Lamentations 5:14-16, King James Version
Italic words were supplied in the English translation for clarity.
Lamentations 5:14-16
Gate, Music, Joy, and Crown Vanish
The gate is empty and the dance is mourning
The elders have ceased from the gate, the young men from their musick. The joy of our heart is ceased; our dance is turned into mourning. Civic deliberation, music, and communal celebration disappear.
The crown is fallen from our head. The crown may figure communal honor or rule rather than one object, and it does not prove that a modern state has divine status.
Woe unto us, that we have sinned—without moving guilt onto the harmed
Woe unto us, that we have sinned! The confession is plural and corporate. It comes after rape, hanging, and forced labor have already been named.
Healthy communal repentance can admit institutional and collective wrong. It must never be reassigned to raped women, starving children, or coerced laborers as proof that they caused the abuse. Mourning does not require permanent loss of music, dance, or cultural rebuilding.
How this should shape us
Confess verified collective failures, distinguish perpetrators, bystanders, and victims, and repair harm. Restore safe public and cultural spaces over time without flattening everyone into equal guilt.
Teach it back
Explain Lamentations 5:14-16 in your own words. Include its poetic movement, one material uncertainty, one vulnerable person or group centered by the text, and one misuse the context rules out.
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Go deeper
The explanation above is meant to stand on its own. Open these notes only if you want language, history, disagreements, or source locations.
Where careful interpreters disagreeThe strongest options and their difficulties
Where do careful interpreters disagree?
Best judgment: The crown may evoke monarchy, honor, identity, or multiple losses. The precise distribution of communal culpability is not specified.
How certain? probableResearch trail and exact locationsThe source record behind this section
Supports: Exact displayed Scripture, paragraph markers, supplied-word markup, and canonical verse coverage.
Lamentations 5:14-16, repository-pinned eng-kjv2006 USFM corpus
Supports: Masoretic Hebrew wording, morphology, alphabet sequence, person and number, repeated vocabulary, and translation questions.
Open Scriptures MorphHB v.2.2, commit 6a5db284c715c18b239422e57bb89684e6a19f00, wlc/Lam.xml, OSIS Lam.5.14-Lam.5.16
Supports: Verse-level Hebrew, syntax, textual, acrostic, literary, historical, and translation notes.
NET Bible Lamentations PDF, printed pp. 1575-1577, translation and notes on 5:14-16
Supports: Five-poem form, historical horizon, voice, judgment, Daughter Zion, chapter 3, famine, hope alternatives, and the unresolved ending.
Joyce, 'Lamentations,' Oxford Bible Commentary, printed pp. 532-533, discussion of poem 5 and 5:14-16
Supports: Trauma-informed analysis of voice, embodiment, humiliation, divine and human agency, children, famine, resistance, memory, and fragile hope.
Yansen, Daughter Zion's Trauma, printed pp. 111-151 and 203-245 on acrostic structure, shifting voices, affliction, judgment, protest, and communal survival; applied to 5:14-16
Sources for This Section
These records identify the source, the claim it supports, and the exact location used. A source remains evidence to evaluate; it does not replace the biblical text.
Biblical text
King James (Authorized) Version — eng-kjv2006
eBible.org and CrossWire Bible Society
USFM archive eng-kjv2006_usfm.zip; source files dated 2026-08-19; downloaded 2026-08-24; archive SHA-256 aec1b3b26c622fd3d963d2bbac963016b9513246ffbfa20da00bb100372ea007; normalized corpus SHA-256 09aef51d90488aa7b9722b3fd9a93f4b25f6bf2064c5fd798fb39673c300ddf2.
Supports: Exact displayed Scripture, paragraph markers, supplied-word markup, and canonical verse coverage.
Exact location: Lamentations 5:14-16, repository-pinned eng-kjv2006 USFM corpus
Open source ↗hebrew text and morphology
Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible: Lamentations
Open Scriptures
Open Scriptures, release 2.2
Supports: Masoretic Hebrew wording, morphology, alphabet sequence, person and number, repeated vocabulary, and translation questions.
Exact location: Open Scriptures MorphHB v.2.2, commit 6a5db284c715c18b239422e57bb89684e6a19f00, wlc/Lam.xml, OSIS Lam.5.14-Lam.5.16
Open source ↗translation and translator notes
NET Bible: Lamentations with translators' notes
Biblical Studies Press
Biblical Studies Press, 2006
Supports: Verse-level Hebrew, syntax, textual, acrostic, literary, historical, and translation notes.
Exact location: NET Bible Lamentations PDF, printed pp. 1575-1577, translation and notes on 5:14-16
Open source ↗modern critical commentary
Lamentations
Paul M. Joyce
Oxford University Press, in The Oxford Bible Commentary, 2001
Supports: Five-poem form, historical horizon, voice, judgment, Daughter Zion, chapter 3, famine, hope alternatives, and the unresolved ending.
Exact location: Joyce, 'Lamentations,' Oxford Bible Commentary, printed pp. 532-533, discussion of poem 5 and 5:14-16
Open source ↗doctoral dissertation and trauma reading
Daughter Zion's Trauma: Reading Lamentations with Insights from Trauma Studies
James Washington Sydgrave Yansen, Jr.
Boston University School of Theology / OpenBU, 2016
Supports: Trauma-informed analysis of voice, embodiment, humiliation, divine and human agency, children, famine, resistance, memory, and fragile hope.
Exact location: Yansen, Daughter Zion's Trauma, printed pp. 111-151 and 203-245 on acrostic structure, shifting voices, affliction, judgment, protest, and communal survival; applied to 5:14-16
Open source ↗