Lamentations 5:21 is a prayer asking God to bring the people of Judah back to himself and to restore their days to the way they once were. The writer does not claim the people have already turned, only that turning is something they need God to do. The words come from the closing chapter of Lamentations, spoken by a survivor of Jerusalem’s destruction in 586 BC, speaking on behalf of the whole community.
Turn us to yourself, the LORD, and we will be turned. Renew our days as of old.
Lamentations 5:21 (WEB)
What Lamentations 5:21 Means
The verse opens with a request: “Turn us to yourself, the LORD.” The Hebrew verb for “turn” can mean to return or to bring back. The writer is asking God to draw the people back into a close relationship with him, the way a shepherd gathers strayed sheep. The people feel distant from God, and they cannot repair that distance by their own effort alone.
The second half, “and we will be turned,” expresses confidence in God’s power to change hearts. The writer believes that once God restores the relationship, the people will respond. Restoration is pictured as God’s work first and the people’s response second. The verse does not promise that God will simply overlook the sin that caused the exile. It is a plea shaped by hope.
The final line, “Renew our days as of old,” asks God to make the present look like the past he once blessed. The writer is not asking for a brand-new future with no connection to history. The request is for the old faithfulness of God to be experienced again in daily life.
The Context of Lamentations 5:21
Lamentations is a collection of five poems mourning the fall of Jerusalem and the temple. Tradition ties the book to the prophet Jeremiah, though the text itself does not name its author. Its first readers were the surviving Judeans who had seen the city burned and their neighbors taken into exile. The poems are sung and spoken as grief, not as tidy theology.
Just before verse 21, the chapter pauses on the ruined mountain of Zion, where foxes now wander. Verses 19 and 20 then contrast God’s eternal throne with the apparent abandonment of his people. Verse 21 is the turning point of that lament, a prayer that rises out of the question “why have you forgotten us?” The verses that follow, however, return to complaint, so the request stands as a desperate hope rather than a settled resolution.
Key Phrases in Lamentations 5:21
Jeremiah 31:18
“I have surely heard Ephraim grieving thus, ‘You have chastised me, and I was chastised, as an untrained calf. Turn me, and I will be turned; for you are the LORD my God.
(WEB)
Ephraim’s prayer in this passage echoes the heart of Lamentations 5:21, confessing a need to be turned back and trusting that God can do it. Reading the two together shows the same longing for restoration voiced from different moments in Israel’s history.
Psalm 80:3
Turn us again, God. Cause your face to shine, and we will be saved.
(WEB)
This verse repeats the plea for God to restore his people, using the same language of turning and shining favor. It helps readers see that asking God to bring them back was a steady refrain in Israel’s worship.
A Short Prayer From Lamentations 5:21
Lord, I feel far from you today, and I am not sure how to find my way back. Turn me toward yourself, and I will trust you to do the work in my heart. Renew the days I have been living in weariness and make them full of your presence again.
I bring you the parts of my life that feel broken and the questions I have not known how to ask. Hold them in your faithful hands and remind me that your throne remains forever. Amen.
