Lamentations 5:6 describes Judah’s humiliating dependence on nations that had once been enemies, reaching out to Egypt and Assyria for food just to stay alive. The verse records a moment of national shame, when the people of Jerusalem had to beg for bread from powers that had oppressed them or their ancestors. The speaker is the community of survivors, voicing their collective grief in the book of Lamentations, which is traditionally attributed to the prophet Jeremiah and written after the fall of Jerusalem to Babylon in 586 BC.
We have given our hands to the Egyptians, and to the Assyrians, to be satisfied with bread.
Lamentations 5:6 (WEB)
What Lamentations 5:6 Means
The verse begins with a picture of surrender. “We have given our hands” is an idiom for making a pact or reaching out in submission, the way a person would hold out empty hands to receive something. The speakers are not describing a choice made in strength. They are describing what their situation has forced them to do.
The two powers named, Egypt and Assyria, were both nations that had dominated or threatened Israel and Judah across earlier centuries. Egypt had once held Israel in slavery, and Assyria had destroyed the northern kingdom. Now the survivors of Judah turn to these same powers for grain, the “bread” that sustains life. The phrase “to be satisfied with bread” points to basic survival, not luxury: they simply want enough food to keep going.
The verse does not promise that the people were rescued or fed in a way that restored their dignity. It records a bitter reality. It shows what loss and siege can do to a people, and it does not present their dependence as a sign of God’s blessing or approval. Read honestly, it is a confession of need and of how far they had fallen.
The Context of Lamentations 5:6
Lamentations is a collection of five poems mourning the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple. Chapter 5 is a communal prayer that lists the hardships of the survivors: orphans, widows, water bought with money, wood sold back to them, enemies pressing on their necks. Verse 6 sits in the middle of this list, and it is one of several verses in the chapter describing a people who have lost their independence and their security.
Just before verse 6, the poem describes the people’s suffering in general terms, and right after it, verse 7 confesses that “our fathers sinned,” and the present generation bears the consequences. Verse 8 adds that servants now rule over them. Read in this setting, verse 6 is one piece of a larger confession: the people see their dependence on foreign nations as part of a judgment they feel they have inherited and must now live under. That framing changes the verse from a simple report of hunger into a prayer of lament, offered to God in the middle of ruin.
Key Phrases in Lamentations 5:6
Lamentations 5:21
Turn us to yourself, the LORD, and we will be turned. Renew our days as of old.
(WEB)
The very next lament in the chapter’s closing turns from describing the suffering to asking God to restore the people. Read alongside verse 6, it shows that the dependence described there is not the final word. The poem ends with a plea for renewal, so the reader sees the shame of verse 6 held inside a longer prayer for God to act.
Psalm 46:1
God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
(WEB)
This psalm speaks of God as a refuge and strength in times of trouble, a contrast to a people looking to foreign nations for help. Set beside verse 6, it reminds the reader where Israel’s security was meant to rest. It highlights the spiritual cost behind the physical hunger that verse 6 describes.
A Short Prayer From Lamentations 5:6
Lord, you see the times when we have had to reach out to others just to survive, and you know how much it hurts to ask for help we never wanted to need. Where we have given our hands to what cannot truly satisfy us, meet us there and show us the difference between provision and peace. Teach us to bring our hunger and our shame honestly before you, trusting that you hear the prayers of the broken. Amen.
