Lamentations Chapter 5 verse 7 Holy Bible
Our fathers sinned, and are not; And we have borne their iniquities.
read chapter 5 in ASV
Our fathers were sinners and are dead; and the weight of their evil-doing is on us.
read chapter 5 in BBE
Our fathers have sinned, [and] they are not; and we bear their iniquities.
read chapter 5 in DARBY
Our fathers have sinned, and are not; and we have borne their iniquities.
read chapter 5 in KJV
read chapter 5 in WBT
Our fathers sinned, and are no more; We have borne their iniquities.
read chapter 5 in WEB
Our fathers have sinned -- they are not, We their iniquities have borne.
read chapter 5 in YLT
Pulpit Commentary
Pulpit CommentaryVerse 7. - We have borne their iniquities. The fathers died before the iniquity was fully ripe for punishment, and their descendants have the feeling that the accumulated sins of the nation are visited upon them. This view of national troubles is very clearly endorsed by one important class of passages (Exodus 20:5; Exodus 34:7; Numbers 14:18; Jeremiah 32:18). The objection to it is forcibly expressed by Job (Job 21:19), "God [it is said] layeth up his iniquity for his children: [but] let him requite it to himself, that he may feel it!" Hence Jeremiah (Jeremiah 31:30) and Ezekiel (Ezekiel 18:1, etc.) insist on the truth that every man is punished for his own sins. Of course the two views of punishment are reconcilable. The Jews were not only punished, according to Jeremiah 16:11, 12, for their fathers' sins, but for their own still more flagrant offences.
Ellicott's Commentary
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(7) We have borne their iniquities.--The words seem at first parallel to the proverb of the "sour grapes" in Jeremiah 31:29; Ezekiel 18:2. Here, however, it is followed in Lamentations 5:16 by a confession of personal guilt, and the complaint is simply that the former generation of offenders had passed away without the punishment which now fell upon their descendants, who thus had to bear, as it were, a double penalty.
