Lamentations 5:6 Meaning and Explanation

'We have given the hand to the Egyptians, and to the Assyrians, to be satisfied with bread.' To give the hand is to submit, to make terms of dependence. The people have had to bow to the great foreign powers, Egypt and Assyria, simply to obtain enough bread to live. Survival has cost them their independence.

There is an echo of old failures here, for these were the very nations to whom Judah had so often turned for help instead of trusting God. Now they must beg from them merely to eat. The verse quietly acknowledges the bitter fruit of misplaced reliance. Hunger has driven the people into submission to the very powers they once courted, a humbling reminder of where their trust should have been all along.