Lamentations 5:3

We are orphans and fatherless,

Our mothers are as widows.

They were orphans and fatherless, and their mothers were as widows because the menfolk had been carried off to Babylon, or had been drafted in for slave labour. There is an irony here in that they themselves had been guilty of neglecting the widows and orphans, and now it had rebounded on their own heads. They had become like the people that they had ignored.

But because of the stress YHWH places on watching over widows and orphans (Exodus 22:22; Deuteronomy 10:18; Deuteronomy 14:29; Psalms 68:5; Psalms 146:9; Isaiah 1:17; Jeremiah 49:11) the prophet clearly sees this as an important argument to put to YHWH on their behalf. Let him now watch over the newly made ‘widows and orphans' as He had declared that He would.