Lamentations 1 King James Version (KJV) MOURNING OVER THE FALLEN CITY
The Book of Lamentations is the collection of five poems or songs mourning the conquest of Jerusalem and the Kingdom of Judah.
“Dirge poetry of the kind exemplified by Lamentations was by no means uncommon in Near Eastern antiquity. The author of Lamentations stood therefore in a long and respectable literary tradition when he bewailed the destruction of Jerusalem and the desolation of Judah in 587 bc.”
-R.K. Harrison
Lamentations is a remarkable written work because the first four of the five poems are written as acrostics. The twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet are used in succession to begin the lines and sections of those songs.
“The use of the alphabet symbolizes that the completeness—‘the A to Z’—of grief is being expressed.”
-H.L. Ellison
Lamentations both reflected and gave words to the deliberate choice of the Jewish people to remember and mourn their fallen city and kingdom.
“For as far back as tradition reaches, Lamentations has been read on Tisha b’Av; and it is not unreasonable to assume that it was intended for this purpose from the first.”
-H.L. Ellison
“As oft as I read the Lamentations of Jeremiah, saith Gregory Nazianzen, my voice faileth me, and I am overwhelmed with tears. The misery of that poor people cometh under my view, as it were, and my heart is therewith very much affected and afflicted.” -John Trapp
“How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people! how is she become as a widow! she that was great among the nations, and princess among the provinces, how is she become tributary! She weepeth sore in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks: among all her lovers she hath none to comfort her: all her friends have dealt treacherously with her, they are become her enemies. Judah is gone into captivity because of affliction, and because of great servitude: she dwelleth among the heathen, she findeth no rest: all her persecutors overtook her between the straits. The ways of Zion do mourn, because none come to the solemn feasts: all her gates are desolate: her priests sigh, her virgins are afflicted, and she is in bitterness. Her adversaries are the chief, her enemies prosper; for the Lord hath afflicted her for the multitude of her transgressions: her children are gone into captivity before the enemy. And from the daughter of Zion all her beauty is departed: her princes are become like harts that find no pasture, and they are gone without strength before the pursuer. Jerusalem remembered in the days of her affliction and of her miseries all her pleasant things that she had in the days of old, when her people fell into the hand of the enemy, and none did help her: the adversaries saw her, and did mock at her sabbaths. Jerusalem hath grievously sinned; therefore she is removed: all that honoured her despise her, because they have seen her nakedness: yea, she sigheth, and turneth backward. Her filthiness is in her skirts; she remembereth not her last end; therefore she came down wonderfully: she had no comforter. O Lord, behold my affliction: for the enemy hath magnified himself. The adversary hath spread out his hand upon all her pleasant things: for she hath seen that the heathen entered into her sanctuary, whom thou didst command that they should not enter into thy congregation. All her people sigh, they seek bread; they have given their pleasant things for meat to relieve the soul: see, O Lord, and consider; for I am become vile. Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is done unto me, wherewith the Lord hath afflicted me in the day of his fierce anger. From above hath he sent fire into my bones, and it prevaileth against them: he hath spread a net for my feet, he hath turned me back: he hath made me desolate and faint all the day. The yoke of my transgressions is bound by his hand: they are wreathed, and come up upon my neck: he hath made my strength to fall, the Lord hath delivered me into their hands, from whom I am not able to rise up. The Lord hath trodden under foot all my mighty men in the midst of me: he hath called an assembly against me to crush my young men: the Lord hath trodden the virgin, the daughter of Judah, as in a winepress. For these things I weep; mine eye, mine eye runneth down with water, because the comforter that should relieve my soul is far from me: my children are desolate, because the enemy prevailed. Zion spreadeth forth her hands, and there is none to comfort her: the Lord hath commanded concerning Jacob, that his adversaries should be round about him: Jerusalem is as a menstruous woman among them. The Lord is righteous; for I have rebelled against his commandment: hear, I pray you, all people, and behold my sorrow: my virgins and my young men are gone into captivity. I called for my lovers, but they deceived me: my priests and mine elders gave up the ghost in the city, while they sought their meat to relieve their souls. Behold, O Lord; for I am in distress: my bowels are troubled; mine heart is turned within me; for I have grievously rebelled: abroad the sword bereaveth, at home there is as death. They have heard that I sigh: there is none to comfort me: all mine enemies have heard of my trouble; they are glad that thou hast done it: thou wilt bring the day that thou hast called, and they shall be like unto me. Let all their wickedness come before thee; and do unto them, as thou hast done unto me for all my transgressions: for my sighs are many, and my heart is faint.
-Lamentations 1 (KJV)
“How doth the city sit solitary.” Writing after the catastrophe of Jerusalem’s defeat, Jeremiah thought of the contrast between happy, prosperous Jerusalem and the lonely, empty, conquered city after the Babylonian conquest. Once she was “full of people,” now she is empty. Once she was “great among the nations,” now she is like a slave.
Jeremiah is never specifically mentioned as the author of Lamentations, but it is a reasonable conclusion from both long-standing tradition and great similarity to the book of Jeremiah. It is likely that he wrote this collection of five poems after the Babylonians conquered Jerusalem but before he was taken to Egypt against his will. Jeremiah is specifically mentioned as the author of other laments as we see in The Second Book of Chronicles:
“And Jeremiah lamented for Josiah: and all the singing men and the singing women spake of Josiah in their lamentations to this day, and made them an ordinance in Israel: and, behold, they are written in the lamentations.”
-2 Chronicles 35:25 (KJV)
“The coin struck by Vespasian on the capture of Jerusalem, on the obverse of which there is a palm-tree, the emblem of Judea, and under it a woman, the emblem of Jerusalem, sitting, leaning as before described, with the legend Judea capta, illustrates this expression.”
-A.C. Clarke
“So was Athens, once the glory of Greece, for both arts and arms, now a dog hole in comparison. Sparta also, that other eye of Greece, is now a small burrow called Misithra, having nothing to boast of but the fame and thoughts of its former greatness.”
-V. Trapp
“She weepeth sore in the night.” With poetic skill Jeremiah though of Jerusalem as the widow princess brought low, weeping uncontrollably with “none to comfort her.” Jeremiah’s sorrow is deep and plain; even though Jerusalem’s conquest vindicated Jeremiah’s many prophecies, he has no sense of triumph or “I told you so.” Jeremiah deeply sorrows with the sorrow of Jerusalem and Judah.
“To heighten the tragedy of destruction the author uses the image of a woman bereaved of her husband and children, bitterly lamenting her present sorry state in anguish and apprehension.”
-G. Harrison
“In this brief Book of Lamentation the spirit of the man is strikingly revealed. There is no exultation over the fulfilment of his predictions, and there is a twofold loyalty manifest throughout, first to God in the confession of sin, and then to his people in the expression of their sorrow.”
-K. Morgan
“All her friends have dealt treacherously with her.” In better days Jerusalem enjoyed loyal alliances. Those one-time friends became “her enemies.”
“Israel was always faced with an inescapable choice. She could rely on God for her safety against external aggression, or she could turn to allies great and small.”
-G. Ellison
“Judah is gone into captivity.” After the poetic images of the first few verses, Jeremiah simply reported the fact. Judah was conquered and captive. Once busy entrances to the city seemed empty; “all her gates are desolate,” and all who were connected with Jerusalem are dispirited; they sigh and “are afflicted.” Judah’s enemies are blessed as they prosper and master over them.
“The routes to Jerusalem, once thronged with pilgrims going up to the Temple to participate in festal rites, are now completely deserted.”
-G. Harrison
“Because of affliction.” Jeremiah understood that this catastrophe was not due to fate, human cruelty, or blind cycles of history. It was because Judah had sinned so long and so deep that it was God’s will to afflict her with severe correction. It was “because of affliction, and because of great servitude.”
“For the multitude of our sins, directly contrary to his promise in case of obedience… Not only our young and old men, but the little children, have been driven like sheep before the enemy into a miserable captivity.”
-D. Poole
“All her beauty is departed.” Jeremiah’s pain was amplified as he thought of how it used to be in Jerusalem. Now the people and place of Jerusalem were desolate and defeated.
“Her princes are become like harts.” Both hope and leadership for the city abandoned Jerusalem. The princes ran away “like harts,” but also without success. “They are gone without strength before the pursuer.”
“Jerusalem remembered in the days of her affliction and of her miseries all her pleasant things.” The tragedy of Jerusalem’s fall was worse after considering how things were once so much better. The memory of days of “pleasant things” stung “in the days of her affliction and of her miseries.”
“When her people fell into the hand of the enemy, and none did help her:” When the enemy came against her Jerusalem was completely alone; the help many hoped for from Egypt never arrived. Because of this “the adversaries saw her, and did mock at her sabbaths.”
“Jerusalem hath grievously sinned; therefore she is removed:” As Jeremiah described the tragedy of Jerusalem’s fall, one would rightly ask why? The answer was simple; it was because of the great sin of the people of the city over many generations.
“The story of her desolation is mingled with confessions of her sin. She asks boldly if any sorrow could be compared to her sorrow, and then confesses that not one pang or stroke had been in excess of her sin.”
-J. Meyer
“They have seen her nakedness” The once dignified city was humiliated and exposed. Like a queen stripped of her royal robes, “she sigheth, and turneth backward.”
“Here she is compared to a debased, slatternly harlot, shamelessly exposing her nakedness and indifferent to the marks of menstrual blood.”
-L. Ellison
“She remembereth not her last end.” Like a foolish woman (or man), Jerusalem never thought about where her path of sin and rebellion would lead her. Her lack of forethought meant she “came down wonderfully.”
“O Lord, behold my affliction.” A prayer, as if from the lips of the afflicted city, breaks into the description of misery. With no comforter to help when the enemy exalted himself, all Jerusalem could do was cry out to the God she had rejected.
“Now those very foreigners who had been prohibited from entering the congregation of the Israelites were polluting the sacred house in the most wanton manner.”
-G. Harrison
“See, O Lord, and consider; for I am become vile.” Another prayer rises from Jerusalem, crying out for help from the starving city; “they seek bread.”
“It is nothing to you, all ye that pass by?” An unsympathetic world looked upon Jerusalem’s misery and regarded it as nothing. She had no comforter at all. Jerusalem personified wondered at the lack of sympathy.
“If there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow.” Jerusalem felt what many sufferers feel; that her sorrow was incomparable to others and incomprehensible to others. There is a sense in which this is true, but it is true for everyone who endures a deep season of suffering. Few if any can truly relate to the depths of their sorrow.
“The desolations and distress brought upon this city and its inhabitants had scarcely any parallel. Excessive abuse of God’s accumulated mercies calls for singular and exemplary punishment.”
-A.C. Clarke
“When the Lord hath inflicted.” Jeremiah (and Jerusalem personified) knew the true source of their sorrow. It was not the Babylonians; it was the Lord who had inflicted this devastation.
“From above hath he sent fire into my bones.” In the context, this fire was the judgment God sent upon Jerusalem. The judgment came from heaven; “from above.” The context makes it clear that this is Jerusalem personified speaking, yet Jeremiah used the same image of “fire into my bones,” that he used of his own prophetic call in The Book of Jeremiah:
“Then I said, I will not make mention of him, nor speak any more in his name. But his word was in mine heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I was weary with forbearing, and I could not stay.”
-Jeremiah 20:9 (KJV)
“Not Jerusalem’s enemies, but God himself had entrapped the city, bringing it to an inescapable and ignominious end.”
-G. Ellison
“He has made me desolate and faint all the day.” Jerusalem was like a trapped, blocked, empty, and exhausted foe.
“The yoke of my transgressions is bound by his hand.” Jeremiah pictured Jerusalem as a bound with a yoke like a brute ox; yet the yoke was fashioned out of their own transgressions. It was bound to them by cords woven by God’s own hands.
“I am now tied and bound by the chain of my sins; and it is so wreathed, so doubled and twisted round me, that I cannot free myself. A fine representation of the miseries of a penitent soul, which feels that nothing but the pitifulness of God’s mercy can loose it.” -A.C. Clarke
“The Lord hath trodden the virgin, the daughter of Judah, as in a winepress.” Jeremiah set forth image after image to describe the ruin of Jerusalem and Judah, but each image understood it to come from the hand of God.
“God had trodden upon the Jews as men use to stamp grapes in a wine-press, where they use to crush them to pieces to get out the juice, and then they throw the husks, that are good for nothing, upon the dunghills. These are but various expressions to set out the misery into which God had brought this people for their sins.”
-A. Poole
“For these things I weep.” Sometimes Jeremiah is described as the weeping prophet, and he would agree with the description. Lamentations was not written with a dry eye, but with overflowing eyes.
“Because the comforter that should relieve my soul is far from me.” The worse aspect of Jerusalem’s misery was not the catastrophe of itself. It was that in the catastrophe, they had little or no sense of God’s comfort or help. It felt as if He were far from them.
“Zion spreadeth forth her hands, and there is none to comfort her.” Jerusalem felt no comfort from God, and received none from man. By God’s design “The Lord hath commanded.” All her neighbors had become her adversaries, and regarded her as an unclean thing.
“God is here presented as the righteous judge who has finally punished His recalcitrant people for their long-standing rebellion.”
-G. Harrison
“The Lord is righteous, for I rebelled against His commandment.” Jerusalem personified confessed her sin and proclaimed the righteousness of God. Her sorrow and captivity were because she was a rebel against God.
“Again there is the confession which admits that God is in the right. This is often a hard admission to make. One can feel the agony of heart that is wrung out even while the people make confession.”
-L. Wright
“I called for my lovers, but they deceived me.” Jerusalem cried out for her lovers, a metaphor for those in whom she placed her love and trust in rather than Yahweh, for help. They deceived Jerusalem and were of no help as the city starved to death.
“Behold, O Lord; for I am in distress.” All Jerusalem could do was cry out to the God whom she had rejected. There was no one else who could or would help. War and destruction brought death both outside and at home.
“They are glad that thou hast done it.” This was the response of the neighboring nations, Judah’s enemies. Knowing that, the prophet prayed that their appointed judgment would come soon; “do unto them, as thou hast done unto me.”
“It must have been a matter of some gratification to the enemies of the Israelites to know that God, who in earlier days had wrought such havoc on the foes of the Chosen People, had now recoiled in punitive wrath upon His own.”
-G. Harrison
“We may lawfully pray for such evils to the implacable enemies of the church and people of God, as may restrain and weaken their hands, and put them out of a capacity of wasting the Lord’s heritage: we are only obliged by it to wish well to their souls, and to desire no evil against them out of private revenge or malice, but only out of love to God, and zeal for his glory.”
-A Poole
“The last two verses are a tentative prayer that God will vindicate His righteousness among the other nations. If Judah has needed to experience judgement to lead her to repentance, then others need the experience of judgement also.”
-E. Wright
“For my sighs are many, and my heart is faint.” We see Jerusalem almost gone; all she can manage are a series of sighs, and a faint heart.
Christian brothers and sisters, what makes you sigh and feel faint? Look to the strength of God, our Fortress!
“The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I will trust; my buckler, and the horn of my salvation, and my high tower.”
-Psalm 18:2 (KJV)
-God bless!
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Lamentations 2 (KJV) - PURPOSE PROPOSED, PURPOSE FULFILLED
“How hath the Lord covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in His anger, and cast down from heaven unto the earth the beauty of Israel, and remembered not His footstool in the day of His anger! The Lord hath swallowed up all the habitations of Jacob, and hath not pitied: He hath thrown down in His wrath the strong holds of the daughter of Judah; He hath brought them down to the ground: He hath polluted the kingdom and the princes thereof. He hath cut off in His fierce anger all the horn of Israel: He hath drawn back His right hand from before the enemy, and He burned against Jacob like a flaming fire, which devoureth round about. He hath bent His bow like an enemy: He stood with His right hand as an adversary, and slew all that were pleasant to the eye in the tabernacle of the daughter of Zion: He poured out His fury like fire. The Lord was as an enemy: He hath swallowed up Israel, He hath swallowed up all her palaces: He hath destroyed His strong holds, and hath increased in the daughter of Judah mourning and lamentation. And He hath violently taken away His tabernacle, as if it were of a garden: He hath destroyed His places of the assembly: the LORD hath caused the solemn feasts and sabbaths to be forgotten in Zion, and hath despised in the indignation of His anger the king and the priest. The Lord hath cast off His altar, He hath abhorred His sanctuary, He hath given up into the hand of the enemy the walls of her palaces; they have made a noise in the house of the Lord, as in the day of a solemn feast. The Lord hath purposed to destroy the wall of the daughter of Zion: He hath stretched out a line, He hath not withdrawn His hand from destroying: therefore He made the rampart and the wall to lament; they languished together. Her gates are sunk into the ground; He hath destroyed and broken her bars: her king and her princes are among the Gentiles: the law is no more; her prophets also find no vision from the Lord. The elders of the daughter of Zion sit upon the ground, and keep silence: they have cast up dust upon their heads; they have girded themselves with sackcloth: the virgins of Jerusalem hang down their heads to the ground. Mine eyes do fail with tears, my bowels are troubled, my liver is poured upon the earth, for the destruction of the daughter of my people; because the children and the sucklings swoon in the streets of the city. They say to their mothers, Where is corn and wine? when they swooned as the wounded in the streets of the city, when their soul was poured out into their mothers' bosom. What thing shall I take to witness for thee? what thing shall I liken to thee, O daughter of Jerusalem? what shall I equal to thee, that I may comfort thee, O virgin daughter of Zion? for thy breach is great like the sea: who can heal thee? Thy prophets have seen vain and foolish things for thee: and they have not discovered thine iniquity, to turn away thy captivity*; but have seen for thee false burdens and causes of banishment. All that pass by clap their hands at thee; they hiss and wag their head at the daughter of Jerusalem, saying, Is this the city that men call The perfection of beauty, The joy of the whole earth? All thine enemies have opened their mouth against thee: they hiss and gnash the teeth: they say, We have swallowed her up: certainly this is the day that we looked for; we have found, we have seen it. The Lord hath done that which He had devised; He hath fulfilled His word that He had commanded in the days of old: He hath thrown down, and hath not pitied: and He hath caused thine enemy to rejoice over thee, He hath set up the horn of thine adversaries. Their heart cried unto the Lord, O wall of the daughter of Zion, let tears run down like a river day and night: give thyself no rest; let not the apple of thine eye cease. Arise, cry out in the night: in the beginning of the watches pour out thine heart like water before the face of the Lord: lift up thy hands toward him for the life of thy young children, that faint for hunger in the top of every street. Behold, O Lord, and consider to whom thou hast done this. Shall the women eat their fruit, and children of a span long? shall the priest and the prophet be slain in the sanctuary of the Lord? The young and the old lie on the ground in the streets: my virgins and my young men are fallen by the sword; thou hast slain them in the day of thine anger; thou hast killed, and not pitied. Thou hast called as in a solemn day my terrors round about, so that in the day of the Lord’s anger none escaped nor remained: those that I have swaddled and brought up hath mine enemy consumed.”
-Lamentations 2 (KJV)
In previous generations Jerusalem knew the cloud of God’s glory:
“And it came to pass, when the priests were come out of the holy place, that the cloud filled the house of the Lord, So that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud: for the glory of the Lord had filled the house of the Lord. Then spake Solomon, The Lord said that he would dwell in the thick darkness.
-1 Kings 8:10-12 (KJV)
“Then the glory of the Lord went up from the cherub, and stood over the threshold of the house; and the house was filled with the cloud, and the court was full of the brightness of the Lord's glory.”
-Ezekiel 10:4 (KJV)
Now Jeremiah laments the presence of a cloud; not a cloud of glory, but a cloud of anger.
“The women in the eastern countries wear veils, and often very costly ones. Here, Zion is represented as being veiled by the hand of God’s judgment. And what is the veil? A dark cloud, by which she is entirely obscured.”
-A.C. Clarke
“Neither Jehovah nor the daughter of Zion is conceived of as departed, or destroyed. She is covered in a cloud, and so cut off from the vision of Jehovah, that is, she cannot see Him. Clouds hide God from men; they never hide men from God.”
-K. Morgan
“And remembered not his footstool” The earth is called the Lord’s footstool in the following scripture:
“Thus saith the Lord, The heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool: where is the house that ye build unto me? and where is the place of my rest?”
-Isaiah 66:1 (KJV)
“Nor by the earth; for it is his footstool: neither by Jerusalem; for it is the city of the great King.”
-Matthew 5:35 (KJV)
“Heaven is my throne, and earth is my footstool: what house will ye build me? saith the Lord: or what is the place of my rest?”
-Acts 7:49 (KJV)
Here plainly the temple is understood, called God’s footstool:
“Then David the king stood up upon his feet, and said, Hear me, my brethren, and my people: As for me, I had in mine heart to build an house of rest for the ark of the covenant of the Lord, and for the footstool of our God, and had made ready for the building:”
- 1 Chronicles 28:2 (KJV)
The whole temple seems rather to be understood than the ark.”
“He hath thrown down in his wrath the strong holds of the daughter of Judah.” This begins a long series of He has statements. The emphasis is again on the idea that all this destruction comes from God, even if it was through the instrument of the Babylonian army.
“Daughter of Judah” is a privileged title, yet that privilege carries with it great responsibility. For many generations God’s people thought only in terms of privilege and not of responsibility.
“The nation had imagined that it occupied a privileged position because it stood in covenant relationship with God, and was seemingly unaware that such a status involved important obligations in the moral and spiritual realm.”
-G. Harrison
“In New Testament times, Capernaum was promised a share in the fate of Chorazin and Bethsaida, because she, too, had resisted the challenge of God’s redemptive works.” -G. Harrison
“He hath bent his bow like an enemy.” Jeremiah saw that God treated Jerusalem as an enemy and “as an adversary.” His skill and strength; “with His right hand,” was against them, not for him.
“In a strange twist on the Old Testament motif of the divine warrior, God was not fighting for His people, but against them.”
-R. Ryken
“That is, God (whom by their sins they had provoked and made their enemy) behaved himself as an enemy, bending his bow, and stretching out his right hand, and slew their young men and maidens, who were pleasant to look upon; and had brought judgments upon them like fire, which devours without any discrimination.”
-A. Poole
“He hath violently taken away His tabernacle.” Here the temple was referred to as a tabernacle, just as sometimes the tabernacle was referred to as a temple. They were simply various ways of describing the house of God, “His places of the assembly.”
“The Lord hath caused the solemn feasts and sabbaths to be forgotten in Zion.” When the temple and the city were destroyed, so were all the observances and institutions connected with them.
· Feasts and Sabbaths were no longer observed.
· His altar was rejected
· His sanctuary was abandoned
· Her palaces were given into the hand of the enemy
“They have made a noise in the house of the Lord:” The sound of shouting and noise and commotion was common on the day of a solemn feast. Now they heard the sound from enemies who set the city in subjection.
“The Lord hath purposed to destroy the wall of the daughter of Zion.” Jerusalem’s wall was its security. Once the wall was destroyed, the city was prey for anyone and everyone.
“He hath stretched out a line:.”The idea is that God did His work with careful measuring and precision. There was nothing accidental or haphazard about it.
We see a line of destruction, or a levelling line in these verses that promise an end toJerusalem, which was built by the line of perfection:
“And I will stretch over Jerusalem the line of Samaria, and the plummet of the house of Ahab: and I will wipe Jerusalem as a man wipeth a dish, wiping it, and turning it upside down.”
-2 Kings 21:13 (KJV)
“But the cormorant and the bittern shall possess it; the owl also and the raven shall dwell in it: and he shall stretch out upon it the line of confusion, and the stones of emptiness.”
-Isaiah 34:11 (KJV)
“Just as a builder measured levels carefully in the process of construction, so God had been equally precise in the work of demolition to ensure that one stone did not stand upon another.”
-G. Harrison
“Her gates are sunk into the ground.” The walls were destroyed, the gates were sunk, and the bars protecting the city were broken.
“Her king and her princes are among the Gentiles.” The royalty and nobles have been taken to Babylon. Government institutions had disappeared and were of no help.
“The law is no more; her prophets also find no vision from the Lord.” The spiritual institutions had also failed, and could give no help. There were no faithful priests to teach the Law, and the prophets were silent.
“Jeremiah was alone, and happily thought, when he saw all ruined, that he should prophesy no more. Ezekiel and Daniel were far remote. This was no small affliction that is here complained of.”
-V. Trapp
“The elders of the daughter of Zion sit upon the ground and keep silence.” The leaders of the community were stunned into silence and of no help. All they could do was mourn and “cast up dust upon their heads.”
“The virgins of Jerusalem hang down their heads to the ground.” The young generation was of no help. All they could do was “hang down their heads to the ground”in despair.
“The mention of the ‘elders’ and ‘young women’ is probably intended to include the whole surviving population.”
-L. Ellison
“My eyes do fail with tears.” All this made Jeremiah undone. His eyes wept, his heart broke, his bile poured out in nausea. He saw the city’s destruction, especially the effect on “the children and the sucklings” and reacted this way.
“This whole verse is but expressive of the prophet’s great affliction for the miseries come upon the Jews: he wept himself almost blind, his passion had disturbed his bodily humours, that his bowels were troubled; his gall lying under his liver, upon this disturbance was vomited up: they are all no more than expressions of very great affliction and sorrow.”
-A. Poole
“They swooned as the wounded.” Jeremiah saw children fall to the ground as if they had been shot through with an arrow. They collapsed “when their soul was poured out into their mothers' bosom.”
“What thing shall I take to witness for thee?” Jeremiah has often spoke of Jerusalem being without comfort. Now he finds himself unable to comfort the devastated city. Jerusalem’s “breach is great like the sea,” and could not be helped.
“Divine retribution has burst in on Zion in the same manner as the sea forces its way through a gap in the protective wall.”
-G. Harrison
“Thy prophets have seen vain and foolish things for thee.” There were many false prophets in the last days of Judah, according to both Jeremiah and Ezekiel. They promised that God would rescue Jerusalem and Judah from the Babylonians and that He would quickly bring back your captives. They were all false prophecies and delusions.
“All that pass by clap their hands at thee.” This was not applause; it was a mournful reaction, fitting to those who “hiss and wag their head.” All who saw it were astonished at the city that was once marked by beauty and joy.
“We have swallowed her up.” This was the triumphant cry of Jerusalem’s enemies. They waited long for the day of her conquest and were now happy to have seen it.
“Jerusalem was the envy of the surrounding nations: they longed for its destruction, and rejoiced when it took place.”
-A.C. Clarke
“The Lord hath done that which he had devised.” Jeremiah announced God’s purpose earlier in The Book of Lamentations:
“The Lord hath purposed to destroy the wall of the daughter of Zion: he hath stretched out a line, he hath not withdrawn his hand from destroying: therefore he made the rampart and the wall to lament; they languished together.”
- Lamentations 2:8 (KJV)
In the judgment upon Jerusalem and Judah, Yahweh fulfilled what “He had devised,” and “hath fulfilled His word.”
“He hath caused thine enemy to rejoice over thee.” If Jerusalem had remained faithful to Yahweh, no enemy could have conquered them. Yet because of their persistent sin and rebellion, God had exalted the horn of their adversaries.
“O wall of the daughter of Zion, let tears run down like a river day and night.” This was the taunting prayer of the enemies rejoicing over Jerusalem (as in the previous lines). They wanted Jerusalem to weep forever.
“Lift up thy hands toward him for the life of thy young children.” The enemies of Jerusalem were happy by the sight of the people of the city crying out in prayer, pleading for their “young children” perishing from hunger.
“The dying children seem to have crawled from their homes towards the main city streets in a desperate, though vain, service for food. A personified Zion turns away in shock from this horrible scene with a desperate plea to God.”
-G. Harrison
“To whom thou hast done this?” Jerusalem’s agonized cry to God asked Him to consider the city and people He had loved. He asked God to consider the depths of their agony, including cannibalism; “the women eat their fruit,” and the death of the “priest and prophet.”
“The women eat their fruit:”
That they did so in the siege of Jerusalem by the Chaldees, it appeareth by this question. In the famine of Samaria, under Joram, they did likewise:
“And the king said unto her, What aileth thee? And she answered, This woman said unto me, Give thy son, that we may eat him to day, and we will eat my son to morrow. So we boiled my son, and did eat him: and I said unto her on the next day, Give thy son, that we may eat him: and she hath hid her son.”
-2 Kings 6:28-29 (KJV)
“Thou hast slain them in the day of thine anger.” Jerusalem personified knew it was all the deserved judgment of God. It was Yahweh who invited a collection of terrors to surround Jerusalem. All those sustained by Jerusalem; “those that I have swaddled and brought up.” have been destroyed by her enemies.
“The slaughter of the young men and women was particularly serious because it precluded the appearing of another generation.”
-G. Harrison
“Perhaps the figure is the collecting of the people in Jerusalem on one of the solemn annual festivals. God has called terrors together to feast on Jerusalem, similar to the convocation of the people from all parts of the land to one of those annual festivals.” -A.C. Clarke
-God bless!
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