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Lamentations 2

¹How 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!

²The 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.

³He 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.

⁴He 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.

⁵The 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.

⁶And 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.

⁷The 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.

⁸The LORD hath purposed to destroy the wall of the daughter of Zion: he hath stretched out a line, he hath not withdrawn his hand from destroying: therefore he made the rampart and the wall to lament; they languished together.

⁹Her 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.

¹⁰The 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.

¹¹Mine 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.

¹²They 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.

¹³What 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?

¹⁴Thy 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.

¹⁵All 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?

¹⁶All 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.

¹⁷The 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.

¹⁸Their 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.

¹⁹Arise, 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.

²⁰Behold, 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?

²¹The 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.

²²Thou 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.

on Lamentations 2

The City’s Destruction

of his people (Jer. 9:1, 18; 13:17; 14:17), but they wouldn’t listen to God’s Word.

Once again, the sufferers called out for any passing stranger to show them sympathy and bring them help (v. 18), but nobody could save them. The rulers of Judah had sought help from their Gentile allies, especially Egypt and Assyria, but their friends and lovers had failed them and did not keep their promises. Isaiah had told them not to trust Egypt (Isa. 31), and Jeremiah had echoed that same message (Jer. 2:18, 36). What a tragedy it is when God’s people look to the world for help instead of seeking the face of the Lord!

The Babylonian soldiers had no mercy for religious leaders, like the priests, or for older people, like the elders (v. 19; 2:10; 4:16; 5:12, 14). The priests were fed from the offerings of the people, but there could be no more offerings; and the elders were cared for by the younger people who had either been slain or deported to Babylon. All this was a fulfillment of the warnings in the covenant (Deut. 28:32, 50). Food became so scarce that mothers killed and ate their own children!

The prayer of the city (vv. 20–22). Each of the first three chapters ends with a prayer (1:20–22; 2:20–22; 3:50–66), and the entire fifth chapter is a prayer. The sufferers had cried out to God, “O Lord, behold my affliction” (v. 9), and to the passersby, “Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like my sorrow” (v. 12), and now they pray, “Behold, O Lord; for I am in distress” (v. 20). They were tormented in their bodies, but even more in their hearts, for they had sinned. If they left the city, they would be slain by the sword; if they remained in the city, they would starve to death. (See Ezek. 7, especially v. 15.) Not only did Judah’s allies (“lovers, friends”) refuse to help them, but they even rejoiced that the kingdom of Judah and the city of Jerusalem had been taken by the Babylonians. (See Ps. 35:15; Jer. 48:27; 50:11.)

Their prayer was that the Lord would “bring the day that He had announced” through the prophets, the day when Babylon would be defeated (Isa. 13—14; Jer. 50—51). But this prayer may also include God’s promise that after seventy years, the Jews would be set free from captivity and allowed to return to their land and rebuild Jerusalem and the temple (Jer. 25:1–14; see Dan. 9:20–27). Now that they were in trouble, the Jews were turning back to God’s Word. It’s too bad they didn’t pay attention to that Word much earlier and keep the trouble from coming! “Do to them as you have done to us!” is not exactly a Christian prayer, but it represented their true feelings (see Ps. 137:7–9).