Peter Pett's Commentary on the Bible
Lamentations 4:18-20
The Aftermath Of The Taking Of The City (Lamentations 4:18).
In vivid terms the prophet describes what followed the taking of the city. People cowered in their houses afraid to go out. For those who did found that they were hunted down by the enemy. Those who fled to the mountains, or into the wilderness discovered the same. Everywhere that they went they found the enemy. They found themselves pursued in the mountains, and ambushed in the wilderness. And this was even true of their king, the king who had been their very life, the Anointed of YHWH, in whom they had had such implicit trust. They had not seen him as a vacillating, weak king, but as the son of the house of David who would ensure their standing among the nations. But instead he had fled and had been taken in the snares of the enemy.
(Tsade) They hunt our steps,
So that we cannot go in our streets,
Our end is near, our days are fulfilled,
For our end is come.
Once the city was taken the soldiery would seek out resistance, which in their eyes would lie in any male who could be found. It thus became impossible to go out in the streets even to search for food. All they could do was lie low and cower in their houses waiting for the end to come, recognising that that day was near. All was lost. Resistance had been in vain. Hope was gone. They had reached the end of their days. They had no time left.
(Qoph) Our pursuers were swifter,
Than the eagles of the heavens,
They chased us on the mountains,
They laid wait for us in the wilderness.
Even those who fled to the mountains or the wilderness fared no better. Their pursuers were swifter than the mighty eagles watching for their prey and swooping down on them with incredible speed. They found themselves chased on the mountains and ambushed in the wilderness. There was no escape from the dogged pursuit as the enemy remorselessly hunted them down.
(Resh) The breath of our nostrils, the anointed of YHWH,
Was taken in their pits,
Of whom we said, ‘Under his shadow,
We will live among the nations.'
And this had even been so for the Anointed of YHWH. He who had been their very life, whom they had trusted so utterly, and whom YHWH had anointed over them, had fled from the city only to be caught in the snares of the enemy. They had looked to him as the Davidic king to give them status among the nations so that they could proudly hold up their heads, to be the hero under whose shadow they lived. There is here a hint of Messianic expectation. But instead he had failed them and in the end had ignominiously fled the city, seeking refuge among those nations, and had been trapped like a hunted animal.
Interestingly this phrase ‘the breath of our nostrils' is found as used in Canaan in the Amarna letters which predated Moses, and on an inscription of Rameses II at Abydos in Egypt indicating how much people in those days depended on their rulers. But for the prophet its chief significance may well have arisen from Genesis 2:7. The king was seen as their God-given life.
Some see ‘under his shadow, we will live among the nations' as referring to those who had fled with Zedekiah, who had hoped to find refuge with him among the nations, thus drawing out the hopelessness of the escape attempt. Even the royal party had been unable to escape. But it is more likely that it had Messianic implications.