Lamentations 1:1-22
1 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!
2 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.
3 Judah is gone into captivity because of affliction, and because of greata servitude: she dwelleth among the heathen, she findeth no rest: all her persecutors overtook her between the straits.
4 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.
5 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.
6 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.
7 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.
8 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.
9 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.
10 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.
11 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.
12 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.
13 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.
14 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.
15 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,b the daughter of Judah, as in a winepress.
16 For these things I weep; mine eye, mine eye runneth down with water, because the comforter that should relievec my soul is far from me: my children are desolate, because the enemy prevailed.
17 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.
18 The LORD is righteous; for I have rebelled against his commandment:d hear, I pray you, all people, and behold my sorrow: my virgins and my young men are gone into captivity.
19 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.
20 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.
21 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,e and they shall be like unto me.
22 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. The First Lament. This is an alphabetical acrostic poem in twenty-two stanzas of three lines each, with five Heb. beats in each line. It has two equal parts: Lamentations 1:1 (Aleph to Kaph), the singer's account of Zion's sorrows, and Lamentations 1:12 (Lamedh to Tau), a soliloquy thereon by the city herself. In detail: Lamentations 1:1 tells of a Zion once populous, now widowed; her nights full of weeping, unconsoled by former lovers who are now all faithless. The people have migrated, to escape taxings (note that they are not exiled, as had been the case in 586 B.C.), but even abroad they are harried; no pilgrims are thronging the roads, as they had been wont to do in the days of the Ptolemies-' rule (300- 200 B.C.), but they did not do so in Jeremiah's time; priests, virgins, children wander about moaning; princes and all grandeur have fled away. And, alas! it is Yahweh Himself who has wrought all this scourging of Zion: it is for her sin.
Lamentations 1:1. How (cf. Lamentations 2:1; Lamentations 4:1, and Isaiah 1:21; Isaiah 14:4): the book takes its Heb. name (Eykah) from this its first word. Medinah (pl. medinoth), (see Introd.) is used only in late writings, except in 1 Kings 20, where it is difficult to avoid thinking that there the word is misspelt for Midianite.
Lamentations 1:4. Mo-' edh, Trysting-place or solemn assembly (see Introd.).
Lamentations 1:6 seems like an echo of Psalms 42, which is probably the wail of Onias II, High Priest in 175 B.C.
Lamentations 1:7. A story of Zion's worst sorrow, which is her own sense of sin, and her sighing and depression over it.
Lamentations 1:7. Delete in, and read, Zion remembers the days of her affliction. The line, All her pleasant. of old is a comment written on the margin by some reader and afterwards copied into the text as if original: we decide thus because it would be a fourth line in the stanza, whereas regularly the stanzas have only three lines; besides it spoils the sense.
Lamentations 1:9. Read, the hinder parts of the filthy skirts, instead of the latter end.
Lamentations 1:10. The third line speaks of entering into thy congregation, which may be a late churchly addition. The verse seems, to the present writer, to concern the sacrilege of Pompey and of Antiochus in entering the Temple.
Lamentations 1:12. Zion moans before Yahweh: first confessing her sin, then appealing to every passer-by to see how her hurt is worse than any that has ever been before. Yahweh's fierce anger has burned her, trapped her, loaded her to the neck with woes. Although He is the indwelling Lord, yet He has dishonoured all her leaders, has summoned a solemn sanctuary meeting (Mo-' edh) to condemn her; and all her choice young lives are to die. But the sentence is just: she confesses she has been unfaithful.
Lamentations 1:12. By a copyist's repetition of one letter, the displacement of another, and the insertion of a tiny one to save space, the text has, Is it nothing to you? instead of the correct sense, Therefore ho! all ye.
Lamentations 1:14 is difficult: we need not state all particulars, but should read:
He has set Himself as a watch over my sin,
Which thro-' His power is going to get twisted into a rope to bind me:
By His yoke on my neck He has made my strength fail.
The lordly one has given me into such hands,
That never shall I be able to rise again.
Lamentations 1:16. My eye is written twice by mistake, spoiling the metre.
Lamentations 1:19. The false lovers are said to be the priests and elders: this was not possible in Jeremiah's time or anywhere near it, but was exactly the condition in the last two centuries B.C.
Lamentations 1:20 is Zion's prayer for mercy: Will not Yahweh see her repentance, and regard her inconsolable mourning? But what then? Is He simply to relieve her pain? Oh no, her cry now is, May He work revenge on her oppressors, who are exulting because He has fulfilled on her His righteous sentence. May they too be so treated: and under His swiftly falling blows may they writhe! Such, then, was the spirit of even the best men in Judah just before Jesus rose to preach His gospel of forgiveness. We see here the treatment they were ready to give Him, when He brought them good. And this was the soil on which He sprang: such were the audiences He sought to change and save.
Lamentations 1:20. there is as death: read, death has utterly ended all.
Lamentations 1:21. They have heard should be, Hear ye, for the Hebrew lack of vowels has caused a slip in the ordinary translation. The verse should run, by making one or two transpositions, Thou has brought the day that Thou proclaimedst.
As we leave the song, let us note how the darkest, gloomy wailing is in the earlier verses, but towards the end Zion is pictured as more confident of Yahweh's help, and more defiant towards her enemies. Then this defiance culminates in the spirit of utter cruelty in the closing stanzas. How wonderful was the faith of those poor oppressed Jews before Jesus came! They could never dream of an annihilation of their nation. In the course of the long ages they had risen wonderfully to a strong grip on an eternal life, and a doctrine that they were by and by to rule all the world. This Lament shows us vividly the agonies that surrounded Nazareth, and also the follies that were cherished amid the sorrows. Men needed a Consolation for Israel, and they felt sure that such would come. These singers are a picture of the audiences to whom Jesus spoke.