Lamentations 2:1-22
1 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!
2 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 downa to the ground: he hath polluted the kingdom and the princes thereof.
3 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.
4 He hath bent his bow like an enemy: he stood with his right hand as an adversary, and slew all that were pleasantb to the eye in the tabernacle of the daughter of Zion: he poured out his fury like fire.
5 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.
6 And he hath violently taken away his tabernacle,c 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.
7 The Lord hath cast off his altar, he hath abhorred his sanctuary, he hath given upd 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.
8 The LORD hath purposed to destroy the wall of the daughter of Zion: he hath stretched out a line, he hath not withdrawn his hand from destroying:e therefore he made the rampart and the wall to lament; they languished together.
9 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.
10 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.
11 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 swoonf in the streets of the city.
12 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.
13 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?
14 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.
15 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?
16 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.
17 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.
18 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.
19 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.
20 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?
21 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.
22 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 2:1. How hath the Lord covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud. The day break, but no sun shines, no opening of future hope.
Lamentations 2:2. The Lord hath swallowed up all the inhabitants of Jacob. The enemy has come in like a flood, the people have disappeared in the vortex.
Lamentations 2:3. He hath cut off all the horn of Israel. See on Job 15:15; Psalms 112.
Lamentations 2:7. They (the Chaldeans) have made a noise in the house of the Lord, as in the day of a solemn feast. The song and the music were once heard there: now the noise, the cries, the shouts of a storming army. What a reverse of glory for vengeance.
Lamentations 2:8. The Lord hath stretched out a line on Zion. This is a figure of architecture: the artists measure the ground for a new building, and for the removal of walls and rubbish. So God caused “the measuring line to pass over Samaria.”
Lamentations 2:10. The elders sit on the ground, and keep silence. Job's three friends sat down for seven days, indicating the deepest sorrow.
Lamentations 2:11. The sucklings swoon in the streets, when dying of the blackest famine, or when they asked their mother,
Lamentations 2:12. Where is corn, דגז dogzt, not parched corn, but bread made of wheat flour, their usual food; and wine, as in former days. These words are the real copies of nature, which always touch the heart. The flood of invasion had made a breach wide as the sea.
Lamentations 2:14. Thy prophets have seen vain and foolish things. To these Jeremiah attributes the ruin of the country. They invariably opposed his ministry. When he predicted war, they predicted peace; when he spake of famine, they foretold fine harvests, and halcyon days. When he raised the cry of invasion, they soothed all fears with the balm of Egypt. Therefore, hardening the people in their sins, they spurned repentance, and boldly rushed on the bucklers of destruction. These prophets were men of influence in the temple, lap-dogs of the highpriest, who stopped at no blasphemy to carry their point. But the priests and the prophets were slain in the sanctuary of the Lord, in the holy temple which their idolatries had profaned: Lamentations 2:20.
Lamentations 2:20. Shall women eat their fruit children of a span long? This, in case of apostasy, Moses had foretold, with all the consequent horrors. Deuteronomy 28.
REFLECTIONS.
The poetry here is admirable, and the subject naturally inspires sublimity of thought. The apostrophes are most striking, and the most impressive images of grief. The prophet loses sight of the Chaldeans, in the more exalted view of the Lord's coming in martial array to fight against his people, to demolish his city, and to make desolate his sanctuary. But when he saw the dead lying in every street, the children asking for corn and wine, and fainting with hunger; when he saw the mothers eating their own children, and the elders sitting with dust on their heads, his eyes failed with tears. Misery unparalleled! Oh what a scene also of priests slain around the altar, to expiate the pollutions of the sanctuary with their blood. The glory is departed; for Ichabod was written on the ruins of Zion in characters far more gloomy than those which befel the house of Eli.
Raised now to all the majesty of grief, he casts an indignant look on the false prophets, now lying slain among the priests. They had frustrated his ministry by counter predictions, they hindered the repentance of the people by promises of peace, and hardened their hearts by falsehood and lies. What an obloquy rests on their memory for ever. But fallen and disgraced as they are, what instruction may not the christian derive from their memory. Never, never, oh pastor, never flatter a people in their sins. They will curse thee for it another day, and God will require their blood at thy hand. It is to betray the charge of God. It is to magnify the maxims of the age above the bible. It is weakness, it is want of courage, it is want of holiness. View, oh minister, view the Lord as in the ten first verses of this chapter, coming to fight against an infidel world with the sharp sword which goeth out of his mouth. Then clothing thy soul with his spirit, fight valiantly, as under thy general's eye, and sure of victory, return a thousand times to the charge. If ministers were all animated with this spirit, there is no saying what advantages would follow in the cause of morality, and in the advancement of the Redeemer's kingdom. But ministers too often assume a profession, because it is a profession. They form parties of pleasure, they dine in public, and attend some of the more decent diversions. Thus when they have sanctioned the errors of the age, then their mouth is shut in the pulpit, the gospel freezes on their lips, and they are incapable of serving God. Their more enlightened and faithful hearers are discouraged and grieved; they would fain speak of what is good in their minister, but are obliged to retain silence on the mention of his name. But let him be assured that a harlot is not more despised by her seducers than the man who has prostituted the honour and glory of his ministry, is despised by the infidels of the age. Be instructed then, oh man, and abandon thy profession for the humblest trade, rather than occasion the ruin of Zion.
The final advice of the prophet to cry in the night, and like Daniel, to afflict the soul with weeping, is most salutary and becoming, till the Lord shall establish and make Jerusalem a praise in the earth, by restoring her to all the promised glory of the latter day.