Lamentations 2:1

II.

(1) How hath the Lord... — The second dirge follows the pattern of the first, opening with a description of the sufferings of Jerusalem, (Lamentations 2:1), and closing with a dramatic soliloquy spoken as by the daughter of Zion (Lamentations 2:11).

The image that floats before the poet’s mind is that of a dark thunder-cloud breaking into a tempest, which overthrows the “beauty of Israel,” sc. the Temple (Isaiah 64:11), or, as in 2 Samuel 1:19, the heroes who defended it. The footstool is, as in 1 Chronicles 28:2; Psalms 99:5, the ark of the covenant, which was involved in the destruction of the Temple. The “Lord” is, as before, Adonai, not Jehovah.