Lamentations 2

See how the Lord has covered the daughter of Zion with the cloud of his anger! He has thrown the glory of Israel down from the heavens to the ground. On the day of his anger he did not remember his footstool.

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!

Note"Daughter of Zion" is a standard Hebrew way of speaking about Jerusalem: the city and its people addressed as though they were a single woman. Zion was the hill the temple stood on, and the name came to stand for the whole city. The "footstool" is the temple, or the ark of the covenant inside it, spoken of as the footstool of a throne whose seat is in heaven. In Hebrew this chapter is an alphabet poem: each stanza begins with the next letter of the Hebrew alphabet, twenty-two letters for twenty-two verses. That pattern cannot survive translation.

2The Lord has swallowed up all the homes of Jacob's people, and he showed no pity. In his anger he tore down the strongholds of the daughter of Judah. He brought them to the ground and disgraced the kingdom and its leaders.

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.

NoteJacob and Judah are both names for the people being mourned. Jacob was the ancestor also called Israel, and his name stands for the whole nation descended from him; Judah was the southern kingdom, with Jerusalem as its capital. "Daughter of Judah," like "daughter of Zion," pictures the territory and its people as a woman.

3In his burning anger he cut off all the strength of Israel. He pulled back his right hand when the enemy came. He burned in the land of Jacob like a blazing fire that eats up everything around it.

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.

NoteWhere the King James says "horn," the image is an animal's horn as the seat of its power, a bull or ram fights with them. To cut off a nation's horn is to break its fighting strength; to raise a horn (verse 17) is to make it strong. The "right hand" is the fighting hand: God is pictured pulling back the arm that used to defend Israel just as the attack came.

4He bent his bow like an enemy. His right hand was raised like the hand of a foe. He killed everyone who was pleasing to look at. On the tent of the daughter of Zion he poured out his anger like fire.

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.

Note"Tabernacle" in the King James simply means tent. Here the tent stands for the temple, and by extension for Jerusalem itself, the place God was said to dwell among his people.

5The Lord acted like an enemy. He swallowed up Israel. He swallowed up all her palaces and destroyed her strongholds. For the daughter of Judah he made mourning and weeping grow and grow.

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.

6He tore down his own tent as easily as a hut in a garden. He destroyed the place where his people met with him. The LORD made Zion forget her appointed festivals and Sabbath days. In his fierce anger he rejected both king and priest.

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.

NoteThe garden hut is a shelter of branches that a watchman threw together in a field or vineyard for the few weeks of harvest and abandoned afterwards: flimsy, and built to be taken down. The "solemn feasts" of the King James are not solemn in the modern sense of gloomy; they are the fixed annual festivals (Passover, Weeks and Booths) that brought crowds to Jerusalem. The Sabbath was the seventh day, kept free of work. Note also the two words for God kept distinct here and elsewhere: LORD in capitals stands in for the personal name of Israel's God, which Jewish readers did not pronounce aloud, while Lord translates an ordinary Hebrew word meaning master.

7The Lord turned away from his own altar and refused his own holy place. He handed the walls of her palaces over to the enemy. They shouted in the LORD's house as loudly as worshipers do on a festival day.

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 decided to destroy the wall of the daughter of Zion. He stretched out a measuring line and did not pull back his hand from destroying. He made the outer bank and the wall mourn; together they wasted away.

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.

NoteA measuring line is a builder's cord, stretched out to lay a wall straight. The grim point is that it is being stretched out for demolition instead: the ruin is measured and deliberate, not random. The "rampart" is the earth bank or lower outer wall built in front of the main city wall.

9Her gates have sunk into the ground. He has smashed and broken the bars that held them shut. Her king and her leaders live among the nations. There is no more teaching of the law, and her prophets receive no vision from the LORD.

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.

NoteThe gates were a walled city's strong point and its weak point at once; heavy beams, the "bars," dropped across them to hold them shut. Gates sunk into the ground means the whole gateway has collapsed into rubble. The king and leaders "among the nations" (the King James says "Gentiles," which simply means the non-Jewish nations) refers to the deportations after Babylon captured Jerusalem in 586 BC, the disaster this whole book mourns. "The law is no more": the Hebrew word is torah, meaning instruction, with temple and priesthood destroyed there was no one left to teach it or give rulings from it.

10The elders of the daughter of Zion sit on the ground without a word. They have thrown dust on their heads and put on rough cloth worn by mourners. The young women of Jerusalem have bowed their heads to the ground.

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.

NoteThese are the recognized public signs of grief: sitting on the bare ground, staying silent, throwing dust or ashes on the head, and putting on sackcloth, coarse dark cloth woven from goat hair, deliberately uncomfortable and worn against the skin. The elders were the older men who governed the city and settled disputes at the gate; their silence in the dust is the collapse of ordinary public life.

11My eyes are worn out from crying. Everything inside me churns. My heart is poured out on the ground because my people are destroyed, because children and babies faint in the streets of the city.

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.

NoteThe King James follows the Hebrew literally: "my bowels are troubled, my liver is poured upon the earth." Hebrew located strong feeling in the inner organs the way modern English locates it in the heart or the stomach. No physical injury is being described.

12They say to their mothers, "Where is the grain and the wine?" They faint in the streets of the city like men who have been wounded. Their lives drain away in their mothers' arms.

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.

Note"Corn" in the King James means grain of any kind, wheat or barley, not the maize that the word now means in American English. Grain and wine were the basic food and drink of daily life, so the children are asking for an ordinary meal.

13What can I say for you? What can I compare you to, daughter of Jerusalem? What can I set beside you to comfort you, virgin daughter of Zion? Your wound is as wide as the sea. Who can heal you?

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?

NoteThe word rendered "wound" (the King James has "breach") is also the word for a gap smashed through a city wall, the injury to the woman and the hole in the fortifications are the same word. Calling Zion a "virgin" daughter does not describe her inhabitants; applied to a city it means one never before broken into by an enemy.

14Your prophets saw visions for you that were empty and foolish. They did not expose your sin, which could have kept you from being carried off. Instead they gave you false messages that led you into exile.

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.

Note"Discovered" in the King James means uncovered or exposed, not found out for the first time. A "burden" was a technical term for a prophet's message, usually one announcing disaster; the complaint is that these prophets delivered such oracles but they were made up.

15Everyone who passes by claps their hands at you in scorn. They hiss and shake their heads at the daughter of Jerusalem and say, "Is this the city people called the most beautiful of all, the joy of the whole earth?"

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?

NoteClapping, hissing through the teeth and shaking the head were gestures of scorn and appalled amazement, not applause. "The perfection of beauty, the joy of the whole earth" quotes the language the temple songs used about Jerusalem in better days (Psalms 48 and 50); passers-by are throwing the city's own praise back at it.

16All your enemies open their mouths wide against you. They hiss and grind their teeth and say, "We have swallowed her up. This is surely the day we have waited for. We have lived to see it."

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.

NoteGrinding the teeth is a gesture of rage and threat, like an animal baring them. Opening the mouth wide pictures a beast about to swallow prey, which is what the enemies then claim to have done.

17The LORD has done what he planned. He has carried out the word he gave long ago. He has torn down without pity. He has let your enemy gloat over you and has raised up the strength of those who fight you.

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.

Note"The word he gave long ago" points back to the warnings attached to the covenant in the law of Moses, which set out siege, ruin and exile as the consequences of abandoning it (Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28). "Raised up the horn" is the reverse of verse 3: their attackers' strength has been increased.

18The hearts of the people cried out to the Lord. Wall of the daughter of Zion, let your tears run down like a river day and night. Give yourself no rest, and let your eyes have no rest either.

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.

NoteThe King James phrase is "let not the apple of thine eye cease." "Apple of the eye" is an old English name for the pupil; the Hebrew calls it "the daughter of the eye." The line means: do not let your eyes stop weeping. The verse also switches who is being spoken to, first the people, then the city wall itself, addressed as a mourner.

19Get up and cry out in the night, as soon as the first watch begins. Pour out your heart like water before the Lord. Lift up your hands to him for the lives of your young children, who faint from hunger at every street corner.

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.

NoteThe night was divided into watches for the men standing guard, and the first watch began at nightfall. Lifting the hands, palms turned upward, was the ordinary bodily posture for prayer, the way kneeling or folding hands is in other traditions.

20Look, LORD, and think about who you have treated this way. Should women eat the children they gave birth to, the babies they have held and cared for? Should priest and prophet be killed in the holy place of the Lord?

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?

Note"Children of a span long" in the King James uses a span (the distance from thumb to little finger on a spread hand, about nine inches) as a measure of size, describing newborns small enough to hold in one hand. The Hebrew is disputed and may instead mean "the children they have nursed and cared for"; both readings are current, and the rendering keeps both in view. Mothers eating their own children is not invented horror: it is recorded of ancient sieges, where a besieged city starved for months, and it appears by name in the covenant warnings of the law.

21Young and old lie together on the ground in the streets. My young women and my young men have fallen by the sword. You killed them on the day of your anger. You slaughtered them and showed no pity.

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.

22You called terrors against me from every side, the way people are called to an appointed festival. On the day of the LORD's anger no one got away and no one was left alive. My enemy has destroyed the ones I raised and cared for.

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.

NoteTwo images are joined. A herald would go out to summon people from every direction to one of the fixed festivals; here what is summoned from every direction is terror. "Swaddled" refers to wrapping a newborn tightly in strips of cloth, the normal care given to an infant, so the last line means the children she nursed and raised herself.