Later text
Her uncleanness stains her skirts; she did not consider her end. Her downfall was astounding; there was no one to comfort her. Look, O LORD, on my affliction, for the enemy has triumphed!
Intertextuality Pair
Echo
Later text
Her uncleanness stains her skirts; she did not consider her end. Her downfall was astounding; there was no one to comfort her. Look, O LORD, on my affliction, for the enemy has triumphed!
Earlier text
Isaiah 40:1BSB
"Comfort, comfort My people," says your God.
Lamentations 1:9 declares of fallen Jerusalem that "there was no one to comfort her" (אֵין מְנַחֵם לָהּ, ein menahem lah), emphasizing the city's total abandonment in the aftermath of her uncleanness. Isaiah 40:1 answers with God's own command to נַחֲמוּ (nachamu, "comfort") His people, using the same root. The echo highlights a deliberate reversal: the comfort that was absent among all Jerusalem's allies and lovers in Lamentations is supplied by God Himself in Isaiah's restoration oracle. Jerusalem's downfall, which "was astounding," meets its counter in God's tender speech to His chastened people. Lamentations 1:9 also pleads, "Look, O LORD, on my affliction, for the enemy has triumphed," a specific cry that Isaiah 40:2 answers directly: her warfare is ended, her iniquity pardoned.