Lamentations 2

Lamentations 2:1

How the Lord has covered the Daughter of Zion with the cloud of His anger! He has cast the glory of Israel from heaven to earth. He has abandoned His footstool in the day of His anger.

Lamentations 2:1 · BSB

Lamentations 2:2

Without pity the Lord has swallowed up all the dwellings of Jacob. In His wrath He has demolished the fortified cities of the Daughter of Judah. He brought to the ground and defiled her kingdom and its princes.

Lamentations 2:2 · BSB

Lamentations 2:3

In fierce anger He has cut off every horn of Israel and withdrawn His right hand at the approach of the enemy. He has burned in Jacob like a flaming fire that consumes everything around it.

Lamentations 2:3 · BSB

Lamentations 2:4

He has bent His bow like an enemy; His right hand is positioned. Like a foe He has killed all who were pleasing to the eye; He has poured out His wrath like fire on the tent of the Daughter of Zion.

Lamentations 2:4 · BSB

Lamentations 2:5

The Lord is like an enemy; He has swallowed up Israel. He has swallowed up all her palaces and destroyed her strongholds. He has multiplied mourning and lamentation for the Daughter of Judah.

Lamentations 2:5 · BSB

Lamentations 2:6

He has laid waste His tabernacle like a garden booth; He has destroyed His place of meeting. The LORD has made Zion forget her appointed feasts and Sabbaths. In His fierce anger He has despised both king and priest.

Lamentations 2:6 · BSB

tabernacle or , hedge

Lamentations 2:7

The Lord has rejected His altar; He has abandoned His sanctuary; He has delivered the walls of her palaces into the hand of the enemy. They have raised a shout in the house of the LORD as on the day of an appointed feast.

Lamentations 2:7 · BSB

Lamentations 2:8

The LORD determined to destroy the wall of the Daughter of Zion. He stretched out a measuring line and did not withdraw His hand from destroying. He made the ramparts and walls lament; together they waste away.

Lamentations 2:8 · BSB

Lamentations 2:9

Her gates have sunk into the ground; He has destroyed and shattered their bars. Her king and her princes are exiled among the nations, the law is no more, and even her prophets find no vision from the LORD.

Lamentations 2:9 · BSB

Lamentations 2:10

The elders of the Daughter of Zion sit on the ground in silence. They have thrown dust on their heads and put on sackcloth. The young women of Jerusalem have bowed their heads to the ground.

Lamentations 2:10 · BSB

Lamentations 2:11

My eyes fail from weeping; I am churning within. My heart is poured out in grief over the destruction of the daughter of my people, because children and infants faint in the streets of the city.

Lamentations 2:11 · BSB

swoon or , faint

Lamentations 2:12

They cry out to their mothers: “Where is the grain and wine?” as they faint like the wounded in the streets of the city, as their lives fade away in the arms of their mothers.

Lamentations 2:12 · BSB

Lamentations 2:13

What can I say for you? To what can I compare you, O Daughter of Jerusalem? To what can I liken you, that I may console you, O Virgin Daughter of Zion? For your wound is as deep as the sea. Who can ever heal you?

Lamentations 2:13 · BSB

Lamentations 2:14

The visions of your prophets were empty and deceptive; they did not expose your guilt to ward off your captivity. The burdens they envisioned for you were empty and misleading.

Lamentations 2:14 · BSB

Lamentations 2:15

All who pass by clap their hands at you in scorn. They hiss and shake their heads at the Daughter of Jerusalem: “Is this the city that was called the perfection of beauty, the joy of all the earth?”

Lamentations 2:15 · BSB

The combination of scorn , enmity , rage , and exultation , which the conquerors and spectators manifested at the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple , are here described with peculiar pathos and energy. The whole scene is presented to view as in an exquisitely finished historical painting.

by Heb. by the way

Lamentations 2:16

All your enemies open their mouths against you. They hiss and gnash their teeth, saying, “We have swallowed her up. This is the day for which we have waited. We have lived to see it!”

Lamentations 2:16 · BSB

Lamentations 2:17

The LORD has done what He planned; He has accomplished His decree, which He ordained in days of old; He has overthrown you without pity. He has let the enemy gloat over you and exalted the horn of your foes.

Lamentations 2:17 · BSB

Lamentations 2:18

The hearts of the people cry out to the Lord. O wall of the Daughter of Zion, let your tears run down like a river day and night. Give yourself no relief, and your eyes no rest.

Lamentations 2:18 · BSB

the apple Bath ayin which sometimes means the pupil of the eye , seems here to denote tears , the produce of the eye; and therefore elegantly termed the daughter of the eye.

Lamentations 2:19

Arise, cry out in the night from the first watch of the night. Pour out your heart like water in the presence of the Lord. Lift up your hands to Him for the lives of your children who are fainting from hunger on the corner of every street.

Lamentations 2:19 · BSB

Lamentations 2:20

Look, O LORD, and consider: Whom have You ever treated like this? Should women eat their offspring, the infants they have nurtured? Should priests and prophets be killed in the sanctuary of the Lord?

Lamentations 2:20 · BSB

of a span long or , swaddled with their hands

Lamentations 2:21

Both young and old lie together in the dust of the streets. My young men and maidens have fallen by the sword. You have slain them in the day of Your anger; You have slaughtered them without compassion.

Lamentations 2:21 · BSB

Lamentations 2:22

You summoned my attackers on every side, as for the day of an appointed feast. In the day of the LORD’s anger no one escaped or survived; my enemy has destroyed those I nurtured and reared.

Lamentations 2:22 · BSB