Lamentations2chapter 2

What is done

No part of this chapter is read on a weekly Sabbath. The site's own table in src/lib/hebraic/readings.ts printed parashot total 0 and haftarah uses total 0 for this book. It records one public reading instead, the whole book, on the eve of the fast of Tisha B'Av. The book is read at night in a darkened room, and the congregation sits on the floor or on low stools as mourners sit. It sources the practice to Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chayim 559. The chapter is heard in that reading, in its own mournful melody.

How it is read

Rashi is the one commentator on this chapter whose English the corpus carries, quoted here from The Metsudah Five Megillot, Lakewood, N.J., 2001, which Sefaria reports as CC-BY. The translation is modern, so every quotation is held to fifty words or fewer. The edition sets numbered notes of its own inside Rashi's text, and only Rashi's own words are quoted as his.

Rashi reads the opening verse as a fall from a height. After God lifted Israel up to heaven, "He cast them to earth all at once, and not gradually" (Rashi on Lamentations 2:1:2). The entry ends with the image "from a lofty roof to a deep pit" (Rashi on Lamentations 2:1:2). At the third verse God withholds His right hand. He stands back from battle "as though withdrawing His right hand from waging war for his children" (Rashi on Lamentations 2:3:1). The arched bow of the fourth verse he explains from the way strong archers work. They "place their foot upon them [bows] when he bends them" (Rashi on Lamentations 2:4:1).

At the eighth verse Rashi says the ruin was long in coming. "It had been many days since this entered His mind" (Rashi on Lamentations 2:8:1), and he cites Jeremiah 32:31 for it. The gates of the ninth verse that sank into the ground draw two readings. The Midrash Aggadah says they sank because they gave honor to the Ark, so that no one had power over them. Rashi then adds that "our Rabbis said that they were Dovid’s handiwork, therefore, the enemies had no power over them" (Rashi on Lamentations 2:9:1). The edition points to Sotah 9a.

The elders sitting on the ground at the tenth verse he takes first "According to its apparent meaning." He then tells the Midrash Aggadah at length. Nevuchadnetzar summoned the Sanhedrin after Tzidkiyahu broke his oath. "He sat them down in golden chairs" and had them recite the Torah to him. When they reached the chapter on vows and said a sage could release a vow, he concluded that they had released the king. He had them pushed down and sat on the ground (Rashi on Lamentations 2:10:1).

At the sixteenth verse the order of the alphabet itself carries a teaching. Rashi asks why the verse beginning with pei stands before the one beginning with ayin. The edition's notes gloss the two letters as mouth and eye. His answer is: "Because they [i.e., the prophets] were saying with their mouths what they did not see with their eyes" (Rashi on Lamentations 2:16:1). Rashi explains the hissing of the fifteenth verse as a common habit. "It is customary for a person to do so upon seeing an important thing that was ruined and destroyed" (Rashi on Lamentations 2:15:1).

The watches of the nineteenth verse are "Two parts of the night, for the night is divided into three parts" (Rashi on Lamentations 2:19:1), and Rashi names Tractate Berakhot for it. At the twentieth verse he gives the plain sense of the infants first, "Tender children". He then reports that the Rabbis read it of Do’eg, "whose mother would measure him with [her] handbreadth every day" (Rashi on Lamentations 2:20:1). She gave gold to the Temple by his growth, "and in the end she devoured him." The edition points to Yoma 38b.

The corpus carries two further notes on this chapter without an English text, each marked linked because Sefaria holds no English version of the ref. They stand cited and unquoted at Ibn Ezra on Lamentations 2:12:1 and 2:21:1.

What the rabbis say

The corpus carries forty rabbinic locators on this chapter and the text of none, so each is cited and linked here rather than quoted. Eikhah Rabbah stands under the second verse at 2:4 and 2:5, under the fourth at 1:3 and 2:8, and under the fifth through the eighth at 2:9, 2:10, 2:11 and 2:12. It stands under the tenth at 2:14 and at Petichta 7, and under the eleventh through the fourteenth at 2:15, 2:16, 2:17, 1:54 and 2:18. It stands under the sixteenth at 2:20, under the seventeenth at 1:1 and 2:21, under the twentieth at 1:51, under the twenty-first at 2:24 and under the twenty-second at 2:25.

Other Midrashim stand beside it. Aggadat Bereshit is set at 67:3 on the first verse, at 24:1 and 47:1 on the third, and at 68:2 on the fifteenth. Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael, Tractate Shirah 5:15, stands on the fifth verse. Midrash Lekach Tov on Lamentations stands at 2:6:1, 2:7:1, 2:12:1 and 2:18:1. Bamidbar Rabbah stands at 15:13 on the ninth verse and 13:2 on the fifteenth. Bereshit Rabbah stands at 91:1 on the eleventh verse and 2:4 on the nineteenth. Midrash Aggadah, Deuteronomy 1:1:8, stands on the thirteenth, and Kohelet Rabbah 1:16:1 on the eighteenth.

The Talmud stands at three places. Chagigah 5b:16 is set on the first verse, Jerusalem Talmud Pesachim 7:12:3 on the eighth, and Bava Kamma 55a:5 on the ninth. Ein Yaakov (Glick Edition), Sanhedrin 11:89, stands on the sixteenth. What each of them teaches is a saying of the rabbis, and is reported as theirs wherever this site quotes one. The quotations wait on a fetch that carries the text.

Sources: Rashi, Rashi on Lamentations 2:1:1 to 2:22:1, The Metsudah Five Megillot, Lakewood, N.J., 2001, reported CC-BY; Ibn Ezra, Ibn Ezra on Lamentations 2:12:1 and 2:21:1, cited by ref because the corpus carries no English text; The Sefaria corpus, scripts/data/sources/sefaria/lamentations/2.json, the 40 Talmud and Midrash locators of this chapter; The site's own files, src/lib/hebraic/readings.ts, probed for this book and printing parashot total 0, haftarah uses total 0, and the festival reading on the eve of the fast of Tisha B'Av, sourced there to Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chayim 559.