Lamentationschapter 2
22 verses · KJVLamentations book hub →
Key verse
Arise, 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.
It stands in scene C of the chapter, verses 18 to 22.
The chapter
Chapter summary
The second acrostic, and the hardest to read, because the destroyer is named. The Lord has covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in his anger, swallowed up her habitations, broken down her strongholds, and bent his bow like an adversary: 'The Lord hath become as an enemy.' The festival is forgotten, king and priest despised, the altar cast off. Elders sit on the ground in silence with dust on their heads; virgins hang down their heads. The prophets find no vision from Jehovah, seeing false burdens instead. Worst is the street scene: children and sucklings swooning, asking their mothers, Where is grain and wine? The call is to pour out the heart like water before the face of the Lord.
Context
Poetry · Jeremiah · Lamentations overview
Where the chapter sits
Lamentations 2 falls in Five poems over a fallen city (chapters 1–5). Acrostic laments over Jerusalem's desolation (ch. 1–4); a non-acrostic closing prayer (ch. 5). At the centre: the great affirmation of 3:22–23, ‘his compassions fail not; they are new every morning.’
The whole shape of Lamentations→The world behind this chapter
Lamentations 2The history
This chapter is another alphabet poem, and its subject is not the Babylonians. Almost every line has God as the one acting: he has swallowed up, he has broken down, he has bent his bow like an enemy, he has scorned his altar and disowned his sanctuary. The army that came over the wall barely appears.
The rest of the history, and what it meant to them
Two images treat the temple as something small. His footstool is a way of speaking about the ark and the sanctuary, God's throne is heaven, and this is where his feet rest. And he has laid waste his booth like a garden hut: farmers built a rough shelter of branches in a field for the harvest weeks and abandoned it when the picking was done. The most sacred building in the nation is compared to a temporary shed.
The mourning is described from life. The elders sit on the ground in silence, throwing dust on their heads and wearing sackcloth, coarse dark goat-hair cloth worn next to the skin. The young women bow their heads to the ground. Eyes are worn out with weeping.
The famine of the siege is here too, in the hardest lines in the book: children and infants faint in the streets of the city, asking their mothers where there is bread and wine, and pouring out their lives on their mothers' bosom. The chapter blames the prophets directly, they saw for you false and deceptive visions, and did not expose your sin to restore your fortunes.
What it meant to them
The first hearers were being kept from two easy escapes. They could not say Babylon was too strong, and they could not say God had lost. He had done this, and he had done it justly.
The chapter ends by telling them to pray anyway: pour out your heart like water before the face of the Lord, lift your hands to him for the lives of your children. The one being addressed as the destroyer is the only one worth crying to.
Sources cited
- Roland de Vaux, Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions
- Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament: Jeremiah and Lamentations
A. The Lord Become as an Enemy to Zion
1. (vv. 1-3)
a.How hath the Lord covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in his anger: This chapter is a second twenty-two verse acrostic, the same alphabet discipline turned now toward a harder question, not what the enemy did but who stood behind the enemy. How hath the Lord covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in his anger, and remembered not his footstool, the ark's own resting place, in the day of his anger: the temple itself is named as forgotten before the destruction is even described. The Lord is the subject of every verb in this opening unit, he hath cut off, he hath drawn back his right hand, the horn of Israel broken by the hand that once raised it.
Lamentations 2:1, 3 voicesWhat preachers and commentators have said about these verses, in their own words.
Lamentations 2:1
“For though men were a hundred times perfidious, yet God never changes, but remains unchangeable in his faithfulness; and we know that his covenant was not made to depend on the merits of men. Whatsoever, then, the people might be, yet it behooved God to continue in his purpose, and not to annul the promise made to Abraham.”
John Calvin· Commentaries (1554)reformed
Lamentations 2:1
“His footstool - His temple; but suffered the Chaldeans to destroy it. Cast down - That is, thrown them down from the highest glory and honour, to the meanest degree of servitude.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Lamentations 2:1
“The beauty of Israel is now cast down from heaven to the earth; their princes ( 2 Sam. i. 19 ), their religious worship, their beauty of holiness, all that which recommended them to the affection and esteem of their neighbours and rendered them amiable, which had lifted them up to heaven, was now withered and gone, because God had covered it with a cloud.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Lamentations 2:2, 2 voices
Lamentations 2:2
“The Lord hath swallowed up - It is a strange figure when thus applied: but Jehovah is here represented as having swallowed down Jerusalem and all the cities and fortifications in the land: that is, he has permitted them to be destroyed. See Lam 2:6.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Lamentations 2:2
“He has given up their glory, which was looked upon as sacred (that is a character we give to majesty), to be trampled upon and profaned; and no marvel that the king and the priest, whose characters were always deemed venerable and inviolable, are despised by every body, when God has, in the indignation of his anger, despised the king and the priest,”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Lamentations 2:3, 2 voices
Lamentations 2:3
“Since the horn is the symbol of power, the cutting off of every horn means the depriving Israel of all power of resistance. The drawing back of God’s right hand signifies the withdrawal of that special Providence which used to protect the chosen people. And he burned ... - Or, “and” he kindled a fire in Jacob: as the active enemy of “Jacob,” Himself applying the torch.”
Lamentations 2:3
“The horn - All their beauty and strength. Drawn back - God hath drawn back his assistance which he was wont to give the Jews against their enemies. Round about - God consumed them, not in this or that part, but round about, as a fire seizing an house at once on all sides.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
2. (vv. 4-6)
a.He hath bent his bow like an enemy: , he stood with his right hand as an adversary, the covenant God described in the very terms Judah's invaders used against her, a reversal the bench takes as the chapter's hardest claim. The tabernacle is taken away as if it were of a garden, a temporary shelter rather than an eternal house, and the solemn feasts and sabbaths are caused to be forgotten in Zion by the Lord's own hand, not merely interrupted by Babylon's siege. Wesley reads the unit as Jeremiah refusing any comfort that blames the enemy alone, the deeper cause named at every turn.
Lamentations 2:4, 2 voices
Lamentations 2:4
“He hath bent his bow - he stood with his right hand - This is the attitude of the archer. He first bends his bow; then sets his arrow upon the string; and, lastly, placing his right hand on the lower end of the arrow, in connection with the string, takes his aim, and prepares to let fly.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Lamentations 2:4
“He - That is, God, (whom by their sins they had provoked and made their enemy) behaved himself as an enemy. And slew - All their young men, and maidens who were pleasant to look upon.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Lamentations 2:5, 2 voices
Lamentations 2:5
“Here is bewailed the destruction of edifices relating to defense. About this idea three further aspects are expressed. First is touched upon the indignation of the Lord God. As asserted: "The Lord has become like an enemy." And Isaiah 63:10: "therefore he turned to be …”
Thomas Aquinas· written before 1274· Commentary on Lamentationspatristic
Lamentations 2:5
“The Lord was as an enemy,.... Who formerly was on their side, their God and guardian, their protector and deliverer, but now against them; and a terrible thing it is to have God for an enemy, or even to be as one; this is repeated, as being exceeding distressing, and even intolerable.”
Lamentations 2:6, 2 voices
Lamentations 2:6
“As if it were of a garden - “As it were the garden of his own hedging.” - Blayney. The Lord hath caused the solemn feasts - By delivering us up into the hands of the enemy our religious worship is not only suspended, but all Divine ordinances are destroyed.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Lamentations 2:6
“He has abandoned them; he looks upon them as no longer worthy of the honours conveyed to them by the covenants of royalty and priesthood, but as having forfeited both; and then Zedekiah the king was used despitefully, and Seraiah the chief priest put to death as a malefactor.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
3. (vv. 7-9)
a.The Lord hath cast off his altar: , he hath abhorred his sanctuary, and the enemy's shouting fills the house of the Lord as if it were itself a feast day, worship's own form used to mock the God once worshipped there. The city's defenses fail in the same breath as its worship, the wall made to lament, the gates sunk into the ground, and the exile of the monarchy is stated flatly, her king and her princes are among the Gentiles. The law is no more and the prophets find no vision from the Lord names a silence as much a judgment as the fallen walls, the ordinary channels of guidance shut along with the gates.
Lamentations 2:7, 1 voice
Lamentations 2:7
“They have made a noise in the house of the Lord - Instead of the silver trumpets of the sanctuary, nothing but the sounds of warlike instruments are to be heard.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Lamentations 2:8, 1 voice
Lamentations 2:8
“The wall - The strength and security of the Jews. A line - Artificers used with lines not only to mark out places for building, but also for destruction, to direct them what to cut off; and such a line is here meant.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Lamentations 2:9, 3 voices
Lamentations 2:9
“Her gates are sunk into the ground - So completely destroyed, that one might suppose they had been swallowed up in an abyss. Her king - The prophet’s lamentation, occupied before chiefly with the buildings of the city and temple, now turns to the people, beginning with their temporal rulers. The law is no more - The Jewish Law, the Torah, came to an end when it no longer had a local habitation.”
Lamentations 2:9
“Among the Gentiles - In miserable captivity. The law - Is no more read, opened or observed. Her prophets - They had but very few prophets, from this time to the time of the gospel, and very few of those at this time alive had any Revelation from God.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Lamentations 2:9
“Note, It is just with God to debase those by his judgments who have by sin debased themselves. Time was when the ordinances of God were administered among them in their power and purity, and they had those tokens of God's presence with them; but now those were taken from them, that part of the beauty of Israel was gone which was indeed their greatest beauty.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
4. (v. 10)
Lamentations 2:10-12
a.The elders of the daughter of Zion sit upon the ground: and keep silence, dust on their heads and sackcloth girded on, mourning too deep for the speech that normally belonged to elders at the gate. The virgins of Jerusalem hang down their heads beside them, grief crossing every rank of the city at once. The chapter's hardest picture follows, children and sucklings swooning in the streets, asking their mothers where is corn and wine while their life is poured out into their mothers' bosom, a scene the bench reads as the siege's famine stated without any figure standing between the reader and the fact.
Lamentations 2:10, 3 voices
Lamentations 2:10
“The destruction of the miserable is mourned, due to reverence for their status. First, regarding elders who: "sit on the ground in silence." Namely, as signs of great sadness. Like Job 2:13: "And they sat with him on the ground seven days and nights and …”
Thomas Aquinas· written before 1274· Commentary on Lamentationspatristic
Lamentations 2:10
“Sit upon the ground - See the note on Lam 1:1. Keep silence - No words can express their sorrows: small griefs are eloquent, great ones dumb.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Lamentations 2:10
“The "elders," by their example, would draw the others to violent grief. the virgins--who usually are so anxious to set off their personal appearances to advantage.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
B. Children Fainting in the Streets; the Prophets Saw Vain Things
1. (vv. 11-12)
Lamentations 2:11, 3 voices
Lamentations 2:11
“Here, miserable persons, due to defect of age, are mourned. First is indicated the death of such persons, second, the order of their death. As verse 12 says: "They cry to their mothers, 'Where is bread and wine?'" And as Jeremiah 9:1 expresses it: "O …”
Thomas Aquinas· written before 1274· Commentary on Lamentationspatristic
Lamentations 2:11
“Troubled - See the margin reference note. Liver - As the heart was regarded by the Jews as the seat of the intellect, so the liver (or bowels) was supposed to be the seat of the emotions. The pouring out of the liver upon the ground meant that feelings had entirely given way under the acuteness of sorrow, and he could no longer restrain them.”
Lamentations 2:11
“Mine eyes - This whole verse is but expressive of the prophets great affliction for the miseries come upon the Jews. He wept himself almost blind. Bowels - His passion had disturbed his bodily humours, that his bowels were troubled.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Lamentations 2:12, 2 voices
Lamentations 2:12
“The order of death is here exposed, as it excites mercy. First is a prayer to mothers as said: "They cry to their mothers, 'Where is bread and wine?'". As if wine is lacking, so give to us bread. For Lamentations 4:4 claims: "the children …”
Thomas Aquinas· written before 1274· Commentary on Lamentationspatristic
Lamentations 2:12
“When their soul was poured out into their mothers’ bosom - When, in endeavoring to draw nourishment from the breasts of their exhausted mothers, they breathed their last in their bosoms! How dreadfully afflicting was this!”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
2. (vv. 13-17)
a.What thing shall I take to witness for thee?: The poet's own voice breaks in, what thing shall I take to witness for thee, what shall I equal to thee, admitting that no comparison is equal to a breach as great as the sea. The false prophets are named directly as a cause, they have not discovered thine iniquity to turn away thy captivity, but have seen for thee false burdens, the failure of true prophetic warning set against the passersby who now hiss and clap their hands where the city once stood as the perfection of beauty. The unit closes on the hardest line of the chapter's theology, the Lord hath done that which he had devised, the enemy's triumph read as the fulfilment of a word spoken long before, not an accident of history.
Lamentations 2:13, 1 voice
Lamentations 2:13
“What thing shall I take - Or, rather, as Dr. Blayney, “What shall I urge to thee?” How shall I comfort thee? Thy breach is great like the sea - Thou hast a flood of afflictions, a sea of troubles, an ocean of miseries.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Lamentations 2:14, 2 voices
Lamentations 2:14
“They have not discovered thine iniquity - They did not reprove for sin, they flattered them in their transgressions; and instead of turning away thy captivity, by turning thee from thy sins, they have pretended visions of good in thy favor, and false burdens for thy enemies.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Lamentations 2:14
“Literally, "They have not taken off (the veil) which was on thine iniquity, so as to set it before thee." burdens--Their prophecies were soothing and flattering; but the result of them was heavy calamities to the people, worse than even what the prophecies of Jeremiah, which they in derision called "burdens," threatened.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Lamentations 2:15, 1 voice
Lamentations 2:15
“The perfection of beauty - This probably only applied to the temple. Jerusalem never was a fine or splendid city; but the temple was most assuredly the most splendid building in the world.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Lamentations 2:16, 1 voice
Lamentations 2:16
“Here a reviling from enemies is exposed. There: "All your enemies rail against you." That is, the Idumeans, the Moabites, and other enemies rail by accusing. Then: "they hiss" by detracting. "they gnash their teeth" by threatening. Also: "they cry: 'We have destroyed her!'" by …”
Thomas Aquinas· written before 1274· Commentary on Lamentationspatristic
Lamentations 2:17, 2 voices
Lamentations 2:17
“The Lord hath done that which he had devised,.... It was not so much the Chaldeans that did it, though they ascribed it to themselves; but it was the Lord's doing, and what he had deliberately thought of, purposed and designed within himself; all whose purposes and devices certainly come to pass: he hath fulfilled his word that he had commanded in the days of old; not only by the mouth of Jeremiah, years ago, or in the times of Isaiah, long before him; but even in the days of Moses; see Lev 26:17, &c. Deu 28:20, &c.”
Lamentations 2:17
“Note, In all the providences of God concerning his church it is good to take notice of the fulfilling of his word; for there is an exact agreement between the judgments of God's hand and the judgments of his mouth, and when they are compared they will mutually explain and illustrate each other.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
C. Pour Out Thy Heart Like Water Before the Lord
1. (vv. 18-19)
a.Their heart cried unto the Lord: , O wall of the daughter of Zion, is addressed as much to the reader as to the wall itself, an instruction to let tears run down like a river day and night rather than seek a quicker comfort. Arise, cry out in the night, pour out thine heart like water before the face of the Lord, gives grief a discipline of its own, prayer in the watches rather than despair without an object. The last plea in the unit names exactly who the prayer is for, the life of thy young children that faint for hunger in the top of every street, the famine's victims kept in view rather than left as background.
Lamentations 2:18, 3 voices
Lamentations 2:18
“Think how great that weeping must be that deserves to be compared with a flood of waters. Whoever so weeps and says with the prophet Jeremiah, "let not the apple of my eye cease," shall straightway find the words fulfilled of him: "mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other." If righteousness and truth terrify him, mercy and peace may encourage him to seek salvation.”
Jerome· written before 420· LETTER 122.3patristic
Lamentations 2:18
“O wall of the daughter of Zion - חומת בת ציון chomath bath tsiyon, wall of the daughter of Zion. These words are probably those of the passengers, who appear to be affected by the desolations of the land; and they address the people, and urge them to plead with God day and night for their restoration. But what is the meaning of wall of the daughter of Zion? I answer I do not know.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Lamentations 2:18
"Their heart," that is, the Jews'; while their heart is lifted up to the Lord in prayer, their speech is addressed to the "wall" (the part being put for the whole city). let tears, &c.-- (Jer 14:17).
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Lamentations 2:19, 2 voices
Lamentations 2:19
“Arise, cry out in the night,.... That is, O daughter of Zion, or congregation of Israel, as the Targum; who are addressed and called upon by the prophet to arise from their beds, and shake off their sleep, and sloth, and stupidity, and cry to God in the night season; and be earnest and importunate with him for help and assistance.”
Lamentations 2:19
“In - (or at) the beginning of the watches “At the beginning of each night-watch” means all the night through. The Hebrews divided the night into three watches.”
2. (vv. 20-22)
a.Behold, O Lord, and consider to whom thou hast done this: pushes the poem's argument to its final question, addressed to the God the poet has named as the destroyer through the chapter. Shall the women eat their fruit, and children of a span long names the siege's worst horror plainly, a famine that drove mothers to their own children, the calamity Moses had warned the covenant curses would bring and that Israel's own history had already seen repeated in an earlier siege. The chapter ends where it began, the day of the Lord's anger, with the swaddled infants once brought up now consumed, grief given its final and hardest sentence before the acrostic runs out of letters.
Lamentations 2:20, 1 voice
Lamentations 2:20
“Consider to whom thou hast done this - Perhaps the best sense of this difficult verse is this: “Thou art our Father, we are thy children; wilt thou destroy thy own offspring?”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Lamentations 2:21, 1 voice
Lamentations 2:21
“The young and the old lie on the ground in the streets,.... Young men and old men, virgins and aged women; these promiscuously lay on the ground in the public streets, fainting and dying for want of food; or lay killed there by the sword of the enemy; the Chaldeans sparing neither age nor sex.”
Lamentations 2:22, 1 voice
Lamentations 2:22
“Thou hast called, as in a solemn day, my terrors round about,.... Terrible enemies, as the Chaldeans; these came at the call of God, as soldiers at the command of their general; and in as great numbers as men from all parts of Judea flocked to Jerusalem on any of the three solemn feasts of passover, pentecost, and tabernacles.”
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on Lamentations 2. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
This page draws on 11 works. Open for the list.
This page draws on Adam Clarke; Albert Barnes; Carl Friedrich Keil, Lamentations; Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871); Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible; Jerome, LETTER 122.3; John Calvin, Commentaries (1554); John Gill; John Wesley; Matthew Henry and Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Lamentations.
Keep studying
On this page