11 My eyes are wasted with weeping, the inmost parts of my body are deeply moved, my inner parts are drained out on the earth, for the destruction of the daughter of my people; because of the young children and babies at the breast who are falling without strength in the open squares of the town.
See, O Lord, for I am in trouble; the inmost parts of my body are deeply moved; my heart is turned in me; for I have been uncontrolled: outside the children are put to the sword, and in the house there is death.
For these things I am weeping; my eye is streaming with water; because the comforter who might give me new life is far from me: my children are made waste, because the hater is strong.
Rivers of water are running down from my eyes, for the destruction of the daughter of my people. My eyes are streaming without stopping, they have no rest, Till the Lord's eye is turned on me, till he sees my trouble from heaven. The Lord is unkind to my soul, more than all the daughters of my town.
My soul, my soul! I am pained to my inmost heart; my heart is troubled in me; I am not able to be quiet, because the sound of the horn, the note of war, has come to my ears.
I am flowing away like water, and all my bones are out of place: my heart is like wax, it has become soft in my body.
My eyes are wasting away with trouble; they are becoming old because of all those who are against me.
Those who have been put to the sword are better off than those whose death is caused by need of food; for these come to death slowly, burned up like the fruit of the field. The hands of kind-hearted women have been boiling their children; they were their food in the destruction of the daughter of my people.
For the days are coming in which they will say, Happy are those who have had no children, whose bodies have never given birth, whose breasts have never given milk.
Then David and the people who were with him gave themselves up to weeping till they were able to go on weeping no longer.
Even the beasts of the waste land have full breasts, they give milk to their young ones: the daughter of my people has become cruel like the ostriches in the waste land. The tongue of the child at the breast is fixed to the roof of his mouth for need of drink: the young children are crying out for bread, and no man gives it to them.
Up! give cries in the night, at the starting of the night-watches; let your heart be flowing out like water before the face of the Lord, lifting up your hands to him for the life of your young children who are falling down, feeble for need of food, at the top of every street. Look! O Lord, see to whom you have done this! Are the women to take as their food the fruit of their bodies, the children who are folded in their arms? are the priest and the prophet to be put to death in the holy place of the Lord?
So now, the Lord, the God of armies, the God of Israel, has said, Why are you doing this great evil against yourselves, causing every man and woman, little child and baby at the breast among you in Judah to be cut off till not one is still living;
I make cries like a bird; I give out sounds of grief like a dove: my eyes are looking up with desire; O Lord, I am crushed, take up my cause.
I am tired with my crying; my throat is burning: my eyes are wasted with waiting for my God.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on Lamentations 2
Commentary on Lamentations 2 Matthew Henry Commentary
Chapter 2
The second alphabetical elegy is set to the same mournful tune with the former, and the substance of it is much the same; it begins with Ecah, as that did, "How sad is our case! Alas for us!'
The hand that wounded must make whole.
Lam 2:1-9
It is a very sad representation which is here made of the state of God's church, of Jacob and Israel, of Zion and Jerusalem; but the emphasis in these verses seems to be laid all along upon the hand of God in the calamities which they were groaning under. The grief is not so much that such and such things are done as that God has done them, that he appears angry with them; it is he that chastens them, and chastens them in wrath and in his hot displeasure; he has become their enemy, and fights against them; and this, this is the wormwood and the gall in the affliction and the misery.
Lam 2:10-22
Justly are these called Lamentations, and they are very pathetic ones, the expressions of grief in perfection, mourning and woe, and nothing else, like the contents of Ezekiel's roll, Eze. 2:10.