19 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.
Have faith in him at all times, you people; let your hearts go flowing out before him: God is our safe place. (Selah.)
In the night the desire of my soul has been for you; early will my spirit be searching for you; for when your punishments come on the earth, the people of the world will get the knowledge of righteousness.
And Hannah, answering him, said, No, my lord, I am a woman whose spirit is broken with sorrow: I have not taken wine or strong drink, but I have been opening my heart before the Lord.
Before the sun is up, my cry for help comes to your ear; my hope is in your words. In the night watches I am awake, so that I may give thought to your saying.
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. They say to their mothers, Where is grain and wine? when they are falling like the wounded in the open squares of the town, when their life is drained out on their mother's breast.
Your sons are overcome, like a roe in a net; they are full of the wrath of the Lord, the punishment of your God.
But the Lord will send his mercy in the daytime, and in the night his song will be with me, a prayer to the God of my life.
So they came together to Mizpah, and got water, draining it out before the Lord, and they took no food that day, and they said, We have done evil against the Lord. And Samuel was judge of the children of Israel in Mizpah.
In place of my food I have grief, and cries of sorrow come from me like water.
And in the fourth watch of the night he came to them, walking on the sea.
And in the morning, a long time before daylight, he got up and went out to a quiet place, and there he gave himself up to prayer.
And it came about in those days that he went out to the mountain for prayer; and he was all night in prayer to God.
Give praise to the Lord, lifting up your hands in his holy place.
It is my desire, then, that in every place men may give themselves to prayer, lifting up holy hands, without wrath or argument.
When I send on you the evil arrows of disease, causing destruction, which I will send to put an end to you; and, further, I will take away your necessary food.
How dark has the gold become! how changed the best gold! the stones of the holy place are dropping out at the top of every street. The valued sons of Zion, whose price was the best gold, are looked on as vessels of earth, the work of the hands of the potter! 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. Those who were used to feasting on delicate food are wasted in the streets: those who as children were dressed in purple are stretched out on the dust. For the punishment of the daughter of my people is greater than the punishment of Sodom, which was overturned suddenly without any hand falling on her. Her holy ones were cleaner than snow, they were whiter than milk, their bodies were redder than corals, their form was as the sapphire: Their face is blacker than night; in the streets no one has knowledge of them: their skin is hanging on their bones, they are dry, they have become like wood. 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.
Let my prayer be ordered before you like a sweet smell; and let the lifting up of my hands be like the evening offering.
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.