19 Arise, cry out in the night, in the beginning of the watches; pour out thy heart like water before the face of the Lord: lift up thy hands toward him for the life of thy young children, who faint from hunger at the top of all the streets.
Confide in him at all times, ye people; pour out your heart before him: God is our refuge. Selah.
With my soul have I desired thee in the night; yea, with my spirit within me I seek thee early: for when thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness.
And Hannah answered and said, No, my lord, I am a woman of a sorrowful spirit: I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but have poured out my soul before Jehovah.
I anticipate the morning-dawn and I cry: I hope in thy word. Mine eyes anticipate the night-watches, that I may meditate in thy ùword.
Mine eyes are consumed with tears, my bowels are troubled; my liver is poured upon the earth, because of the ruin of the daughter of my people; because infant and suckling swoon in the streets of the city. They say to their mothers, Where is corn and wine? when they swoon as the wounded in the streets of the city; when they pour out their soul into their mothers' bosom.
Thy children have fainted, they lie at the head of all the streets, as an oryx in a net: they are full of the fury of Jehovah, the rebuke of thy God.
In the day-time will Jehovah command his loving-kindness, and in the night his song shall be with me, a prayer unto the ùGod of my life.
And they gathered together to Mizpah, and drew water, and poured it out before Jehovah, and fasted on that day, and said there, We have sinned against Jehovah. And Samuel judged the children of Israel in Mizpah.
For my sighing cometh before my bread, and my groanings are poured out like the waters.
But in the fourth watch of the night he went off to them, walking on the sea.
And rising in the morning long before day, he went out and went away into a desert place, and there prayed.
And it came to pass in those days that he went out into the mountain to pray, and he spent the night in prayer to God.
Lift up your hands in the sanctuary, and bless Jehovah.
I will therefore that the men pray in every place, lifting up pious hands, without wrath or reasoning.
When I send upon them the evil arrows of famine, that are for [their] destruction, which I send to destroy you, then will I increase the famine upon you, and will break your staff of bread.
How is the gold become dim! the most pure gold changed! the stones of the sanctuary poured out at the top of all the streets! The sons of Zion, so precious, comparable to fine gold, how are they esteemed as earthen pitchers, the work of the hands of the potter! Even the jackals offer the breast, they give suck to their young; the daughter of my people is become cruel, like the ostriches in the wilderness. The tongue of the sucking child cleaveth to the roof of his mouth for thirst; the young children ask bread, no man breaketh it unto them. They that fed delicately are desolate in the streets; they that were brought up in scarlet embrace dung-hills. And the punishment of the iniquity of the daughter of my people is greater than the reward of the sin of Sodom, which was overthrown as in a moment, and no hands were violently laid upon her. Her Nazarites were purer than snow, whiter than milk; they were more ruddy in body than rubies, their figure was as sapphire. Their visage is darker than blackness, they are not known in the streets; their skin cleaveth to their bones, it is withered, it is become like a stick. The slain with the sword are happier than the slain with hunger; for these pine away, stricken through for want of the fruits of the field.
Let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense, the lifting up of my hands as the evening oblation.
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.