18 Their heart cried to the Lord: wall of the daughter of Zion, let tears run down like a river day and night; Give yourself no respite; don't let the apple of your eye cease.
I have called with my whole heart. Answer me, Yahweh! I will keep your statutes.
Oh that my head were waters, and my eyes a spring of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!
Yahweh has purposed to destroy the wall of the daughter of Zion; He has stretched out the line, he has not withdrawn his hand from destroying; He has made the rampart and wall to lament; they languish together.
Streams of tears run down my eyes, Because they don't observe your law.
My eye runs down with streams of water, for the destruction of the daughter of my people. My eye pours down, and doesn't cease, without any intermission,
They haven't cried to me with their heart, But they howl on their beds. They assemble themselves for grain and new wine. They turn away from me.
Yahweh, in trouble have they visited you; they poured out a prayer [when] your chastening was on them. Like as a woman with child, who draws near the time of her delivery, is in pain and cries out in her pangs; so we have been before you, Yahweh.
For I have heard a voice as of a woman in travail, the anguish as of her who brings forth her first child, the voice of the daughter of Zion, who gasps for breath, who spreads her hands, [saying], Woe is me now! for my soul faints before the murderers.
Thus says Yahweh of Hosts, Consider you, and call for the mourning women, that they may come; and send for the skillful women, that they may come: and let them make haste, and take up a wailing for us, that our eyes may run down with tears, and our eyelids gush out with waters.
But if you will not hear it, my soul shall weep in secret for [your] pride; and my eye shall weep sore, and run down with tears, because Yahweh's flock is taken captive.
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.