9 Her gates are sunk into the ground; he has destroyed and broken her bars: Her king and her princes are among the nations where the law is not; Yes, her prophets find no vision from Yahweh.
For the children of Israel shall abide many days without king, and without prince, and without sacrifice, and without sacred stone, and without ephod or idols.
Mischief shall come on mischief, and rumor shall be on rumor; and they shall seek a vision of the prophet; but the law shall perish from the priest, and counsel from the elders.
Now for a long season Israel was without the true God, and without a teaching priest, and without law:
"Therefore night is over you, with no vision, And it is dark to you, that you may not divine; And the sun will go down on the prophets, And the day will be black over them. The seers shall be disappointed, And the diviners confounded. Yes, they shall all cover their lips; For there is no answer from God."
Behold, the days come," says the Lord Yahweh, "That I will send a famine in the land, Not a famine of bread, Nor a thirst for water, But of hearing the words of Yahweh. They will wander from sea to sea, And from the north even to the east; They will run back and forth to seek the word of Yahweh, And will not find it.
The mighty men of Babylon have forborne to fight, they remain in their strongholds; their might has failed; they are become as women: her dwelling-places are set on fire; her bars are broken.
We see no miraculous signs. There is no longer any prophet, Neither is there among us anyone who knows how long.
My net also will I spread on him, and he shall be taken in my snare; and I will bring him to Babylon to the land of the Chaldeans; yet shall he not see it, though he shall die there.
I will spread my net on him, and he shall be taken in my snare, and I will bring him to Babylon, and will enter into judgment with him there for his trespass that he has trespassed against me.
and Jehoiachin the king of Judah went out to the king of Babylon, he, and his mother, and his servants, and his princes, and his officers: and the king of Babylon took him in the eighth year of his reign. He carried out there all the treasures of the house of Yahweh, and the treasures of the king's house, and cut in pieces all the vessels of gold, which Solomon king of Israel had made in the temple of Yahweh, as Yahweh had said. He carried away all Jerusalem, and all the princes, and all the mighty men of valor, even ten thousand captives, and all the craftsmen and the smiths; none remained, save the poorest sort of the people of the land. He carried away Jehoiachin to Babylon; and the king's mother, and the king's wives, and his officers, and the chief men of the land, carried he into captivity from Jerusalem to Babylon. All the men of might, even seven thousand, and the craftsmen and the smiths one thousand, all of them strong and apt for war, even them the king of Babylon brought captive to Babylon.
The breath of our nostrils, the anointed of Yahweh, was taken in their pits; Of whom we said, Under his shadow we shall live among the nations.
Depart you, they cried to them, Unclean! depart, depart, don't touch! When they fled away and wandered, men said among the nations, They shall no more sojourn [here].
All the army of the Chaldeans, who were with the captain of the guard, broke down all the walls of Jerusalem round about.
But the army of the Chaldeans pursued after the king, and overtook Zedekiah in the plains of Jericho; and all his army was scattered from him. Then they took the king, and carried him up to the king of Babylon to Riblah in the land of Hamath; and he gave judgment on him.
in the eleventh year of Zedekiah, in the fourth month, the ninth day of the month, a breach was made in the city),
Then Yahweh said to me, The prophets prophesy lies in my name; I didn't send them, neither have I commanded them, neither spoke I to them: they prophesy to you a lying vision, and divination, and a thing of nothing, and the deceit of their own heart.
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.