10 His hand spread out hath an adversary On all her desirable things, For she hath seen -- Nations have entered her sanctuary, Concerning which Thou didst command, `They do not come into the assembly to thee.'
We have been ashamed, for we heard reproach, Covered hath shame our faces, For come in have strangers, against the sanctuaries of the house of Jehovah.
`An Ammonite and a Moabite doth not enter into the assembly of Jehovah; even a tenth generation of them doth not enter into the assembly of Jehovah -- to the age;
Remembered hath Jerusalem `In' the days of her affliction and her mournings, all her desirable things that were from the days of old, In the falling of her people into the hand of an adversary, And she hath no helper; Seen her have adversaries, They have laughed at her cessation.
Thy holy cities have been a wilderness, Zion a wilderness hath been, Jerusalem a desolation. Our holy and our beautiful house, Where praise Thee did our fathers, Hath become burnt with fire, And all our desirable things have become a waste.
Roared have thine adversaries, In the midst of Thy meeting-places, They have set their ensigns as ensigns. He is known as one bringing in on high Against a thicket of wood -- axes. And now, its carvings together With axe and hatchet they break down, They have sent into fire Thy sanctuary, to the earth they polluted the tabernacle of Thy name, They said in their hearts, `Let us oppress them together,' They did burn all the meeting-places of God in the land.
And they begin among the aged men who `are' before the house, and He saith unto them, `Defile the house, and fill the courts with the wounded, go forth.' And they have gone forth and have smitten in the city.
`And when ye may see the abomination of the desolation, that was spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing where it ought not, (whoever is reading let him understand), then those in Judea, let them flee to the mountains;
A Psalm of Asaph. O God, nations have come into Thy inheritance, They have defiled Thy holy temple, They made Jerusalem become heaps, They gave the dead bodies of Thy servants Food for the fowls of the heavens, The flesh of Thy saints For the wild beast of the earth. They have shed their blood As water round about Jerusalem, And there is none burying. We have been a reproach to our neighbours, A scorn and a derision to our surrounders. Till when, O Jehovah? art Thou angry for ever? Thy jealousy doth burn as fire. Pour Thy fury on the nations who have not known Thee, And on kingdoms that have not called in Thy name. For `one' hath devoured Jacob, And his habitation they have made desolate.
And I have turned My face from them, And they have polluted My hidden place, Yea, come into it have destroyers, and polluted it.
And the pillars of brass that `are' to the house of Jehovah, and the bases, and the brasen sea that `is' in the house of Jehovah, have the Chaldeans broken, and they bear away all the brass of them to Babylon; and the pots, and the shovels, and the snuffers, and the bowls, and the spoons, and all the vessels of brass with which they minister, they have taken away; and the basins, and the fire-pans, and the bowls, and the pots, and the candlesticks, and the spoons, and the cups, the gold of that which `is' gold, and the silver of that which `is' silver, hath the chief of the executioners taken. The two pillars, the one sea, and the twelve brazen oxen that `are' beneath the bases, that king Solomon made for the house of Jehovah, there was no weighing of the brass of all these vessels.
and he burneth the house of Jehovah, and the house of the king, and all the houses of Jerusalem, even every great house he hath burned with fire,
And I have given all the strength of this city, And all its labour, and all its precious things, Yea, all the treasures of the kings of Judah I do give into the hand of their enemies, And they have spoiled them, and taken them, And have brought them into Babylon.
For a little while did Thy holy people possess, Our adversaries have trodden down Thy sanctuary.
Therefore my people removed without knowledge, And its honourable ones are famished, And its multitude dried up of thirst. Therefore hath Sheol enlarged herself, And hath opened her mouth without limit. And gone down hath its honour, and its multitude, And its noise, and its exulting one -- into her.
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Commentary on Lamentations 1 Matthew Henry Commentary
An Exposition, With Practical Observations, of
The Lamentations of Jeremiah
Chapter 1
We have here the first alphabet of this lamentation, twenty-two stanzas, in which the miseries of Jerusalem are bitterly bewailed and her present deplorable condition is aggravated by comparing it with her former prosperous state; all along, sin is acknowledged and complained of as the procuring cause of all these miseries; and God is appealed to for justice against their enemies and applied to for compassion towards them. The chapter is all of a piece, and the several remonstrances are interwoven; but here is,
Lam 1:1-11
Those that have any disposition to weep with those that weep, one would think, should scarcely be able to refrain from tears at the reading of these verses, so very pathetic are the lamentations here.
Lam 1:12-22
The complaints here are, for substance, the same with those in the foregoing part of the chapter; but in these verses the prophet, in the name of the lamenting church, does more particularly acknowledge the hand of god in these calamities, and the righteousness of his hand.