The prophet speaks again in his own voice
2
📚How the Lord has covered the daughter 📖 of Zion
with a cloud in his anger 📖!
And he has thrown down
the beauty of Israel from
heaven to the earth,
and has not remembered
his footstool 📖 in the day of his anger.
2:1 In this whole chapter up to verse 20 the prophet himself is speaking of Jerusalem.⚜
2 📚The Lord has swallowed up
all the dwelling places of Jacob,
and has not shown pity 📖.
In his wrath he has thrown down
the strongholds of the daughter of Judah.
He has brought them
down to the ground;
he has dishonoured the kingdom
and its princes.
3 📚In his fierce anger
he has cut off all the horn 📖 of Israel.
He has drawn back his right hand
from before the enemy,
and burned against Jacob
like a flaming fire which
devours all around.
4 📚He has bent his bow 📖 like an enemy.
He stood with his right hand
like an adversary,
and has slain all who were
pleasant to the eye.
In the tent of the daughter of Zion,
he has poured out his fury like fire.
5 📚The Lord was like an enemy;
he has swallowed up Israel,
he has swallowed up all her palaces.
He has destroyed its strongholds,
and has multiplied mourning
and lamentation in the daughter of Judah.
2:5 God was their true friend, but was an enemy of their sins and rebellion and wickedness.⚜
6 📚And he has done violence to his
tabernacle like a garden.
He has destroyed his place 📖 of assembly.
The LORD has caused the appointed
feasts and Sabbaths to be
forgotten in Zion,
and in the indignation of his anger
has despised the king and the priest.
7 📚The Lord has rejected his altar;
he has abhorred his sanctuary;
he has given up the walls of her
palaces into the hands of the enemy.
They have made a noise in
the house of the LORD,
as in the day of an appointed feast.
8 📚The LORD purposed to destroy
the wall of the daughter of Zion.
He stretched out a measuring line.
He did not withdraw his hand
from destroying;
therefore he caused the rampart
and the wall to lament.
They languish together.
9 📚Her gates are sunk into the ground.
He has destroyed and broken her bars.
Her king and her princes are
among the Gentiles.
The law is no more,
and her prophets find
no vision from the LORD.
10 📚The elders of the daughter of Zion
sit on the ground, and keep silent.
They have thrown dust on their heads.
They have tied sackcloth around themselves.
The virgins of Jerusalem hang down
their heads to the ground.
11 📚My eyes fail with tears,
my inner being is troubled,
my heart 📖 is poured out on the earth,
because of the destruction of
the daughter of my people,
because the children and the infants
faint in the streets of the city.
2:11 Compare Lam 1:20; Jer 9:1; Luke 19:41-44. The Spirit of Christ was in the prophet. The grief of the prophet indicated beforehand the grief of Christ.⚜
12 📚They say to their mothers,
“Where is grain and wine?”
as they faint like the wounded
in the streets of the city,
as their life pours out into
their mothers’ bosom.
13 📚What thing shall I take
to testify for you?
To what can I liken you,
O daughter of Jerusalem?
To what can I compare you,
that I may comfort you,
O virgin daughter of Zion?
For your fracture is
as vast as the sea.
Who can heal you?
14 📚The things your prophets saw
for you were empty and foolish visions.
And they did not expose your guilt,
to turn you away from captivity,
but their visions for you were false oracles,
leading you astray.
2:14 See Jer 5:12-13; 6:13-15; 8:10-12; 14:13-15; 23:9-40; 27:9—28:17. Perhaps if those called prophets had exposed and rebuked the sins of the people the people might have repented and this calamity might not have come on them. But those prophets preferred to speak lies. And the people wanted to hear and believe lies (Jer 5:31). The results of all this are seen here in this book of Lamentations. Compare 2 Thess 2:9-12.⚜
15 📚All who pass by clap their
hands at you.
They hiss 📖 and wag their heads
at the daughter of Jerusalem,
saying, “Is this the city
that men called
The Perfection of Beauty,
The Joy 📖 of the Whole Earth?”
16 📚All your enemies have opened
their mouth against you.
They hiss and gnash the teeth.
They say, “We have swallowed her up!
Certainly, we have looked forward
to this day.
We have found it,
we have seen it”.
17 📚The LORD has done what he planned.
He has fulfilled his word 📖 that
he commanded in the days of old.
He has thrown down,
and has not shown pity 📖.
And he has caused your
enemy to rejoice over you.
He has set up the horn 📖 of
your adversaries.
18 📚Their hearts cried to the Lord.
O wall of the daughter of Zion,
let your tears run down like
a river day and night.
Give yourself no rest.
Do not let your eyes get relief.
2:18 Jer 14:17. Here the word “daughter” signifies all that remained in the city.⚜
19 📚Arise, cry out in the night!
In the beginning of the watches pour
out your heart like water before
the face of the Lord.
Lift up your hands toward him
for the life of your young children,
who faint for hunger at the head
of every street.
20 📚See, O Lord, and consider whom
you have treated like this.
Should the women eat their offspring 📖,
children a span long? Should the priest
and the prophet be slain in the sanctuary
of the LORD?
21 📚The young and the old lie on the ground
in the streets.
My virgins and my young men have fallen
by the sword.
You have slain them in the day
of your anger.
You have killed,
and not pitied.
22 📚You summoned my terrors all around
as to a feast day,
so that in the day of the LORD’s anger 📖
no one escaped or remained.
My enemy has consumed those whom
I nursed and reared.
2:20-22 Here once again it seems that Jeremiah is presenting Jerusalem herself as speaking. Speaking of himself he could hardly have used words like “my virgins and my young men” (v 21), “those whom I nursed and reared” (v 22). See Jer 16:1-2.⚜