9 Her gates are sunk into the ground; he hath destroyed and broken her bars. Her king and her princes are among the nations: the law is no [more]; her prophets also find no vision from Jehovah.
For the children of Israel shall abide many days without king, and without prince, and without sacrifice, and without statue, and without ephod and teraphim.
Mischief shall come upon mischief, and rumour shall be upon rumour; and they shall seek a vision from a prophet; but the law shall perish from the priest, and counsel from the elders.
Now for a long while Israel [was] without the true God, and without a teaching priest, and without law;
therefore ye shall have night without a vision; and it shall be dark unto you, without divination; and the sun shall go down upon the prophets, and the day shall be black over them. And the seers shall be ashamed, and the diviners confounded; and they shall all cover their lips, for there will be no answer of God.
Behold, days come, saith the Lord Jehovah, when I will send a famine in the land; not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of Jehovah. And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north to the east; they shall run to and fro to seek the word of Jehovah, and shall not find it.
The mighty men of Babylon have ceased to fight, they are sitting in the fortresses; their might hath failed, they are become as women: they have set her dwelling places on fire; her bars are broken.
We see not our signs; there is no more any prophet, neither is there among us any that knoweth how long.
And I will spread my net upon him, and he shall be taken in my snare; and I will bring him to Babylon to the land of the Chaldeans; but he shall not see it, and there shall he die.
And I will spread my net upon 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 unfaithfulness in which he hath been unfaithful against me.
And Jehoiachin king of Judah went out to the king of Babylon, he, and his mother, and his servants, and his princes, and his chamberlains; and the king of Babylon took him in the eighth year of his reign. And he brought out thence all the treasures of the house of Jehovah, and the treasures of the king's house, and cut in pieces all the vessels of gold that Solomon king of Israel had made in the temple of Jehovah, as Jehovah had said. And he carried away all Jerusalem, and all the princes, and all the mighty men of valour, ten thousand captives, and all the craftsmen and smiths: none remained but the poorest sort of the people of the land. And he carried away Jehoiachin to Babylon, and the king's mother, and the king's wives, and his chamberlains, and the mighty of the land, he led into captivity from Jerusalem to Babylon; and all the men of valour, seven thousand, and the craftsmen and smiths a thousand, all strong men apt for war, and the king of Babylon brought them captive to Babylon.
The breath of our nostrils, the anointed of Jehovah, was taken in their pits; of whom we said, Under his shadow we shall live among the nations.
They cried unto them, Depart! Unclean! Depart! depart, touch not! When they fled away, and wandered about, it was said among the nations, They shall no more sojourn [there].
And all the army of the Chaldeans, that were with the captain of the body-guard, broke down all the walls of Jerusalem round about.
And 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. And they took the king, and brought him up to the king of Babylon, unto Riblah in the land of Hamath, and he pronounced judgment upon him.
In the eleventh year of Zedekiah, in the fourth month, on the ninth of the month, the city was broken into;
And Jehovah said unto me, The prophets prophesy falsehood in my name; I have not sent them, neither have I commanded them, nor spoken unto them: they prophesy unto you a false vision, and divination, and a thing of nought, and the deceit of their 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.