19 Arise, cry aloud in the night, At the beginning of the watches. Pour out as water thy heart, Over against the face of the Lord, Lift up unto Him thy hands, for the soul of thine infants, Who are feeble with hunger at the head of all out-places.
I have gone forward in the dawn, and I cry, For Thy word I have hoped. Mine eyes have gone before the watches, To meditate in Thy saying.
Consumed by tears have been my eyes, Troubled have been my bowels, Poured out to the earth hath been my liver, For the breach of the daughter of my people; In infant and suckling being feeble, In the broad places of the city, To their mothers they say, `Where `are' corn and wine?' In their becoming feeble as a pierced one In the broad places of the city, In their soul pouring itself out into the bosom of their mothers.
How is the gold become dim, Changed the best -- the pure gold? Poured out are stones of the sanctuary At the head of all out-places. The precious sons of Zion, Who are comparable with fine gold, How have they been reckoned earthen bottles, Work of the hands of a potter. Even dragons have drawn out the breast, They have suckled their young ones, The daughter of my people is become cruel, Like the ostriches in a wilderness. Cleaved hath the tongue of a suckling unto his palate with thirst, Infants asked bread, a dealer out they have none. Those eating of dainties have been desolate in out-places, Those supported on scarlet have embraced dunghills. And greater is the iniquity of the daughter of my people, Than the sin of Sodom, That was overturned as `in' a moment, And no hands were stayed on her. Purer were her Nazarites than snow, Whiter than milk, ruddier of body than rubies, Of sapphire their form. Darker than blackness hath been their visage, They have not been known in out-places, Cleaved hath their skin unto their bone, It hath withered -- it hath been as wood. Better have been the pierced of a sword Than the pierced of famine, For these flow away, pierced through, Without the increase of the field.
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.