Lamentations 2:11

Lam 2:11 Mine eyes do fail with tears, my bowels are troubled, my liver is poured upon the earth, for the destruction of the daughter of my people; because the children and the sucklings swoon in the streets of the city.

Ver. 11. Mine eyes do fail with tears.] Those fountains (as the Hebrew word signifieth) are even drawn dry. I have wept till I can weep no more, as David did; or I have wept myself blind, as Faustus the son of Vortigern (once king of England) is said to have done.

My bowels are troubled.] Heb., Bemudded. See Lam 1:20.

My liver is poured upon the earth.] I have well nigh vomited up my gall. {as Job 16:13}

For the destruction.] Heb., The breach even to shivers, as young trees or ships are broken by tempests.

Because the children and sucklings swoon in the streets.] Miserabile etiam hostibus spectaculum; a rueful sight.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Lam_2:11-13

Mine eyes do fail with tears.

The miseries of the Church taken to heart

1. The true ministers of God do take the miseries of the Church to heart in the greatest measure.

2. Our sorrow, humiliation, earnest prayer, and all other means of extraordinary calling upon God, must increase in us, so long as Gods heavy hand is upon us.

3. Hearty sorrow for spiritual miseries distempereth the whole body.

4. The sorrows of the soul will easily consume the body.

5. A lively member is grieved with the hurt of the body, or any member thereof.

6. The ministers of Christ should have a tender affection to the members of the Church, as a man hath to his daughter.

7. There is no outward thing so much cause of sorrow, as the miseries laid upon our children in our sight. (J. Udall.)

Compassion for sinners

It is the missionary with the fountain of pity that reaches the deepest place in the natives heart. When Livingstone was found dead on his knees in the heart of Africa, his head was resting over his open Bible, and his finger was pointing to the last words he ever penned in his diary: Oh, God, when will the open sore of the world be healed? That was the profound pity which commenced the redemptive work in Africa, and which lives in emancipating influence today. (Hartley Aspen.)

They say to their mothers, Where is corn and wine?--

Great grief

1. It is the greatest grief that can be, to have them whom we would gladly pleasure, seek that at our hands which we cannot help them unto.

2. When God would have us profit by any work of His, He will let us see the true cause of it.

3. The grief that is seen with the eye is the heaviest unto us of all other things that fall upon our friends.

4. When God meaneth to humble us, He will use most effectual means to bring it to pass. (J. Udall.)

What thing shall I take to witness for thee?--

Plain ministries

Ministers must be studious in the Word, to find out everything that may fit the Churchs present condition (Isa_50:4; Mat_13:52).

2. It is the greatest grief that can be, to fall into a trouble that hath not been laid upon others before.

3. That minister loveth us best, that dealeth most plainly with us.

4. The visible state of the Church of God may come to be of a desperate condition, every way vexed more and more. (J. Udall.)

The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

THE LAMENTATION, Lam_2:11-16.

11, 12. Liver is poured… earth — This language occurs nowhere else in the Old Testament, and the exact force of it is doubtful. “My soul is poured out” occurs in two passages, but this is easier. It would seem that “the liver” is taken as representing the large viscera, usually classed together under the general name of bowels, and regarded as the seat of the emotions. If so, the expression means that he could no longer restrain his feelings; that his grief must have vent in expression.

Swoon — Rather faint; or, with Keil, pine away. No feature of the common calamity — the utter desolation of the people — is more graphic or more painful than the falling down of the children in the street from hunger, and their pitiful and oft repeated cry, Where is corn and wine? until they finally expire in the arms of their miserable mothers.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

EXEGETICAL NOTES.—

(כ) Lam_2:11. So exasperating is his misery that he feels as if organic parts of his body were dismembered. My eyes fail with tears, my bowels are troubled, my liver is poured upon the ground—an effect of terrible grief, showing how body and soul are sympathetic with each other over the breach of the daughter of my people. This shattered condition was replete with the harrowing details of suffering, as when the young children and the sucklings faint in the streets of the city.

(ל) Lam_2:12. His ears heard their piteous cravings, while to their mothers they are saying, Where is corn and wine, solid and liquid nourishment. Even when listening, his eyes saw the older children faint as the wounded in the streets of the city, and infants in arms poured their souls into their mother’s bosom, which could supply no aliment.

HOMILETICS

THE UTTER EXHAUSTION OF GRIEF

(Lam_2:11-12)

I. Because of the hopelessness of the desolation endured. “For the destruction of the daughter of my people” (Lam_2:11). The desolation is complete. Everything is destroyed—Temple, home, army, nation, wealth, food, and the very capacity to rouse themselves from the torpor of despair. When the light of hope is quenched it is impossible to put forth effort. Paralysis is destruction.

II. Because of the heart-rending spectacle of little children fainting in the streets and dying in their mothers’ arms, while they vainly moan for food. “Because the children and the sucklings swoon in the streets. They say to their mothers, ‘Where is corn and wine?’ when their soul was poured out into their mother’s bosom” (Lam_2:11-12). The harrowing details here given are the most affecting that have yet been depicted by the graphic and versatile pen of the prophet. The cry—an oft-repeated cry, as the tense means—of the children for food, which the mothers were powerless to supply, only added to the tortures they already suffered. So completely prostrate were they with their misery, that they saw their children die with indifference, and could not conceal an unnatural relief when they heard their last sob. Excessive grief blunts the edge of the finest natural instincts.

III. Because all the powers for expressing emotion are completely spent. “Mine eyes do fail with tears, my bowels are troubled, my liver is poured upon the earth” (Lam_2:11). Jeremiah employs the terms in ordinary use, and as they were popularly understood. As the heart was regarded by the Jews as the seat of the intellect, so the liver, as the chief of the large viscera classed together under the name of bowels, was supposed to be the seat of the emotions. By the pouring out, therefore, of the liver upon the ground was meant that his feelings had entirely given way under the acuteness of his sorrow, and he could no longer restrain them.—Speaker’s Comm. The agony of grief was passed. It was quelled by sheer exhaustion. He wept till he could weep no more. He grieved till he was incapable of feeling his grief. A tearless sorrow is the most dangerous, and the most difficult to cure.

LESSONS.—

1. There is a limit to the greatest human sorrow.

2. There is a moment in the experience of the sufferer when death itself is welcome.

3. The greatest sorrow is a painful testimony to the desolating power of sin.

ILLUSTRATIONS.—Grief prostrating. Late in the afternoon of a summer day I entered a quiet graveyard where slept one of my dearest friends. It occupied the brow of a hill, which, with many a knoll and graceful undulation, sloped to the green meadow, watered by a winding stream, now catching, at its repeated curves, the rays of the setting sun. On the left was a pleasant wood, where the sturdy pine and fruit-bearing beech concealed narrow paths to cool caves and mossy banks. White birches and the trembling aspen, with the sweet-scented willow, grew upon the right, and from beyond rose the curling smoke from the cottage-houses. A robin sang its song of love and praise, a sparrow passed me bearing food to its little progeny, and the chirp of the merry grasshopper mingled with the hum of hundreds of flitting insects. But for this peace-breathing scene I had no greeting. The wild storm, thunder, rain, and darkness had been more welcome. Yielding utterly to my grief, I threw myself upon the sod, and took no heed of time. There came over me a sense of utter and hopeless desolation; an agony like that of death turned to bitterness the blessings of my lot.

—Grief is a flower as delicate and prompt to fade as happiness. Still it does not wholly die. Like the magic rose, dried and unrecognisable, a warm air breathed on it will suffice to renew its bloom.—De Gasparin.

Misery makes indelible impressions. The rapidity with which ideas grow old in our memories is in a direct ratio to the squares of their importance. Their apparent age runs up miraculously, like the value of diamonds, as they increase in magnitude. A great calamity, for instance, is as old as the trilobites an hour after it has happened. It stains backward through all the leaves we have turned over in the book of life before its blot of tears or of blood is dry on the page we are turning. Did you ever happen to see that most soft-spoken and velvet-handed steam-engine at the Mint? The smooth piston slides backwards and forwards as a lady might slip her delicate finger in and out of a ring. The engine lays one of its fingers calmly but firmly upon a bit of metal; it is a coin now, and will remember that touch, and tell a new race about it, when the date upon it is crusted over with twenty centuries. So it is that a great silent-movingsilent-moving an hour or a moment—as sharp an impression as if it had taken half a lifetime to engrave it.—Holmes.

Distress exhausting. Distress is trouble of a mental kind, tending to despair. Tribulation may be described as the “fighting without,” whilst distress may be described as the “fears within.” That kind of trouble is indicated which comes upon a wrestler when his antagonist has succeeded in throwing him after a long struggle, has got his foot on him, is holding him down, and all seems to be up with him. Before, when wrestling, he was troubled, now he is distressed. Thus we see that the afflictions contemplated by the terms tribulation and distress are no light ones; and it is little wonder that, under the strain of such untoward circumstances of outward and inward trouble, the Christian should lose heart and fear the worst.

Grief excessively indulged. Ebenezer Adams, an eminent member of the Society of Friends, on visiting a lady of rank, whom he found, six months after the death of her husband, seated on a sofa covered with black cloth and in all the dignity of woe, approached her with great solemnity, and gently taking her by the hand, thus addressed her: “So, friend, I see, then, thou hast not yet forgiven God Almighty.” This reproof had so great an effect on the lady, that she immediately laid aside her violent grief, and again entered on the discharge of the duties of life.

The cure of excessive sorrow. A pale mourner stood bending over the tomb, and his tears fell fast and often. As he raised his humid eyes to heaven, he cried, “My brother! O my brother.” A sage passed that way and said, “For whom dost thou mourn?” “One,” replied he, “whom I did not sufficiently love while living, but whose inestimable worth I now feel.” “What wouldst thou do if he were restored to thee?” The mourner replied that he would never offend him by an unkind word, but would take every occasion to show his friendship, if he could but come back to his fond embrace. “Then, waste not thy time in useless grief,” said the sage; “but if thou hast friends, go and cherish the living, remembering that they will one day be dead also.”

—Like the passengers through the tunnelled Alps from the dark, cold, stifling air, emerging on the broad light-flooded plains of Lombardy, it is often by a way which they know not, gloomy and underground, that the convoy is carried which God’s Spirit is bringing to the wealthy place; and your present grief you will have no reason to regret if it introduce you to God’s friendship and to joys which do not perish in the using. Affliction is God’s message.—Hamilton.

The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.

The impotence of human comfort, and the mockery of enemies. Lam 2:11. The misery that has befallen the people is so fearful, that sorrow over it wears out one's life. "Mine eyes pine away because of tears," is the complaint of the prophet, not merely for himself personally, but in the name of all the godly ones. "Mine eyes pine" is the expression used in Psa 69:4. On חמרמרוּ מעי, cf. Lam 1:20. The expression, "my liver is poured out on the earth," occurs nowhere else, and is variously explained. That the liver is fons sanguinis, and thus the seat of the animal life (Rosenmller, Thenius), cannot be made out from Pro 7:23. This passage rather forms a proof that among the Hebrews, according to a view widely prevalent in ancient times, the liver was considered the seat of sensual desire and lust (cf. Delitzsch's Bib. Psychology, Clark's translation, p. 316). But this view is insufficient as an explanation of the passage now before us. Besides, there are no proofs to show that "liver" is used for "heart," or even for "gall," although Job 16:13 is unwarrantably adduced in support of this position. A closely related expression, certainly, is found in Job 30:16; Psa 42:5, where the soul is said to be poured out; but the liver is different from נפשׁ, the principle of the corporeal life. If the liver was called כּבד because, according to Galen, de usu partium, vi. 17 (in Gesen. Thes. p. 655), omnium viscerum et densissimum et gravissimum est, then it may be regarded, instead of מעים, as the chief bodily organ through which not merely lust, but also pain, is felt; and the pouring out of the liver on the earth may thus mean that the inner man is dissolved in pain and sorrow, - perishes, as it were, through pain. For it is evident from the context, and universally admitted, that it is the effect of pain in consuming the bodily organs that is here meant to be expressed. שׁבר בּת עמּי is a genuine Jeremianic expression (cf. Jer 6:14; Jer 8:11, Jer 8:21, etc.), which again occurs in Lam 2:13, Lam 3:47-48, and Lam 4:10. In what follows, some harrowing details are given regarding the destruction of the daughter of Zion. בּעטף for בּהעטף, while (or because) children and sucklings were pining away on the streets of the city. This figure of heartrending misery is further carried out in Lam 2:12, for the purpose of vividly setting forth the terrible distress. Gerlach is wrong in thinking that the writer brings forward such sad scenes as would be likely to present themselves in the period immediately after the destruction of the city. For, the fact that, in Lam 2:10, the eye of the mourner is directed to the present, is far from being a proof that Lam 2:11 and Lam 2:12 also treat of the present; and the imperfect יאמרוּ, Lam 2:12, is not parallel in time with ישׁבוּ, Lam 2:12, but designates the repetition of the action in past time. "The children say to their mothers, Where is corn and wine?" i.e., Give us bread and wine, or, Where can we eat and drink? Corn and must (as in Jer 31:12, etc.) are mentioned as the usual means of nourishment of the Israelites. דּגן, "corn," is used poetically for bread (cf. Psa 78:24), - not pounded or roasted grain, which was used without further preparation (Thenius), and which is called קלי, Lev 23:14; Sa1 17:17; Sa2 17:28. The sucklings poured out their soul, i.e., breathed out their life, into the bosom of their mothers, i.e., hugging their mothers, although these could not give them nourishment; cf. Lam 4:4.

Keil & Delitzsch — Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament (1861–1891) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API. (Old Testament only.)

Or, faint.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

liver is poured, &c.--that is, as the liver was thought to be the seat of the passions, "all my feelings are poured out and prostrated for," &c. The "liver," is here put for the bile ("gall," Job 16:13; "bowels," Psa 22:14) in a bladder on the surface of the liver, copiously discharged when the passions are agitated.

swoon--through faintness from the effects of hunger.

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Verse 11. Swoon in the streets of the city.] Through the excess of the famine.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

The Prophet himself now speaks, and says that his eyes were consumed with tears, while weeping on account of the calamities of the people: even in the deepest grief tears at length dry up; but when there is no end of weeping, the sorrow, which as it were never ripens, must necessarily be very bitter. Jeremiah then expresses now the vehemence of his grief when he says that his eyes failed through shedding tears. He said in Jeremiah 9, “Who will give me eyes for fountains?” that is, who will make my eyes to turn into fountains, that they may continually flow? and this he said, because he saw how dreadful a vengeance of God impended over the obstinate. But now, when he sees accomplished what he had dreaded, he says, that his eyes were consumed with weeping.

To the same purpose is what he adds, that his bowels were disturbed. It is the same verb as we have seen before, חמרמרו, chemermeru; which some render “bound,” as we also said then. I know not why one expositor has changed what he had elsewhere said rightly; he puts here, “swollen have my bowels.” But I see no reason why the verb should be taken here in a different sense, for it immediately follows, my liver is poured forth on the ground. He may, indeed, have included other parts of the intestines by stating a part for the whole. The word here properly means the liver, as when Solomon says,

“He hath pierced my liver.” (Proverbs 7:23.)

But Jeremiah, in short, shews that all his faculties were so seized with grief, that no part was exempt. He then says that his liver was poured forth, but in the same sense in which he said that his bowels were disturbed. They are indeed hyperbolical expressions; but as to the meaning, Jeremiah simply expresses his feelings; for there is no doubt but that he was incredibly anxious and sorrowful on account of so great a calamity; for he not only lamented the adversity in no ordinary way, but he also considered how wicked was that obstinacy in which the people had hardened themselves for almost fifty years; for he had spent himself in vain, not for a short time, but for nearly fifty years he never ceased to speak to them. He then, no doubt, thought within himself what the people had deserved, so that he had no common dread of God’s vengeance. This, then, was the reason why he said that his bowels were disturbed and his liver poured forth. He, however, mentions the cause of his sorrow, even the breach or destruction of the daughter of his people; and he mentions one thing in particular, because the little one and he who sucked the breasts vanished away in the streets of the city; for so I render the verb עתף, otheph, which properly means to cover; but its secondary meaning is to vanish away, as we shall again presently see. It was, indeed, a miserable sight, when not only men and women were everywhere slain, but when, through famine, little children also fainted. We, indeed, know that infants move our pity, for the tears of a child in hunger penetrate into our inmost souls. When, therefore, little children and those who hung on their mothers’ breasts, cried through the streets of the city, it must have touched the most iron hearts. It was then not without reason that Jeremiah referred to this in particular, that little children and sucklings vanished away, not in a deserted and barren land, but in the very streets of the city. It follows, —

John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.

(11) My liver is poured upon the earth . . .—The phrase is not found elsewhere, but admits of an easy explanation. The “liver,” like the “heart” and the “bowels,” is thought of as the centre of all intense emotions, both of joy or sorrow (Pro_7:23). As such it is represented as giving way without restraint (comp. Lam_2:19), under the pressure of the horror caused by the calamities which the next words paint, by the starving children who fainted for hunger in the streets of the city.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

11. my bowels are troubled] See on ch. Lam_1:20.

My liver is poured upon the earth] The liver seems to have been looked upon, as were the rest of the vitals, as the seat of the emotions, and hence the expression in the text merely denotes strong and painful excitement. Cp. pouring out the heart, Lam_2:19, Psa_62:8; cp. Job_16:13.

destruction] mg. breach. See on Jer_4:20; Jer_17:18.

11–17. Lament over Zion’s exposure to the mockery of her enemies.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Mine eyes do fail with tears,.... According to Aben Ezra, everyone of the elders before mentioned said this; but rather they are the words of the Prophet Jeremiah, who had wept his eyes dry, or rather blind, on account of the calamities of his people; though he himself obtained liberty and enlargement by means thereof:

my bowels are troubled; all his inward parts were distressed:

my liver is poured upon the earth; his gall bladder, which lay at the bottom of his liver, broke, and he cast it up, and poured it on the earth; see Job 16:13; and all this was

for the destruction of the daughter of my people; or, the "breach" of them (t); their civil and church state being destroyed and broke to shivers; and for the ruin of the several families of them: particularly

because the children and sucklings swoon in the streets of the city; through famine, for want of bread, with those that could eat it; and for want of the milk of their mothers and nurses, who being starved themselves could not give it; and hence the poor infants fainted and swooned away; which was a dismal sight, and heart melting to the prophet.

(t) "propter contritionem", Pagninus, Montanus, Junius & Tremellius; "propter confractionem", Piscator; "propter fractionem", Cocceius.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Troubled - See the margin reference note.

Liver - As the heart was regarded by the Jews as the seat of the intellect, so the liver (or bowels) was supposed to be the seat of the emotions. The pouring out of the liver upon the ground meant that feelings had entirely given way under the acuteness of sorrow, and he could no longer restrain them.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Earth, by an overflowing of the bile, occasioned by grief, Job xvi. 14. (Calmet)

George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).

This whole verse is but expressive of the prophet’s great affliction for the miseries come upon the Jews: he wept himself almost blind, his passion had disturbed his bodily humours, that his bowels were troubled; his gall lying under his liver, upon this disturbance was vomited up: they are all no more than expressions of very great affliction and sorrow.

For the destination of the daughter of my people; for the miseries befallen the Jews: he had mourned for their sins before, and for their plagues too which he had in prospect, Jer 9:1; he now mourns for them as being come upon them: which mourning considered only as for their miseries, spake no more than the prophet’s good nature and love to his country; but considered as the indication of God’s wrath and displeasure, was also a godly sorrow.

Because the children and the sucklings swoon in the streets of the city; the children and sucklings fainted and swooned, either for want of water, or bread, or milk in their mothers’ or nurses’ breasts during the famine, occasioned by the long siege of the city. This appears in the next verse.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

My bowels are troubled. (see on Lam_1:20) My liver is poured upon the earth. A violent emotion being supposed to occasion a copious discharge of bile. The daughter of my people. A poetic expression for Zion or Judah.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Mine eyes - This whole verse is but expressive of the prophets great affliction for the miseries come upon the Jews. He wept himself almost blind. Bowels - His passion had disturbed his bodily humours, that his bowels were troubled. Liver - His gall lying under his liver. All these are expressions of great affliction and sorrow. Swoon - During the famine, occasioned by the long siege.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

The Vanity of Human Consolation Together with a Plea for Help

v. 11. Mine eyes do fail with tears, being spent, worn out, with weeping, my bowels are troubled, his heart being most deeply affected, my liver is poured upon the earth, that is,—since the liver was considered the seat of the passions,—all my feelings are dissolved with pain, for the destruction of the daughter of my people, because the children and the sucklings swoon in the streets of the city, the fainting away of these innocent victims of the calamity being the very climax of its severity.

v. 12. They say to their mothers, as they are tortured with the pangs of hunger, Where is corn and wine? anything to eat, when they swooned as the wounded in the streets of the city, faint with weakness for lack of food, when their soul was poured out into their mothers’ bosom, breathing out their lives while lying on their mothers’ laps, the latter being compelled to look on in helpless misery.

v. 13. What thing shall I take to witness for thee? to bring some measure of comfort from the experience of others. What thing shall I liken to thee, O daughter of Jerusalem? in making some comparison which would tend to arouse her drooping spirits. What shall I equal to thee that I may comfort thee, O virgin daughter of Zion? Any attempt of this kind is bound to fail in this instance, since no real comparison can be made. For thy breach is great like the sea, immeasurably boundless in extent and depth; who can heal thee? As the conditions are, Jerusalem can expect neither comfort nor healing from her prophets.

v. 14. Thy prophets have seen vain and foolish things for thee, namely, the false prophets, to whom the people of Jerusalem listened, much against Jeremiah’s advice; and they have not discovered thine iniquity, pointing out the real cause of all this misery, to turn away thy captivity, namely, by leading the people to repentance, but have seen for thee false burdens and causes of banishment, that is, the contents of their prophecies, while apparently directed against the enemies, are such as to bring ruin upon Judah.

v. 15. All that pass by clap their hands at thee, in scorn and mockery; they hiss and wag their head at the daughter of Jerusalem, saying, in expressing the derision which they felt, Is this the city that men call The perfection of beauty, The joy of the whole earth? It is a question of scornful wonderment, denying Jerusalem’s right ever to have borne such designations. To this behavior of strangers is added the mocking triumph of enemies.

v. 16. All thine enemies have opened their mouth against thee, in a gesture of mockery and derision; they hiss and gnash the teeth, as an expression of satisfied rage, of vindictive malice. They say, We have swallowed her up, thus effecting a complete destruction; certainly this is the day that we looked for, which they had so eagerly awaited; we have found, we have seen it, and they feel a corresponding satisfaction and pleasure. But the destruction of Jerusalem was not a chance happening, nor was it alone the culmination of men’s hateful plans.

v. 17. The Lord hath done that which He had devised, what He had resolved upon; He hath fulfilled His word that He had commanded in the days of old, for the holiness of the Lord demands the punishment of every act of rebellion against His holy Law; He hath thrown down and hath not pitied, carrying out His threat with merciless severity; and He hath caused thine enemy to rejoice over thee; He hath set up the horn of thine adversaries, so that they were given power, authority, and victory.

v. 18. Their heart, that of the Jews suffering such great afflictions, cried unto the Lord, even while they addressed the fortifications of their city, O wall of the daughter of Zion, the city with all its inhabitants, let tears run down like a river day and night, in the intensity of grief over the present conditions; give thyself no rest, no surcease from sorrow; let not the apple of thine eye cease, in desisting from shedding tears.

v. 19. Arise, cry out in the night, throughout all the watches of the night; in the beginning of the watches, with the desire and strength for weeping renewed again and again, pour out thine heart like water before the face of the Lord, the very heart dissolving in tears, as it were, in the excess of the sorrow caused by the great calamity; lift up thy hands toward Him, in a gesture of fervent supplication, for the life of thy young children that faint for hunger in the top, at the head, of every street.

v. 20. Behold, O Lord, and consider to whom Thou hast done this, so the prayer of the city’s inhabitants now arises. Shall the women eat their fruit, and children of a span long? in revolting cannibalism caused by excessive hunger. Cf Lev 26:29; ’Deu 28:53; Jer 19:9. Shall the priest and the prophet be slain in the Sanctuary of the Lord? The one was against God’s moral order governing the universe, the other conflicted with His covenant and the worship connected with it.

v. 21. The young and the old lie on the ground in the streets, being slaughtered without mercy; my virgins and my young men are fallen by the sword, neither age nor sex being spared. Thou hast slain them in the day of Thine anger; Thou hast killed and not pitied.

v. 22. Thou hast called as in a solemn day, as for a festival prepared for the enemies, my terrors round about, from every direction, so that Jerusalem was surrounded by them, so that in the day of the Lord’s anger none escaped nor remained, all being involved in the common ruin; those that I have swaddled and brought up, with the fondest love of a parent, hath mine enemy consumed. Fortunate is the person who, when experiencing the Lord’s punishment, cried out thus in true repentance!

Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

General Information:

The author shifts from describing Jerusalem to describing his own experience.

My eyes have failed from their tears

This is an idiom. AT: "I have cried until I cannot cry anymore" (See: Idiom)

my stomach churns

The word "churn" means to move around violently, normally in a circular rotation. This does not mean the stomach is literally churning, but describes how the author feels. AT: "my insides ache" or "my stomach hurts" (See: Metaphor)

my inner parts are poured out to the ground

The author speaks of feeling grief in his inner being as if his inner body parts had fallen out of his body onto the ground. AT: "my entire inner being is in grief" (See: Metaphor)

the daughter of my people

This is a poetic name of Jerusalem, which is spoken of here as if it were a woman. AT: "my people" (See: Metonymy and Personification)

Where is grain and wine?

This rhetorical question is used as a request for something to eat. The children are telling their mother that they are hungry. The phrase "grain and wine" represents food and drink. This question may be written as a statement. AT: "Give us something to eat and drink." (See: Metonymy and Rhetorical Question)

as they faint like a wounded man

This speaks of the children fainting from hunger and thirst in the same way that a wounded man faints. (See: Simile)

their lives are poured out on the bosom of their mothers

This speaks of the children dying as if their lives were a liquid that was being poured out. AT: "they slowly die in the arms of their mothers" (See: Metaphor)

translationWords

people group

grain

wine

life

unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.

my innards burn Heb. חֳמַרְמְרוּ, regrizi(l)lerent in Old French, have shriveled up. It is usual that when a person casts intestines into the fire, they shrivel up and burn.

faint Heb. בֵּעָטֵף, pa(s)mer in Old French, to faint, swoon.

Rashi on the Tanakh — English translations: “The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg” (CC BY 4.0); “Pentateuch with Rashi's commentary by M. Rosenbaum and A.M. Silbermann, 1929-1934” (public domain); “The Metsudah Tanach series, Lakewood, N.J” (CC BY 4.0); and “The Book of Joshua, Metsudah Publications, 1997” (CC BY 4.0). Text via Sefaria.