Lamentations 2
BBCLamentations 2:1
III. THE LORD SEEN AS THE ONE WHO PUNISHED JERUSALEM (Chap. 2) A. The Effects of God’s Wrath (2:1-13)2:1-7 These verses describe what God has done to Judahdestroyed the temple (footstool) (v. 1), swallowed up the cities (v. 2), refused to hold back the enemy, as if He Himself were Judah’s foe (vv. 3-5), treated the temple as if it were a mere garden, caused the sacrificial system to cease in Zion, and set aside both king and priest (vv. 6, 7). 2:8-13 He has laid the city in ruins, the rulers are in exile, the prophets receive no word from the LORD, the elders mourn, and the maidens hang their heads in shame (vv. 8-10). The children . . . faint from hunger in the streets; they fall and die (vv. 11, 12). The people’s calamity is greater than anything the prophet can think of with which to comfort them (v. 13). “Virgin daughter of Zion” is what the people should have been, not what they actually were.
Lamentations 2:14
B. The Cause of God’s Wraththe False Prophets’ Failure to Warn the People (2:14)Judah’s prophets had seen false and deceptive visions. Rather than exposing the people’s iniquity they had manufactured false prophecies and delusions.
Lamentations 2:15
C. The Ridicule of the Onlookers (2:15, 16)Judah’s neighbors gloat over Jerusalem’s downfall. They clap their hands, hiss, and say with sadistic pleasure, “This is the day we have waited for; we have found it, we have seen it!”
Lamentations 2:17
D. The Fulfillment of God’s Threats (2:17)The LORD had fulfilled His word. He had put His own people down and exalted the power (horn, a Hebrew figure of speech) of Judah’s adversaries.
Lamentations 2:18
E. The Call to Repentance (2:18, 19)Parents are summoned to cry . . . out to the LORD unceasingly for their young children, who faint from hunger at every street corner.
Lamentations 2:20
F. The Prayer for God’s Mercy (2:20-22)Women eat their own offspring because of the famine. The streets are filled with the slain because God has invited the Babylonians to come as if to a feast.