Tyndale Open Study Notes

Verse 1

4:1-22 Although God’s people still experience his judgment, they will soon experience restoration.

Verse 3

4:3 like ostriches: See also Job 39:13-16.

Verse 7

4:7 like fine jewels: (literally like lapis lazuli): Lapis lazuli is a beautiful blue stone that is soft enough to carve. It is often used in decorations and mosaics.

Verse 8

4:8 Skin sticking to bones is symptomatic of the final stages of starvation, just before death.

Verse 9

4:9 Long sieges result in a serious lack of food. Even if people could get to the fields, they would find the crops destroyed or harvested to feed the soldiers.

Verse 12

4:12 Not a king . . . could march through the gates of Jerusalem: Since God had delivered Jerusalem from Sennacherib of Assyria more than a century earlier (2 Kgs 19:36-37), Judeans had strongly believed that not even the mightiest king, Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, could defeat the city.

Verse 15

4:15 It appears that these leaders fled from Jerusalem as refugees to other lands.

Verse 20

4:20 Our king . . . was caught: A reference to Zedekiah, who tried to flee but was caught and treated cruelly by Nebuchadnezzar (2 Kgs 25:4-7; Jer 39:4-7; 52:9-11).

Verse 21

4:21-22 The people of Edom were feeling secure and gloating over Jerusalem’s misfortune, but they, too, would experience punishment for their sins (see Obad 1; Jer 49:7-22).

4:21 Uz was an area east of the Jordan River that extended south to Edom. It was Job’s home (Job 1:1).

Verse 22

4:22 The first return from exile occurred in 538 BC, after Cyrus of Persia defeated Babylon (2 Chr 36:22-23; Ezra 1:1-4).