God’s Anger over Jerusalem
א ALEPH
1How the Lord has covered the Daughter of Zion
with the cloud of His anger!
He has cast the glory of Israel
from heaven to earth.
He has abandoned His footstool
in the day of His anger.
- LAM 2:1[NOTE]HIS FOOTSTOOL. The ark of the covenant, or the temple where it stood, 1 Chronicles 28:2 and Psalm 132:7. God let His own house fall.
ב BETH
2Without pity the Lord has swallowed up
all the dwellings of Jacob.
In His wrath He has demolished
the fortified cities of the Daughter of Judah.
He brought to the ground and defiled
her kingdom and its princes.
ג GIMEL
3In fierce anger He has cut off
every horn of Israel
and withdrawn His right hand
at the approach of the enemy.
He has burned in Jacob like a flaming fire
that consumes everything around it.
ד DALETH
4He has bent His bow like an enemy;
His right hand is positioned.
Like a foe He has killed
all who were pleasing to the eye;
He has poured out His wrath like fire
on the tent of the Daughter of Zion.
ה HE
5The Lord is like an enemy;
He has swallowed up Israel.
He has swallowed up all her palaces
and destroyed her strongholds.
He has multiplied mourning and lamentation
for the Daughter of Judah.
- LAM 2:5[ARCHAEOLOGY]Four Dead Sea Scrolls of Lamentations, copied about 30 BC to AD 70; 4QLam has 1:1 to 18 and this verse, see The Lamentations Scrolls Field Notes page
ו WAW
6He has laid waste His tabernacle like a garden booth;
He has destroyed His place of meeting.
Yahweh has made Zion forget
her appointed feasts and Sabbaths.
In His fierce anger
He has despised both king and priest.
- LAM 2:6[NOTE]LIKE A GARDEN BOOTH. A little hut of branches in a field. God took His temple down as easily as a farmer takes down a shed.
ז ZAYIN
7The Lord has rejected His altar;
He has abandoned His sanctuary;
He has delivered the walls of her palaces
into the hand of the enemy.
They have raised a shout in the house of Yahweh
as on the day of an appointed feast.
- LAM 2:7[ARCHAEOLOGY]Sumerian poems from about 2000 BC that weep over ruined cities like Ur, where the gods leave their own temples, see The Lament for Ur Field Notes box
ח HETH
8Yahweh determined to destroy
the wall of the Daughter of Zion.
He stretched out a measuring line
and did not withdraw His hand from destroying.
He made the ramparts and walls lament;
together they waste away.
ט TETH
9Her gates have sunk into the ground;
He has destroyed and shattered their bars.
Her king and her princes are exiled among the nations,
the law is no more,
and even her prophets
find no vision from Yahweh.
- LAM 2:9[NOTE]NO VISION. With the king gone and the temple burned, even the prophets heard nothing from God. Silence can be the hardest part of grief.
י YODH
10The elders of the Daughter of Zion
sit on the ground in silence.
They have thrown dust on their heads
and put on sackcloth.
The young women of Jerusalem
have bowed their heads to the ground.
כ KAPH
11My eyes fail from weeping;
I am churning within.
My heart is poured out in grief
over the destruction of the daughter of my people,
because children and infants faint
in the streets of the city.
- LAM 2:11[TEXT]MY HEART. The Hebrew word here is kaved, liver. In Hebrew, the liver was a place of deep feeling. The KJV says my liver is poured upon the earth. Most Bibles say heart.
ל LAMEDH
12They cry out to their mothers:
“Where is the grain and wine?”
as they faint like the wounded
in the streets of the city,
as their lives fade away
in the arms of their mothers.
מ MEM
13What can I say for you?
To what can I compare you,
O Daughter of Jerusalem?
To what can I liken you,
that I may console you,
O Virgin Daughter of Zion?
For your wound is as deep as the sea.
Who can ever heal you?
נ NUN
14The visions of your prophets
were empty and deceptive;
they did not expose your guilt
to ward off your captivity.
The burdens they envisioned for you
were empty and misleading.
- LAM 2:14[NOTE]EMPTY VISIONS. The false prophets said peace, peace, when there was no peace, Jeremiah 6:14 and 23:16 to 17. They told people what they wanted to hear.
ס SAMEKH
15All who pass by
clap their hands at you in scorn.
They hiss and shake their heads
at the Daughter of Jerusalem:
“Is this the city that was called
the perfection of beauty,
the joy of all the earth?”
- LAM 2:15[NOTE]SHAKE THEIR HEADS. Passersby mocked the city, the way they later shook their heads at Jesus on the cross, Matthew 27:39.
פ PE
16All your enemies
open their mouths against you.
They hiss and gnash their teeth,
saying, “We have swallowed her up.
This is the day for which we have waited.
We have lived to see it!”
ע AYIN
17Yahweh has done what He planned;
He has accomplished His decree,
which He ordained in days of old;
He has overthrown you without pity.
He has let the enemy gloat over you
and exalted the horn of your foes.
צ TZADE
18The hearts of the people
cry out to the Lord.
O wall of the Daughter of Zion,
let your tears run down like a river
day and night.
Give yourself no relief,
and your eyes no rest.
ק KOPH
19Arise, cry out in the night
from the first watch of the night.
Pour out your heart like water
in the presence of the Lord.
Lift up your hands to Him
for the lives of your children
who are fainting from hunger
on the corner of every street.
- LAM 2:19[HEART]Pour out your heart like water before the Lord. God wants your honest tears, not a brave face.
- LAM 2:19[NOTE]POUR OUT YOUR HEART. Not a brave face. God invites honest tears, prayed out loud, for the children and for the city, Psalm 62:8.
ר RESH
20Look, O Yahweh, and consider:
Whom have You ever treated like this?
Should women eat their offspring,
the infants they have nurtured?
Should priests and prophets be killed
in the sanctuary of the Lord?
- LAM 2:20[NOTE]THE WORST OF THE SIEGE. The poet asks God to look at how bad the hunger became. Moses had warned that a siege could bring this, Deuteronomy 28:53. The Bible does not hide it, but it tells it with grief, not detail.
ש SIN
21Both young and old lie together
in the dust of the streets.
My young men and maidens
have fallen by the sword.
You have slain them in the day of Your anger;
You have slaughtered them without compassion.
ת TAW
22You summoned my terrors on every side,
as for the day of an appointed feast.
In the day of Yahweh’s anger
no one escaped or survived;
my enemy has destroyed
those I nurtured and reared.
- LAM 2:22[NOTE]THE DAY OF YAHWEH'S ANGER. Chapter 2 ends with no comfort at all. Lamentations lets grief be grief before it talks about hope.