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2. Lord's Anger Against His People

¹ This chapter is an acrostic poem, the verses of which begin with the successive letters of the Hebrew alphabet.How the Lord has covered Daughter Zion
   with the cloud of his anger Or How the Lord in his anger / has treated Daughter Zion with contempt!
He has hurled down the splendor of Israel
   from heaven to earth;
he has not remembered his footstool
   in the day of his anger.

    ² Without pity the Lord has swallowed up
   all the dwellings of Jacob;
in his wrath he has torn down
   the strongholds of Daughter Judah.
He has brought her kingdom and its princes
   down to the ground in dishonor.

    ³ In fierce anger he has cut off
   every horn Or off / all the strength; or every king Horn here symbolizes strength. of Israel.
He has withdrawn his right hand
   at the approach of the enemy.
He has burned in Jacob like a flaming fire
   that consumes everything around it.

    ⁴ Like an enemy he has strung his bow;
   his right hand is ready.
Like a foe he has slain
   all who were pleasing to the eye;
he has poured out his wrath like fire
   on the tent of Daughter Zion.

    ⁵ The 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 Daughter Judah.

    ⁶ He has laid waste his dwelling like a garden;
   he has destroyed his place of meeting.
The LORD has made Zion forget
   her appointed festivals and her Sabbaths;
in his fierce anger he has spurned
   both king and priest.

    ⁷ The Lord has rejected his altar
   and abandoned his sanctuary.
He has given the walls of her palaces
   into the hands of the enemy;
they have raised a shout in the house of the LORD
   as on the day of an appointed festival.

    ⁸ The LORD determined to tear down
   the wall around Daughter Zion.
He stretched out a measuring line
   and did not withhold his hand from destroying.
He made ramparts and walls lament;
   together they wasted away.

    ⁹ Her gates have sunk into the ground;
   their bars he has broken and destroyed.
Her king and her princes are exiled among the nations,
   the law is no more,
and her prophets no longer find
   visions from the LORD.

    ¹⁰ The elders of Daughter Zion
   sit on the ground in silence;
they have sprinkled dust on their heads
   and put on sackcloth.
The young women of Jerusalem
   have bowed their heads to the ground.

    ¹¹ My eyes fail from weeping,
   I am in torment within;
my heart is poured out on the ground
   because my people are destroyed,
because children and infants faint
   in the streets of the city.

    ¹² They say to their mothers,
   “Where is bread and wine?”
as they faint like the wounded
   in the streets of the city,
as their lives ebb away
   in their mothers’ arms.

    ¹³ What can I say for you?
   With what can I compare you,
   Daughter Jerusalem?
To what can I liken you,
   that I may comfort you,
   Virgin Daughter Zion?
Your wound is as deep as the sea.
   Who can heal you?

    ¹⁴ The visions of your prophets
   were false and worthless;
they did not expose your sin
   to ward off your captivity.
The prophecies they gave you
   were false and misleading.

    ¹⁵ All who pass your way
   clap their hands at you;
they scoff and shake their heads
   at Daughter Jerusalem:
“Is this the city that was called
   the perfection of beauty,
   the joy of the whole earth?”

    ¹⁶ All your enemies open their mouths
   wide against you;
they scoff and gnash their teeth
   and say, “We have swallowed her up.
This is the day we have waited for;
   we have lived to see it.”

    ¹⁷ The LORD has done what he planned;
   he has fulfilled his word,
   which he decreed long ago.
He has overthrown you without pity,
   he has let the enemy gloat over you,
   he has exalted the horn Horn here symbolizes strength. of your foes.

    ¹⁸ The hearts of the people
   cry out to the Lord.
You walls of Daughter Zion,
   let your tears flow like a river
   day and night;
give yourself no relief,
   your eyes no rest.

    ¹⁹ Arise, cry out in the night,
   as the watches of the night begin;
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 faint from hunger
   at every street corner.

    ²⁰ “Look, LORD, and consider:
   Whom have you ever treated like this?
Should women eat their offspring,
   the children they have cared for?
Should priest and prophet be killed
   in the sanctuary of the Lord?

    ²¹ “Young and old lie together
   in the dust of the streets;
my young men and young women
   have fallen by the sword.
You have slain them in the day of your anger;
   you have slaughtered them without pity.

    ²² “As you summon to a feast day,
   so you summoned against me terrors on every side.
In the day of the LORD’s anger
   no one escaped or survived;
those I cared for and reared
   my enemy has destroyed.”

He means not that their heart really cried to God, for there was no cry in their heart; but by this expression he sets forth the vehemence of their grief, as though he had said, that the heart of the people was oppressed with so much sorrow, that their feelings burst forth into crying; for crying arises from extreme grief, and when any one cries or weeps, he has no control over himself. Silence is a token of patience; but when grief overcomes one, he, as though forgetting himself, necessarily bursts out into crying. This is the reason why he says that their heart cried to Jehovah

But we must observe, that the piety of the people is not here commended, as though they complained of their evils to God in sincerity and with an honest heart: on the contrary, the Prophet means that it was a common cry, often uttered even by the reprobate; for nature in a manner teaches this, that we ought to flee to God when oppressed by evils; and even those who have no fear of God exclaim in their extreme miseries, “God be merciful to us.” And, as I have said, such a cry does not flow from a right feeling or from the true fear of God, but from the strong and turbid impulse of nature: and thus God has from the beginning rendered all mortals inexcusable. So, then, now the Prophet says, that the Jews cried to God, or that their heart cried; not that they looked to God as they ought to have done, or that they deposited with him their sorrows and cast them into his bosom, as the Prophet encourages us to do; but because they found no remedy in the world — for as long as men find any comfort or help in the world, with that they are satisfied. Whence, then, was this crying to God? even because the world offered them nothing in which they could acquiesce; for it is indigenous, as it were, in our nature (that is, corrupt nature) to look around here and there, when any evil oppresses us. Now, when we find, as I have said, anything as a help, even an empty specter, to that we cleave, and never raise up our eyes to God. But when necessity forces us, then we begin to cry to God. Then the Prophet means that the people had been reduced to the greatest straits, when he says that their heart cried to God

He afterwards turns to the wall of Jerusalem, and ascribes understanding to an inanimate thing. O wall of Jerusalem, he says, draw down tears as though thou wert a river; or, as a river; for both meanings may be admitted. But by stating a part for the whole, he includes under the word wall, the whole city, as it is well known. And yet there is still a personification, for neither houses, nor walls, nor gates, nor streets, could shed tears; but Jeremiah could not, except by this hyperbolical language, sufficiently express the extent of their cry. This was the reason why he addressed the very wall of the city, and bade it to shed tears like a river ¹⁶⁹¹⁶⁹     The meaning suggested by the Vulgate is the most appropriate. The words may be rendered thus, —
   Cried has their heart to the Lord,
“O the wall of the daughter of Sion!” —
Bring down like a torrent the tear, day and night;
Give no rest to thyself.
Let not cease the daughter of thine eye.
   Their exclamation was, “O the wall,” etc. Then follow the words of Jeremiah to the end of the chapter; but the daughter of Sion, not the wall, is exhorted to weep and repent. “The daughter of the eye,” may be the tear, as suggested by Blayney and approved by Horsley; and it would be more suitable here. — Ed.

There seems to be some allusion to the ruins; for the walls of the city had been broken down as though they were melted. And then the Prophet seems to allude to the previous hardness of the people, for their hearts had been extremely stupified. As, then, they never had been flexible, whether addressed by doctrine, or exhortations, or threatenings, he now by implication brings forward in contrast with them the walls of the city, as though he had said, “Hitherto no one of God’s servants could draw even one tear from your eyes, so great was your hardness; but now the very walls weep, for they dissolve, as though they would send forth rivers of waters. Therefore the very stones turn to tears, because ye have hitherto been hardened against God and all prophetic instruction.”

He afterwards adds, Spare not thyself, give not thyself rest day or night, and let not the daughter of thine eye, or the pupil of thine eye, cease, literally, be silent; but to be silent is metaphorically taken in the sense of ceasing or resting. He intimates that there would be, nay, that there was now, an occasion of continual lamentation; and hence he exhorted them to weep day and night; as though he had said, that sorrow would continue without intermission, as there would be no relaxation as to their evils. But we must bear in mind what we have before said, that the Prophet did not speak thus to embitter the sorrow of the people. We indeed know that the minds of men are very tender and delicate while under evils, and then that they rush headlong into impatience; but as they were not as yet led to true repentance, he sets before them the punishment which God had inflicted, that they might thereby be turned to consider their own sins. It follows, —