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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Lamentations 2:17 - 2:17
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In this calamity, which Jahveh has ordained, it is only He who can bring comfort and help; [and this He will do], if earnest and incessant complaint be made to Him regarding the misery. In order to turn the thoughts of the people in this direction, the prophet lays emphasis on the fact that God has now executed this destruction which He has threatened long before, and has prepared for the triumph of the enemy. "Jahveh hath done what He hath purposed," has now performed the word which He has commanded all along from the days of yore. Zechariah (Zec 1:6) also lays this truth before the heart of his contemporaries. בִּצַּע, to cut off, is used metaphorically in the sense of finishing, completing, as in Isa 10:12; Zec 4:9. To fulfil a word that has been ordered, signifies to execute it. צִוָּה does not mean to announce, but to command, order; the word has been chosen, not merely with reference to the fact that the threatened rejection of Israel was announced in the law, but also with regard to the circumstance that the threat of punishment for sins is an evidence of the moral government of the world, and the holiness of the Lord and Ruler of the world demands the punishment of every act of rebellion against the government and decrees of God. "The days of old" are the times of Moses; for Jeremiah has before his mind the threatenings of the law, Lev 26:23., Deu 28:15. "Without sparing," as Jeremiah (Jer 4:28) has announced to the people. In the following clause, "He hath made thine enemy rejoice over thee," thoughts are reproduced from Psa 89:43. To "exalt the horn" means to grant power and victory; cf. 1Sa 21:1; Psa 75:5.
Lam 2:18
When it is seen that the Lord has appointed the terrible calamity, the people are driven to pray for mercy. Hence Lam 2:18 follows, yet not at once with the summons to prayer, but with the assertion of the fact that this actually takes place: "their heart cries out unto the Lord;" and it is not till after this that there follows the summons to entreat Him incessantly with tears. The perfect צָעַק represents the crying as already begun, and reaching on to the present (cf. Ewald, §135, b), for which we use the present in German [and in English]. That the suffix in "their heart" does not point to the enemies mentioned at the close of Lam 2:17, but to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, is indubitably evident from what is substantially stated in the clause, viz., that crying to the Lord merely indicates the crying to God for help in distress. There is no sufficient reason for Ewald's change of צָעַק לִ into צַעֲקֵי לִבֵּךְ, "outcries of thine heart," i.e., let the cry of thine heart sound forth; still less ground is there for the conjecture of Thenius, that לִבָּם should be changed into חִנָּם, because this is opposed to the following summons to implore help: other more unnatural changes in the text it were needless to mention. The following clauses, "O wall of the daughter of Zion," etc., do not state how her heart has cried and still cries to the Lord, but bid her constantly go on imploring. Several expositors have taken objection to the direct address, "O wall of the daughter of Zion," and have sought to remove the difficulty by making conjectures. Hence, e.g., Thenius still holds that there is good ground for the objection, saying that there is a wide difference between the poetic expression, "the wall mourns" (Lam 2:8), and the summons, "O wall, let tears run down." This difference cannot be denied, yet such personification is not without analogy. A similar summons is found in Isa 14:31 : "Howl, O gate" (porta). It is self-evident that it is not the wall simply as such that is considered, but everything besides connected with it, so that the wall is named instead of the city with its inhabitants, just as in Isa 14:31 gate and city are synonymous. Hence, also, all the faculties of those residing within the wall (eyes, heart, hands) may be ascribed to it, inasmuch as the idea of the wall easily and naturally glides over into that of the daughter of Zion. The expression, "Let tears run down like a stream," is a hyperbole used to indicate the exceeding greatness of the grief. "By day and night" is intensified by the clauses which follow: "give not," i.e., grant not. פּוּגַת לָךְ , "torpidity (stagnation) to thyself." The noun פּוּגָה is ἅπ. λεγ., like הַפוּגָה, Lam 3:49; the verb פּוּג, however, occurs in Gen 25:26 and Psa 77:3, where it is used of the torpidity of the vital spirits, stagnation of the heart. The expression in the text is a poetic one for פּוּגָתֵךְ: "do not permit thy numbness," i.e., let not thy flood of tears dry up; cf. Ewald, §289, b. בַּת עַיִן is the eyeball, not the tears (Pareau); cf. Psa 17:8. תִּדֹּם comes from דָּמַם, to be still, as in Jer 47:6. On the thought here presented, cf. Jer 14:17.
Lam 2:19
רָנַן (prop. to raise a whining cry, but commonly "to shout for joy") here means to weep aloud, lament. לְרֹאשׁ אַשְׁמֻרֹות, at the beginning of the night-watches (cf. Jdg 7:19); not "in the first night-watch" (Kalkschmidt, following Bochart and Nägelsbach), but at the beginning of each night-watch, i.e., throughout the night; cf. Psa 63:7. "Pour out thine heart like water before the face of the Lord," i.e., utter the sorrow of thine heart in tears to the Lord. The uplifting of the hands is a gesture indicative of prayer and entreaty (cf. Psa 28:2; Psa 63:5, etc.), not "of the deepest distress" (Thenius). עַל־נֶפֶשׁ does not mean pro vita parvulorum tuorum, that God may at least preserve them (Rosenmüller, Gerlach), but "on account of the soul of thy children," which is more distinctly stated, in the following relative sentence, to mean that they have breathed out their soul through hunger. On this matter, cf. Lam 2:11 and the exposition of that verse. Ewald has placed the last member of the verse within parentheses, as an interpolation, on the ground that a fourth member offends against the law observed in these verses; on the other hand, Thenius is of opinion that the words do not form a member of the verse by themselves, but are a mere prolongation of the third, "because the conclusion of the prophet's address, begun in Lam 2:19, was certainly intended to be a complete finish." But the deviation from the rule is not thereby accounted for. Inasmuch as the words are essential to the expression of the thought, we must simply acknowledge the irregularity, and not arbitrarily cast suspicion on the genuineness of the words.