Charles Ellicott Commentary Jeremiah 14:2

"Judah mourneth, and the gates thereof languish, they sit in black upon the ground; and the cry of Jerusalem is gone up." — Jeremiah 14:2 (ASV)

The gates thereof languish. —The “gates” of the cities, as the chief places of assembly (much like the agora of Greek cities), figuratively represent the inhabitants, who, in “black” garments of sorrow and with the pallor of the famine (a state in which all faces gather blackness), are crouching on the ground in their despair.