Charles Ellicott Commentary Lamentations 1

How does the city ... —The poem of twenty-two verses divides itself into two symmetrical halves:

1. Lamentations 1:1–11, in which the prophet laments over Jerusalem.
2. Lamentations 1:12–22, more dramatic in its form, in which the daughter of Zion bewails her own miseries.

Each verse is divided into three lines, each line beginning, in Hebrew, with the same letter. The opening picture reminds us of the well-known Judaea capta, a woman sitting under a palm tree, on the Roman medals struck after the destruction of Jerusalem.

How is she become. —It is better to render this as one sentence instead of two: She is become a widow that was great among the nations, and the same applies to the clause that follows.

Provinces. —The word is used in Esther 1:1, Esther 1:22, and elsewhere to refer to the countries subject to Persia and Assyria; it is also used in Ezra 2:1 and Nehemiah 7:6 to refer to Judah itself. In this context, the word indicates the neighboring countries that had once, as in the reign of Hezekiah, been subject to Judah.

“Tributary,” as used here, implies, as in Joshua 16:10, personal servitude rather than the money payment for which it was commuted at a later period, as in Esther 10:1.

She weepeth sore in the night. —The intensity of the sorrow is emphasized by the fact that the tears do not cease even in the time that commonly brings rest and repose to mourners. The “lovers” and the “friends” are the nations, Egypt (Jeremiah 2:36), Edomites, Moabites, and others, with which Judah had been in alliance, and which now turned against her. (Ezekiel 25:3–6; Jeremiah 40:14, for instances of their hostility, and especially Lamentations 4:21.)

Because of affliction. — The Authorised Version suggests the thought that the words refer to the voluntary emigration of those who went to Egypt and other countries (Jeremiah 42:14), to avoid the oppression to which they were subject in their own land. The Hebrew, however, permits the rendering from affliction, and so the words speak of the forcible deportation of the people from misery at home to a yet worse misery in Babylon as the land of their exile. Even there they found no rest (Deuteronomy 28:65). Their persecutors hunted them down to the straits from which no escape was possible.

The ways of Zion do mourn. —The words paint what we may call the religious desolation of Jerusalem. The roads leading to it, the “gates” by which it was entered, were no longer thronged with pilgrims and worshippers. “Virgins” are joined with “priests” as taking part in the hymns and rejoicing processions of the great festivals (Exodus 15:20; Psalms 68:25; Judges 21:19–21; Jeremiah 31:13).

Her adversaries are the chief, —Literally, have become the head (Deuteronomy 28:13).

Her enemies prosper; —Better, are at ease, secure from every resistance on her part. Before the enemy, driven, i.e., as slaves are driven.