Charles Ellicott Commentary Lamentations 1:19

"I called for my lovers, [but] they deceived me: My priests and mine elders gave up the ghost in the city, While they sought them food to refresh their souls." — Lamentations 1:19 (ASV)

I called for. —Better, to. The “lovers,” as in Lamentations 1:2, are the former allies of Judah.

My priests and mine elders. —The pressure of the famine of the besieged city is emphasized by the fact that even these, the honored guides of the people, had died of hunger. On the phrase that follows, see Lamentations 1:11. A conjectural addition, at the end of the verse, “and found not,” is supplied in the LXX and Syriac versions; but rhetorically there is more force in the aposiopesis, the suggestive silence, of the Hebrew.