Charles Ellicott Commentary Lamentations 2:1

"How hath the Lord covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in his anger! He hath cast down from heaven unto the earth the beauty of Israel, And hath not remembered his footstool in the day of his anger." — Lamentations 2:1 (ASV)

How has the Lord ... —The second dirge follows the pattern of the first, opening with a description of the sufferings of Jerusalem (Lamentations 2:1–10), and closing with a dramatic soliloquy spoken as by the daughter of Zion (Lamentations 2:11–22).

The image that floats before the poet’s mind is that of a dark thunder-cloud breaking into a tempest, which overthrows the beauty of Israel, namely the Temple (Isaiah 64:11), or, as in 2 Samuel 1:19, the heroes who defended it. The footstool is, as in 1 Chronicles 28:2; Psalms 99:5, the ark of the covenant, which was involved in the destruction of the Temple. The “Lord” is, as before, Adonai, not Jehovah.