Charles Ellicott Commentary Lamentations 2:9

"Her gates are sunk into the ground; he hath destroyed and broken her bars: Her king and her princes are among the nations where the law is not; Yea, her prophets find no vision from Jehovah." — Lamentations 2:9 (ASV)

Her gates ... —The picture of ruin is completed. The gates are broken, and hidden by heaps of rubbish as if they had been buried in the earth; they cannot be closed, for the bars are gone. King and princes are captives to the Chaldeans. The Law was practically repealed, for the conditions of its observance were absent, and prophecy had become a thing of the past. The outward desolation was but the shadow of that of the nation’s spiritual life.