Charles Ellicott Commentary Lamentations 4

How is the gold ... —The chapter, considered as a distinct poem, reproduces in its general character that of Lamentations 1:2, differing from them, however, in tracing more fully the connection between the sufferings and the sins of Judah. The “gold” and the stones of holiness are none other than the material treasures of palace or temple, and the repetition of the phrase in the top of every street, used in Lamentations 2:19 of children, seems intended to indicate that the words include all that was most precious among the possessions of Jerusalem.

The precious sons of Zion ... —The adjective is applied not to a special class, priests, nobles, or the like, but to all the sons of Zion in their ideal character as kingdom of priests (Exodus 19:6). They had been “comparable to” (literally, weighed with), i.e., equal to their weight in, fine gold, the work of God. Now they had become as earthen pitchers, the work of the potter. We note the comparison as characteristic of the writer (Jeremiah 18:1–6; Jeremiah 19:1–10).

Even the sea monsters ... —Better, jackals. The Authorised Version is intended apparently to apply to cetaceous mammals; elsewhere (Jeremiah 14:6) the word is rendered “dragons.” “Jackals,” it may be noted, are combined with “owls” or “ostriches,” as they are here, in Job 30:29; Isaiah 13:21. A like reference to the seeming lack of maternal instinct in the ostrich is found in Job 39:16. The comparison was obviously suggested by facts like those referred to in Lamentations 2:20.

Those who were brought up ... —Literally, that were carried (as children are carried). “Scarlet” as in 2 Samuel 1:24, stands for the shawls or garments of the rich, dyed, as they were, in the Tyrian purple or crimson. Those who had once been wrapped in such shawls now threw themselves, “embracing” them as their only refuge, on dunghills.

The punishment of the iniquity. —Better, The iniquity of the daughter of my people was greater than the sin of Sodom. The words in both cases point to guilt rather than its penalty, though, as the context shows, the greatness of the former is inferred from that of the latter. The point of comparison was that Sodom was not doomed to a protracted misery, like that which had been the lot of Jerusalem.

No hands stayed on her ... —Literally, no hands went round about her: i.e., her destruction was the direct work of God, and not of human agents, with their more merciless tortures. (Compare to 2 Samuel 24:14.) This main thought is also reflected in Matthew 10:15; Matthew 11:24.