Charles Ellicott Commentary Lamentations 4:19

"Our pursuers were swifter than the eagles of the heavens: They chased us upon the mountains, they laid wait for us in the wilderness." — Lamentations 4:19 (ASV)

Our persecutors. —Better, Our pursuers, the words referring to the Chaldean enemies rather than to persecutors in the modern sense of the word. The comparison with eagles has a parallel in Deuteronomy 28:49. If we take the second clause as referring to the flight of Zedekiah, mentioned in the next verse, the mountains would be the heights east of Jerusalem, beginning with the Mount of Olives, and the wilderness that of the Ghor, or Jordan Valley (Jeremiah 39:5).