John Calvin Commentary Lamentations 2:10

"The elders of the daughter of Zion sit upon the ground, they keep silence; They have cast up dust upon their heads; they have girded themselves with sackcloth: The virgins of Jerusalem hang down their heads to the ground." — Lamentations 2:10 (ASV)

The Prophet here strikingly portrays the severity of the people’s calamity when he says that the elders, as in hopeless despair, were lying on the ground; that they cast dust on their heads; that they were clad in sackcloth, as was customary in times of intense sorrow; and that the virgins bent their heads down to the ground. The meaning is that the elders did not know what to do and led others to join them in acts of fruitless and abject lamentation. We indeed know that young women are typically very particular about their appearance and beauty, and indulge in pleasures; and that when they roll themselves with their face and hair on the ground, it is a sign of extreme mourning. This is what the Prophet means.

They were indeed accustomed to put on sackcloth as a sign of repentance and to cast dust on their heads; but their minds were often so confused that they only thus expressed their mourning and sorrow, and had no regard for God. And hypocrites, when they put on sackcloth, pretended to repent, but it was a false pretense. Now in this passage, the Prophet does not mean that the elders, by adopting these rites, professed to repent and humbly to seek pardon; but he refers to them only as signs of sorrow, as if he had said that the elders had no resources, and that the young women had no hope or joy. For the elders lay down on the ground, as is typical for those who have no remedy. We now understand the meaning of the Prophet.