John Calvin Commentary Lamentations 2:11

"Mine eyes do fail with tears, my heart is troubled; My liver is poured upon the earth, because of the destruction of the daughter of my people, Because the young children and the sucklings swoon in the streets of the city." — Lamentations 2:11 (ASV)

The Prophet himself now speaks, and says that his eyes were consumed with tears while weeping because of the calamities of the people. Even in the deepest grief, tears eventually dry up; but when there is no end to weeping, the sorrow, which, as it were, never ripens, must necessarily be very bitter. Jeremiah then expresses the intensity of his grief when he says that his eyes failed through shedding tears. He said in Jeremiah 9, “Who will give me eyes for fountains?” that is, who will make my eyes turn into fountains, so that they may continually flow? He said this because he saw how dreadful God's vengeance threatened the obstinate. But now, when he sees what he had dreaded come to pass, he says that his eyes were consumed with weeping.

What he adds serves the same purpose: that his bowels were disturbed. It is the same verb as we have seen before, חמרמרו, chemermeru, which some translate as “bound,” as we also said then. I do not know why one commentator has changed what he had elsewhere said correctly; he writes here, “swollen have my bowels.” But I see no reason why the verb should be taken here in a different sense, for it immediately follows, my liver is poured forth on the ground. He may, indeed, have included other parts of the intestines by stating a part for the whole. The word here properly means the liver, as when Solomon says,

“He hath pierced my liver.” (Proverbs 7:23)

But Jeremiah, in short, shows that all his faculties were so seized with grief that no part was exempt. He then says that his liver was poured forth, but in the same sense in which he said that his bowels were disturbed. They are indeed hyperbolical expressions; but as to the meaning, Jeremiah simply expresses his feelings.

For there is no doubt that he was incredibly anxious and sorrowful because of such a great calamity. He not only lamented the adversity in an extraordinary way, but he also considered how wicked was the obstinacy in which the people had hardened themselves for almost fifty years. For he had exerted himself in vain; not for a short time, but for nearly fifty years he never ceased to speak to them.

He then, undoubtedly, thought to himself what the people had deserved, so that he had a profound dread of God’s vengeance. This, then, was the reason why he said that his bowels were disturbed and his liver poured forth.

He, however, mentions the cause of his sorrow: the breach or destruction of the daughter of his people. And he mentions one thing in particular: because the little one and he who sucked the breasts vanished away in the streets of the city. For that is how I translate the verb עתף, otheph, which properly means to cover; but its secondary meaning is to vanish away, as we shall again see shortly.

It was, indeed, a miserable sight when not only men and women were everywhere slain, but when, through famine, little children also fainted. We, indeed, know that infants move our pity, for the tears of a child in hunger penetrate into our inmost souls. When, therefore, little children and those who hung on their mothers’ breasts cried through the streets of the city, it must have touched the most iron hearts. It was then not without reason that Jeremiah referred to this in particular: that little children and sucklings vanished away, not in a deserted and barren land, but in the very streets of the city.