John Calvin Commentary Lamentations 5:14

"The elders have ceased from the gate, The young men from their music." — Lamentations 5:14 (ASV)

Here the Prophet briefly shows that the city was reduced to ruins, so that nothing but desolation could be seen there. For when cities are inhabited, judges sit at the gate and young men engage in lawful pursuits; but he says that there were no judgments. For at that time, as is well known, they were accustomed to administer justice and to hold assemblies at the gates of cities. It was then as if all civil order had been abolished.

Then he adds, the young men had ceased from their own beating, or musical songs. The meaning is that there was so great a desolation in the city that it was no longer a city. For men cannot dwell together without laws and without courts of justice. Where courts of justice are closed, where laws are mute, where no equity is administered, there barbarity prevails, which is worse than solitude; and where there are no assemblies for legitimate amusements, life becomes brutal, for we know that man is a sociable being.

By these words, then, the Prophet shows that a dreadful desolation appeared in the city after the people had gone into exile. And among the Chaldeans and in Assyria, they had no judges of their own nor any form of government, for they were dispersed and scattered—and that by design—so that they might not unite again. For it was the purpose of the Chaldeans to obliterate by degrees the very name of the people, and thus they were not formed into a community there. So justly does the Prophet deplore their desolation even in exile.