John Gill Commentary Lamentations 3:51

"Mine eye affecteth my soul, because of all the daughters of my city." — Lamentations 3:51 (ASV)

Mine eye affecteth mine heart
Seeing the desolation of his country; the ruins of the city and temple of Jerusalem; and the multitudes of those that were slain, and carried captive; and the distresses the rest were in; this affected his heart, and filled it with grief; as his heart also affected his eyes, and caused them to run down in rivers of water, as before expressed; or, as the Targum, ``the weeping of mine eyes is the occasion of hurt to my soul or life;'' his excessive weeping endangered his life.

because of all the daughters of my city ;
not Anathoth, his native place, but Jerusalem; so the Targum, ``of Jerusalem my city.'' The meaning is, that his heart was affected at seeing the ruin of the inhabitants of Jerusalem; or of the towns and cities round about it, which that was the metropolis of. Some, as Jarchi, render it, "more than all the daughters of my city" ^F16 ; his heart was more affected with those calamities than those of the most tender sex, even than any or all of them.

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FOOTNOTES:

• F16: (yrye twnb lkm) "supra cunctas filias civitatis meae"; so some in Vatablus; and Jarchi.