Lamentations 1:15

Lamentations mourns the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple by the Babylonian army under King Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BC, the event recorded in 2 Kings 25 and Jeremiah 52. It ended the kingdom of Judah and began the exile. The book is traditionally attributed to Jeremiah. Its first chapter is an acrostic poem, each verse beginning with the next letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and all through Lamentations 1 the city is pictured as a woman: a widow forsaken by those who loved her, mocked by her enemies, her children led away captive. Verse 12 is her own appeal.

“Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by?” The people she calls to are those who ʻâbar, pass along or cross over, the derek, the road. They are travellers on the roads into and around Jerusalem, merchants and traders, and perhaps the Babylonian soldiers who had taken the city. Her ruin lies in plain view beside the road, and the question asks them to stop and take in what they are seeing. It needs no spoken answer. It rebukes everyone who looks at such a ruin and walks on unmoved.

“Behold, and see” joins two verbs, nâbaṭ and râʼâh, which both mean to look or to see, and together they press the request home. What she wants them to see is her sorrow. The word makʼôb covers pain of body and grief of heart together, and in “any sorrow like unto my sorrow” it comes back at once. She claims a sorrow beyond any other. That is the language of grief at its height, which looks around and finds its own loss unequalled.

Then she names its source. It is a sorrow “which is done unto me”, from ʻâlal, to deal with someone thoroughly or severely, and the one who did it is the LORD, Yᵉhôvâh, Israel’s covenant God. “Afflicted” is yâgâh, to cause grief, to vex. It came “in the day of his fierce anger”. The day, yôwm, is the time of the city’s fall. “Fierce anger” joins chârôwn, a burning of anger, anger kindled like a fire, with ʼaph, the word for the nose or nostril that Hebrew also uses for anger itself.

From verse 12 to verse 17 Jerusalem keeps naming the LORD as the one who acted: “he hath spread a net”, “he hath turned me back”, “he hath made me desolate”, “bound by his hand”, “the Lord hath delivered me”, “he hath called an assembly”, “the LORD hath commanded”. The KJV marks two names. “The LORD” in capitals, in verses 12 and 17, is Yᵉhôvâh, the name of the God who made his covenant with Israel. “The Lord” in verses 14 and 15 is ʼĂdônây, an emphatic form used as a name of God alone, meaning Lord or Master. The God who bound himself to his people is also the Master of every army and every city.

Babylon’s army was his instrument. In Jeremiah 25:8–11 the LORD calls Nebuchadnezzar his servant and sends him against Judah because the people had refused to hear. The fall of the city fulfilled what God had set before Israel in the blessings and curses of Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28. For generations the prophets had warned against idolatry, injustice and oppression, as in Jeremiah’s sermon at the temple (Jeremiah 7) and Ezekiel’s vision of idolatry inside the temple itself (Ezekiel 8). The people had trusted in God’s covenant with David and believed Zion was safe under his protection forever, the confidence that sings in Psalm 46 of God as refuge and strength. The fall of the city shook their whole understanding of his promises.

The anger in these verses is the anger of the holy God against sin, the wrath that Paul says is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness (Romans 1:18). It has a cause, and it came after long warning. The curses for disobedience, spelled out in Deuteronomy 28:15–68, included siege, exile and a land laid waste, and here God keeps his word in judgment as surely as he keeps it in blessing. Being his chosen people gave Judah great privilege, and it also held her to account.

Verse 13 lays one picture on another. The fire comes “from above”, mârôwm, the height, which is to say from God. Fire, ʼêsh, is here a pain within, burning in her ʻetsem, her bones, the frame of the body and the seat of its strength. “It prevaileth against them” uses râdâh, to rule or have dominion, so the fire has mastered her bones. Jeremiah uses the same picture of fire shut up in his bones for God’s word burning in him until he had to speak it (Jeremiah 20:9). In Lamentations the burning is the LORD’s judgment.

Then the picture moves from inside her to the ground under her feet. “He hath spread a net for my feet” uses pâras, to spread, resheth, a net, and regel, the foot. A hunter spreads a net to catch an animal by the feet. In Psalm 35:7 David complains of enemies who hid their net for him without cause. Here the LORD himself has spread it, and every way of escape is caught. “He hath turned me back” joins shûwb, to turn back, with ʼâchôwr, backward. She is driven back in retreat, and every attempt to go forward is turned around.

The verse ends with what all this has left. “Desolate” is shâmêm, used of a place laid waste and of people left alone or stunned with shock. “Faint” is dâveh, sick or weak, a word used especially of a woman’s monthly sickness. And it lasts “all the day”, where yôwm comes again, so her weakness gives her no hour of relief.

Verse 14 is Jerusalem’s confession. “The yoke of my transgressions is bound by his hand.” A yoke, ʻôl, is the bar or frame that joins draft animals at the neck, and Scripture uses it for bondage and oppression. Transgression, peshaʻ, is an act of rebellion against authority, and the plural counts her rebellions one by one. Her sins have become the yoke she wears, and the hand that bound it on her is the LORD’s. Moses had warned that disobedience would end with a yoke of iron on Israel’s neck (Deuteronomy 28:48), and Isaiah pronounced woe on those who “draw iniquity with cords of vanity” (Isaiah 5:18).

“They are wreathed, and come up upon my neck.” The verb śārag means to intertwine, twist or braid together. Her sins are twisted together like the cords of the yoke and sit fast on her neck, the very place where a yoke bears down. Paul gives the end of that road in one line: “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23).

“He hath made my strength to fall, the Lord hath delivered me into their hands, from whom I am not able to rise up.” The yoke breaks her strength, and the Lord himself hands her over to her enemies. She lies where she fell, too weak to rise, resist or recover. Yet the confession itself is a step toward life. By owning her transgressions Jerusalem takes the first step of repentance, and the way to restoration begins there.

Verse 15 widens the view to the whole people. “The Lord hath trodden under foot all my mighty men in the midst of me.” Her mighty men are her warriors, her defence, crushed inside the city where they stood to protect her. “He hath called an assembly against me” uses moʻed, a word for an appointed time or meeting. The Babylonian army came at God’s summons, at the time he had set, and it came “to crush my young men”, the strength and future of the nation.

“The Lord hath trodden the virgin, the daughter of Judah, as in a winepress.” The verb dârak means to tread or walk, and here it has its sense of trampling. The gath, the winepress, was the trough where grapes were crushed under bare feet to draw out their juice, a familiar sight in Israel. Its red juice made it a picture of crushing that is thorough and bloody, the lifeblood of the people pressed out. “The virgin, the daughter of Judah” names the city as a young woman once cherished and kept, and now she is trampled.

The prophets use the winepress for God’s wrath elsewhere. Isaiah sees the LORD coming from Edom in garments stained red, saying, “I have trodden the winepress alone” (Isaiah 63:3), and Revelation speaks of the great winepress of the wrath of God at the end of the age (Revelation 14:19–20).

“For these things I weep.” These things are everything she has described: the ruin, the shame and the suffering of her people. The verb bâkâh means to weep, bemoan and make lamentation, the outward act of mourning. Lament was the recognised way to grieve in Israel, alone and together, with weeping, torn garments and ashes, as when David lamented Saul and Jonathan. The repeated “mine eye, mine eye runneth down with water” gives tears that keep flowing.

The reason is that “the comforter that should relieve my soul is far from me”. The comforter, menaḥem, is one who comforts, from nâcham, a root traced to sighing that comes to mean to be sorry, to pity and to console. The soul is nephesh, her life and her very self. The comforter’s distance takes in every source of help: allies and friends gone, every human resource spent, and the consolation of God withheld for this season so that the full weight of the judgment is felt. It repeats the cry of Lamentations 1:2, where among all her lovers she has none to comfort her.

“My children are desolate” speaks of the city’s people, above all the young and the vulnerable. “Desolate” is shâmêm, the same word as in verse 13. The book returns to the children later (Lamentations 2:19). “Because the enemy prevailed” uses ʼôyêb, the enemy, from a verb meaning to be hostile, and gâbar, to be strong or prevail, a different word from the one behind “prevaileth” in verse 13, though the two share the English word. In the verse the enemy is Babylon.

Scripture keeps other tears from the same disaster. The exiles wept by the rivers of Babylon when they remembered Zion (Psalm 137:1), Jeremiah grieved for the hurt of his people (Jeremiah 8:18–22), and Isaiah speaks of Jerusalem drinking the cup of the LORD’s fury until God takes it out of her hand (Isaiah 51:17–23).

In verse 17 the poet speaks about her again. “Zion spreadeth forth her hands”: Tsîyôwn is a mountain of Jerusalem and a name for the city as the place of God’s dwelling. To spread, pâras, the hands, yâd, is the posture of prayer and pleading, and also of a helpless appeal for aid. It is the same verb as the net in verse 13. The LORD has spread a net, and Zion spreads her hands.

“And there is none to comfort her”: the word is nâcham, the same word as behind “comforter” in verse 16. Her outstretched hands are met with silence.

“The LORD hath commanded concerning Jacob, that his adversaries should be round about him.” The LORD is Yᵉhôvâh again, and he has given the order, tsâvâh. Jacob, Yaʻăqôb, is another name for the nation. The adversaries are tsar, a word that most often means an opponent and can also mean distress, and they stand çâbîyb, round about, on every side.

“Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by?” The question is heard again at the cross, where crowds watched Jesus suffer, many of them indifferent or hostile. Isaiah had foretold “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief” who “hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows” (Isaiah 53:3–4), and Jesus cried, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). His sorrow was unique in a way Jerusalem’s was only in her grief.

Jerusalem suffered for her own transgressions. Jesus is the sinless Lamb of God, “which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), and God made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him (2 Corinthians 5:21). The winepress of verse 15 has its echo in Isaiah’s words, “Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him; he hath put him to grief” (Isaiah 53:10). He bore the wrath that sinners deserved, offered once for all (Hebrews 10:10). In this God shows his love toward us, that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us (Romans 5:8), and so there is now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1).

The yoke of verse 14 is every sinner’s burden, since all have sinned (Romans 3:23) and none can lift that yoke alone. Jesus calls the weary to come to him and says, “my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28–30). Where Jerusalem’s strength fell, Christ triumphed over principalities and powers at the cross (Colossians 2:13–15), defeating the greater enemy behind all sin and death, and those who could not rise are raised with him to walk in newness of life (Romans 6:4).

Jesus wept over this same city as he foresaw its judgment (Luke 19:41–44), and he longed to gather Jerusalem’s children as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings (Matthew 23:37). The comforter who was far from Zion is given to his people in the Holy Spirit, whom Jesus promised as “another Comforter”, saying, “I will not leave you comfortless” (John 14:16–18). The blood of Christ cleanses the conscience from dead works to serve the living God (Hebrews 9:14), and Scripture ends with a new Jerusalem, holy and prepared as a bride (Revelation 21:2), where God dwells with his people and sorrow and crying are gone.

These verses give God’s people words for the worst day of their history, and those words are spoken to God. Jerusalem names her pain in full and confesses her sin in full. To lament before the LORD like this, even in the language of complaint, is to own that he rules, and that acknowledgement is where repentance and restoration begin.

The passage shows us who God is. He is holy, he keeps his word in judgment as surely as in mercy, and the hand that bound the yoke is the hand that can lift it. The same book goes on to say, “It is of the LORD’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness” (Lamentations 3:22–23), and the hope of Lamentations 3 is spoken from the same ruins.

The question of verse 12 is put to everyone who sees suffering and passes by. In Jerusalem’s cry, the sorrow of the afflicted is brought before God and before us, and it asks to be seen.