Lamentations 2:9

The most startling thing in these verses is who does the acting. Babylon is never named. Verse after verse, it is the Lord who covers, casts down, swallows up, throws down, cuts off, burns, slays, destroys and gives the city up. The first chapter mourned Jerusalem as a widow sitting alone (Lamentations 1:1) and dwelt on her sorrow and her sin (Lamentations 1). The second chapter turns to the hand behind the sorrow (Lamentations 2). Nebuchadnezzar’s army broke through the walls, burned the Temple and carried the people away (2 Kings 25, Jeremiah 52), and the poet sees the LORD at work in all of it. The book has long been held to come from Jeremiah, who lived through the siege.

For Israel the Temple was the place where the LORD dwelt among his people, and Jerusalem was the city of David’s kings. Their fall raised the hardest question a believer in Judah could ask: how could the God who chose Zion destroy it? A neighbouring nation would have said that its gods had beaten Israel’s God. Lamentations says that the LORD was well able to defend Zion and chose to judge it.

He had said he would. The covenant he made with Israel set blessing before them for obedience and curses for disobedience (Deuteronomy 28, Leviticus 26). Moses warned that the LORD would bring a nation against them from far away (Deuteronomy 28:49), and that just as he had rejoiced over them to do them good, he would rejoice over them to destroy them (Deuteronomy 28:63). Jeremiah stood in the Temple gate and warned the people against trusting the building while they went on in their sins (Jeremiah 7:1–15): “Trust ye not in lying words, saying, The temple of the LORD, The temple of the LORD, The temple of the LORD, are these.” In the same sermon he reminded them that God had once let his sanctuary at Shiloh fall, and later he told them that Babylon would make the land a desolation for seventy years (Jeremiah 25:8–11). Isaiah had sung of a vineyard whose hedge the LORD would take away and whose wall he would break down (Isaiah 5:5–7). Jeremiah also told them, “Thine own wickedness shall correct thee” (Jeremiah 2:19).

So when the poet says that God did all this, he is telling the truth about who stands behind the ruins, and the truth leaves no room for a weak God. The sin was Judah’s and the judgment was just.

Verse 1 begins with the cry of someone who can hardly believe what he sees: “How hath the Lord...”. It is a lament more than a question, close to the psalm that asks, “O God, why hast thou cast us off for ever? why doth thine anger smoke against the sheep of thy pasture?” (Psalm 74:1). The title used for God here is ʼĂdônây, the Lord who is Master and Owner. The one who has done this is Israel’s own covenant God.

The verb “covered... with a cloud”, ʻûwb, stands only here in the whole Bible, and it means to cover with a cloud. God has darkened his city with the cloud of his anger. The picture recalls the cloud of his presence that once led Israel through the wilderness, and here a cloud is the sign of his wrath.

“The daughter of Zion” is a tender name for Jerusalem and its people, picturing the city as a beloved daughter. The book uses it again and again, and it makes the ruin of a city into the suffering of a person. “The beauty of Israel” is chiefly the Temple, the glory of the nation, and God has thrown it “from heaven unto the earth”, from the height of honour to the dust.

The “footstool” is the Temple, or the ark within it. David spoke of building a house of rest “for the ark of the covenant of the LORD, and for the footstool of our God” (1 Chronicles 28:2), and a psalm calls Israel to “worship at his footstool; for he is holy” (Psalm 99:5). The verse names his anger at its start and at its end, and in “the day of his anger” he left his own footstool to its fate.

Verse 2 widens the view from the Temple to the whole land. “The Lord hath swallowed up all the habitations of Jacob”, every home and settlement of the people. The verb bâlaʻ means to swallow, swallow up or destroy, and it comes back in verses 5 and 8. “And hath not pitied” uses châmal, to pity, have compassion or spare. On this day God spared nothing.

He threw down “the strong holds of the daughter of Judah”, the fortified towns and defences, mibtsâr, that a nation relied on in war, and brought them down to the ground. Then “he hath polluted the kingdom and the princes thereof”. The verb châlal means to profane or make common. The royal house of David and the rulers of Judah, set apart to govern God’s people, were stripped of their honour and treated as common things. God had said the same of his own house through Ezekiel: “Behold, I will profane my sanctuary, the excellency of your strength” (Ezekiel 24:21).

“He hath cut off in his fierce anger all the horn of Israel.” The verb gâdaʻ is used for felling a tree, and more widely for destroying anything. “Fierce anger” is chŏrîy, a burning anger, from a root meaning to burn. The horn, qeren, is Scripture’s picture of strength and dignity, like the horn of a bull, and the LORD himself is called “the horn of my salvation”. A psalm says, “All the horns of the wicked also will I cut off; but the horns of the righteous shall be exalted” (Psalm 75:10). Now it is Israel’s horn that God has cut off, and with it their power, independence and pride.

“He hath drawn back his right hand from before the enemy.” God’s right hand is his power to protect and save. By strength of hand he brought Israel out of Egypt (Exodus 13:3). Now, as the enemy advances, he pulls that hand back and leaves his people exposed, so their defeat came from his decision to withdraw his shield as much as from Babylon’s strength.

“And he burned against Jacob like a flaming fire, which devoureth round about.” The verb bâʻar means to burn, kindle or consume. The flame (lehâbâh) and the fire (ʼêsh) spread “round about”, çâbîyb, so the judgment closes in from every side. Fire is one of Scripture’s great pictures of God’s judgment, as when the LORD rained fire and brimstone on Sodom (Genesis 19:24), and the New Testament still says, “For our God is a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:29).

Verses 4 and 5 say outright what the first three verses imply. “He hath bent his bow like an enemy.” The verb dârak means to tread, and it is also used for bending a bow, which an archer strung by treading on it. God has taken the stance of an archer taking aim at his own people, the stance of their worst enemy. “He stood with his right hand as an adversary.” The psalmist sang, “The right hand of the LORD is exalted: the right hand of the LORD doeth valiantly” (Psalm 118:16), and that same right hand now stands against Zion.

“And slew all that were pleasant to the eye in the tabernacle of the daughter of Zion.” The verb is hârag, to slay. “Pleasant” is machmâd, a delight, an object of affection or desire, and with “eye”, ʻayin, it means everything Zion treasured: its people, children above all, and the beauty of the city and its holy things. “The tabernacle of the daughter of Zion” is Jerusalem itself, and especially its sacred places.

“He poured out his fury like fire.” Shâphak means to pour out, spill or shed, and chêmâh is heat, and so rage. The fire here is the same word, ʼêsh, as in verse 3. Isaiah had spoken of the LORD coming with fire, to render his anger with fury and his rebuke with flames of fire (Isaiah 66:15–16).

Verse 5 then states it plainly: “The Lord was as an enemy.” The word ʼôyêb is the participle of a verb meaning to be hostile, and it is the ordinary word for an enemy. “Swallowed up” comes twice in verse 5, the bâlaʻ of verse 2 again, first of Israel and then of “all her palaces”, the royal residences and citadels where power and wealth were kept. With them went the strongholds. And God “hath increased in the daughter of Judah mourning and lamentation”. The two Hebrew words, taʼănîyâh and ʼănîyâh, are closely related nouns from roots meaning to groan, and set side by side they heap grief upon grief. “The daughter of Judah” is the people of Judah, pictured as a grieving woman. It is the sorrow the exiles later carried to Babylon (Psalm 137).

Verses 6 and 7 reach the heart of Israel’s worship. “And he hath violently taken away his tabernacle, as if it were of a garden.” Châmaç means to treat with violence or seize by force. The word for “tabernacle” here, sôk, is a booth, shelter or thicket, and gan is a garden, an enclosed plot. God pulled down Solomon’s Temple, which Israel thought could never fall, as easily as a booth in a garden is taken down.

“He hath destroyed his places of the assembly.” The Hebrew word môwʻêd means an appointment, and it is used for a meeting, an assembly, a meeting place, an appointed time and an appointed feast. The same word stands behind both “places of the assembly” and “solemn feasts” in this verse, so God has ended both the places where Israel met him and the times set for meeting him. “The LORD”, Yᵉhôvâh, is named as the one who “hath caused the solemn feasts and sabbaths to be forgotten in Zion”. The feasts and the sabbaths, shabbâth, were commanded in the law (Leviticus 23) and gave Israel’s life its rhythm of worship, and now no one in Zion keeps them. Through Isaiah God had already said he was weary of their feasts and sabbaths while their hands were full of blood (Isaiah 1:13–15), and Ezekiel was shown idolatry practised inside the Temple courts themselves (Ezekiel 8:5–18).

“And hath despised in the indignation of his anger the king and the priest.” To despise, nâʼats, is to spurn with contempt, and “the indignation of his anger” joins zaʻam, indignation, with ʼaph, anger. The king stood for the rule of David’s house and the priest for the service of the altar, so the whole leadership of the nation falls under God’s judgment. Jeremiah had pronounced woe on the shepherds who scattered God’s flock, and promised to set up shepherds who would feed them (Jeremiah 23:1–4).

Verse 7 comes closer still. “The Lord hath cast off his altar, he hath abhorred his sanctuary.” Zânach means to reject or cast away, and nâʼar means to reject or abhor. The altar was the place of sacrifice and atonement and the sanctuary the place of his presence, and God turned from both because his people had defiled them with their idolatry and trusted in them while their hearts were far from him. A psalm grieves the same day: “They have cast fire into thy sanctuary, they have defiled by casting down the dwelling place of thy name to the ground” (Psalm 74:7). Before the city fell, Ezekiel saw the glory of the LORD depart from the threshold of the house (Ezekiel 10:18).

“He hath given up into the hand of the enemy the walls of her palaces; they have made a noise in the house of the LORD, as in the day of a solemn feast.” The solemn feast is môwʻêd again. On the great pilgrim feasts of Passover, Pentecost and Tabernacles the Temple rang with singing, shouting and trumpets, and the people said, “I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the LORD” (Psalm 122:1). Now the house is just as loud, and the noise is the shouting of the invaders. The comparison is bitter, and it sums up how completely Israel’s fortunes have been reversed.

“The LORD hath purposed to destroy the wall of the daughter of Zion.” The verb châshab means to think, plan or reckon, and shâchath means to ruin or destroy. The fall of the wall was planned and carried out with full intent.

“He hath stretched out a line.” The line, qav, is a cord, especially a builder’s measuring line, and nâṭâh is to stretch it out. God measured the wall as a builder would, this time in order to pull it down. Isaiah uses the same tool as a picture of judgment: “Judgment also will I lay to the line, and righteousness to the plummet” (Isaiah 28:17). The ruin was exact and just, according to his plan.

“He hath not withdrawn his hand from destroying.” “Withdrawn” is shûwb, to turn back, and “hand” is yâd, the hand that stands for his power at work. “Destroying” is bâlaʻ, the verb rendered “swallowed up” in verses 2 and 5. Once he began, he did not turn his hand back until the work was done.

“Therefore he made the rampart and the wall to lament; they languished together.” The rampart, chêyl, is the outer wall or the earthwork before it, and the wall, chôwmâh, is the city wall itself. They “lament”, ʼâbal, which means to mourn, and they “languish”, ʼâmal, to droop and grow feeble. The stones that once guarded the city now lie in heaps, and the poet pictures them mourning together, sharing the grief of the people they failed to protect.

“Her gates are sunk into the ground.” The gates have fallen so far into the rubble that they look as though the earth has swallowed them. “He hath destroyed and broken her bars”: the bar, bᵉrîyach, is the bolt that secured a gate from within, the last line of defence, and it is broken. Many of the losses in this verse are on the list of curses Moses set before Israel (Deuteronomy 28:15–68).

“Her king and her princes are among the Gentiles.” Gôwy means a nation, a foreign people. King Zedekiah and the nobles of Judah were carried into exile and now live under the rule of the nations, the deepest humiliation for a people whose kings were meant to rule for God.

“Her prophets also find no vision from the LORD.” The word for vision, châzôwn, means most often a revelation from God. The prophets seek a word and receive none. Ezekiel had warned of exactly this: “then shall they seek a vision of the prophet; but the law shall perish from the priest, and counsel from the ancients” (Ezekiel 7:26). Amos had spoken of a famine “not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD” (Amos 8:11–12). God’s silence was itself part of the judgment, and it was a silence for a season, meant to make his people long for his voice again.

These verses show the wrath of God against sin in its full weight, and the New Testament tells us where that wrath finally fell for all who believe. Jesus is “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). God set him forth as a propitiation through faith in his blood (Romans 3:25), and made him “to be sin for us, who knew no sin” (2 Corinthians 5:21). He was made a curse for us to redeem us from the curse of the law (Galatians 3:13), the curse Lamentations shows in all its terror. On the cross he cried, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). The wages of sin is death, and the gift of God is eternal life through him (Romans 6:23). Since we are justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him (Romans 5:8–9), and the handwriting that was against us has been nailed to his cross (Colossians 2:13–14). God sent his Son to save the world, and the Son came on that errand (John 3:17).

The fallen Temple points to Christ as well. Jesus said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up,” and he spoke of the temple of his body (John 2:19–21). The Word became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14). When he died, the veil of the Temple was torn in two (Matthew 27:51), and he entered heaven through a greater and more perfect tabernacle (Hebrews 9:11–14). Through his blood we have a new and living way into God’s presence (Hebrews 10:19–22), under a better covenant (Hebrews 8:6). His people are built up as a spiritual house of living stones (1 Peter 2:5), and true worshippers worship the Father in spirit and in truth (John 4:23–24).

The feasts and sabbaths that were forgotten in Zion were a shadow of things to come, and the substance is Christ (Colossians 2:16–17). He is our Passover sacrificed for us (1 Corinthians 5:7), and he gives rest to all who come to him (Matthew 11:28). The king and the priest whom God spurned give way to the King whose dominion shall never pass away (Daniel 7:14) and the High Priest who lives for ever, holy and undefiled, who offered himself once for all (Hebrews 7:24, Hebrews 7:26–27). Judah’s king went among the Gentiles in shame, and Jesus too was delivered to the Gentiles to be mocked and crucified (Matthew 20:19), the King whose kingdom is not of this world (John 18:36).

Where the law was no more, Christ came to fulfil it (Matthew 5:17), and in the new covenant God writes his law on his people’s hearts (Jeremiah 31:33). Where the prophets found no vision, God has now spoken to us by his Son (Hebrews 1:1–2). And where Zion’s gates sank into the ground, John saw a holy city whose gates are never shut, lit by the glory of God and the Lamb (Revelation 21:23–27).

These verses give God’s people words for the worst day in their history, and every line is spoken with God in view. The poet names the Lord as the one who struck, and by doing so he holds on to the Lord as the one who rules. The same chapter ends with the city pleading with God to look and consider what has been done (Lamentations 2:20). Grief that names God in this way stays in his presence even when it can only cry “How?”

The passage also shows that God means what he says. The warnings of Deuteronomy came true in every detail, and the same faithfulness stands behind every promise he has made. His discipline of his own people is real and painful and has a purpose, for “whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth”, for our profit, “that we might be partakers of his holiness” (Hebrews 12:5–11).

And it shows the cost of sin and the greatness of the mercy that covers it. When you read of the bow bent against Zion and the fury poured out like fire, you are reading of what the Lamb of God took on himself for everyone who trusts in him. The God who silenced the prophets for a season has now spoken by his Son, and the book that holds these verses also holds the confession that his mercies are new every morning.