21 How has the Lord covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in his anger!
He has cast down from heaven to the earth the beauty of Israel,
And hasn’t remembered his footstool in the day of his anger. 2 The Lord has swallowed up all the habitations of Jacob, and has not pitied:
He has thrown down in his wrath the strongholds of the daughter of Judah;
He has brought them down to the ground; he has profaned the kingdom and its princes. 3 He has cut off in fierce anger all the horn of Israel;
He has drawn back his right hand from before the enemy:
He has burned up Jacob like a flaming fire, which devours all around. 4 He has bent his bow like an enemy, he has stood with his right hand as an adversary,
Has killed all that were pleasant to the eye:
In the tent of the daughter of Zion he has poured out his wrath like fire. 5 The Lord is become as an enemy, he has swallowed up Israel;
He has swallowed up all her palaces, he has destroyed his strongholds;
He has multiplied in the daughter of Judah mourning and lamentation. 6 He has violently taken away his tabernacle, as if it were of a garden; he has destroyed his place of assembly:
Yahweh has caused solemn assembly and Sabbath to be forgotten in Zion,
Has despised in the indignation of his anger the king and the priest. 7 The Lord has cast off his altar, he has abhorred his sanctuary;
He has given up into the hand of the enemy the walls of her palaces:
They have made a noise in the house of Yahweh, as in the day of a solemn assembly. 8 Yahweh has purposed to destroy the wall of the daughter of Zion;
He has stretched out the line, he has not withdrawn his hand from destroying;
He has made the rampart and wall to lament; they languish together. 9 Her gates are sunk into the ground; he has destroyed and broken her bars:
Her king and her princes are among the nations where the law is not;
Yes, her prophets find no vision from Yahweh.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on Lamentations 2:1-9
Commentary on Lamentations 2:1-9
(Read Lamentations 2:1-9)
A sad representation is here made of the state of God's church, of Jacob and Israel; but the notice seems mostly to refer to the hand of the Lord in their calamities. Yet God is not an enemy to his people, when he is angry with them and corrects them. And gates and bars stand in no stead when God withdraws his protection. It is just with God to cast down those by judgments, who debase themselves by sin; and to deprive those of the benefit and comfort of sabbaths and ordinances, who have not duly valued nor observed them. What should they do with Bibles, who make no improvement of them? Those who misuse God's prophets, justly lose them. It becomes necessary, though painful, to turn the thoughts of the afflicted to the hand of God lifted up against them, and to their sins as the source of their miseries.