1. sound this lament. What follows are two allegorical prophecies, one involving lions and the other a vine. Unlike the allegories that have preceded, this pair is cast in poetry because it is a “lament,” qinah, and it follows—loosely, it should be said—the lament meter of three accents in the first verset and two in the second.

the princes of Israel. These are the last kings of Judah, though precise identification of monarchs will become problematic.

2. your mother. After the plural “princes,” the poem switches to the singular, evidently having in mind one particular king.

She crouches among young lions. The fierce lion is a stock figure for monarchs in biblical poetry (as in many other cultures), being linked in the Blessing of Jacob (Genesis 49:9) with the royal tribe of Judah. But this proud image of the royal line will be quickly subverted here.

3. a young lion. It is the translator’s despair that there are five different words for “lion” in biblical Hebrew, and the distinctions among them are unclear. “Young lion” for kefir is the solution of the King James Version, perhaps in part because of this passage, even though elsewhere kefir is indistinguishable in meaning from the four other terms for “lion.”

4. pit. The Hebrew shaḥat everywhere else means “pit,” and so there is not much justification for rendering it here as “net,” which many modern interpreters do. Lions were sometimes trapped in pits, and then a restraining net was cast over them, which seems to be the case in verse 8.

they brought him down in hooks / to the land of Egypt. The one Judahite king who was carried off to Egypt was Jehoahaz son of Josiah and Hamutal. What remains somewhat problematic about this identification is that he reigned only three months before his deportation by Pharaoh Neco, which makes the representation of his ravening power in the previous verse look a bit odd. Perhaps any king once enthroned was imagined to be a fierce lion.

5. she took another of her cubs. At this point, the identification becomes ambiguous: two of Hamutal’s sons reigned successively, Jehoiachin and Zedekiah.

7. harrowed. The Hebrew seems to say “knew.” Many interpreters, medieval and modern, understand it in the sexual sense, meaning “rape” (although, despite its sexual sense, it is not a verb used for rape). Its object in the received text is ʾalmenotaw, “their [literally, its] widows.” All this seems improbable. ʾAlmenotaw has been emended here to ʾarmenotaw, “their bastions.” The verb is understood in the sense in which it is used in Judges 8:16. The verb as it appears in Judges is in a different conjugation, but the Masoretic vocalization here may be mistaken.

9. brought him to the king of Babylonia. This makes Jehoiachin, who was exiled to Babylonia in 597 B.C.E., the most likely candidate for the historical reference.

so that his voice would no more be heard / on the mountains of Israel. This line neatly joins vehicle and tenor: the captured lion will no longer strike terror in the terrain around him; the king of Judah will no longer exercise authority in his land.

10. Your mother was like a vine. The received text seems to say “Your mother like a vine in your blood.” This translation emends bedamkha, “in your blood,” to damta, “was like.” Rashi understands it this way without emendation.

like a vine. As the lion is a traditional image of the king, the vine is a traditional image of the people of Israel.

11. And she had mighty boughs / for the scepters of rulers. The branches of the vine are thick and strong, producing powerful kings.

12. But it was torn from its roots in fury. While the prophetic mode uses verbs that imply a completed action, this is a prediction of the final destruction of the kingdom.

13. the desert. The reference must be to the land of exile.

14. And a fire springs out from her boughs. No explanation is offered for the sudden appearance of fire in the vine, either here or in verse 12. The image may be used automatically because fire is a constant image of destruction, or the historical referent—the destruction of Jerusalem, put to the torch by the invaders—may have seeped into the allegorical image.