Lamentations 2:18–22

Comments

2:18–19 In verse 18 the third-person commentary returns for the briefest of moments in the opening line of the first bicolon. The prophet makes a simple statement, that the people of Zion have cried to the Lord from their ruinous state.69 Their cry reveals that they have accepted the prophet’s assessment as to the ultimate cause behind their suffering, and so it is to the Lord that they cry (cf. Ex. 2:23). The rest of Lamentations 2:18–19 is an urgent exhortation to Zion to continue to cry out to Yahweh, even though this is already what they have done. The prophet paints a picture of persistence (tears flowing like a “torrent”) coupled with an idiom for continuity (“day and night”) to stress that the people should keep on praying. The image is followed by two negative commands that reinforce the point: Zion must give herself “no rest” and her “eyes no respite” (v. 18).

The exhortation to relentless petition continues in verse 19, but now the focus shifts to the night period, and the metaphoric flowing water issues from the heart, not the eyes. Physical gestures are also encouraged—lifting up of hands—before the prophet indicates who this tearful, heartfelt intercession is for: the children who are fainting for hunger on every street. The word “faint” appears for the third time from verses 11–12. The phrase “At the head of every street” underlines the nature of the children’s starvation: it is widespread and public. All the more reason, then, for the heart to cry and the eyes to flow. Where and to whom this prayer is to be poured out is made explicit near the middle of verse 19: “Before the presence of the Lord!” The repetition of the title “Lord” from verse 18 underscores the vital connection between God’s sovereignty and human prayer.

2:20–22 Having received the prophet’s exhortation, Zion responds with an earnest protest. The protest is delivered in the first person and directed to Yahweh, indicating that the whole nation stands united in its grief before God. There is also a subtle shift in Zion’s personification. She is now Mother Zion: those who have died are her young women and young men (v. 21), as those whom she “held and raised [the] enemy destroyed” (v. 22). The address to Yahweh is not yet in essence a prayer of repentance; it is instead more like a plea-cum-protest.

Verse 20 begins with a plea for God to consider Zion’s plight: “Look, O Lord, and see!” The words echo exactly Zion’s first plea in 1:11 (cf. 1:9, 20). What follows this time are three pointed questions that aim to elicit a response from God. The first question in 2:20 is marked, with the prepositional phrase “with whom” (or “to/against whom”) being fronted for emphasis in the Hebrew text. The question heightens the incredulity that Yahweh would do this to his covenant partner. The adverb “thus” calls into question the severity of the punishment. Together they make the accusation double-barbed: not only has God done thus to his covenant people, but he has not even treated other nations this way.

The next two questions, structurally identical in grammar and syntax, present vivid images of what Yahweh “has done.” The first focuses on the pitiful children and states how some of them died: they were eaten by their own mothers (cf. 4:10). The depth of horror is heightened by the two descriptors used for the infant children: they were the “fruit of their womb” and the “children of their tender care.”70 The image even contrasts with 2:11, where at least some babies expired their last breath while being held on their mothers’ bosoms. But this is not the case here: the cradling mothers are replaced by cannibalistic mothers. That is how dire the situation became, though it is not beyond what God had forewarned (cf. Deut. 28:53).

The final question shifts from the home to the temple and asks if priest and prophet, two of the key personnel in Israel’s theocracy, should be slain in the Most Holy Place in Israel. The Levitical code was clear that dead bodies, or even contact with dead bodies, could desecrate the sanctuary (cf. Lev. 21:11; Num. 19:14), yet by his own sanction the Lord “has done” exactly this by exalting the might of Zion’s enemy. The place that ought to have been the priest and prophet’s security now becomes the place of their slaughter. Unholy pagans have slain holy ministers of God in his holy temple—an abomination if ever there was one! Yet these questions are directed to Yahweh because of his purposeful involvement in all this unholy debacle. In this regard the three questions are theological at heart. Has God compromised his own covenant? Has God compromised human dignity? Has God compromised his own holiness?

Lamentations 2:21 continues the horrifying scenes of Zion post-invasion, painting the picture of a battlefield, with the dead strewn everywhere. The reference to “dust” echoes verse 10, where old men and young women had been brought down to the dust of the earth. But at least then they were alive, sitting and bowing; here the young and old lie dead in the dust. Young women do not escape the slaughter either. The double use of “my” indicates how personal the grief has become. Then comes the accusation, the most direct in the book so far: “you have killed them . . . slaughtering without pity.” In verse 4 the prophet said it was the enemy who had “killed” those delightful in Yahweh’s/their eyes, but now it is Yahweh; in verse 20 the passive verb “be killed” left unidentified the subject of who had slain priest and prophet in the temple, but now we realize that it was Yahweh himself, wielding the sword on his holy servants in his own holy temple. As if these statements were not enough, a final accusation is made, one already heard twice before in this second poem: Yahweh did all this “without pity” (cf. vv. 2, 17). Describing the occasion when this all occurred (“in the day of your anger”) situates the events on a redemptive-historical timeline, but it does not lessen the shock and horror of them in any way.

In verse 22 the accusation continues and brings the poem to a closure by linking to verses 1–2 via key similarities, most notably the day of the Lord’s anger (vv. 1, 22). In her protest Zion likens the day of the Lord to the day of an appointed feast, only this time what ascends to Zion and surrounds her at God’s beckoning call are not tribes but terrors. If the poem began with Zion enveloped under a cloud of God-provoked judgment (v. 1), it ends with Zion surrounded by a host of God-induced terrors (v. 22).71 Another similarity is the totality of destruction; in verse 2 all the habitations of Jacob are swallowed up, and in verse 22 there is no fugitive or survivor on the day of the Lord’s anger. The final bicolon indicates that this is true even among the newborns and infants—they too have been “destroyed” (v. 22). But who is “my enemy” that has done this? Perhaps the ambiguity is deliberate, reminding us of the double agency behind the aggressive, violent destruction that Zion has experienced. The enemies of Zion have done this, yes, but ultimately Yahweh has done it. Read in the light of verse 17 (the climax of the second half of the chapter), what other conclusion could there be? As the prophet Amos asks, “Does disaster come to a city, unless the Lord has done it?” (Amos 3:6).