Lamentations 1:6

1:1-11 The prophet sometimes speaks in his own person; at other times Jerusalem, as a distressed female, is the speaker, or some of the Jews. The description shows the miseries of the Jewish nation. Jerusalem became a captive and a slave, by reason of the greatness of her sins; and had no rest from suffering. If we allow sin, our greatest adversary, to have dominion over us, justly will other enemies also be suffered to have dominion. The people endured the extremities of famine and distress. In this sad condition Jerusalem acknowledged her sin, and entreated the Lord to look upon her case. This is the only way to make ourselves easy under our burdens; for it is the just anger of the Lord for man's transgressions, that has filled the earth with sorrows, lamentations, sickness, and death.

And from the daughter of Zion all her beauty is departed,.... The kingdom removed; the priesthood ceased; the temple, their beautiful house, burnt; the palaces of their king and nobles demolished; and everything in church and state that was glorious were now no more: her princes are become like harts that find no pasture; that are heartless and without courage, fearful and timorous, as harts are, especially when destitute of food. The Targum is "her princes run about for food, as harts run about in the wilderness, and find no place fit for pasture:'' and they are gone without strength before the pursuer; having no spirit nor courage to oppose the enemy, nor strength to flee from him, they fell into his hands, and so were carried captive; see Jeremiah 52:8. Jarchi observes, that the word for "pursuer" has here all its letters, and nowhere else; and so denotes the full pursuit of the enemy, and the complete victory obtained by him.

6 . majesty ] mg. less well, beauty . Exhaustion from hunger and fatigue has taken the place of dignity and wealth. Her princes are become like harts ] The most natural reference is to the flight and capture of Zedekiah and his princes, Jeremiah 39:4 f. Cp. Jeremiah 52:10 . The LXX and Vulg. for “harts” read (with different vowel punctuation) rams , a word used elsewhere (e.g. Exodus 15:15 ; see mg.) for leaders. But the figure needs an animal which is hunted. Budde therefore accepts the Targ. “stags.”

All the inhabitants of Zion have lost their former beauty; whatsoever splendour the city had, whether from the multitude or gallantry of her inhabitants, it is all gone; her nobles are become thin and ill-favoured, like beasts almost starved, their enemies pursue them to destroy them, and they have no strength to oppose or resist them.

Her adversaries or oppressors, in relation to her, have become the head (and Judah thus the tail), as was threatened, Deuteronomy 28:44 ; whereas, according to Deuteronomy 28:13 in that same address of Moses, the reverse was intended. Her enemies, knowing that their power is supreme, and that Judah has been completely vanquished, are quite at ease, secure (שׁלוּ, cf. Jeremiah 12:1 ). This unhappy fate Zion has brought on herself through the multitude of her own transgressions. Her children (עוללים, children of tender age) are driven away by the enemy like a flock. The comparison to a flock of lambs is indicated by לפני. But Zion has not merely lost what she loves most (the tender children), but all her glory; so that even her princes, enfeebled by hunger, cannot escape the pursuers, who overtake them and make them prisoners. Like deer that find no pasture, they flee exhausted before the pursuer. כּאיּלים has been rendered ὡς κριοὶ by the lxx, and ut arietes by the Vulgate; hence Kalkschmidt, Bttcher (Aehrenl. S. 94), and Thenius would read כּאילים, against which Rosenmller has remarked: perperam, nam hirci non sunt fugacia animalia, sed cervi. Raschi had already indicated the point of the comparison in the words, quibus nullae vires sunt ad effugiendum, fame eorum robore debilitato.

The objections raised against כּאיּלים as the correct reading are founded on the erroneous supposition that the subject treated of is the carrying away of the princes into exile; and that for the princes, in contrast with the young, no more suitable emblem could be chosen than the ram. But רודף does not mean "the driver," him who leads or drives the captives into exile, but "the pursuer," who runs after the fugitive and seeks to catch him. The words treat of the capture of the princes: the flight of the king and his princes at the taking of Jerusalem ( 2 Kings 25:3 .) hovered before the writer's mind. For such a subject, the comparison of the fugitive princes to starved or badly fed rams is inappropriate; but it is suitable enough to compare them with harts which had lost all power to run, because they had been unable to find any pasture, and בּלא־כח (without strength, i.e., in weakness) are pursued and caught.

10 . If our transgressions ] Better, direct: our transgressions … are upon us. The people had come to regard their calamities as due to their sins and evidence of them. They had come round to the prophet’s view of their history, for they saw his predictions fulfilled. But the new view came with a crushing weight upon them. The calamities of their country were unparalleled ( Lamentations 1:12 ; Lamentations 2:13 ; Lamentations 2:20 ; Lamentations 3:1 ; Lamentations 4:6 ; Lamentations 4:9 ), and equally unparalleled must have been their guilt ( Lamentations 1:9 ; Lamentations 1:14 ; Lamentations 2:14 ; Lamentations 4:13 ; Lamentations 5:7 ). And their calamities seemed final, their sin was expiable only by their complete destruction. we pine away ] Or, waste away. The word expresses not mental but physical wasting away, ending in complete dissolution. See the very similar figures, Isaiah 10:18 ; Isaiah 17:4 ; cf. Ezekiel 4:17 ; Ezekiel 24:23 ; Leviticus 26:39 . 10–20 . Despondency of the people, making the prophet’s appeals to them of none effect. Removal of the despair by two gracious words from the Lord.