What does Lamentations Chapter 2 say, and which statements belong to its speaker?

Atlas of Saints · Chapter summary

Adversarial imagery and a separate sanctuary gloss precede collapse. Hungry children and false prophets accompany mocking enemies. Night intercession leads to questions and continued distress.

Chapter breakdown

Lamentations 2 depicts the Lord obscuring Sion, casting down Israel’s glory and not remembering his footstool. Beautiful things and strongholds fall; kingdom and princes are made unclean. Broken horn, withdrawn right hand and fire precede bow and hand like an enemy, slain beauty and indignation. Walls, strongholds and men and women suffer. Tent and tabernacle fall, feasts and sabbaths are forgotten, and king and priest meet reproach. Cast-off altar and cursed sanctuary receive a separate edition explanation: permitted destruction as if unconsecrated and execrable. Enemy noise resembles a feast.

A stretched line, mourning bulwark and wall, sunken gates and broken bars accompany rulers among Gentiles, absent law and no prophetic vision. Elders sit silent with dust and haircloth; virgins bow heads. The speaker’s eyes fail, bowels trouble and liver pours out at children and sucklings fainting. They ask for corn and wine and breathe out souls in mothers’ bosoms. Sea-sized ruin prompts a healing question. Prophets’ false and foolish revelations failed to expose iniquity for penance. Clapping, hissing and head-wagging passersby and teeth-gnashing enemies precede the Lord’s fulfilled old word and raised adversarial horn.

Tears like a torrent, no rest, night praise at the start of watches and hearts poured like water accompany raised hands for hungry children. A question asks whether women shall eat their span-long children and priests and prophets be slain in the sanctuary. Fallen young and old and terrifiers summoned like a festival conclude with no escape and consumed children. Severe dehydration, orchard sheds, climbing battlements and boiled newborns are not narrated here; the explicit boiling account belongs to chapter 4.

The story inside

Opening: Adversarial imagery and a separate sanctuary gloss precede collapse. Development: Hungry children and false prophets accompany mocking enemies. Conclusion: Night intercession leads to questions and continued distress.

Lessons worth keeping

1
Adversarial imagery and a separate sanctuary gloss precede collapse.
2
Hungry children and false prophets accompany mocking enemies.
3
Night intercession leads to questions and continued distress.

Test your recall

Which images and requests does the speaker use, and what does the chapter leave unresolved?

Source edition and notes

Douay–Rheims, revised by Richard Challoner (1749–1752). Project Gutenberg no. 1581. Locators refer to lines in the admitted pg1581.txt edition. Source notes may include Challoner commentary.

Lines 90030–90036
2:7. Zain. The Lord hath cast off his altar, he hath cursed his sanctuary: he hath delivered the walls of the towers thereof into the hand of the enemy: they have made a noise in the house of the Lord, as in the day of a solemn feast. He hath cursed his sanctuary.... That is, he permitted his sanctuary to be destroyed, as if it had not been consecrated, but execrable.
Lines 90066–90068
2:14. Nun. Thy prophets have seen false and foolish things for thee: and they have not laid open thy iniquity, to excite thee to penance: but they have seen for thee false revelations and banishments.
Lines 90089–90092
2:19. Coph. Arise, give praise in the night, in the beginning of the watches: pour out thy heart like water, before the face of the Lord: lift up thy hands to him for the life of thy little children, that have fainted for hunger at the top of all the streets.