Jeremiah's second lamentation on the fall of Judah.
More poetic imagery of this horrific situation for Israel:
- covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud of anger
- cast from heaven to earth the glory of Israel
- swallowed up thrown down
- habitations of Jacob
- daughters of Judah
- In fierce anger He has cut off all the strength of Israel
- poured out His wrath like fire
- the Lord has become like an enemy
- multiplied in the daughter of Judah mourning and moaning
Starting in verse 6 are surprising consequences the Lord imposed that had an affect on the holy aspects of Jerusalem:
- violently treated His tabernacle like a garden booth
- destroyed His appointed meeting place
- caused to be forgotten the appointed feast and sabbath
- He despised king and priest
- rejected His altar
- abandon His sanctuary
He describes things that were afflicted:
- palace walls
- quiet of the Temple
- Jerusalem's walls
- gates sunk into the ground
- her kings and princes
- the law
- prophets
- no visions from the Lord
- elders are grieving in the dust
- shamed virgins
- starving infants
Starting in verse 11 is a lament specifically from Jeremiah:
Because of what he's seeing:
- his eyes fail from the tears
- his spirit is troubled
- his heart is poured out
- he hears children begging for food from their mommas
- children faint from hunger
- they starve as their mothers hold them
He doesn't know how to admonish them, describe them, or comfort them due to their vast ruin.
In verse 14 he reviews how they arrived in this situation:
- the false prophets saw false and foolish things
- the prophets failed to call out sin
- they saw false and misleading oracles
Starting in verse 15 we see how other nations are observing the fall of Jerusalem:
- they clap their hands in derision
- hiss and shake their heads
- they sarcastically ask of this was the perfect beauty and joy of all the earth
- enemies open their mouths against Israel
- hiss and gnash their teeth
- brag about swallowing her up
- enemies rejoice over her
- they curse her
Jeremiah advises them to cry out in the night, pour out their hearts, and lift up their hands on behalf of their little ones.
In verse 20, Jeremiah turns his speech to the Lord, questioning whether women should be eating their children, priests be slain in the sanctuary, and the people be slain without being spared.
Jeremiah ends this lament with this in verse 22:
You called as in the day of an appointed feast
My terrors on every side;
And there was no one who escaped or survived
In the day of the Lord’s anger.
Those whom I bore and reared,
My enemy annihilated them. Lamentations 2:22