When it is seen that the Lord has appointed the terrible calamity, the people are driven to pray for mercy. Hence Lamentations 2:18 follows, yet not at once with the summons to prayer, but with the assertion of the fact that this actually takes place: "their heart cries out unto the Lord;" and it is not till after this that there follows the summons to entreat Him incessantly with tears. The perfect צעק represents the crying as already begun, and reaching on to the present (cf. Ewald, 135, b), for which we use the present in German [and in English]. That the suffix in "their heart" does not point to the enemies mentioned at the close of Lamentations 2:17, but to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, is indubitably evident from what is substantially stated in the clause, viz., that crying to the Lord merely indicates the crying to God for help in distress. There is no sufficient reason for Ewald's change of צעק ל into צעקי לבּך, "outcries of thine heart," i.e., let the cry of thine heart sound forth; still less ground is there for the conjecture of Thenius, that לבּם should be changed into חנּם, because this is opposed to the following summons to implore help: other more unnatural changes in the text it were needless to mention. The following clauses, "O wall of the daughter of Zion," etc., do not state how her heart has cried and still cries to the Lord, but bid her constantly go on imploring. Several expositors have taken objection to the direct address, "O wall of the daughter of Zion," and have sought to remove the difficulty by making conjectures. Hence, e.g., Thenius still holds that there is good ground for the objection, saying that there is a wide difference between the poetic expression, "the wall mourns" (Lamentations 2:8), and the summons, "O wall, let tears run down." This difference cannot be denied, yet such personification is not without analogy. A similar summons is found in Isaiah 14:31 : "Howl, O gate" (porta). It is self-evident that it is not the wall simply as such that is considered, but everything besides connected with it, so that the wall is named instead of the city with its inhabitants, just as in Isaiah 14:31 gate and city are synonymous. Hence, also, all the faculties of those residing within the wall (eyes, heart, hands) may be ascribed to it, inasmuch as the idea of the wall easily and naturally glides over into that of the daughter of Zion. The expression, "Let tears run down like a stream," is a hyperbole used to indicate the exceeding greatness of the grief. "By day and night" is intensified by the clauses which follow: "give not," i.e., grant not. פּוּגת לך , "torpidity (stagnation) to thyself." The noun פּוּגה is ἅπ. λεγ., like הפוּגה, Lamentations 3:49; the verb פּוּג, however, occurs in Genesis 25:26 and Psalm 77:3, where it is used of the torpidity of the vital spirits, stagnation of the heart. The expression in the text is a poetic one for פּוּגתך: "do not permit thy numbness," i.e., let not thy flood of tears dry up; cf. Ewald, 289, b. בּת עין is the eyeball, not the tears (Pareau); cf. Psalm 17:8. תּדּם comes from דּמם, to be still, as in Jeremiah 47:6. On the thought here presented, cf. Jeremiah 14:17.

Lamentations 3:2 Parallel Commentaries

brought

Lamentations 3:53-55 They have cut off my life in the dungeon, and cast a stone on me...

Lamentations 2:1 How has the LORD covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in his anger, and cast down from heaven to the earth the beauty of Israel...

Deuteronomy 28:29 And you shall grope at noonday, as the blind gropes in darkness, and you shall not prosper in your ways...

Job 18:18 He shall be driven from light into darkness, and chased out of the world.

Job 30:26 When I looked for good, then evil came to me: and when I waited for light, there came darkness.

Isaiah 59:9 Therefore is judgment far from us, neither does justice overtake us: we wait for light, but behold obscurity; for brightness...

Jeremiah 13:16 Give glory to the LORD your God, before he cause darkness, and before your feet stumble on the dark mountains, and...

Amos 5:18-20 Woe to you that desire the day of the LORD! to what end is it for you? the day of the LORD is darkness, and not light...