Atlas Biblica

    Lamentations · 22 verses

    Lamentations 2

    Every verse links to the people and places named in it, and to the passages readers connect it with.

    The chapter

    What happens here

    Atlas's own reading, written from this chapter and nothing else, and published only once a person has approved it. Each scene names the verses it covers; the names inside it link to the people and places they name.

    Jerusalem, once called the perfection of beauty and the joy of all the earth, is greeted by passersby with clapping, hissing, and a rather pointed question about what became of it.

    The city measured for ruinvv. 1–9

    The Lord turns against Zion, Judah, and Israel with the full apparatus of siege and fire: palaces swallowed, strongholds destroyed, the sanctuary abandoned, and the walls carefully measured for demolition. Even the noise inside the house of the LORD has acquired the wrong sort of festal air, for the enemy shouts there as though an appointed feast had arrived. The gates sink, the bars are shattered, the king and princes are exiled, and the prophets have no vision from the LORD.

    The city in the streetvv. 10–17

    The elders sit in silence with dust on their heads, while the young women of Jerusalem bow to the ground. Children and infants faint in the streets asking for grain and wine, and the lamenting voice searches for a comparison large enough for a wound as deep as the sea. Meanwhile the passersby offer their review, and the enemies provide the chorus: the city that was beauty and joy has become a spectacle. The prophets are not spared the chapter's sharp eye; their visions did not expose guilt, but were empty and misleading.

    A cry through the nightvv. 18–22

    Then the hearts of the people cry out, and the wall of the Daughter of Zion is summoned to weep without taking a night off. The appeal is urgent and physical: pour out the heart like water, lift up hands for children fainting from hunger, and ask the LORD to look and consider. The questions become terrible—women eating the children they nurtured, priests and prophets killed in the sanctuary—before the chapter closes with young and old lying in the dust and no one escaping the day of anger.

    The text

    Read it

    Berean Standard Bible, public domain. Names the Hebrew and Greek put in the verse link to the person, place or people they name; the address beside each verse is a link to that verse, which is what a reader copies and shares.

    1. Lam 2:1How the Lord has covered the Daughter of Zion with the cloud of His anger! He has cast the glory of Israel from heaven to earth. He has abandoned His footstool in the day of His anger.

    2. Lam 2:2Without pity the Lord has swallowed up all the dwellings of Jacob. In His wrath He has demolished the fortified cities of the Daughter of Judah. He brought to the ground and defiled her kingdom and its princes.

    3. Lam 2:3In fierce anger He has cut off every horn of Israel and withdrawn His right hand at the approach of the enemy. He has burned in Jacob like a flaming fire that consumes everything around it.

    4. Lam 2:4He has bent His bow like an enemy; His right hand is positioned. Like a foe He has killed all who were pleasing to the eye; He has poured out His wrath like fire on the tent of the Daughter of Zion.

    5. Lam 2:5The Lord is like an enemy; He has swallowed up Israel. He has swallowed up all her palaces and destroyed her strongholds. He has multiplied mourning and lamentation for the Daughter of Judah.

    6. Lam 2:6He has laid waste His tabernacle like a garden booth; He has destroyed His place of meeting. The LORD has made Zion forget her appointed feasts and Sabbaths. In His fierce anger He has despised both king and priest.

    7. Lam 2:7The Lord has rejected His altar; He has abandoned His sanctuary; He has delivered the walls of her palaces into the hand of the enemy. They have raised a shout in the house of the LORD as on the day of an appointed feast.

    8. Lam 2:8The LORD determined to destroy the wall of the Daughter of Zion. He stretched out a measuring line and did not withdraw His hand from destroying. He made the ramparts and walls lament; together they waste away.

    9. Lam 2:9Her gates have sunk into the ground; He has destroyed and shattered their bars. Her king and her princes are exiled among the nations, the law is no more, and even her prophets find no vision from the LORD.

    10. Lam 2:10The elders of the Daughter of Zion sit on the ground in silence. They have thrown dust on their heads and put on sackcloth. The young women of Jerusalem have bowed their heads to the ground.

    11. Lam 2:11My eyes fail from weeping; I am churning within. My heart is poured out in grief over the destruction of the daughter of my people, because children and infants faint in the streets of the city.

    12. Lam 2:12They cry out to their mothers: “Where is the grain and wine?” as they faint like the wounded in the streets of the city, as their lives fade away in the arms of their mothers.

    13. Lam 2:13What can I say for you? To what can I compare you, O Daughter of Jerusalem? To what can I liken you, that I may console you, O Virgin Daughter of Zion? For your wound is as deep as the sea. Who can ever heal you?

    14. Lam 2:14The visions of your prophets were empty and deceptive; they did not expose your guilt to ward off your captivity. The burdens they envisioned for you were empty and misleading.

    15. Lam 2:15All who pass by clap their hands at you in scorn. They hiss and shake their heads at the Daughter of Jerusalem: “Is this the city that was called the perfection of beauty, the joy of all the earth?”

    16. Lam 2:16All your enemies open their mouths against you. They hiss and gnash their teeth, saying, “We have swallowed her up. This is the day for which we have waited. We have lived to see it!”

    17. Lam 2:17The LORD has done what He planned; He has accomplished His decree, which He ordained in days of old; He has overthrown you without pity. He has let the enemy gloat over you and exalted the horn of your foes.

    18. Lam 2:18The hearts of the people cry out to the Lord. O wall of the Daughter of Zion, let your tears run down like a river day and night. Give yourself no relief, and your eyes no rest.

    19. Lam 2:19Arise, cry out in the night from the first watch of the night. Pour out your heart like water in the presence of the Lord. Lift up your hands to Him for the lives of your children who are fainting from hunger on the corner of every street.

    20. Lam 2:20Look, O LORD, and consider: Whom have You ever treated like this? Should women eat their offspring, the infants they have nurtured? Should priests and prophets be killed in the sanctuary of the Lord?

    21. Lam 2:21Both young and old lie together in the dust of the streets. My young men and maidens have fallen by the sword. You have slain them in the day of Your anger; You have slaughtered them without compassion.

    22. Lam 2:22You summoned my terrors on every side, as for the day of an appointed feast. In the day of the LORD’s anger no one escaped or survived; my enemy has destroyed those I nurtured and reared.

    01 — Also here

    Who else the chapter reaches

    Names written in the English are linked in the text above. These are the ones that are not: an entity the Hebrew or Greek names under a spelling the translation does not use, or one reached only by an assertion about a verse of this chapter.

    Named in the Hebrew or Greek somewhere in this chapter, under a form the English renders differently — the registry's Ludim against the translation's Ludites — so there is no word in the sentence to hang the link on.

    Reached by an assertion Atlas extracted from a verse of this chapter rather than by a name written in it — a pronoun, a title, or a participant the sentence carries without naming. This layer is model-read and measured at 88.6–90.3% precision, and it is kept separate from the names above for that reason.

    02 — Read alongside

    Where this is echoed

    Readers' own connections, from OpenBible's crowd-voted cross-references — agreement about relevance, and not scholarly confidence. 415 passages were voted onto 22 verses of this chapter; the 16 shown lead on votes, and each is listed at the verse it was voted onto most strongly.

    • 19Psalms 62:8Trust in Him at all times, O people; pour out your hearts before Him. God is our refuge. Selah
    • 19Psalms 119:147–148I rise before dawn and cry for help; in Your word I have put my hope.
    • 19Isaiah 26:9My soul longs for You in the night; indeed, my spirit seeks You at dawn. For when Your judgments come upon the earth, the people of the world learn righteousness.
    • 19Psalms 142:2I pour out my complaint before Him; I reveal my trouble to Him.
    • 19Mark 1:35Early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up and went out to a solitary place to pray.
    • 191 Samuel 1:15“No, my lord,” Hannah replied. “I am a woman troubled in spirit. I have not had any wine or strong drink, but I have poured out my soul before the LORD.
    • 19Lamentations 2:11–12My eyes fail from weeping; I am churning within. My heart is poured out in grief over the destruction of the daughter of my people, because children and infants faint in the streets of the city.
    • 9Ezekiel 7:26Disaster upon disaster will come, and rumor after rumor. Then they will seek a vision from a prophet, but instruction from the priests will perish, as will counsel from the elders.
    • 16Psalms 35:21They gape at me and say, “Aha, aha! Our eyes have seen!”
    • 18Psalms 119:145I call with all my heart; answer me, O LORD! I will obey Your statutes.
    • 19Judges 7:19Gideon and the hundred men with him reached the outskirts of the camp at the beginning of the middle watch, just after the changing of the guard. They blew their horns and broke the jars that were in their hands.
    • 19Luke 6:12In those days Jesus went out to the mountain to pray, and He spent the night in prayer to God.
    • 11Lamentations 1:20See, O LORD, how distressed I am! I am churning within; my heart is pounding within me, for I have been most rebellious. Outside, the sword bereaves; inside, there is death.
    • 13Lamentations 1:12Is this nothing to you, all you who pass by? Look around and see! Is there any sorrow like mine, which was inflicted on me, which the LORD made me suffer on the day of His fierce anger?
    • 14Ezekiel 22:28Her prophets whitewash these deeds by false visions and lying divinations, saying, ‘This is what the Lord GOD says,’ when the LORD has not spoken.
    • 14Isaiah 58:1“Cry aloud, do not hold back! Raise your voice like a ram’s horn. Declare to My people their transgression and to the house of Jacob their sins.

    Onward

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