Lamentations 2:11

11 My eyes are worn out with weeping; my soul is in anguish. I am exhausted with grief at the destruction of my people. Children and babies are fainting in the streets of the city.

Lamentations 2:11 Meaning and Commentary

Lamentations 2:11

Mine eyes do fail with tears
According to Aben Ezra, everyone of the elders before mentioned said this; but rather they are the words of the Prophet Jeremiah, who had wept his eyes dry, or rather blind, on account of the calamities of his people; though he himself obtained liberty and enlargement by means thereof: my bowels are troubled;
all his inward parts were distressed: my liver is poured upon the earth;
his gall bladder, which lay at the bottom of his liver, broke, and he cast it up, and poured it on the earth; see ( Job 16:13 ) ; and all this was for the destruction of the daughter of my people;
or, the "breach" of them F20; their civil and church state being destroyed and broke to shivers; and for the ruin of the several families of them: particularly because the children and sucklings swoon in the streets of the city;
through famine, for want of bread, with those that could eat it; and for want of the milk of their mothers and nurses, who being starved themselves could not give it; and hence the poor infants fainted and swooned away; which was a dismal sight, and heart melting to the prophet.


FOOTNOTES:

F20 (rbv le) "propter contritionem", Pagninus, Montanus, Junius & Tremellius; "propter confractionem", Piscator; "propter fractionem", Cocceius.

Lamentations 2:11 In-Context

9 The gates lie buried in rubble, their bars smashed to pieces. The king and the noblemen now are in exile. The Law is no longer taught, and the prophets have no visions from the Lord.
10 Jerusalem's old men sit on the ground in silence, With dust on their heads and sackcloth on their bodies. Young women bow their heads to the ground.
11 My eyes are worn out with weeping; my soul is in anguish. I am exhausted with grief at the destruction of my people. Children and babies are fainting in the streets of the city.
12 Hungry and thirsty, they cry to their mothers; They fall in the streets as though they were wounded, And slowly die in their mothers' arms.
13 O Jerusalem, beloved Jerusalem, what can I say? How can I comfort you? No one has ever suffered like this. Your disaster is boundless as the ocean; there is no possible hope.
Scripture taken from the Good News Translation - Second Edition, Copyright 1992 by American Bible Society. Used by Permission.