Lamentations 2:11

11 My eyes do fail with tears, my heart is troubled; My liver is poured on the eretz, because of the destruction of the daughter of my people, Because the young children and the infants swoon 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 Her gates are sunk into the ground; he has destroyed and broken her bars: Her king and her princes are among the nations where the law is not; Yes, her prophets find no vision from the LORD.
10 The Zakenim of the daughter of Tziyon sit on the ground, they keep silence; They have cast up dust on their heads; they have girded themselves with sackcloth: The virgins of Yerushalayim hang down their heads to the ground.
11 My eyes do fail with tears, my heart is troubled; My liver is poured on the eretz, because of the destruction of the daughter of my people, Because the young children and the infants swoon in the streets of the city.
12 They tell their mothers, Where is grain and wine? When they swoon as the wounded in the streets of the city, When their soul is poured out into their mothers' bosom.
13 What shall I testify to you? what shall I liken to you, daughter of Yerushalayim? What shall I compare to you, that I may comfort you, virgin daughter of Tziyon? For your breach is great like the sea: who can heal you?
The Hebrew Names Version is in the public domain.