Lamentations 2:8

8 It is the Lord's purpose to make waste the wall of the daughter of Zion; his line has been stretched out, he has not kept back his hand from destruction: he has sent sorrow on tower and wall, they have become feeble together.

Lamentations 2:8 Meaning and Commentary

Lamentations 2:8

The Lord hath purposed to destroy the wall of the daughter of
Zion
Either the wall of the city, as Aben Ezra; or the wall that encompassed the temple, and all the outward courts of it, as Dr. Lightfoot ^F19 thinks; this the Lord had determined to destroy, and according to his purposes did destroy it, or suffer it to be demolished; and so all were laid open for the enemy to enter: he hath stretched out a line;
a line of destruction, to mark out how far the destruction should go, and bow much should be laid in ruins; all being as exactly done, according to the purpose and counsel of God, as if it was done by line and rule; see ( Isaiah 34:11 ) ; he hath not withdrawn his hand from destroying;
till he made a full end of the city and temple, as he first designed: therefore he made the rampart and the wall to lament:
the "chel" and the wall; all that space between the courts of the temple and the wall that surrounded it was called the "chel"; and so the Targum, the circumference or enclosure; and these were laid waste together, and so said to lament: according to others they were two walls, a wall the son of a wall, as Jarchi interprets it; an outward and an inward wall, one higher than another; a low wall over against a high wall; which was as a rampart or bulwark, for the strength and support of it: they languished together;
or fell together, as persons in a fit faint away and full to the ground.

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FOOTNOTES:

F19 Prospect of the Temple, c. 17. p. 1089.

Lamentations 2:8 In-Context

6 And he has violently taken away his tent, as from a garden; he has made waste his meeting-place: the Lord has taken away the memory of feast and Sabbath in Zion, and in the passion of his wrath he is against king and priest.

7 The Lord has given up his altar and has been turned in hate from his holy place; he has given up into the hands of the attacker the walls of her great houses: their voices have been loud in the house of the Lord as in the day of a holy meeting.

8 It is the Lord's purpose to make waste the wall of the daughter of Zion; his line has been stretched out, he has not kept back his hand from destruction: he has sent sorrow on tower and wall, they have become feeble together.

9 Her doors have gone down into the earth; he has sent destruction on her locks: her king and her princes are among the nations where the law is not; even her prophets have had no vision from the Lord.

10 The responsible men of the daughter of Zion are seated on the earth without a word; they have put dust on their heads, they are clothed in haircloth: the heads of the virgins of Jerusalem are bent down to the earth.