Lamentations 2:21

21 Young and old lie on the ground in the streets. My young women and men are cut down by swords. You killed them on the day of your anger. You slaughtered them without any pity.

Lamentations 2:21 Meaning and Commentary

Lamentations 2:21

The young and the old lie on the ground in the streets
Young men and old men, virgins and aged women; these promiscuously lay on the ground in the public streets, fainting and dying for want of food; or lay killed there by the sword of the enemy; the Chaldeans sparing neither age nor sex. The Targum interprets it of their sleeping on the ground,

``young men slept on the ground in the villages, and old men who used to lie on pillows of fine wool, and on beds of ivory;''

but the former sense is confirmed by what follows: my virgins and my young men are fallen by the sword;
by the sword of the Chaldeans, when they entered the city: thou hast slain [them] in the day of thine anger: thou hast killed,
[and] not pitied;
the Chaldeans were only instruments; it was the Lord's doing; it was according to his will; it was what he had purposed and decreed; what he had solemnly declared and threatened; and now in his providence brought about, for the sins of the Jews, by which he was provoked to anger; and so gave them up into the hands of their enemies, to slay them without mercy; and which is here owned; the church takes notice of the hand of God in all this.

Lamentations 2:21 In-Context

19 Get up! Cry out at night, every hour on the hour. Pour your heart out like water in the presence of the LORD. Lift up your hands to him [in prayer] for the life of your little children who faint from hunger at every street corner."

20 "O LORD, look and consider: Have you ever treated anyone like this? Should women eat their own children, the children they have nursed? Should priests and prophets be killed in the Lord's holy place?

21 Young and old lie on the ground in the streets. My young women and men are cut down by swords. You killed them on the day of your anger. You slaughtered them without any pity.

22 You have invited those who terrorize me on every side, as though they were invited to a festival. No one escaped or survived on the day of the LORD's anger. My enemy has murdered the children I nursed and raised."