Lamentations 2:12

12 To their mothers they say, "Where is the bread and wine?" as they faint like the wounded in [the] public squares of a city, as their life is being poured out onto the bosom of their mothers.

Lamentations 2:12 Meaning and Commentary

Lamentations 2:12

They say to their mothers, where [is] corn and wine?
&c.] Not the sucklings who could not speak, nor were used to corn and wine, but the children more grown; both are before spoken of, but these are meant, even the young men of Israel, as the Targum; and such as had been brought up in the best manner, had been used to wine, and not water, and therefore ask for that as well as corn; both take in all the necessaries of life; and which they ask of their mothers, who had been used to feed them, and were most tender of them; but now not seeing and having their usual provisions, and not knowing what was the reason of it, inquire after them, being pressed with hunger: when they swooned as the wounded in the streets of the city;
having no food given them, though they asked for it time after time, they fainted away, and died a lingering death; as wounded persons do who are not killed at once, which is the more distressing: when their soul was poured out into their mothers' bosom;
meaning not the desires of their souls for food, expressed in moving and melting language as they sat in their mothers' laps, and lay in their bosoms; which must be piercing unto them, if no more was designed; but their souls or lives themselves, which they gave up through famine, as the Targum; expiring in their mothers' arms.

Lamentations 2:12 In-Context

10 They sit on the ground, the elders of the daughter of Zion are silent. They cast dust on their head, they have put on sackcloth; the young women of Jerusalem have bowed their head down to the ground.

11 My eyes have {spent all their tears}; {my stomach} is in torment, {my heart} is poured out on the earth because of the destruction of the daughter of my people, because child and babe faint in [the] public squares of a city.

12 To their mothers they say, "Where is the bread and wine?" as they faint like the wounded in [the] public squares of a city, as their life is being poured out onto the bosom of their mothers.

13 What can I say for you? What can I compare to you, O daughter of Jerusalem? To what can I liken you so that I can comfort you, O virgin daughter of Zion? For your destruction [is] as vast as the sea; who can heal you?

14 Your prophets had a vision for you, false and worthless; they have not exposed your sin, to restore your fortune; they have seen oracles for you, false and misleading.