Lamentations 2:13

13 What can I say about you, Jerusalem? What can I compare you to? What can I say you are like? How can I comfort you, Jerusalem? Your ruin is as deep as the sea. No one can heal you.

Lamentations 2:13 Meaning and Commentary

Lamentations 2:13

What thing shall I take to witness for thee?
&c.] What argument can be made use of? what proof or evidence can be given? what witnesses can be called to convince thee, and make it a clear case to time, that ever any people or nation was in such distress and calamity, what with sword, famine, pestilence, and captivity, as thou art? what thing shall I liken thee to, O daughter of Jerusalem?
what kingdom or nation ever suffered the like? no example can be given, no instance that comes up to it; not the Egyptians, when the ten plagues were inflicted on them; not the Canaanites, when conquered and drove out by Joshua; not the Philistines, Moabites, Edomites, and Syrians, when subdued by David; or any other people: what shall I equal to thee, that I may comfort thee, O virgin daughter
of Zion?
for this is one way that friends comfort the afflicted, by telling them that such an one's case was as bad, and worse, than theirs; and therefore bid them be of good heart; bear their affliction patiently; before long it will be over; but nothing of this kind could be said here; no, nor any hope given it would be otherwise; they could not say their case was like others, or that it was not desperate: for thy breach [is] great like the sea;
as large and as wide as that: Zion's troubles were a sea of trouble; her afflictions as numerous and as boisterous as the waves of the sea; and as salt, as disagreeable, and as intolerable, as the waters of it: or her breach was great, like the breach of the sea; when it overflows its banks, or breaks through its bounds, there is no stopping it, but it grows wider and wider: who can heal thee?
it was not in the power of man, in her own power, or of her allies, to recover her out of the hands of the enemy; to restore her civil or church state; her wound was incurable; none but God could be her physician. The Targum is,

``for thy breach is great as the greatness of the breach of the waves of the sea in the time of its tempest; and who is the physician that can heal thee of thy infirmity?''

Lamentations 2:13 In-Context

11 My eyes have no more tears, and I am sick to my stomach. I feel empty inside, because my people have been destroyed. Children and babies are fainting in the streets of the city.

12 They ask their mothers, "Where is the grain and wine?" They faint like wounded soldiers in the streets of the city and die in their mothers' arms.

13 What can I say about you, Jerusalem? What can I compare you to? What can I say you are like? How can I comfort you, Jerusalem? Your ruin is as deep as the sea. No one can heal you.

14 Your prophets saw visions, but they were false and worth nothing. They did not point out your sins to keep you from being captured. They preached what was false and led you wrongly.

15 All who pass by on the road clap their hands at you; they make fun of Jerusalem and shake their heads. They ask, "Is this the city that people called the most beautiful city, the happiest place on earth?"