Lamentations 2:21

21 "People young and old lie outside on the ground. My young women and young men have been killed by the sword. You killed them on the day of your anger; you killed them without mercy.

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 in the night, even as the night begins. Pour out your heart like water in prayer to the Lord. Lift up your hands in prayer to him for the life of your children who are fainting with hunger on every street corner.

20 Jerusalem says: "Look, Lord, and see to whom you have done this. Women eat their own babies, the children they have cared for. Priests and prophets are killed in the Temple of the Lord.

21 "People young and old lie outside on the ground. My young women and young men have been killed by the sword. You killed them on the day of your anger; you killed them without mercy.

22 "You invited terrors to come against me on every side, as if you were inviting them to a feast. No one escaped or remained alive on the day of the Lord's anger. My enemy has killed those I cared for and brought up."