Ekhah 2:11

11 Mine eyes do fail from weepings, my insides are troubled, empty and poured upon ha’aretz, for the destruction of Bat Ami; because the olel and the infant swoon in the rechovot of the city.

Ekhah 2:11 Meaning and Commentary

Lamentations 2:11

Mine eyes do fail with tears
According to Aben Ezra, everyone of the elders before mentioned said this; but rather they are the words of the Prophet Jeremiah, who had wept his eyes dry, or rather blind, on account of the calamities of his people; though he himself obtained liberty and enlargement by means thereof: my bowels are troubled;
all his inward parts were distressed: my liver is poured upon the earth;
his gall bladder, which lay at the bottom of his liver, broke, and he cast it up, and poured it on the earth; see ( Job 16:13 ) ; and all this was for the destruction of the daughter of my people;
or, the "breach" of them ^F20; their civil and church state being destroyed and broke to shivers; and for the ruin of the several families of them: particularly because the children and sucklings swoon in the streets of the city;
through famine, for want of bread, with those that could eat it; and for want of the milk of their mothers and nurses, who being starved themselves could not give it; and hence the poor infants fainted and swooned away; which was a dismal sight, and heart melting to the prophet.

---

FOOTNOTES:

F20 (rbv le) "propter contritionem", Pagninus, Montanus, Junius & Tremellius; "propter confractionem", Piscator; "propter fractionem", Cocceius.

Ekhah 2:11 In-Context

9 Her she’arim are sunk into the ground; He hath destroyed and broken her bars; her melech and her sarim (princes) are among the Goyim; the torah is no more; her nevi’im also find no chazon (vision) from Hashem.

10 The Ziknei Bat Tziyon sit upon the ground, and keep silence; they have cast up aphar upon their heads; they have girded themselves with sackcloth; the Betulot Yerushalayim hang down their heads to the ground.

11 Mine eyes do fail from weepings, my insides are troubled, empty and poured upon ha’aretz, for the destruction of Bat Ami; because the olel and the infant swoon in the rechovot of the city.

12 They say to their imahot, Where is grain and yayin? Say they when they swooned like the wounded in the rechovot Ir, when their nefesh ebbed away into the kheyk imahot of them.

13 What thing shall I say to thee? What thing shall I liken to thee, O Bat Yerushalayim? What shall I equal to thee, that I may comfort thee, O Betulat Bat Tziyon? For thy shever (destruction) is as gadol as the yam. Who can heal thee?