Lamentations 2:21

21 A child and an eld man lie on the earth withoutforth; my virgins and my young men fell down by sword; thou hast slain them in the day of thy strong vengeance, thou smotest and didest no mercy. (A child and an old man lie on the ground outside; my virgins and my young men fell down by the sword; thou hast killed them on the day of thy strong vengeance, thou struck them down, and showed no 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 Rise thou together, praise thou in the night, in the beginning of wakings; shed out thine heart as water, before the sight of the Lord (Rise thou up, praise thou in the night, at the beginning of every watch; pour out thy heart like water, before the Lord); raise thine hands to him for the souls of thy little children, that failed for hunger in the head of all (the) meetings of (the) ways.

20 See thou, Lord, and behold, whom thou hast made so bare; therefore whether women shall eat their fruit, (their) little children at the measure of an hand? for a priest and prophet is slain in the saintuary of the Lord. (See thou, Lord, and behold, they whom thou hast made so bare; and so shall women eat their own fruit, their own little children at the measure of an hand? shall a priest and a prophet be killed in the Lord's sanctuary?)

21 A child and an eld man lie on the earth withoutforth; my virgins and my young men fell down by sword; thou hast slain them in the day of thy strong vengeance, thou smotest and didest no mercy. (A child and an old man lie on the ground outside; my virgins and my young men fell down by the sword; thou hast killed them on the day of thy strong vengeance, thou struck them down, and showed no mercy.)

22 Thou calledest, as to a solemn day, them that made me afeared of compass; and none was that escaped in the day of the strong vengeance of the Lord, and was left; mine enemy wasted them, which I fed, and nourished up. (Thou hast called, like to a feast day, those all around me who made me afraid; and there was no one who escaped on the day of the strong vengeance of the Lord, and was left alive; my enemy destroyed all of them, whom I had fed, and nourished.)