Lamentations - The Sermon Depository

saccis; demiserunt (vel,
demittunt) ad terram caput suum
virgines (aut, puellae) Jerusalem.
The Prophet here strikingly represents the grievousness of the people’s
calamity, when he says, that the elders, as in hopeless despair, were lying
on the ground, that they cast dust on their heads, that they were clad in
sackcloth, as it was usually done in very grievous sorrow, and that the
virgins bent their heads down to the ground. The meaning is, that the
elders knew not what to do, and led others. to join them in acts of fruitless
and abject lamentation. We indeed know that young women are overcareful
as to their form and beauty, and indulge themselves in pleasures;
and that when they roll themselves with their face and hair on the ground,
it is a token of extreme mourning. This is what the Prophet means.
They were wont indeed to put on sackcloth as a token of repentance, and
to cast dust on their heads; but their minds were often so confused, that
they only thus set forth their mourning and sorrow, and had no regard to
God; and hypocrites, when they put on sackcloth, pretended to repent,
but it was a false pretense. Now in this place the Prophet does not mean
that the elders by adopting these rites professed to repent and humbly to
solicit pardon; but refers to them only as tokens of sorrow; as though he
had said, that the elders had no resources, and that the young women had
no hope nor joy. For the elders did lie down on the ground, as it is usual
with those who have no remedy. We now understand the meaning of the
Prophet. F35 It follows, —
Lamentations 2:11
11. Mine eyes do fail with tears,
my bowels are troubled, my liver
is poured upon the earth, for the
destruction of the daughter of my
people; because the children and
the sucklings swoon in the streets
of the city.
11. Defecerunt in lachrymis
oculi mei, conturbata sunt
viscera mea, effusum est ad
terram jecur meum, propter
contritionem filiae populi mei,
dum evanuit parvalus et sugens
Ubera in compitis urbis.
The Prophet himself now speaks, and says that his eyes were consumed
with tears, while weeping on account of the calamities of the people: even
in the deepest grief tears at length dry up; but when there is no end of
weeping, the sorrow, which as it were never ripens, must necessarily be
very bitter. Jeremiah then expresses now the vehemence of his grief when
he says that his eyes failed through shedding tears. He said in Jeremiah 9,
“Who will give me eyes for fountains?” that is, who will make my eyes to
turn into fountains, that they may continually flow? and this he said,
because he saw how dreadful a vengeance of God impended over the
obstinate. But now, when he sees accomplished what he had dreaded, he
says, that his eyes were consumed with weeping.
To the same purpose is what he adds, that his bowels were disturbed. It is
the same verb as we have seen before, wrmrmj, chemermeru; which some
render “bound,” as we also said then. I know not why one expositor has
changed what he had elsewhere said rightly; he puts here, “swollen have
my bowels.” But I see no reason why the verb should be taken here in a
different sense, for it immediately follows, my liver is poured forth on the
ground. He may, indeed, have included other parts of the intestines by
stating a part for the whole. The word here properly means the liver, as
when Solomon says,
“He hath pierced my liver.” (Proverbs 7:23.)
But Jeremiah, in short, shews that all his faculties were so seized with
grief, that no part was exempt. He then says that his liver was poured