Lamentations 2

The Lord Has Done What He Planned

The second poem describes the fall of Jerusalem as the Lord’s own doing, in His anger, then turns the city toward Him in prayer: “Arise, cry out in the night.”

Last revised October 6, 2026

Lamentations chaptersChapter 2 of 5

After the Babylonians took Jerusalem. The Bible Dictionary puts the book “some years after the fall of the city,” by a writer who saw it. Read with footnotes in Gospel Library

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Background

Lamentations 2 is the second of five poems about the fall of Jerusalem.

Lamentations 2 is the second of five poems about the fall of Jerusalem. The book is “Dirges over the fall of Jerusalem and the nation,” “Written by Jeremiah” and dated “some years after the fall of the city, of which the writer was an eyewitness.” This poem keeps the book’s alphabet form, with 22 verses that begin with the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet.

The events behind it are told in the book of Jeremiah. Jer. 52 tells how the Chaldeans besieged and took Jerusalem, and Jer. 52:6 tells of the hunger: “the famine was sore in the city, so that there was no bread for the people of the land.” That famine is in this poem, in the streets and at the mothers’ breasts.

What makes chapter 2 different from chapter 1 is who is the subject. In chapter 1 the city grieves. Here, in verses 1–8, nearly every verb has the Lord for its subject: He covers, casts down, swallows up, bends His bow. The poem then widens to the people’s grief, speaks to the city in verses 13–17, and ends in verses 18–22 with a call to pray and the prayer itself. The Lord does not answer in this book: unlike many books in the Old Testament, Lamentations “does not contain any responses from the Lord.”

The thread through the chapter

The poet does not call the fall of Jerusalem an accident or a defeat the Lord failed to prevent.

The poet does not call the fall of Jerusalem an accident or a defeat the Lord failed to prevent. In verses 1–8 the Lord is the one acting, and verse 17 says why: He “hath fulfilled his word that he had commanded in the days of old.” It is to the One who did it that the second half of the chapter turns. The poem changes from “he hath” to “thou”: the people’s heart cries “unto the Lord” (verse 18), the city is told to pour out its heart “like water before the face of the Lord” (verse 19), and the chapter closes with a prayer that begins “Behold, O LORD, and consider” (verse 20). The poem asks the Lord to look; it records no answer, because the book contains none.

Tap any highlighted phrase to open a note beneath its versein the margin.

Verses 1–8

The Lord is the one who strikes

In plain words

The poet says the Lord has covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in His anger. He has thrown down the beauty of Israel from heaven to earth and has not remembered His footstool in the day of His anger. He has swallowed up the dwellings of Jacob without pity, pulled down the strongholds of Judah, and dishonored the kingdom and its princes. He has cut off Israel’s strength, drawn back His right hand when the enemy came, and burned in Jacob like a flaming fire.

He has bent His bow like an enemy and poured out His fury like fire on the tent of the daughter of Zion. The Lord was like an enemy. He has taken violently the place that was His own, the place where He met His people, and has made the feasts and sabbaths be forgotten in Zion. He has rejected king and priest, thrown off His altar, abhorred His sanctuary, and handed the walls of the palaces to the enemy, whose noise in the Lord’s house was like the noise of a feast day. He planned to destroy the wall of Zion, stretched out the measuring line, and did not draw back His hand until rampart and wall mourned together.

1 How hath the Lord covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in his anger, and cast down from heaven unto the earth the beauty of Israel, and remembered not his footstool in the day of his anger!

Language #

The footstool the Lord did not remember

The Lord’s “footstool” is His sanctuary on Zion, and the poem’s first verse says He did not remember it.

The Lord’s “footstool” is His sanctuary on Zion, and the poem’s first verse says He did not remember it. In the Old Testament the word is “never literal.” Here it is used “with reference to sanctuary,” and in two other places it is perhaps the ark itself, “as place on which God rests”: David had wanted to build “an house of rest for the ark of the covenant of the Lord, and for the footstool of our God” (1 Chr. 28:2), and a psalm tells Israel to “worship at his footstool; for he is holy” (Ps. 99:5).

So when the poet says that in the day of His anger the Lord “remembered not his footstool” (Lam. 2:1), the loss is more than stone and timber. The place where His presence rested was not spared. The verse also opens the pattern of the first eight verses, where the Lord is the subject of nearly every verb.

Sources: The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906.

2 The Lord hath swallowed up all the habitations of Jacob, and hath not pitied: he hath thrown down in his wrath the strong holds of the daughter of Judah; he hath brought them down to the ground: he hath polluted the kingdom and the princes thereof.

3 He hath cut off in his fierce anger all the horn of Israel: he hath drawn back his right hand from before the enemy, and he burned against Jacob like a flaming fire, which devoureth round about.

4 He hath bent his bow like an enemy: he stood with his right hand as an adversary, and slew all that were pleasant to the eye in the tabernacle of the daughter of Zion: he poured out his fury like fire.

5 The Lord was as an enemy: he hath swallowed up Israel, he hath swallowed up all her palaces: he hath destroyed his strong holds, and hath increased in the daughter of Judah mourning and lamentation.

Related Scriptures #

The right hand turned against Israel

The poet says the Lord acted as an enemy toward His own people, and he says it in similes.

The poet says the Lord acted as an enemy toward His own people, and he says it in similes. The Lord’s right hand is “drawn back… from before the enemy” (Lam. 2:3); then He “stood with his right hand as an adversary” (Lam. 2:4), and “The Lord was as an enemy” (Lam. 2:5).

The word each time is “as” or “like.” This is a grieving voice in a poem, saying what the Lord did to the city, and it is not all the book says of Him. The book gives the cause in the city’s own words, “The Lord is righteous; for I have rebelled against his commandment” (Lam. 1:18), and it makes its own statement of His heart: “he doth not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of men” (Lam. 3:33).

Sources: The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

6 And he hath violently taken away his tabernacle, as if it were of a garden: he hath destroyed his places of the assembly: the LORD hath caused the solemn feasts and sabbaths to be forgotten in Zion, and hath despised in the indignation of his anger the king and the priest.

Language #

His tabernacle and his place of meeting

The verse says the Lord tore down His own sanctuary, and it names the sanctuary twice, in the words the King James renders “tabernacle” and “places of the assembly.”

The verse says the Lord tore down His own sanctuary, and it names the sanctuary twice, in the words the King James renders “tabernacle” and “places of the assembly.” The first is given in the lexicon as “booth, pavilion”; an older explanation takes it as a hedge or enclosure. Either way it is His own, and the context shows that it means the temple or its holy place. The second word, moed, covers “appointed time, place, meeting.” Here it is not the time of a feast but the “place of meeting,” where God met with His people.

Why “as if it were of a garden”? The comparison “has perplexed expositors.” One explanation is that a garden is a pleasure-ground that its owner pulls down or gives up without much hesitation when it no longer suits him, so that the Lord is pictured taking apart what was His. That is a plausible reading, not a settled one. The next clause says what the loss meant: the feasts and sabbaths were “forgotten in Zion.”

Sources: Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: Lamentations, In Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament, online at Bible Hub. Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906.

7 The Lord hath cast off his altar, he hath abhorred his sanctuary, he hath given up into the hand of the enemy the walls of her palaces; they have made a noise in the house of the LORD, as in the day of a solemn feast.

8 The LORD hath purposed to destroy the wall of the daughter of Zion: he hath stretched out a line, he hath not withdrawn his hand from destroying: therefore he made the rampart and the wall to lament; they languished together.

Verses 9–12

No law, no vision, and the cries of children

In plain words

Zion’s gates have sunk into the ground and her bars are broken. Her king and princes are among the nations, there is no law, and her prophets receive no vision from the Lord. The elders sit on the ground in silence with dust on their heads and sackcloth on their bodies, and the young women hang their heads.

The poet speaks for himself: his eyes fail from weeping, his insides are in turmoil, and his liver is poured out on the ground at the destruction of the daughter of his people, because children and infants faint in the streets. They ask their mothers for grain and wine, and they faint like the wounded and pour out their lives at their mothers’ breasts.

9 Her gates are sunk into the ground; he hath destroyed and broken her bars: her king and her princes are among the Gentiles: the law is no more; her prophets also find no vision from the LORD.

Language #

No law, and no vision from the Lord

Verse 9 names four losses in a row, and the last two are the ways the Lord spoke to Israel.

Verse 9 names four losses in a row, and the last two are the ways the Lord spoke to Israel. Gates and bars are gone, and king and princes are among the nations. Then come “the law” and “vision from the Lord.” The Hebrew for “law” is torah, a word whose range is “direction, instruction, law,” so it is wider than a code of statutes. Set beside prophets who “find no vision,” the line describes a people for whom both the Lord’s instruction and His prophetic word have stopped. Whether it means the whole nation or only the capital in the siege, the poem does not say.

A psalm about the burning of the temple, “They have cast fire into thy sanctuary” (Ps. 74:7), voices the same loss: “there is no more any prophet” (Ps. 74:9).

Sources: The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Westminster Leningrad Codex, with morphology, Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible (OSHB), openscriptures/morphhb. Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906.

10 The elders of the daughter of Zion sit upon the ground, and keep silence: they have cast up dust upon their heads; they have girded themselves with sackcloth: the virgins of Jerusalem hang down their heads to the ground.

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.

Language #

My liver is poured upon the earth

The poet’s “liver” poured out is a line of physical grief, and what it means is not certain.

The poet’s “liver” poured out is a line of physical grief, and what it means is not certain. The expression occurs nowhere else, and it “is variously explained.” One suggestion is that the liver stands here for the chief organ through which pain is felt, so that being poured out on the ground means the inner person dissolving in pain. That is a reading, not a fact, but the context leaves no doubt of the sense: this is the effect of grief that consumes the body.

What causes it is in the rest of the verse: “the children and the sucklings swoon in the streets of the city.” Their hunger is the famine of the siege (Jer. 52:6), and verse 12 gives the children’s words, “Where is corn and wine?”, as they faint at their mothers’ breasts.

Sources: Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: Lamentations, In Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament, online at Bible Hub. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Related Scriptures #

Mormon mourns his people at Cumorah

Mormon’s lament over the Nephites is a lament of the same kind as this poem, a mourner’s cry over a whole people.

Mormon’s lament over the Nephites is a lament of the same kind as this poem, a mourner’s cry over a whole people. Poets in the ancient world “also applied the forms of funeral laments to whole cities,” as Jeremiah did for Jerusalem in this book, and Mormon “similarly applied the form” to the destruction of his people.

Mormon cries, “O ye fair ones, how could ye have departed from the ways of the Lord!” (Morm. 6:17) and says, “Behold, if ye had not done this, ye would not have fallen. But behold, ye are fallen, and I mourn your loss” (Morm. 6:18). His lament closes by leaving the dead with God: “the Father, yea, the Eternal Father of heaven, knoweth your state; and he doeth with you according to his justice and mercy” (Morm. 6:22).

Sources: The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Scripture Central, “How Did Mormon React to Seeing His People Slain?”, KnoWhy #232, Aug. 21, 2019.

12 They say to their mothers, Where is corn and wine? when they swooned as the wounded in the streets of the city, when their soul was poured out into their mothers’ bosom.

Verses 13–17

Who can heal you?

In plain words

The poet turns to speak to the city. What can he say to her, what can he compare to her, how can he comfort her? Her breach is as great as the sea, and he asks who can heal it. Her prophets saw empty and foolish visions for her. They did not uncover her sin to turn her from captivity but saw false messages for her that led to her being driven out.

Everyone passing by claps and hisses and shakes his head at her: “Is this the city that men call The perfection of beauty, The joy of the whole earth?” All her enemies open their mouths against her, hiss, gnash their teeth, and say they have swallowed her up and that this is the day they hoped for. But the Lord has done what He planned. He has carried out the word He gave long ago, thrown down without pity, and let the enemy rejoice over her.

13 What thing shall I take to witness for thee? what thing shall I liken to thee, O daughter of Jerusalem? what shall I equal to thee, that I may comfort thee, O virgin daughter of Zion? for thy breach is great like the sea: who can heal thee?

14 Thy prophets have seen vain and foolish things for thee: and they have not discovered thine iniquity, to turn away thy captivity; but have seen for thee false burdens and causes of banishment.

Language #

Prophets who did not uncover the iniquity

The charge against Jerusalem’s prophets is that they did not expose her sin: “discovered” translates the Hebrew galah, “uncover, remove.”

The charge against Jerusalem’s prophets is that they did not expose her sin: “discovered” translates the Hebrew galah, “uncover, remove.” The poet says that uncovering her iniquity is what would have served “to turn away thy captivity.” The same verb, in its other sense of being removed, is the one in “Judah is gone into captivity” (Lam. 1:3); whether the poet meant the echo, the text does not say.

The book of Jeremiah records what prophets in Jerusalem were saying before the city fell. They “healed also the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace” (Jer. 6:14), and the Lord told Jeremiah, “The prophets prophesy lies in my name: I sent them not” (Jer. 14:14).

Sources: Westminster Leningrad Codex, with morphology, Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible (OSHB), openscriptures/morphhb. Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

15 All that pass by clap their hands at thee; they hiss and wag their head at the daughter of Jerusalem, saying, Is this the city that men call The perfection of beauty, The joy of the whole earth?

16 All thine enemies have opened their mouth against thee: they hiss and gnash the teeth: they say, We have swallowed her up: certainly this is the day that we looked for; we have found, we have seen it.

Literary Structure #

Pe comes before ayin

This verse and the next stand in the opposite order from the usual Hebrew alphabet, and why is not settled.

This verse and the next stand in the opposite order from the usual Hebrew alphabet, and why is not settled. Verse 16 begins with pe (the Hebrew word that starts “opened,” patsu) and verse 17 with ayin (the word that starts “hath done,” asah). In the traditional alphabet ayin comes first. Chapter 1 keeps that order, and chapters 3 and 4 follow the order used here, with pe first.

It is unlikely that a copyist transposed the verses, or that the order of the letters was not yet fixed, since the Semitic alphabets show no such change in the order of their letters. A likelier explanation is that the poet used the form freely, so that “the form was rather sacrificed to the thought.” That is a judgment, not an established fact. The Church’s reference work describes the 22-verse pattern without saying why the order varies.

Sources: Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: Lamentations, In Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament, online at Bible Hub. Westminster Leningrad Codex, with morphology, Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible (OSHB), openscriptures/morphhb. “Lamentations, book of”, Bible Dictionary.

17 The LORD hath done that which he had devised; he hath fulfilled his word that he had commanded in the days of old: he hath thrown down, and hath not pitied: and he hath caused thine enemy to rejoice over thee, he hath set up the horn of thine adversaries.

Related Scriptures #

The word commanded in the days of old

The word the Lord “commanded in the days of old” is probably the warnings in the law of Moses, so the poem is saying that what happened had been foretold.

The word the Lord “commanded in the days of old” is probably the warnings in the law of Moses, so the poem is saying that what happened had been foretold. The days of old are “the times of Moses,” and the poet has “the threatenings of the law” before his mind: “I will make your cities waste, and bring your sanctuaries unto desolation” (Lev. 26:31). Those warnings went on to describe a siege so hard that people would eat their own sons and daughters (Lev. 26:29; Deut. 28:53). Jeremiah had said the same (Jer. 19:9), and verse 20 of this chapter names that horror in its prayer.

The poem does not turn the warning into an accusation against the children. It says what was commanded, what came, and who carried it out.

Sources: The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: Lamentations, In Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament, online at Bible Hub.

Verses 18–22

Cry out to the Lord

In plain words

The people’s heart cries to the Lord. The poet tells the wall of the daughter of Zion to let her tears run like a river day and night, and to give herself no rest. She is to rise in the night, at the start of each watch, pour out her heart like water in front of the Lord, and lift her hands to Him for the lives of her children who faint with hunger at the corner of every street.

Then the prayer: “Behold, O LORD, and consider to whom thou hast done this.” Should women eat their own children? Should priest and prophet be killed in the sanctuary? Young and old lie in the streets, and the city’s young men and women have fallen by the sword in the day of the Lord’s anger. The speaker says the Lord has summoned her terrors from every side as to a feast day, and that those she had cared for and raised, the enemy has finished.

18 Their heart cried unto the Lord, O wall of the daughter of Zion, let tears run down like a river day and night: give thyself no rest; let not the apple of thine eye cease.

Literary Structure #

The poem turns from describing to praying

Verse 18 is where the chapter turns, from what the Lord has done to what Zion should do.

Verse 18 is where the chapter turns, from what the Lord has done to what Zion should do. Verses 1–8 are nearly all “he hath”; here the poet speaks to the city: “let tears run down like a river day and night.” The wall that “lament[ed]” with the rampart in verse 8 is now told to weep. And what the city is told to do is to pray: “pour out thine heart like water before the face of the Lord: lift up thy hands toward him” (Lam. 2:19).

The same Lord who was “as an enemy” in verse 5 is the One the city is sent to. The poem makes no promise about what will come of it, and the book does not say. The book “captures only the suffering and longing that the people felt before the Lord later showed mercy to them.”

Sources: The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Jeremiah 31–33; 36–38; Lamentations 1; 3, Scripture Helps: Old Testament.

19 Arise, cry out in the night: in the beginning of the watches pour out thine heart like water before the face of the Lord: lift up thy hands toward him for the life of thy young children, that faint for hunger in the top of every street.

20 Behold, O LORD, and consider to whom thou hast done this. Shall the women eat their fruit, and children of a span long? shall the priest and the prophet be slain in the sanctuary of the Lord?

Language #

A prayer that asks the Lord to look

The prayer asks one thing, that the Lord look. Its only commands are “Behold” and “consider,” and the Hebrew verb behind “consider” means simply to look.

The prayer asks one thing, that the Lord look. Its only commands are “Behold” and “consider,” and the Hebrew verb behind “consider” means simply to look. What He is asked to look at follows as questions: should women eat their own children, and should “the priest and the prophet be slain in the sanctuary of the Lord” (Lam. 2:20)? In these three verses the prayer does not ask for rescue and does not claim innocence; chapter 1 has already said, “I have rebelled against his commandment” (Lam. 1:18).

The text does not mark who is praying. The poet has just told Zion to cry out (verses 18–19), and “my virgins and my young men” (Lam. 2:21) and “those that I have swaddled and brought up” (Lam. 2:22) fit the city speaking as a mother, so these verses read most easily as her prayer.

21 The young and the old lie on the ground in the streets: my virgins and my young men are fallen by the sword; thou hast slain them in the day of thine anger; thou hast killed, and not pitied.

22 Thou hast called as in a solemn day my terrors round about, so that in the day of the LORD’s anger none escaped nor remained: those that I have swaddled and brought up hath mine enemy consumed.

Language #

The day of appointed meeting returns

“A solemn day” is a feast day, and the city says the Lord has summoned her terrors as worshippers are summoned to a feast.

“A solemn day” is a feast day, and the city says the Lord has summoned her terrors as worshippers are summoned to a feast. The Hebrew word is moed, “appointed time, place, meeting.” The first poem uses the same picture, “he hath called an assembly against me to crush my young men” (Lam. 1:15), where “assembly” is this word, “a festal meeting.”

The word runs through this chapter. In verse 6 it is both the “places of the assembly” the Lord destroyed and the “solemn feasts” He caused to be forgotten; in verse 7 the enemy’s noise in the Lord’s house is “as in the day of a solemn feast”; and here, at the end, what is called together is terror. That last is an observation from the repeated word; the poem does not comment on it.

Seeing Christ in Lamentations 2

The chapter does not name the Messiah. What other scripture adds is that the Savior mourned over this same city. Jeremiah lamented the destruction of Jerusalem, and “Centuries later,” the Savior too lamented: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!” (Matt. 23:37). He went on, “Behold, your house is left unto you desolate” (Matt. 23:38).

Worth exploring next

Read the rest of the lament in Lam. 1, Lam. 3, and Lam. 4, and the people’s prayer in Lam. 5.
The warnings that this chapter calls “the word… commanded in the days of old”: Lev. 26 and Deut. 28.
The siege as Jeremiah tells it: Jer. 52. The “peace, peace” prophets: Jer. 6:14.

Sources & further reading

The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
“Lamentations, book of”, Bible Dictionary.
Jeremiah 31–33; 36–38; Lamentations 1; 3, Scripture Helps: Old Testament.
Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament: Lamentations, In Keil and Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament, online at Bible Hub.
Westminster Leningrad Codex, with morphology, Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible (OSHB), openscriptures/morphhb.
Scripture Central, “How Did Mormon React to Seeing His People Slain?”, KnoWhy #232, Aug. 21, 2019.
Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906.
Chapter 24: The Babylonian Captivity (Jeremiah 20–22; 24–29; 32; 34–45; 52; Lamentations), Old Testament Student Manual: 1 Kings–Malachi (2003).

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