How the Lord has covered the Daughter of Zion with the cloud of His anger! He has cast the glory of Israel from heaven to earth. He has abandoned His footstool in the day of His anger.
The Prophet cries out in astonishment, how can God cast off a people bound to Him by an everlasting covenant, as though He had broken His own faithfulness? Yet he does not accuse God of inconstancy; rather, he means to shake Jerusalem awake from the hardness and torpor that calamity had only deepened, for no one truly calls upon God unless first humbled and broken in spirit.
AI summary
The weight of these verses falls entirely on God's hand in the affliction. What cuts deepest is not that Jerusalem suffered, but that God made her suffer in His anger as an enemy. To those who prize His favor, His wrath is the true bitterness; His corrections in love wound most deeply because they come from Him.
AI summary
Commenting on Lamentations 2:1-9
The Lord wraps Jerusalem in clouds of anger, not the protective cloud at the Red Sea, but thick darkness that veils her brightness and glory. He casts her down from the highest dignity to the lowest reproach, even forgetting to spare the temple, the ark, that very footstool where His Majesty dwelt between the cherubim.
AI summary