“Go away! Unclean!” men shouted at them. “Away, away! Do not touch us!” So they fled and wandered. Among the nations it was said, “They can stay here no longer.”
The Prophet calls the city infected with uncleanness as though lepers were everywhere, an allusion to Leviticus 13:45, where the ceremonially unclean cry "Depart, depart." Their own filth and sin drove them to flight; the exile itself proceeded from the defilements they could no longer endure.
AI summary
The prophets and priests bear chief fault, not that the people were innocent, but these watchmen should have warned them and did not. They shed the blood of the righteous to please their people and advance their false religion. Nothing ripens a nation for ruin faster than the sins of those set to teach the truth.
AI summary
Commenting on Lamentations 4:13-20
The very priests who cleansed others of leprosy are now treated as lepers themselves, shunned with the same cry. They who said "Stand by yourselves, we are more holy than you" are driven out and scattered among the nations, never to return and officiate in the temple as before.
AI summary