What can I say for you, to what compare you, O daughter of Jerusalem? What can I liken to you, that I may comfort you, O virgin daughter of Zion? For your ruin is vast as the sea; who can heal you?
Comfort usually works by example: someone tells the suffering man he is not alone, others have endured the like. But what example can I offer Jerusalem? Her calamity exceeds all others in the world. God has never thundered so terribly against any people. To bring witnesses would be useless, for she surpasses every nation in misery.
AI summary
These lamentations paint grief itself; magistrates who sat in judgment now sit on the ground in silence, having stripped themselves of authority and donned mourning clothes. The young women who once held their heads high now bend them to the earth, learning sorrow from loss, genuine tears for what they have lost.
AI summary
Commenting on Lamentations 2:10-22
What nation ever suffered as you have? Not Egypt under the plagues, not Canaan under Joshua, not those David subdued. Friends comfort the afflicted by showing their case is like others' and will pass; but nothing such can be said here. Your breach is as wide and wild as the sea when it breaks its banks and grows wider still. No one can heal you.
AI summary