You summoned as if to a festival day my terrors on every side, and on the day of the anger of the LORD no one escaped or survived; those whom I held and raised my enemy destroyed.
God summoned these terrors as one summons crowds to a feast day, from every quarter they converged on His command. Yet understand this: though the Chaldeans brought the sword, it was the Lord's wrath that sent them, and every Jew must see God's hand in his own calamity, not merely the enemy's cruelty.
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
Terrible enemies assembled at God's call as soldiers answer their general, thronging like pilgrims to the feasts, yet coming not to worship but to destroy. Mothers' tenderness, the care they lavished swaddling and nursing these children, meant nothing; the Chaldeans consumed them without mercy, as lambs bred for slaughter.
AI summary