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.
Here he relates in the person of the Church another calamity, that the young and the aged were lying prostrate in the streets; and he joins children to the old men, to shew that there was no difference as to age. Then he says that dead bodies were lying promiscuously in public places.
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
The young and the old lie on the ground in the streets,.... Young men and old men, virgins and aged women; these promiscuously lay on the ground in the public streets, fainting and dying for want of food; or lay killed there by the sword of the enemy; the Chaldeans sparing neither age nor sex.