The interpretation timeline

Lam 2:12

How this passage has been read — the sources, oldest to newest.

From the early Church Fathers to now.

2 Reformed · 1 Methodist

Lam 2:12 · Douay-Rheims
“Lamed. They said to their mothers: Where is corn and wine? when they fainted away as the wounded in the streets of the city: when they breathed out their souls in the bosoms of their mothers.”
Post-Reformation c. 1650 – 1900
1771
A.D.
John Gill Reformed
1697–1771
“They say to their mothers, where is corn and wine?.... Not the sucklings who could not speak, nor were used to corn and wine, but the children more grown; both are before spoken of, but these are meant, even the young men of Israel, as the Targum; and such as had been brought up in the best manner, had been used to wine, and not water, and therefore ask for that as well as corn; both take in all the necessaries of life; and which they ask of their mothers, who had been used to feed them, and were most tender of them; but now not seeing and having their usual provisions, and not knowing what was the reason of it, inquire after them, being pressed with hunger: when they swooned as the wounded in the streets of the city; having no food given them, though they asked for it time after time, they fainted away, and died a lingering death; as wounded persons do who are not killed at once, which is the more distressing: when their soul was poured out into their mothers' bosom; meaning not the desires of their souls for food, expressed in moving and melting language as they sat in their mothers' laps, and lay in their bosoms; which must be piercing unto them, if no more was designed; but their souls or lives themselves, which they gave up through famine, as the Targum; expiring in their mothers' arms.”
Source
1832
A.D.
Adam Clarke Methodist
1762–1832
“When their soul was poured out into their mothers' bosom - When, in endeavoring to draw nourishment from the breasts of their exhausted mothers, they breathed their last in their bosoms! How dreadfully afflicting was this!”
1871
A.D.
1871
“as the wounded--famine being as deadly as the sword (Jer 52:6). soul . . . poured . . . into . . . mothers bosom--Instinctively turning to their mother's bosom, but finding no milk there, they breathe out their life as it were "into her bosom."”
Modern · 1953 →

The in-app commentary runs from the Fathers to the early-modern record, then stops — that's where the public-domain sources end, not where the reading does. For the modern reading, follow the sources directly.