Lam 2:22

“Thou hast called, as in a solemn day, my terrors round about,.... Terrible enemies, as the Chaldeans; these came at the call of God, as soldiers at the command of their general; and in as great numbers as men from all parts of Judea flocked to Jerusalem on any of the three solemn feasts of passover, pentecost, and tabernacles. The Targum paraphrases it very foreign to the sense; "thou shall proclaim liberty to thy people, the house of Israel, by the Messiah, as thou didst by Moses and Aaron on the day of the passover:'' so that in the day of the Lord's anger none escaped or remained; in the city of Jerusalem, and in the land of Judea; either they were put to death, or were carried captive; so that there was scarce an inhabitant to be found, especially after Gedaliah was slain, and the Jews left in the land were carried into Egypt: those that I have swaddled and brought up hath mine enemy consumed; or "whom I could span", as Broughton; or "handled"; whose limbs she had stroked with her hands, whom she had swathed with bands, and had carried in her arms, and had most carefully and tenderly brought up: by those she had "swaddled" are meant the little ones; and by those she had "brought up" the greater ones, as Aben Ezra observes; but both the enemy, the Chaldeans, consumed and destroyed without mercy, without regard to their tender years, or the manner in which they were brought up; but as if they were nourished like lambs for the day of slaughter. Next: Lamentations Chapter 3”

“Thou hast called as in a solemn day - It is by thy influence alone that so many enemies are called together at one time; and they have so hemmed us in that none could escape, and none remained unslain or uncaptivated, Perhaps the figure is the collecting of the people in Jerusalem on one of the solemn annual festivals. God has called terrors together to feast on Jerusalem, similar to the convocation of the people from all parts of the land to one of those annual festivals. The indiscriminate slaughter of young and old, priest and prophet, all ranks and conditions, may be illustrated by the following verses from Lucan, which appear as if a translation of the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first verses of this chapter: - Nobilitas cum plebe perit; lateque vagatur Ensis, et a nullo revocatum est pectore ferrum. Stat cruor in Templis; multaque rubentia caede Lubrica saxa madent. Nulli sua profuit aetas. Non senes extremum piguit vergentibus annis Praecipitasse diem; nec primo in limine vitae, Infanti miseri nascentia rumpere fata. Pharsal. lib. ii., 101. "With what a slide devouring slaughter passed, And swept promiscuous orders in her haste; O'er noble and plebeian ranged the sword, Nor pity nor remorse one pause afford! The sliding streets with blood were clotted o'er, And sacred temples stood in pools of gore. The ruthless steel, impatient of delay, Forbade the sire to linger out his day: It struck the bending father to the earth, And cropped the wailing infant at its birth." Rowe.”

“About. The troops of the enemy resemble those multitudes, which come from all parts to Jerusalem. Many kings could not raise such an army. (Calmet) Bible Text & Cross-references: 1 Aleph . How hath the Lord covered with obscurity the daughter of Sion in his wrath! how hath he cast down from heaven to the earth the glorious one of Israel, and hath not remembered his footstool in the day of his anger. 2 Beth . The Lord hath cast down headlong, and hath not spared all that was beautiful in Jacob: he hath destroyed in his wrath the strong holds of the virgin of Juda, and brought them down to the ground: he hath made the kingdom unclean, and the princes thereof. 3 Ghimel . He hath broken, in his fierce anger, all the horn of Israel: he hath drawn back his right hand from before the enemy, and he hath kindled in Jacob, as it were a flaming fire, devouring round about. 4 Daleth . He hath bent his bow as an enemy; he hath fixed his right hand as an adversary; and he hath killed all that was fair to behold in the tabernacle of the daughter of Sion; he hath poured out his indignation like fire. 5 He . The Lord is become as an enemy: he hath cast down Israel headlong, he hath overthrown all the walls thereof: he hath destroyed his strong holds, and hath multiplied in the daughter of Juda the afflicted, both men and women. 6 Vau . And he hath destroyed his tent as a garden, he hath thrown down his tabernacle: the Lord hath caused feasts and sabbaths to be forgotten in Sion: and hath delivered up king and priest to reproach, and to the indignation of his wrath. 7 Zain . The Lord hath cast off his altar, he hath cursed his sanctuary: he hath delivered the walls of the towers thereof into the hand of the enemy: they have made a noise in the house of the Lord, as in the day of a solemn feast. 8 Heth . The Lord hath purposed to destroy the wall of the daughter of Sion: he hath stretched out his line, and hath not withdrawn his hand from destroying: and the bulwark hath mourned, and the wall hath been destroyed together. 9 Teth . Her gates are sunk into the ground: he hath destroyed, and broken her bars: her king and her princes are among the Gentiles: the law is no more, and her prophets have found no vision from the Lord. 10 Jod . The ancients of the daughter of Sion sit upon the ground, they have held their peace: they have sprinkled their heads with dust, they are girded with haircloth, the virgins of Jerusalem hang down their heads to the ground. 11 Caph . My eyes have failed with weeping, my bowels are troubled: my liver is poured out upon the earth, for the destruction of the daughter of my people, when the children, and the sucklings, fainted away in the streets of the city. 12 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. 13 Mem . To what shall I compare thee? or to what shall I liken thee, O daughter of Jerusalem? to what shall I equal thee, that I may comfort thee, O virgin daughter of Sion? for great as the sea is thy destruction: who shall heal thee? 14 Nun . Thy prophets have seen false and foolish things for thee: and they have not laid open thy iniquity, to excite thee to penance: but they have seen for thee false revelations and banishments. 15 Samech . All they that passed by the way have clapped their hands at thee: they have hissed, and wagged their heads at the daughter of Jerusalem, saying: Is this the city of perfect beauty, the joy of all the earth? 16 Phe . All thy enemies have opened their mouth against thee: they have hissed, and gnashed with the teeth, and have said: We will swallow her up: lo, this is the day which we looked for: we have found it, we have seen it. 17 * Ain . The Lord hath done that which he purposed, he hath fulfilled his word, which he commanded in the days of old: he hath destroyed, and hath not spared, and he hath caused the enemy to rejoice over thee, and hath set up the horn of thy adversaries. 18 Sade . Their heart cried to the Lord upon the walls of the daughter of Sion: *Let tears run down like a torrent day and night: give thyself no rest, and let not the apple of thy eye cease. 19 Coph . Arise, give praise in the night, in the beginning of the watches: pour out thy heart like water, before the face of the Lord: lift up thy hands to him for the life of thy little children, that have fainted for hunger at the top of all the streets. 20 Res . Behold, O Lord, and consider whom thou hast thus dealt with: shall women then eat their own fruit, their children of a span long: shall the priest, and the prophet be slain in the sanctuary of the Lord? 21 Sin . The child and the old man lie without on the ground: my virgins and my young men are fallen by the sword: thou hast slain them in the day of thy wrath: thou hast killed, and shewn them no pity. 22 Thau . Thou hast called, as to a festival, those that should terrify me round about, and there was none in the day of the wrath of the Lord that escaped and was left: those that I brought up, and nourished, my enemy hath consumed them.”

“Thou hast called as in . . . solemn day . . . terrors--Thou hast summoned my enemies against me from all quarters, just as multitudes used to be convened to Jerusalem, on the solemn feast days. The objects, for which the enemies and the festal multitude respectively met, formed a sad contrast. Compare Lam 1:15 : "called an assembly against me." Jeremiah proposes his own experience under afflictions, as an example as to how the Jews should behave under theirs, so as to have hope of a restoration; hence the change from singular to plural (Lam 3:22, Lam 3:40-47). The stanzas consist of three lines, each of which begins with the same Hebrew letter. Next: Lamentations Chapter 3”

“The imperf. תּקרא has perhaps bee chosen merely for the sake of the alphabetic arrangement, because the description is still continued, and the idea of custom (wont) or repetition is not very suitable in the present instance. "Thou summonest, as for a feast-day (viz., for the enemy, cf. Lam 1:15), all my terrors round about." מגוּרי מסּביב is to be explained in conformity with the formula מגור מסּביב, so frequent in Jeremiah (Jer 6:25; Jer 20:4, Jer 20:10, etc.): מגוּרי is therefore to be derived from מגור, but not to be confined in its reference to the enemy (as in the Vulgate, qui terrent); it is rather to be understood as applying to all the terrible powers that had come upon Judah, - sword, famine, plagues (cf. Lam 1:20). On the ground that מגוּרים elsewhere means wandering, pilgrimage, and that, moreover, the sing. מגור in Psa 55:16 signifies a dwelling, Ewald translates the expression in the text, "my hamlets round about," understanding by that the inhabitants of the defenceless country towns and villages, which stand to the capital that gave them its protection in the relation of settlers in its neighbourhood (lxx πάροικοι). According to this view, the verse alludes to an important event which took place in those days of the siege, when all the inhabitants of the country towns fled to the capital, thinking that a great festival was going to be held there, as on former occasions; but this became at last for them the great festival of death, when the city was taken. But the translation of the lxx is of no authority, since they have given a false rendering of מגור מסּביב also; and the whole explanation is so artificial and unnatural, that it needs no further refutation. Raschi, indeed, had previously explained מגוּרי to mean שכיני, vicinos meos, but added improbos, ut sese congregarent adversus me ad perdendum. Notwithstanding this, מגוּרים, "wandering" and "place of sojourn," cannot denote the country towns as distinguished from the capital; nor can the flight of the inhabitants of the low-lying regions into the capital be fitly called a summoning together of them by the Lord. The combination פּליט ושׂריד is used as in Jer 42:17; Jer 44:14. For טפּח, see on Lam 2:20. With the complaint that no one could escape the judgment, - that the enemy dared to murder even the children whom she Jerusalem had carefully nourished and brought up, - the poem concludes, like the first, with deep sorrow, regarding which all attempts at comfort are quite unavailing (Gerlach).”