CHAPTER ONE

 

 

1:1: “How doth the city sit solitary” = Jeremiah looked on these calamities as the death of the Jewish people; and he prepares an elegy for the national funeral.

 

“widow” = Unmarried to God.  Compare to Revelation 18:7.  Speaking of the high priest or your pastor, see Leviticus 21:14.  Paul describes Jesus and taking the Church as His virgin bride (2Co. 11:2; Eph. 5:25-27).

 

1:3: “because of affliction, and because of great servitude” = Here is the reason for the desolation of verses 1 & 2, in that the “Targum” states, “their sins in oppressing and afflicting their poor brethren, and retaining them in a state of bondage after their seven years’ servitude, contrary to the Law of God {Jer. 34:13-14}; for which they were threatened with captivity.”

 

 

CHAPTER TWO

 

 

2:ALL:  The expressions “daughter of Zion,” Lamentations 2:1; “daughter of Judah,” Lamentations 2:5; and “daughter of Jerusalem,” Lamentations 2:13 & 15, (see also Lam. 1:15) although associated with supreme grief over God’s judgment of His sinful people, yet there is still hope in that they are still spoken of as being and remaining “daughters.”

 

2:7 & 9: “The Law is no more” = This is an interesting statement, in that, God’s Law, which should have been a universal Law, and as such, a universal religion, by not being so because of God’s peoples sins, not God’s Law, came to an end when it no longer had a local habitation.  Its enactments were essentially those not of a universal religion, but of a national religion.  Also, for the Law of God to be “no more,” of which said “Law” is really the character of God Himself, it would mean that God is “no more.”

 

2:9: “no vision from the LORD” = This is what happens when sin takes over the life.  Let not your sins separate you from the presence of our Lord.

 

2:20: “Shall the women eat their fruit, and children of a span long” = That it was foretold that there should be such distress in the siege, that mothers should be obliged to eat their own children, is evident enough from Leviticus 26:29; Deuteronomy 28:53 & 56 & 57.

 

 

CHAPTER THREE

 

 

3:1: “I am the man that hath seen affliction” = In the two preceding poems (Chapters 1 & 2) Jeremiah had spoken of the misery and destruction of Jerusalem.  Here he begins to speak chiefly, though not exclusively, of his own sins, mistakes, and grief.

 

3:27: “bear the yoke in his youth” = Only a man of years would understand this verse.  I did not when I remember first reading it with any comprehension at age 23 or 24.  In other words, you will reap what you have sown.

 

3:38: “not evil and good” = That is, at the same time.  See Job 2:10.

 

3:62: “device” = Here is my Psalm 7:15 Note:  “fallen into the ditch which he made” = The wicked will eventually perish due to their own doing.  God does not destroy them; they destroy themselves with their own wickedness. Continued in verse 16.  This is called, “Retributive Justice.” Unrighteous king Saul wanted to kill righteous David who had Saul in his hands twice but did not kill him.

 

 

CHAPTER FOUR

 

 

4:6: “greater than the punishment of the sin of Sodom” = See Matthew 10:15.

 

4:10: “the pitiful women have sodden their own children” = See my Lamentation 2:20 Note.

 

4:17: “we have watched for a nation that could not save us” = That “nation” would be Egypt.

 

 

CHAPTER FIVE

 

 

5:4: “drunken our water for money” = They had to pay for water out of wells which they once owned.

​