CHAPTER 2

(588 B.C.)

ZION UNDER JUDGMENT

¹How has the LORD covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in His anger, and cast down from heaven unto the Earth the beauty of Israel, and remembered not His footstool in the day of His anger! (The deep sorrow of this Chapter is occasioned by the recognition of the fact that the wrath which overthrew the Temple was Divine Wrath. Never had there been, therefore, such sorrow. But this foreshadowed the Wrath which smote the True Temple at Calvary. That was sorrow indeed, for that Temple was without blemish and undefiled, while the Temple at Jerusalem, which God had planned and set up, had been polluted by man.)

²The LORD has swallowed up all the habitations of Jacob, and has not pitied: He has thrown down in His wrath the strongholds of the daughter of Judah; He has brought them down to the ground: He has polluted the kingdom and the princes thereof. (These Verses plainly proclaim the fact that God was the sole Source of Judahs blessings, as He is the sole Source of the blessings of the Church. If He is repeatedly insulted by sin, with a refusal to repent, He will throw down the Church in His Wrath, exactly as He did Jerusalem of old. Paul said so [Rom. 11:18-22].)

³He has cut off in His fierce anger all the horn of Israel: He has drawn back His right hand from before the enemy, and He burned against Jacob like a flaming fire, which devours round about. (The horn of Israel, refers to the kings of Israel. He had cut them off in His fierce anger because of sin. He has drawn back His right hand from before the enemy, refers to the Lord lifting His Hand of protection over Israel, permitting the enemy to destroy His People. Repentance would have stopped this, but, despite Prophet after Prophet being sent by the Lord, with Jeremiah being the last, Jacob would not repent [Mat. 23:37].)

⁴He has bent His bow like an enemy: He stood with His right hand as an adversary, and killed all who were pleasant to the eye in the Tabernacle of the daughter of Zion: He poured out His fury like fire. (Even though Nebuchadnezzar was the instrument, the Lord was the Author. He actually became Israels Adversary.)

⁵The LORD was as an enemy: He has swallowed up Israel, He has swallowed up all her palaces: He has destroyed His strongholds, and has increased in the daughter of Judah mourning and lamentation. (The LORD was as an enemy, does not actually say that He was an enemy, but as an enemy. In other words, He Who was accustomed to blessing Israel now does them harm, as an enemy would do, again, because they would not repent.)

⁶And He has violently taken away His Tabernacle, as if it were of a garden: He has destroyed His places of the assembly: the LORD has caused the solemn Feasts and Sabbaths to be forgotten in Zion, and has despised in the indignation of His anger the king and the Priest. (This Verse proclaims the apparatus of the entire worship of God being taken away. It included His Tabernacle, which pertained to all the Holy Vessels, which symbolized the Coming Redeemer. In fact, He took everything away, because Israel had grossly polluted it.)

⁷The LORD has cast off His Altar, He has abhorred His Sanctuary, He has given up into the hand of the enemy the walls of her palaces; they have made a noise in the House of the LORD, as in the day of a solemn feast. (The LORD has cast off His Altar, is awful indeed! This was the Brazen Altar, which was a type of Calvary. They didnt want the Cross, so the Lord took the Cross away!)

⁸The LORD has purposed to destroy the wall of the daughter of Zion: He has stretched out a line, He has not withdrawn His hand from destroying: therefore He made the rampart and the wall to lament; they languished together. (He has stretched out a line, expressed unsparing demolition [II Ki. 21:13].)

ZIONS HUMILIATION

⁹Her gates are sunk into the ground; He has destroyed and broken her bars: her king and her princes are among the Gentiles: the Law is no more; her Prophets also find no vision from the LORD. (The Law is no more, is devastating! A material Temple was indispensable to its continued existence and enforcement; however, the Temple was destroyed and the Sacrifices were stopped! The only Light was now extinguished!)

¹⁰The elders of the daughter of Zion sit upon the ground, and keep silence: they have cast up dust upon their heads; they have girded themselves with sackcloth: the virgins of Jerusalem hang down their heads to the ground. (If the action of this Verse had been done when the Lord commanded them to repent, the horror of this time would never have happened!)

¹¹My eyes do fail with tears, my bowels are troubled, my liver is poured upon the Earth, for the destruction of the daughter of my people; because the children and the sucklings swoon in the streets of the city. (This speaks of acute shortage of food, with the children staggering because of physical weakness. Israel was brought to this state, with some of them even becoming cannibals and eating their own sons and daughters, because of their sinfulness against Jehovah. This was predicted by Moses [Lev. 26:29; Deut. 28:53].)

¹²They say to their mothers, Where is corn and wine? when they swooned as the wounded in the streets of the city, when their soul was poured out into their mothers bosom.

¹³What thing shall I take to witness for you? what thing shall I liken to you, O daughter of Jerusalem? what shall I equal to you, that I may comfort you, O virgin daughter of Zion? for your breach is great like the sea: who can heal you? (The statement of this Verse is that it is impossible to console Jerusalem by pointing to others in a like affliction, for her misery was greater than there had ever been, and for the obvious reasons. In fact, her misery was so bad that only the Lord could heal such!)

¹⁴Your prophets have seen vain and foolish things for you: and they have not discovered your iniquity, to turn away your captivity; but have seen for you false burdens and causes of banishment. (And they have not discovered your iniquity, means that these false prophets would not point out Israels sins; they rather preached what Israel wanted to hear. The words, false burdens, refer to false prophecies. The Holy Spirit here says that the false prophets led this parade, which led to total destruction.)

¹⁵All who pass by clap their hands at you; they hiss and wag their head at the daughter of Jerusalem, saying, Is this the city that men call The perfection of beauty, The joy of the whole Earth? (Jerusalem had been the capital of the whole Earth, because the Lord Himself dwelt in Jerusalem, actually in the Temple between the Mercy Seat and the Cherubim. But now all of that is gone!)

¹⁶All your enemies have opened their mouth against you: they hiss and gnash the teeth: they say, We have swallowed her up: certainly this is the day that we looked for; we have found, we have seen it. (These enemies are some of the nations that Judah and Jerusalem thought were her friends. Jerusalem embraced their gods and, thereby, forsook Jehovah. All the time these friends were secretly hissing and gnashing their teeth in anger; they hated Judah and Jerusalem.

The world is not our friend!)

JUDGMENT ON JUDAH; ADMONITION TO PRAY

¹⁷The LORD has done that which He had devised; He has fulfilled His Word that He had commanded in the days of old: He has thrown down, and has not pitied: and He has caused your enemy to rejoice over you, He has set up the horn of your adversaries. (The LORD has done that which He had devised, refers to the fulfilling of His Word which He had given to the Prophets many years before, and many times. So Israel had no excuse!)

¹⁸Their heart cried unto the LORD, O wall of the daughter of Zion, let tears run down like a river day and night: give yourself no rest; let not the apple of your eye cease. (While it is true that Judah and Jerusalem are under the judging Hand of God, still, the Holy Spirit through the Prophet implores the people to come before the Lord with a broken heart, and Mercy, at least in some respect, will be given.)

¹⁹Arise, cry out in the night: in the beginning of the watches pour out your heart like water before the face of the LORD: lift up your hands toward Him for the life of your young children, who faint for hunger in the top of every street. (Despite the anger of the Lord against Judah and Jerusalem [because they would not repent], still, the Lord was their only hope, as He had always been their only hope. So, they were exhorted to cry out in the night to Him. Even though Judah and Jerusalem could not be spared, as is now obvious, still, the Lord tells these hapless survivors that He can help, and He in fact will help, if they will only seek His Face.)

JEREMIAHS PRAYER

²⁰Behold, O LORD, and consider to whom You have done this. Shall the women eat their fruit, and children of a span long? shall the Priest and the Prophet be killed in the Sanctuary of the LORD? (Even though Judah and Jerusalem have grievously sinned and refused to repent, which is the cause of all this problem, Jeremiah pleads for help. Inasmuch as the Holy Spirit allowed this to be recorded, the indication is that the Lord would consider and show Mercy.)

²¹The young and the old lie on the ground in the streets: my virgins and my young men are fallen by the sword; You have killed them in the day of Your anger; You have killed, and not pitied. (The idea of this petition in this Verse is that Jeremiah pleads to the Lord that great judgment has already been carried out on the people, with many killed and others in a state of acute starvation, so now surely the Lord will show Mercy. You have killed, and not pitied, portrays the past tense; surely at the present pity can be shown!)

²²You have called as in a solemn day my terrors round about, so that in the day of the LORDs anger none escaped nor remained: those whom I have swaddled and brought up has my enemy consumed. (Those whom I have swaddled and brought up has my enemy consumed, seems to refer to the possibility of some of Jeremiahs relatives being killed in the carnage. If in fact this did happen, it would have been a just vengeance carried out by the Lord, because these very individuals, Jeremiahs family, had sought his life because they did not like what he preached [Jer. 12:6].)