Lamentations 2
v.2
Without pity the Lord has swallowed up all the dwellings of Jacob; in his wrath he has torn down the strongholds of the Daughter of Judah. He has brought her kingdom and its princes down to the ground in dishonor.
The Lord’s judgements are just and righteous. Why would the Lord pity the execution of his true justice?
v.11
My eyes fail from weeping, I am in torment within, my heart is poured out on the ground because my people are destroyed, because children and infants faint in the streets of the city.
Jeremiah let the situation cut him.
v.14
The visions of your prophets were false and worthless; they did not expose your sin to ward off your captivity. The oracles they gave you were false and misleading.
The prophetic spirit exposes sin since it is the testimony of Jesus, the Lamb who takes away every sin.
The best commentaries on this verse are Jer 23:18-22 and Ezek 13:10-16. Just as many preachers are so obsessed with the holiness of the church that they have not been able to take its shortcomings seriously, so it was in Israel. It took the shock of the Babylonian exile to break the power and influence of the popular prophets and to discredit them finally.
v.15
All who pass your way clap their hands at you; they scoff and shake their heads at the Daughter of Jerusalem: “Is this the city that was called the perfection of beauty, the joy of the whole earth?”
Even the pagans know the standard to which God has called Jerusalem to be.
v.18
The hearts of the people cry out to the Lord. O wall of the Daughter of Zion, let your tears flow like a river day and night; give yourself no relief, your eyes no rest.
v.19
Arise, cry out in the night, as the watches of the night begin; pour out your heart like water in the presence of the Lord. Lift up your hands to him for the lives of your children, who faint from hunger at the head of every street.
v.20
“Look, O LORD, and consider: Whom have you ever treated like this? Should women eat their offspring, the children they have cared for? Should priest and prophet be killed in the sanctuary of the Lord?