Lamentations 4
4:1-22 This chapter is an alphabetic acrostic where each verse begins with a successive letter of the twenty-two-letter Hebrew alphabet.
4:1-2 God’s people were worth their weight in gold. The prophet used three terms for gold: the general term gold, fine gold, and pure gold. That is what the holy nation was before God; but now smeared with sin, they were regarded as clay jars, like pieces of broken pottery.
4:3-4 The jackals offer their breasts to nurse their young, but Israel’s parents neglected their young during the crisis. They are like ostriches, which are known for their habit of laying eggs and then leaving them (Jb 39:13-18).
4:5 Those who had been raised on delicacies and clothed in purple now had to go hungry and huddle in trash heaps.
4:6 Greater privilege (revelation from God) brought greater responsibility to God and thus greater degrees of guilt for wrongdoing. Thus Judah’s guilt was greater than that of Sodom.
4:7-8 The phrase her dignitaries is often rendered as “her Nazirites,” but Gn 49:26 and Dt 33:16 use it of a person who is “separated” by rank and task from his contemporaries. Hence, these dignitaries, once ruddy and glamorous, were now darker than soot. Their skin was shriveled on their bones.
4:9 A swift death by the sword was better than a slow death by starvation.
4:10 So horrific were the effects of the famine during the siege of Jerusalem that even compassionate women, who under normal circumstances would never think of such a thing, cooked their own children for food (see note at 2:20).
4:11 All the miseries that had befallen Jerusalem were allowed by the Lord. Exhausted his wrath means his planned judgment was fulfilled, not that he became weary and thus relented.
4:12 What many kings of the earth and all the world’s inhabitants had thought impossible had happened: Jerusalem had fallen.
4:13-14 The reason for this tragedy was the sins of the prophets and the iniquities of the priests (as Jeremiah had warned time and again, Jr 6:13; 8:8-12; 23:11-36; 26:7-24; 28:1-17). Now no one dared to touch their garments. They were the outcasts of society.
| Hebrew pronunciation | [kah LAH] |
| CSB translation | end, finish, destroy, exhaust |
| Uses in Lamentations | 5 |
| Uses in the OT | 207 |
| Focus passage | Lamentations 4:11,17 |
Kalah means come to an end (Gn 41:53) or end. Things are gone, spent, or empty. They fade away (Ps 37:20), vanish, and disappear. People are destroyed (Ezk 13:14), consumed, finished off, or confounded. Eyes fail or grow weary. Flesh wastes away; people perish. Things are finished (Ru 2:23), concluded, fulfilled, done, or completed. Events are determined (1Sm 20:33) or certain. Individuals intend (1Sm 20:7), plan, yearn (Ps 84:2), or long. The intensive, often a helping verb, means finish (Nm 4:15). One brings about or to an end (Dn 9:24), puts or makes an end, and ends. Kalah is complete (Ezk 4:6) or fill. One spends (Is 49:4), uses up, exhausts, or strips. He has enough. People exterminate, consume, finish off, annihilate, wipe off or out, and (completely) destroy (Jos 24:20). They let go blind (Jb 31:16) or cause eyes to fail. They resolve (Ru 3:18) or deal.
4:15-16 The survivors, who once cheered the false prophets and priests, now yelled at them: Unclean! . . . Away, away! Don’t touch us! They were now homeless, aimless, and despised.
4:17 They looked in vain for a nation to come to their assistance. No human could overturn the judgment God had handed down.
4:18-19 The imagery of closely followed is that of a hunter stalking his prey.
4:20 Likewise, their trust in the heir of the Davidic line (The Lord’s anointed, the breath of our life) proved futile. He was also captured in their traps. King Zedekiah was chained, blinded after watching his sons being massacred, and exiled to Babylon.
4:21-22 The nation of Edom might jeer for the moment, but the cup of God’s wrath would fall on them also (Jr 25:15-29; Hab 2:15-16; Obadiah).
