Lamentations 1:18,19 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

The Lord is righteous, for I have rebelled, &c. He does me no wrong in dealing thus with me, nor can I charge him with any injustice. Observe, reader, whatever the troubles are which God is pleased to inflict upon us, we must own that in them he is righteous: we neither know him nor ourselves, if we do not acknowledge this. Jerusalem owns the equity of God's actions by confessing the iniquity of her own. Hear, I pray you, all people See note on Lamentations 1:12. My virgins and my young men are gone into captivity Thus it is said, 2 Chronicles 36:17, that the Chaldeans had “no compassion upon young men or maidens.” I called for my lovers, but they deceived me They proved like the brooks in summer to the thirsty traveller, Job 6:15. The Egyptians and her other allies are intended, who made court to her in her prosperity, and promised her assistance, but in the day of her adversity and necessity were alienated from her, and cast her off. Thus we are commonly deceived and disappointed in those creatures that we set our hearts upon, and put our trust in. Happy they that have made God their friend, and keep themselves in his love, for he will not deceive them! My priests and mine elders gave up the ghost in the city The famine hath consumed the most honourable as well as the meaner people. While they sought their meat to relieve their souls While they went about seeking for bread to keep them alive. The LXX. add, και ουχ ευρον, and found none, with whom the Syriac agrees. But no such words appear in the Hebrew copies, although the thing is implied, for they would not have died if they had found what they sought.