Lamentations 1:7 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Bible Comments

Jerusalem remembered in her affliction and misery. The word מרודים, here rendered misery, frequently signifies banishment and captivity. The LXX. render it απωσμων, rejections, or expulsions; all her pleasant things All her former riches and glory, and the various benefits she enjoyed from God's favour and protection, particularly the honour and happiness of having his peculiar presence in the temple, and among his people, and the manifestation he gave of his will by the prophets. Nothing is more natural than for persons, who have fallen into adversity, to recollect the advantages they had formerly possessed, and to feel an aggravation of their sufferings in proportion to the greatness of the contrast. The adversaries saw her, and did mock at her sabbaths Not considering the excellent uses those days were designed for; namely, to give men a proper degree of relaxation from labour; leisure to attend upon the service of God, and learn the duties of religion; and to celebrate the creation of the world, that wonderful effect of infinite wisdom, power, and goodness, which can never be sufficiently extolled. The heathen writers, it must be observed, commonly ridicule the Jews' celebration of their sabbaths as a mark of their sloth and idleness.

Lamentations 1:7

7 Jerusalem remembered in the days of her affliction and of her miseries all her pleasant things that she had in the days of old, when her people fell into the hand of the enemy, and none did help her: the adversaries saw her, and did mock at her sabbaths.