Lamentations 2:20-22 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Behold, O Lord, to whom thou hast done this To thy people, for whom thou hast formerly expressed so much tenderness and affection. Jerusalem seems to be here introduced speaking. Shall the women eat their fruit We find by comparing this verse with chap. Lamentations 4:10, that God brought upon them that terrible judgment which he had denounced against them, if they continued to provoke him, namely, that they should eat the flesh of their own sons and daughters. See the margin. And children of a span long Hebrew, שׂפחים, rendered in the margin, swaddled with their hands, and by the LXX., νηπια θηλαζοντα μαστους, infants sucking the breasts. Shall the priest and the prophet be slain in the sanctuary of the Lord? Shall thy ministers be slain, and that in thy sanctuary? We learn from this, 1st, That the Chaldeans spared no character, no, not the most distinguished; even the priest and the prophet, who, of all men, one would think, might have expected protection from heaven, and veneration on earth, yet they were slain; not abroad in the field of battle, where they would have been out of their place, as Hophni and Phinehas were, but in the sanctuary of the Lord, the place of their business, and which they hoped would have been a refuge to them. 2d, They spared no age, no, not those who, by reason of their tender or decrepit age, were exempted from taking up the sword; for the young and the old lay on the ground slain in the streets. 3d, They spared no sex, the virgins and the young men fell by the sword. In the most barbarous military executions that we read of, the virgins were spared and made part of the spoil, but here they were put to the sword as well as the young men. We learn, 4th, That this was the Lord's doing; he suffered the sword of the Chaldeans to devour thus without distinction; he slew them in the day of his anger Namely, his anger for their many and aggravated sins. Thou hast called, as in a solemn day A day of awful retribution; my terrors round about As my people were wont to be called together from all parts on solemn days, when they were to meet at Jerusalem for thy service; so now, by thy providence, my terrible enemies are by thee called together to slay thy people in that holy city in which they were wont to worship thee. So that none escaped nor remained That is, few or none. Those that I have swaddled, and brought up, hath mine enemy consumed As if they had been brought forth for the murderer, like lambs for the butcher, Hosea 9:13. Zion, that was a mother to them all, laments to see those that were brought up in her courts, and under the tuition of her oracles, thus made a prey of and destroyed.