Lamentations 2:1 - John Trapp Complete Commentary

Bible Comments

How hath the Lord covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in his anger, [and] cast down from heaven unto the earth the beauty of Israel, and remembered not his footstool in the day of his anger!

Ver. 1. How hath the Lord covered the daughter of Zion witha cloud!] Heb., With a thick cloud: nothing like that bright cloud wherein he appeared to his people, as a token of his grace, at the dedication of the temple. 1Ki 8:10 How comes it about, and what may be the reason for it? Oh in what a wonderful manner and by what strange means hath the Lord now clouded and covered his people (whom he had established as Mount Zion) with blackest calamities and confusions, taking all the lustre of happiness and of hope from her, and that in his anger, and again in the day of his anger!

Tantaene animis coelestibus irae?

And cast down from heaven to earth,] i.e., From the highest pitch of felicity to the lowest plight of misery. This was afterwards indeed Caperuaum's case; but when Micah the Morashite prophesied in the times of Jeremiah that "Zion should be ploughed as a field, and Jerusalem laid on heaps," Mic 3:12 Jer 26:18 it seemed a paradox, and very few believed them. Christ's disciples also had a conceit that the temple and the world must needs have one and the same period, which occasioned that mixed discourse made by our Saviour. Mat 24:1-3 But God's gracious presence is not tied to a place. The ark, God's footstool (as here it is called) was transportative till settled in Zion; so is the Church militant in continual motion, till it come to triumph in heaven; and those that with Capernaum are lifted up to heaven in the abundance of means, may be brought down to hell for an instance of divine vengeance.

And remembered not his footstool.] The temple, and therein the ark, to teach them that he was not wholly there included, neither ought now to be sought and worshipped anywhere but above. Sursum corda.

Lamentations 2:1

1 How hath the Lord covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in his anger, and cast down from heaven unto the earth the beauty of Israel, and remembered not his footstool in the day of his anger!