Lamentations 1:21 - John Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Bible Comments

They have heard that I sigh: [there is] none to comfort me,.... That is, the nations, as the Targum; the neighbouring ones, those that were her confederates and allies; the same with her lovers, as before, as Aben Ezra observes; these being near her, knew full well her sorrowful and distressed condition, being as it were within the hearing of her sighs and groans; and yet none of them offered to help her, or so much as to speak a comfortable word to her:

all mine enemies have heard of my trouble; not only her friends, but foes; meaning the Tyrians, Edomites, Moabites, and Ammonites, and as the following description of them shows; for it must design others from the Chaldeans, that were the immediate cause of it:

they are glad that thou hast done [it]; brought all this ruin and destruction on Jerusalem, which could never have been done, if the Lord had not willed it; and at this the above mentioned nations rejoiced; see Ezekiel 25:3; there being a considerable stop on the word glad, it may be rendered, as by some, "they are glad; but thou hast done it" n; not they, but thou; and therefore must be patiently bore, and quietly submitted to, it being the Lord's doing:

thou wilt bring the day [that] thou hast called; the time of, he destruction of, he Chaldeans, who had the chief hand in the ruin of the Jewish nation, and of those that rejoiced at it; which time was fixed by the Lord, and proclaimed and published by his prophets, and would certainly and exactly come, as and when it was pointed out: some o take it to be a wish or prayer, that God would bring it, as he had declared; though others interpret it in a quite different sense, "thou hast brought the day" p; meaning on herself, the determined destruction; so the Targum,

"thou hast brought upon me the day of vengeance; thou hast called a time upon me to my desolation:''

and they shall be like unto me; in the same distressed, desolate, and sorrowful condition, being brought to ruin and destruction; which afterwards was the case of the Chaldeans, and all the other nations.

n כי אתה עשית "laetati sunt; sed tu fecisti", Grotius. o "Utinam induceres diem", so some in Vatablus. p חבאת יום "adduxisti diem", V. L. Pagninus, Montanus; "induxisti [aut] inducis", Vatablus.

Lamentations 1:21

21 They have heard that I sigh: there is none to comfort me: all mine enemies have heard of my trouble; they are glad that thou hast done it: thou wilt bring the day that thou hast called,e and they shall be like unto me.