Lamentations 1:1 - Exposition

How . The characteristic introductory word of an elegy (comp. Isaiah 1:21 ; Isaiah 14:4 , Isaiah 14:12 ), and adopted by the early Jewish divines as the title of the Book of Lamentations. It is repeated at the opening of Lamentations 2:1-22 and Lamentations 4:1-22 . Sit solitary. Jerusalem is poetically personified and distinguished from the persons who accidentally compose her population. She is "solitary," not as having retired into solitude, but as deserted by her inhabitants (same word as in first clause of Isaiah 27:10 ). How is she become as a widow! etc. Rather, She is become a widow that was great among the nations; a princess among the provinces, she is become a vassal. The alteration greatly conduces to the effect of the verse, which consists of three parallel lines, like almost all the rest of the chapter. We are not to press the phrase, "a widow," as if some. earthly or heavenly husband were alluded to; it is a kind of symbol of desolation and misery (comp. Isaiah 47:8 ). "The provinces" at once suggests the period of the writer, who must have been a subject of the Babylonian empire. The term is also frequently used of the countries under the Persian rule ( e.g. Esther 1:1 , Esther 1:22 ), and in Ezra 2:1 and Nehemiah 7:6 is used of Judah itself. Here, however, the "provinces," like the "nations," must be the countries formerly subject to David and Solomon (comp. Ecclesiastes 2:8 ).