Lamentations Chapter 1 verse 1 Holy Bible

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerse 1. - How. The characteristic introductory word of an elegy (comp. Isaiah 1:21; Isaiah 14:4, 12), and adopted by the early Jewish divines as the title of the Book of Lamentations. It is repeated at the opening of ch. 2 and ch. 4. 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, 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).

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English ReadersI.(1) How doth the city . . .--The poem of twenty-two verses divides itself into two symmetrical halves, (1) Lamentations 1:1-11, in which the prophet laments over Jerusalem; and (2) Lamentations 1:12-22, more dramatic in its form, in which the daughter of Zion bewails her own miseries. Each verse is divided into three lines, each line beginning, in the Hebrew, with the same letter. The opening picture reminds us of the well-known Jud?a capta, a woman sitting under a palm-tree, on the Roman medals struck after the destruction of Jerusalem.How is she become.--Better, making one sentence instead of two, She is become a widow that was great among the nations, and so with the clause that follows.Provinces.--The word, used in Esther 1:1; Esther 1:22, and elsewhere, of the countries subject to Persia and Assyria and so in Ezra 2:1; Nehemiah 7:6, of Judah itself, here indicates the neighbouring countries that had once, as in the reign of Hezekiah, been subject to Judah. "Tributary," as used here, implies, as in Joshua 16:10, personal servitude, rather than the money payment, for which, at a later period, as in Esther 10:1, it was commuted. . . .