Chapter ii.--"Ah how in wrath the Lord | Beclouds Bath-Sion!" The poet

laments Yahweh's anger as the true cause which destroyed city and kingdom, suspended feast and Sabbath, rejected altar and sanctuary. He mentions the uproar of the victors in the Temple; the dismantling of the walls; the exile of king and princes (verses 1-9). He recalls the mourning in the doomed city; the children dying of hunger in the streets; the prophets deluding the people with vain hopes. Passers-by jeered at the fallen city; and all her enemies triumphed over her (verses 10-17). Sion is urged to cry to the Lord in protest against His pitiless work (verses 18-22).

Here too emendation is necessary. Verse 4a: [Hebrew: hetziv hatzev], "He fixed His arrow," sc. on the string (Septuagint, [Greek: estereôsen]); cf. Psalm xi. 2. Add at the end [Hebrew: kila (et) apo], "He spent His anger:" see iv. 11; Ezek. vii. 8, xx. 8, 21. Verse 6: [Hebrew: vaifratz gader mishkano], "And He broke down the wall of His dwelling-place" (Septuagint [Greek: tho skênôma autou]; cf. Psalm lxxxiv. 7f., where [Hebrew: moed] follows, as here). Is. v. 5; Psalms lxxx. 13, lxxxix. 41. Perhaps [Hebrew: vaiehares], verses 2, 17. But Septuagint [Greek: kahi diepetasen] = [Hebrew: vaifros] (i. 13, 17) = [Hebrew: vaifros] (iv. 4) or even [Hebrew: vaifrotz]. Verse 9, perhaps: "He sunk ([Hebrew: tava]) her gates in the ground,--He shattered her bars; He made her king and her princes wander ([Hebrew: ybir], Jer. xxiii. 1)--Among the nations without Torah" (cf. Ezek. vii. 26 f.). Verse 18: "Cry much" ([Hebrew: rabat]; or bitterly, [Hebrew: mar], Zeph. i. 14) "unto the Lord, O Virgin Daughter of Zion!" Verse 19 is metrically redundant, and the last clauses do not agree with what follows. "For the life of thy children" was altered from "for what He hath done to thee" ([Hebrew: al sheolel leha]); and then the rest was added. The uniform gloom of this, the most dirge-like of all the pieces, is unrelieved by a single ray of hope, even the hope of vengeance; cf. chapters i. iii. iv. _ad fin_.