Commentary - Lamentations 2:5

Bird's-eye view

This verse is one of the most stark and terrifying in all of Scripture, articulating the central horror of Jerusalem's fall. The prophet, speaking for the remnant, makes no excuses and points no fingers at Babylon. He looks past the secondary causes and sees the primary cause with terrifying clarity: the Lord Himself has turned against His own covenant people. This is not a random tragedy; it is a deliberate, personal, and comprehensive act of divine judgment. God, who had pledged to be their defender, has now taken on the role of their adversary, their enemy. He is systematically dismantling the nation, swallowing its identity, demolishing its centers of power and pride, and leaving nothing in His wake but an ocean of sorrow. This is the covenant lawsuit reaching its awful verdict and sentence, all executed by the hand of the divine Judge.

The language is that of total consumption and ruin. The repetition of "swallowed up" emphasizes the completeness of the destruction. Nothing is left. The palaces, representing their civic glory and wealth, are gone. The strongholds, representing their military security and self-reliance, are gone. The result is not just sadness, but a divinely multiplied and inescapable state of grief. This is what happens when a people exhaust the patience of a holy God.

Outline

Context In Lamentations

Lamentations 2 is a detailed recounting of the destruction of Jerusalem with a specific theological focus: the anger of the Lord. The chapter relentlessly attributes the city's demise not to the military might of the Babylonians, but to the deliberate and righteous wrath of God. Verse 5 serves as a thematic summary of this reality. It follows descriptions of how the Lord has bent His bow like an enemy (v. 4) and cast off His altar and sanctuary (v. 7). This verse crystallizes the raw theological truth that undergirds the entire book: Israel's greatest protector has become her most fearsome foe because of her persistent, unrepentant sin. This is the explicit fulfillment of the covenant curses threatened centuries before in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28, where God promised that if His people broke covenant, He Himself would fight against them.

Key Issues

The Divine Enemy

We are modern, sentimental creatures, and we like to imagine God as a sort of cosmic teddy bear, infinitely cuddly and constitutionally incapable of acting with severity. This verse is a bucket of ice water in the face of all such notions. The text says plainly that the Lord, Yahweh, the covenant God of Israel, has become like an enemy. This does not mean He has become sinful or unjust. God is never the author of sin. It means that His holy and righteous opposition to sin has been fully unleashed against the people who bore His name. He is now acting toward them in the way a conquering general acts toward a rebellious city.

For generations, Israel had treated God as their enemy through their idolatry, injustice, and hypocrisy. They had set up other lovers in His sight. They had broken His laws. They had ignored His prophets. Now, in this terrible judgment, God is simply agreeing with them. He is saying, through fire and sword, "You have treated me as your enemy. Very well. I will now show you what it is like to have Me as your enemy." This is the terrible logic of the covenant. The God who blesses obedience is the same God who curses disobedience. He is not a fickle deity; He is a faithful one, faithful to His warnings as much as to His promises.

Verse by Verse Commentary

5a The Lord has become like an enemy.

The foundation of the lament is this shocking role reversal. The Hebrew word for Lord is Adonai, emphasizing His sovereign authority. The one who is supposed to be their master and protector is now their opponent. The word "like" is important; God has not ceased to be Himself. He has not become capricious or evil. Rather, He has taken on the posture and function of an enemy in order to execute perfect justice. He is the divine warrior, but the shocking thing is that His arrows are now turned inward, against His own unfaithful bride. All the power that was once wielded for their salvation is now wielded for their destruction. This is what unrepented sin does; it turns a Father into a Judge, and a Shepherd into a lion.

5b He has swallowed up Israel; He has swallowed up all its palaces;

The verb here, bālaʿ, means to swallow or engulf. It pictures a total, catastrophic consumption, leaving no remainder. First, He swallows up "Israel" as a whole, the corporate identity of the people. The nation as they knew it is simply gone, consumed by the wrath of God. Then, the prophet specifies the destruction, using the same verb for emphasis. He has swallowed up its palaces. Palaces were the symbols of the nation's wealth, prestige, and royal authority. They were the visible evidence of the Davidic covenant and the glory of the kingdom. By swallowing them, God is demonstrating that the nation's trust in its own splendor and political structures was a hollow idolatry. The things they built to glorify themselves have been devoured by the God they refused to glorify.

5c He has brought its strongholds to ruin

After the palaces, the symbols of civic pride, come the strongholds, the symbols of military security. If the palaces represented their trust in wealth and culture, the strongholds represented their trust in their own power to defend themselves. These were the fortified cities, the walls, the garrisons. They were the nation's insurance policy against foreign invasion. But no wall can stand when God is the one attacking it. By bringing them to ruin, God is teaching His people the hard lesson of Psalm 20:7, "Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God." Judah had ceased to trust in the name of the Lord, and so their chariots and strongholds were proven to be worthless rubble.

5d And multiplied in the daughter of Judah Mourning and moaning.

The result of this divine assault is an emotional devastation that matches the physical devastation. "Daughter of Judah" is a tender personification of the collective people of Judah, now pictured as a bereaved woman. God has not just caused a little sadness; He has multiplied mourning and moaning. The Hebrew here is a powerful alliteration, taʾăniyyâ waʾăniyyâ, which conveys the sound of weeping, a grief that is layered and unending. This sorrow is the direct and intended consequence of God's action. It is the bitter fruit that grows from the tree of rebellion. This is the beginning of wisdom: to recognize that the deepest sorrows of our lives are often the righteous judgment of God upon our sin, intended to bring us to our knees.

Application

This verse stands as a permanent warning against presumption. It is easy for those of us in the new covenant to read this and thank God that we are not like old covenant Israel. But the apostle Paul warns us not to be arrogant, for if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will He spare us if we walk in unbelief (Romans 11:21). The church can fall into the same sins as Israel: trusting in our palaces (our fine buildings, our budgets, our cultural influence) and our strongholds (our political maneuvering, our demographic size, our clever strategies) instead of in the living God. When we do this, we invite the discipline of the Lord. And as Peter tells us, judgment begins with the household of God (1 Peter 4:17).

The only safe place to stand when confronted with the reality of God as an enemy of sin is at the foot of the cross. For at the cross, God the Son was treated as the ultimate enemy by God the Father. On Calvary, Jesus was "swallowed up." He endured the fullness of the covenant curse. The divine warrior bent His bow and shot all His arrows of wrath into His own Son. He did this so that all who abandon their own palaces and strongholds and flee to Christ for refuge would never have to face God as an enemy. In Christ, God's opposition to our sin has been satisfied. Because Jesus was engulfed by the wrath we deserved, we can be engulfed by the grace we do not. We must, therefore, hear the warning of Lamentations and repent of our self-reliance, lest we face the terrible chastisement of our God. For our God is a consuming fire.