Bible Strands
Lamentations 2:11
My eyes fail from weeping; I am churning within. My heart is poured out in grief over the destruction of the daughter of my people, because children and infants faint in the streets of the city.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — The speaker, addressing God or the community, describes the immediate aftermath of Jerusalem's destruction during the national mourning period. This occurs while elders sit in silence and citizens collapse from hunger in the surrounding verses.
The words — The Hebrew כָּל֨וּ (ka.Lu) literally means "they have failed," describing eyes exhausted from tears, while חֳמַרְמְר֣וּ (cho.mar.me.Ru) denotes the inward parts being in violent turmoil. נִשְׁפַּ֤ךְ (nish.Pakh) similarly portrays the liver or inward parts being poured out to the ground.
The thread — This imagery of inward churning and poured-out grief reappears in Lamentations 1:20 where the speaker describes rebellion and a pounding heart, and in Jeremiah 4:19 with similar expressions of anguish. Job 16:13 also uses the motif of pierced kidneys and spilled gall on the ground to depict divine affliction.
Why it lands — The text demands recognition of physical and emotional collapse as a direct response to national ruin. It requires the reader to acknowledge that grief over collective destruction manifests as bodily exhaustion and internal turmoil.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
Mine eyes do fail with tears, my bowels are troubled, my liver is poured upon the earth, for the destruction of the daughter of my people; because the children and the sucklings swoon in the streets of the city.
Cross-references
- Lamentations 1:20 See, O LORD, how distressed I am! I am churning within; my heart is pounding within me, for I have been most rebellious. Outside, the sword bereaves; inside, there is death.
- Job 16:13 His archers surround me. He pierces my kidneys without mercy and spills my gall on the ground.
- Jeremiah 4:19 My anguish, my anguish! I writhe in pain! Oh, the pain in my chest! My heart pounds within me; I cannot be silent. For I have heard the sound of the horn, the alarm of battle.
- Lamentations 1:16 For these things I weep; my eyes flow with tears. For there is no one nearby to comfort me, no one to revive my soul. My children are destitute because the enemy has prevailed.
- Psalms 6:7 My eyes fail from grief; they grow dim because of all my foes.
- Psalms 22:14 I am poured out like water, and all my bones are disjointed. My heart is like wax; it melts away within me.
- Isaiah 22:4 Therefore I said, “Turn away from me, let me weep bitterly! Do not try to console me over the destruction of the daughter of my people.”
- Lamentations 3:48 Streams of tears flow from my eyes over the destruction of the daughter of my people.
- Luke 23:29 Look, the days are coming when people will say, ‘Blessed are the barren women, the wombs that never bore, and breasts that never nursed!’
- Psalms 31:9 Be merciful to me, O LORD, for I am in distress; my eyes fail from sorrow, my soul and body as well.