Bible Strands
Lamentations 2:13
What can I say for you? To what can I compare you, O Daughter of Jerusalem? To what can I liken you, that I may console you, O Virgin Daughter of Zion? For your wound is as deep as the sea. Who can ever heal you?
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — The speaker addresses the Daughter of Jerusalem and Virgin Daughter of Zion, posing rhetorical questions about consolation amid the city's devastation. This occurs during the famine and slaughter described in the surrounding verses where citizens faint in the streets and false prophets mislead the people.
The words — The Hebrew מָה (mah) repeats three times to emphasize the impossibility of finding a fitting comparison. אֲדַמֶּה (adamme) and אַשְׁוֶה (ashveh) both mean "will I liken" or "will I make equal," underscoring the speaker's search for an analogy to console the wounded city.
The thread — The motif of unhealable wounds and failed consolation appears in Lamentations 1:12 and Jeremiah 8:22, which ask if balm or physicians can restore the people. The rhetorical search for a comparison echoes prophetic laments that trace national collapse to divine judgment.
Why it lands — The text demands recognition that human consolation and prophetic promises cannot address the depth of the city's ruin. It leaves the reader to confront the reality that only a power beyond human means can restore what has been shattered.
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
What thing shall I take to witness for thee? what thing shall I liken to thee, O daughter of Jerusalem? what shall I equal to thee, that I may comfort thee, O virgin daughter of Zion? for thy breach is great like the sea: who can heal thee?
Cross-references
- Lamentations 1:12 Is this nothing to you, all you who pass by? Look around and see! Is there any sorrow like mine, which was inflicted on me, which the LORD made me suffer on the day of His fierce anger?
- 2 Samuel 5:20 So David went to Baal-perazim, where he defeated the Philistines and said, “Like a bursting flood, the LORD has burst out against my enemies before me.” So he called that place Baal-perazim.
- Jeremiah 8:22 Is there no balm in Gilead? Is no physician there? Why then has the health of the daughter of my people not been restored?
- Jeremiah 14:17 You are to speak this word to them: ‘My eyes overflow with tears; day and night they do not cease, for the virgin daughter of my people has been shattered by a crushing blow, a severely grievous wound.
- Jeremiah 30:12 For this is what the LORD says: “Your injury is incurable; your wound is grievous.
- Psalms 60:2 You have shaken the land and torn it open. Heal its fractures, for it is quaking.
- Isaiah 37:22 this is the word that the LORD has spoken against him: ‘The Virgin Daughter of Zion despises you and mocks you; the Daughter of Jerusalem shakes her head behind you.
- Jeremiah 51:8 Suddenly Babylon has fallen and been shattered. Wail for her; get her balm for her pain; perhaps she can be healed.
- Ezekiel 26:3 therefore this is what the Lord GOD says: ‘Behold, O Tyre, I am against you, and I will raise up many nations against you, as the sea brings up its waves.
- Daniel 9:12 You have carried out the words spoken against us and against our rulers by bringing upon us a great disaster. For under all of heaven, nothing has ever been done like what has been done to Jerusalem.