Bible Strands
Lamentations 2:5
The Lord is like an enemy; He has swallowed up Israel. He has swallowed up all her palaces and destroyed her strongholds. He has multiplied mourning and lamentation for the Daughter of Judah.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — The poet addresses the surviving community of Judah, describing the immediate aftermath of Jerusalem's fall. The speaker functions as a witness recounting divine judgment following the city's destruction.
The words — The verb בִּלַּ֣ע (bi.La') translates literally as "he has swallowed up" and appears twice to describe God's consumption of Israel and her palaces. The phrase כְּאוֹיֵב (ke.'o.Yev) means "like an enemy," framing Yahweh's actions in hostile terms.
The thread — This imagery of divine hostility echoes Lamentations 2:2, where the Lord swallows Jacob's dwellings, and Jeremiah 30:14, where God strikes Zion as an enemy would. The destruction of royal and religious structures parallels the historical record in 2 Kings 25:9.
Why it lands — The text demands recognition that covenant judgment operates through total devastation rather than partial correction. It requires the reader to acknowledge that mourning and lamentation are the direct result of divine action against Judah's strongholds and institutions.
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
The Lord was as an enemy: he hath swallowed up Israel, he hath swallowed up all her palaces: he hath destroyed his strong holds, and hath increased in the daughter of Judah mourning and lamentation.
Cross-references
- Lamentations 2:2 Without pity the Lord has swallowed up all the dwellings of Jacob. In His wrath He has demolished the fortified cities of the Daughter of Judah. He brought to the ground and defiled her kingdom and its princes.
- 2 Kings 25:9 He burned down the house of the LORD, the royal palace, and all the houses of Jerusalem—every significant building.
- Jeremiah 30:14 All your lovers have forgotten you; they no longer seek you, for I have struck you as an enemy would, with the discipline of someone cruel, because of your great iniquity and your numerous sins.
- Jeremiah 52:13 He burned down the house of the LORD, the royal palace, and all the houses of Jerusalem—every significant building.
- Lamentations 2:4 He has bent His bow like an enemy; His right hand is positioned. Like a foe He has killed all who were pleasing to the eye; He has poured out His wrath like fire on the tent of the Daughter of Zion.
- 2 Chronicles 36:16 But they mocked the messengers of God, despising His words and scoffing at His prophets, until the wrath of the LORD against His people was stirred up beyond remedy.
- Jeremiah 9:17 This is what the LORD of Hosts says: “Take note, and summon the wailing women; send for the most skillful among them.
- Jeremiah 15:1 Then the LORD said to me: “Even if Moses and Samuel should stand before Me, My heart would not go out to this people. Send them from My presence, and let them go!
- Ezekiel 2:10 which He unrolled before me. And written on the front and back of it were words of lamentation, mourning, and woe.