Is Any Sorrow Like My Sorrow
12 “Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? Look, and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow, which is brought on me, with which Yahweh has afflicted me in the day of his fierce anger. 13 “From on high has he sent fire into my bones, and it prevails against them. He has spread a net for my feet. He has turned me back. He has made me desolate and I faint all day long. 14 “The yoke of my transgressions is bound by his hand. They are knit together. They have come up on my neck. He made my strength fail. The Lord has delivered me into their hands, against whom I am not able to stand. 15 “The Lord has set at nothing all my mighty men within me. He has called a solemn assembly against me to crush my young men. The Lord has trodden the virgin daughter of Judah as in a wine press. 16 “For these things I weep. My eye, my eye runs down with water, because the comforter who should refresh my soul is far from me. My children are desolate, because the enemy has prevailed.” 17 Zion spreads out her hands. There is no one to comfort her. Yahweh has commanded concerning Jacob, that those who are around him should be his adversaries. Jerusalem is among them as an unclean thing. 18 “Yahweh is righteous, for I have rebelled against his commandment. Please hear all you peoples, and see my sorrow. My virgins and my young men have gone into captivity. 19 “I called for my lovers, but they deceived me. My priests and my elders gave up the spirit in the city, while they sought food for themselves to refresh their souls. 20 “Look, Yahweh; for I am in distress. My heart is troubled. My heart turns over within me, for I have grievously rebelled. Abroad, the sword bereaves. At home, it is like death. 21 “They have heard that I sigh. There is no one to comfort me. All my enemies have heard of my trouble. They are glad that you have done it. You will bring the day that you have proclaimed, and they will be like me. 22 “Let all their wickedness come before you. Do to them as you have done to me for all my transgressions. For my sighs are many, and my heart is faint.
The city speaks for herself for the first time, and what she asks passers-by for is not help but attention.
From verse 12 the voice changes and Jerusalem speaks. Her first words are addressed to people walking past: is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? Look, and see.
That is the request the whole chapter has been building toward, and it is not a request for rescue. She asks to be looked at. A grief nobody acknowledges is a second injury, and the poem treats the indifference of passers-by as part of the suffering rather than a separate failing.
The images that follow are all of a hand deliberately applied: fire sent into the bones, a net spread for the feet, a yoke bound by his hand and knit together, the young men crushed, the daughter of Judah trodden as in a winepress Lamentations 1:13–15. The agent throughout is God, named without hedging.
And in the middle of it, verse 18: Yahweh is righteous, for I have rebelled against his commandment. The poem holds the two together without resolving them — the affliction described as God's own work, and God declared right in doing it, by the one being afflicted.
Verse 16 returns to the wound of the chapter: the comforter who should refresh my soul is far from me.
The chapter ends where lament often ends, in a request that the same measure fall on those who watched and were glad Lamentations 1:21–22. It is not a polished sentiment, and the book does not tidy it.
settled What this mark means