Lamentations

Chapter 1

How Lonely Lies the City!

Lamentations 1 mourns Jerusalem as a once-crowded city now left solitary, humiliated, and exposed after judgment. The chapter moves from the city's desolation and public shame to its own first-person cries, acknowledging that its suffering is bound up with sin while still pleading for the LORD to see, hear, and answer amid the ruin.

As the book's opening lament, this chapter establishes the emotional and theological pattern for everything that follows: devastation is described unsparingly, enemies triumph, Zion grieves, and yet the pain is interpreted in relation to the LORD's righteous judgment rather than as meaningless disaster.

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Lamentations 1

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vv. 1-22

How Lonely Lies the City!

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H¹ow lonely lies the city, ²She weeps aloud in the night, ³Judah has gone into exile ⁴The roads to Zion mourn, ⁵Her foes have become her masters;

⁶All the splendor has departed ⁷In the days of her affliction and wandering ⁸Jerusalem has sinned greatly; ⁹Her uncleanness stains her skirts; ¹⁰The adversary has seized ¹¹All her people groan

¹²Is this nothing to you, all you who pass by? ¹³He sent fire from on high, ¹⁴My transgressions are bound into a yoke, ¹⁵The Lord has rejected ¹⁶For these things I weep;

¹⁷Zion stretches out her hands, ¹⁸The LORD is righteous, ¹⁹I called out to my lovers, ²⁰See, O LORD, how distressed I am! ²¹People have heard my groaning, ²²Let all their wickedness come before You,

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01vv. 1-22How Lonely Lies the City!Jerusalem is portrayed as a widowed, enslaved city whose festivals have ceased, whose roads and gates are desolate, and whose enemies prosper while her people groan. The lament shifts into Jerusalem's own voice as she recounts fire, yoke, rejection, and abandonment, yet still appeals to the LORD to look on her distress and to bring justice against those who rejoice over her downfall.