Lamentations 5:12 - Exposition

Princes are hanged up by their hand; i.e. by the hand of the enemy. Impalement after death was a common punishment with the Assyrians and Babylonians. Thus Sennacherib says that, after capturing rebellious Ekron, he hung the bodies of the chief men on stakes all round the city ('Records of the Past,' 1.38). Benomi gives a picture of such an impalement from one of the plates in Botta's great work.