Lamentations 2:11-12

THE LAMENTATION, Lamentations 2:11-16.

11, 12. Liver is poured… earth This language occurs nowhere else in the Old Testament, and the exact force of it is doubtful. “My soul is poured out” occurs in two passages, but this is easier. It would seem that “the liver” is taken as representing the large viscera, usually classed together under the general name of bowels, and regarded as the seat of the emotions. If so, the expression means that he could no longer restrain his feelings; that his grief must have vent in expression.

Swoon Rather faint; or, with Keil, pine away. No feature of the common calamity the utter desolation of the people is more graphic or more painful than the falling down of the children in the street from hunger, and their pitiful and oft repeated cry, Where is corn and wine? until they finally expire in the arms of their miserable mothers.