Ratapan 5:3

5:3 We have become fatherless orphans;

our mothers have become widows.

Ratapan 2:12

ל (Lamed)

2:12 Children ¹  say to their mothers, ² 

“Where are food and drink?” ³ 

They faint ⁴  like a wounded warrior

in the city squares.

They die slowly ⁵ 

in their mothers’ arms. ⁶ 

Ratapan 4:10

י (Yod)

4:10 The hands of tenderhearted women ⁷ 

cooked their own children,

who became their food, ⁸ 

when my people ⁹  were destroyed. ¹⁰ 

Ratapan 2:20

Jerusalem Speaks:

ר (Resh)

2:20 Look, O Lord! Consider! ¹¹ 

Whom have you ever afflicted ¹²  like this?

Should women eat their offspring, ¹³ 

their healthy infants? ¹⁴ 

Should priest and prophet

be killed in the Lord’s ¹⁵  sanctuary?

[2:12]  ¹ tn Heb “they”; the referent has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[2:12]  ² tn Heb “to their mother,” understood as a collective singular.

[2:12]  ³ tn Heb “Where is bread and wine?” The terms “bread” and “wine” are synecdoches of specific (= bread, wine) for general (= food, drink).

[2:12]  ⁴ tn Heb “as they faint” or “when they faint.”

[2:12]  ⁵ tn Heb “as their life is poured out.” The term בְּהִשְׁתַּפֵּךְ (bÿhishtappekh), Hitpael infinitive construct + the preposition בּ (bet), from שָׁפַךְ (shafakh, “to pour out”) may be rendered “as they expire” (BDB 1050 s.v. שָׁפַךְ), referring to the process of dying. Note the repetition of the word “pour out” with various direct objects in this poem at 2:4, 11, 12, and 19.

[2:12]  ⁶ tn Heb “chest, lap.”

[4:10]  ⁷ tn Heb “the hands of compassionate women.”

[4:10]  ⁸ tn Heb “eating.” The infinitive construct (from I בָּרָה, barah) is translated as a noun. Three passages employ the verb (2 Sam 3:35; 12:17; 13:5,6,10) for eating when ill or in mourning.

[4:10]  ⁹ tn Heb “the daughter of my people.”

[4:10]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “in the destruction of the daughter of my people.”

[2:20]  ¹¹ tn Heb “Look, O Lord! See!” When used in collocation with verbs of cognition, רָאָה (ra’ah) means “to see for oneself” or “to take notice” (1 Sam 26:12). The parallelism between seeing and understanding is often emphasized (e.g., Exod 16:6; Isa 5:19; 29:15; Job 11:11; Eccl 6:5). See also 1:11 and cf. 1:9, 12, 20; 3:50, 59, 60; 5:1.

[2:20]  sn Integral to battered Jerusalem’s appeal, and part of the ancient Near Eastern lament genre, is the request for God to look at her pain. This should evoke pity regardless of the reason for punishment. The request is not for God to see merely that there are misfortunes, as one might note items on a checklist. The cognitive (facts) and affective (feelings) are not divided. The plea is for God to watch, think about, and be affected by these facts while listening to the petitioner’s perspective.

[2:20]  ¹² tn For the nuance “afflict” see the note at 1:12.

[2:20]  ¹³ tn Heb “their fruit.” The term פְּרִי (pÿri, “fruit”) is used figuratively to refer to children as the fruit of a mother’s womb (e.g., Gen 30:2; Deut 7:13; 28:4, 11, 18, 53; 30:9; Pss 21:11; 127:3; 132:11; Isa 13:18; Mic 6:7).

[2:20]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “infants of healthy childbirth.” The genitive-construct phrase עֹלֲלֵי טִפֻּחִים (’olale tippukhim) functions as an attributive genitive construction: “healthy newborn infants.” The noun טִפֻּחִים (tippukhim) appears only here. It is related to the verb טָפַח (tafakh), meaning “to give birth to a healthy child” or “to raise children” depending on whether the Arabic or Akkadian cognate is emphasized. For the related verb, see below at 2:22.

[2:20]  sn Placing the specific reference to children at the end of the line in apposition to clarify that it does not describe the normal eating of fruit helps produce the repulsive shock of the image. Furthermore, the root of the word for “infants” (עוֹלֵל, ’olel) has the same root letters for the verb “to afflict” occurring in the first line of the verse, making a pun (F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp, Lamentations [IBC], 99-100).

[2:20]  ¹⁵ tc The MT reads אֲדֹנָי (’adonay, “the Lord”) here rather than יהוה (YHWH, “the Lord”) as at the beginning of the verse. See the tc note at 1:14.