Isaiah 64:11-12

64:11 Our holy temple, our pride and joy, ¹ 

the place where our ancestors praised you,

has been burned with fire;

all our prized possessions have been destroyed. ² 

64:12 In light of all this, ³  how can you still hold back, Lord?

How can you be silent and continue to humiliate us?

Psalms 74:3-7

74:3 Hurry and look ⁴  at the permanent ruins,

and all the damage the enemy has done to the temple! ⁵ 

74:4 Your enemies roar ⁶  in the middle of your sanctuary; ⁷ 

they set up their battle flags. ⁸ 

74:5 They invade like lumberjacks

swinging their axes in a thick forest. ⁹ 

74:6 And now ¹⁰  they are tearing down ¹¹  all its engravings ¹² 

with axes ¹³  and crowbars. ¹⁴ 

74:7 They set your sanctuary on fire;

they desecrate your dwelling place by knocking it to the ground. ¹⁵ 

Lamentations 1:10

י (Yod)

1:10 An enemy grabbed ¹⁶ 

all her valuables. ¹⁷ 

Indeed she watched in horror ¹⁸  as Gentiles ¹⁹ 

invaded her holy temple ²⁰  –

those whom you ²¹  had commanded:

“They must not enter ²²  your assembly place.” ²³ 

Lamentations 4:1

The Prophet Speaks:

א (Alef)

4:1 ²⁴ Alas! ²⁵  Gold has lost its luster; ²⁶ 

pure gold loses value. ²⁷ 

Jewels ²⁸  are scattered

on every street corner. ²⁹ 

Matthew 24:2

24:2 And he said to them, ³⁰  “Do you see all these things? I tell you the truth, ³¹  not one stone will be left on another. ³²  All will be torn down!” ³³ 

Revelation 11:2

11:2 But ³⁴  do not measure the outer courtyard ³⁵  of the temple; leave it out, ³⁶  because it has been given to the Gentiles, ³⁷  and they will trample on the holy city ³⁸  for forty-two months.

[64:11]  ¹ tn Heb “our source of pride.”

[64:11]  ² tn Or “all that we valued has become a ruin.”

[64:12]  ³ tn Heb “because of these”; KJV, ASV “for these things.”

[74:3]  ⁴ tn Heb “lift up your steps to,” which may mean “run, hurry.”

[74:3]  ⁵ tn Heb “everything [the] enemy has damaged in the holy place.”

[74:4]  ⁶ tn This verb is often used of a lion’s roar, so the psalmist may be comparing the enemy to a raging, devouring lion.

[74:4]  ⁷ tn Heb “your meeting place.”

[74:4]  ⁸ tn Heb “they set up their banners [as] banners.” The Hebrew noun אוֹת (’ot, “sign”) here refers to the enemy army’s battle flags and banners (see Num 2:12).

[74:5]  ⁹ tn Heb “it is known like one bringing upwards, in a thicket of wood, axes.” The Babylonian invaders destroyed the woodwork in the temple.

[74:6]  ¹⁰ tn This is the reading of the Qere (marginal reading). The Kethib (consonantal text) has “and a time.”

[74:6]  ¹¹ tn The imperfect verbal form vividly describes the act as underway.

[74:6]  ¹² tn Heb “its engravings together.”

[74:6]  ¹³ tn This Hebrew noun occurs only here in the OT (see H. R. Cohen, Biblical Hapax Legomena [SBLDS], 49-50).

[74:6]  ¹⁴ tn This Hebrew noun occurs only here in the OT. An Akkadian cognate refers to a “pickaxe” (cf. NEB “hatchet and pick”; NIV “axes and hatchets”; NRSV “hatchets and hammers”).

[74:7]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “to the ground they desecrate the dwelling place of your name.”

[1:10]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “stretched out his hand.” The war imagery is of seizure of property; the anthropomorphic element pictures rape. This is an idiom that describes greedy actions (BDB 831 s.v. פָרַשׂ), meaning “to seize” (HALOT 976 s.v. 2).

[1:10]  ¹⁷ tc The Kethib is written מַחֲמוֹדֵּיהֶם (makhamodehem, “her desired things”); the Qere and many medieval Hebrew mss read מַחֲמַדֵּיהֶם (makhamaddehem, “her desirable things”). The Qere reading should be adopted.

[1:10]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “she watched” or “she saw.” The verb רָאָה (ra’ah, “to see”) has a broad range of meanings, including “to see” a spectacle causing grief (Gen 21:16; 44:34; Num 11:15; 2 Kgs 22:20; 2 Chr 34:28; Esth 8:6) or abhorrence (Isa 66:24). The words “in horror” are added to “she watched” to bring out this nuance.

[1:10]  ¹⁹ sn The syntax of the sentence is interrupted by the insertion of the following sentence, “they invaded…,” then continued with “whom…” The disruption of the syntax is a structural device intended to help convey the shock of the situation.

[1:10]  ²⁰ tn Heb “her sanctuary.” The term מִקְדָּשָׁהּ (miqdashah, “her sanctuary”) refers to the temple. Anthropomorphically, translating as “her sacred place” would also allow for the rape imagery.

[1:10]  ²¹ sn Lam 1-2 has two speaking voices: a third person voice reporting the horrific reality of Jerusalem’s suffering and Jerusalem’s voice. See W. F. Lanahan, “The Speaking Voice in the Book of Lamentations” JBL 93 (1974): 41-49. The reporting voice has been addressing the listener, referring to the Lord in the third person. Here he switches to a second person address to God, also changing the wording of the following command to second person. The revulsion of the Reporter is so great that he is moved to address God directly.

[1:10]  ²² tn Heb “enter.” The Hebrew term בּוֹא (bo’) is also a sexual metaphor.

[1:10]  ²³ tn The noun קָהָל (qahal, “assembly”) does not refer here to the collective group of people assembled to worship the Lord, but to the place of their assembly: the temple. This is an example of a synecdoche of the people contained (= assembly) for the container (= temple). The intent is to make the violation feel more personal than someone walking into a building.

[4:1]  ²⁴ sn According to W. F. Lanahan (“The Speaking Voice in the Book of Lamentations” JBL 93 [1974]: 48), the persona or speaking voice in chap. 4 is a bourgeois, the common man. This voice is somewhat akin to the Reporter in chs 1-2 in that much of the description is in the third person. However, “the bourgeois has some sense of identity with his fellow-citizens” seen in the shift to the first person plural. The alphabetic acrostic structure reduces to two bicola per letter. The first letter of only the first line in each stanza spells the acrostic.

[4:1]  ²⁵ tn See the note at 1:1

[4:1]  ²⁶ tn Heb “had grown dim.” The verb יוּעַם (yu’am), Hophal imperfect 3rd person masculine singular from עָמַם (’amam, “to conceal, darken”), literally means “to be dimmed” or “to be darkened.” Most English versions render this literally: the gold has “become dim” (KJV, NKJV), “grown dim” (RSV, NRSV), “is dulled” (NJPS), “grown dull” (TEV); however, but NIV has captured the sense well: “How the gold has lost its luster.”

[4:1]  ²⁷ tc The verb יִשְׁנֶא (yishne’, Qal imperfect 3rd person feminine singular) is typically taken to be the only Qal imperfect of I שָׁנָהּ (shanah). Such a spelling with א (aleph) instead of ה (he) is feasible. D. R. Hillers suggests the root שָׂנֵא (sane’, “to hate”): “Pure gold is hated”. This maintains the consonantal text and also makes sense in context. In either case the point is that gold no longer holds the same value, probably because there is nothing available to buy with it.

[4:1]  ²⁸ tn Heb “the stones of holiness/jewelry.” קֹדֶשׁ (qodesh) in most cases refers to holiness or sacredness. For the meaning “jewelry” see J. A. Emerton, “The Meaning of אַבְנֵי־קֹדֶשׁ in Lamentations 4:1” ZAW 79 (1967): 233-36.

[4:1]  ²⁹ tn Heb “at the head of every street.”

[24:2]  ³⁰ tn Grk “answering, he said to them.” The participle ἀποκριθείς (ajpokriqei") is redundant in English and has not been translated.

[24:2]  ³¹ tn Grk “Truly (ἀμήν, amhn), I say to you.”

[24:2]  ³² sn With the statement not one stone will be left on another Jesus predicted the total destruction of the temple, something that did occur in a.d. 70.

[24:2]  ³³ tn Grk “not one stone will be left here on another which will not be thrown down.”

[11:2]  ³⁴ tn Here καί (kai) has been translated as “but” to indicate the contrast present in this context.

[11:2]  ³⁵ tn On the term αὐλήν (aulhn) BDAG 150 s.v. αὐλή 1 states, “(outer) court of the temple…Rv 11:2.”

[11:2]  ³⁶ tn The precise meaning of the phrase ἔκβαλε ἔξωθεν (ekbale exwqen) is difficult to determine.

[11:2]  ³⁷ tn Or “to the nations” (the same Greek word may be translated “Gentiles” or “nations”).

[11:2]  ³⁸ sn The holy city appears to be a reference to Jerusalem. See also Luke 21:24.