Lamentations 2:15-16

ס (Samek)

2:15 All who passed by on the road

clapped their hands to mock you. ¹ 

They sneered and shook their heads

at Daughter Jerusalem.

“Ha! Is this the city they called ² 

‘The perfection of beauty, ³ 

the source of joy of the whole earth!’?” ⁴ 

פ (Pe)

2:16 All your enemies

gloated over you. ⁵ 

They sneered and gnashed their teeth;

they said, “We have destroyed ⁶  her!

Ha! We have waited a long time for this day.

We have lived to see it!” ⁷ 

Psalms 79:4

79:4 We have become an object of disdain to our neighbors;

those who live on our borders taunt and insult us. ⁸ 

Psalms 137:3-4

137:3 for there our captors ask us to compose songs; ⁹ 

those who mock us demand that we be happy, saying: ¹⁰ 

“Sing for us a song about Zion!” ¹¹ 

137:4 How can we sing a song to the Lord

in a foreign land?

Micah 4:11

4:11 Many nations have now assembled against you.

They say, “Jerusalem must be desecrated, ¹² 

so we can gloat over Zion!” ¹³ 

[2:15]  ¹ tn Heb “clap their hands at you.” Clapping hands at someone was an expression of malicious glee, derision and mockery (Num 24:10; Job 27:23; Lam 2:15).

[2:15]  ² tn Heb “of which they said.”

[2:15]  ³ tn Heb “perfection of beauty.” The noun יֹפִי (yofi, “beauty”) functions as a genitive of respect in relation to the preceding construct noun: Jerusalem was perfect in respect to its physical beauty.

[2:15]  ⁴ tn Heb “the joy of all the earth.” This is similar to statements found in Pss 48:2 and 50:2.

[2:16]  ⁵ tn Heb “they have opened wide their mouth against you.”

[2:16]  ⁶ tn Heb “We have swallowed!”

[2:16]  ⁷ tn Heb “We have attained, we have seen!” The verbs מָצָאנוּ רָאִינוּ (matsa’nu ra’inu) form a verbal hendiadys in which the first retains its full verbal sense and the second functions as an object complement. It forms a Hebrew idiom that means something like, “We have lived to see it!” The three asyndetic 1st person common plural statements in 2:16 (“We waited, we destroyed, we saw!”) are spoken in an impassioned, staccato style reflecting the delight of the conquerors.

[79:4]  ⁸ tn Heb “an [object of] taunting and [of] mockery to those around us.” See Ps 44:13.

[137:3]  ⁹ tn Heb “ask us [for] the words of a song.”

[137:3]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “our [?] joy.” The derivation and meaning of the Hebrew phrase תוֹלָלֵינוּ (tolalenu, “our [?]”) are uncertain. A derivation from תָּלַל (talal, “to mock”) fits contextually, but this root occurs only in the Hiphil stem. For a discussion of various proposals, see L. C. Allen, Psalms 101-150 (WBC), 236.

[137:3]  ¹¹ tn Heb “from a song of Zion.” Most modern translations read, “one of the songs of Zion,” taking the preposition מִן (min, “from”) as partitive and “song” as collective. The present translation assumes the mem (ם) is enclitic, being misunderstood later as the prefixed preposition.

[4:11]  ¹² tn Heb “let her be desecrated.” the referent (Jerusalem) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[4:11]  ¹³ tn Heb “and let our eye look upon Zion.”