What Does Lamentations 2:15 Mean in the King James?
All that pass by clap their hands at thee; they hiss and wag their head at the daughter of Jerusalem, saying, Is this the city that men call The perfection of beauty, The joy of the whole earth?
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The city’s former praise becomes its mockers’ weapon: its claimed fullness is now the measure by which its ruin is exposed.
THE MEANING
This verse meets the moment when something once named beautiful is exposed to ridicule: praise now comes back as a cruel question. The words still carry a claim of wholeness even as the crowd points at visible ruin.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the lie that what is publicly praised is therefore protected from public ruin.
THE ROOT
כְּלִילַת
kelilat
GROWS FROM
כלל
k-l-l
To complete or bring to fullness.
The praise phrases echo the same completeness-family: “perfection” and “whole” link the city’s beauty to the reach of its joy. The mockers turn that doubled fullness into a measure against which the city’s humiliation is exposed.
ALSO GROWS
kalil: Complete, entire, whole.
כָּלִיל
It echoes the city’s description as complete in beauty.
kol: All, every, the whole.
כֹּל
In “the whole earth,” the same fullness extends the city’s joy to everyone.
יְרוּשָׁלַיִם
Yerushalayim
GROWS FROM
שלם
sh-l-m
To be whole, complete, intact.
“Jerusalem” in this verse is Yerushalayim. The name carries שָׁלוֹם (shalom, wholeness), even as the passersby describe a city in visible ruin. Its name and its present humiliation remain side by side in the verse.
ALSO GROWS
shalom: Wholeness, well-being.
שָׁלוֹם
It carries the wholeness associated with Jerusalem’s name.
shalem: Whole, complete, intact.
שָׁלֵם
Its meaning makes the contrast between the city’s name and its visible ruin sharper.
THE PATTERN
When visible ruin overturns public honor, passersby turn former praise into a taunt.
Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, is mount Zion, on the sides of the north, the city of the great King.And at this house, which is high, every one that passeth by it shall be astonished, and shall hiss; and they shall say, Why hath the LORD done thus unto this land, and to this house?And they that passed by reviled him, wagging their heads,THE THREAD
Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, is mount Zion, on the sides of the north, the city of the great King.Psalm 48:2 gives the praise behind the taunt: Zion is “the joy of the whole earth.” Here that same claim returns as a question, so the memory of wholeness stands beside the city’s visible ruin.
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