What Does Lamentations 2:20 Mean in the King James?
Behold, O LORD, and consider to whom thou hast done this. Shall the women eat their fruit, and children of a span long? shall the priest and the prophet be slain in the sanctuary of the Lord?
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 cry asks the LORD to look at the horror while naming the LORD as the one who has done it.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks from the place where starvation reaches mothers and children, and slaughter reaches priests and prophets inside the sanctuary. It calls the LORD to look directly and asks whom God has treated this way, leaving divine agency inside the cry rather than smoothing the horror into an unnamed disaster.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A holy place and sacred office do not guarantee protection from violence; here, the priest and prophet are killed within the sanctuary.
THE ROOT
עוֹלַלְתָּ
ʿolalta
GROWS FROM
ע־ל־ל
ʿ-l-l
To act upon or deal with someone; in some forms, to mock or treat abusively.
“done” in this verse is ʿolalta. The verb belongs to a word-family that can describe dealing with someone harshly. That sharper range keeps the question from sounding like an abstract “why did this happen?”: the verse directly asks whom the LORD has treated this way.
ALSO GROWS
ʿalilah: Deed or action
עֲלִילָה
This branch keeps the focus on what has been done to the people named in the cry.
hitʿallel: To mock or treat abusively
הִתְעַלֵּל
This form shows the harsher reach of the word-family behind the verse’s blunt question about the LORD’s action.
פְּרִיָם
piryam
GROWS FROM
פ־ר־ה
p-r-h
To bear fruit or be fruitful.
The women are said to eat their own פְּרִי (peri, fruit), and the next phrase names little children. The word ties the horror to what a family bears and nourishes: what should be fruit becomes food amid starvation.
ALSO GROWS
peri: Fruit or produce
פְּרִי
This is the word the verse uses for what the women eat.
parah: To bear fruit or be fruitful
פָּרָה
This verb shares the seed with “fruit,” linking the image to life that is borne.
מִקְדַּשׁ
miqdash
GROWS FROM
ק־ד־ש
q-d-sh
To set apart.
The sanctuary’s name comes from the root for setting something apart. The verse places the killing of priest and prophet inside that set-apart place, holding sacred designation and slaughter together in a single line.
ALSO GROWS
qodesh: Set-apartness or a set-apart place
קֹדֶשׁ
This branch makes clear what the sanctuary’s name carries.
qadosh: Set apart
קָדוֹשׁ
This related word echoes the sanctuary’s identity as a place marked out as sacred.
THE PATTERN
Lament makes suffering visible to God by naming bodies, places, and blood without concealing the devastation.
Thou hast seen it; for thou beholdest mischief and spite, to requite it with thy hand: the poor committeth himself unto thee; thou art the helper of the fatherless.And I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and they shall eat every one the flesh of his friend in the siege and straitness, wherewith their enemies, and they that seek their lives, shall straiten them.And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?THE THREAD
Arise, cry out in the night: in the beginning of the watches pour out thine heart like water before the face of the Lord: lift up thy hands toward him for the life of thy young children, that faint for hunger in the top of every street.The same Hebrew noun עוֹלֵל (ʿolēl, little child) appears in both verses. In verse 19, the young children are the subject of a plea for life; here, the same word stands inside the question about women eating their fruit.
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