What Does Lamentations 2:1 Mean?
How the Lord covers the daughter of Zion with a cloud in the burning of his anger, and throws down from the heavens to the earth the adornment of Israel. He does not remember his footstool in the day of his burning!
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
How hath the Lord covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in his anger, and cast down from heaven unto the earth the beauty of Israel, and remembered not his footstool in the day of his anger!THE KEY
The verse depicts divine anger as the collapse of sacred regard: Zion is clouded, Israel’s splendor falls, and even the LORD’s footstool is not remembered.
THE MEANING
The verse names ruin without softening it: anger covers Zion like a cloud, Israel’s splendor is cast from heaven to earth, and the footstool is left outside remembrance. Even what is sacred can be brought low and left unremembered in the day of anger.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that the LORD’s presence makes Zion invulnerable: its beauty is cast down, and its footstool is not remembered.
THE ROOT
תִּפְאֶרֶת
tifʾeret
GROWS FROM
פ־א־ר
p-ʾ-r
To beautify, adorn, or make splendid.
Tifʾeret names visible splendor, from a root about adorning or glorifying. What is cast from heaven to earth is Israel’s displayed adornment, now brought low.
ALSO GROWS
paʾar: To beautify or glorify.
פָּאַר
The verb shows that this splendor is something adorned or made glorious.
peʾer: Headdress or ornament.
פְּאֵר
This branch makes splendor concrete: an adornment that can be cast down.
זָכַר
zākhar
GROWS FROM
ז־כ־ר
z-k-r
To remember, recall, or bring to mind.
“remembered” in this verse is zākhar. The same root yields words for remembering and for a memorial. Beside the splendor cast down, the unremembered footstool makes the loss of active regard part of the devastation.
ALSO GROWS
zikkaron: Memorial or remembrance.
זִכָּרוֹן
A memorial keeps someone or something in view; the verse says the footstool is not remembered.
zeker: Remembrance or mention.
זֵכֶר
This branch links remembering with speaking of something, giving the verse’s silence around the footstool added weight.
THE PATTERN
In scripture, judgment can be pictured as sacred beauty being lowered and sacred space left desolate.
They send fire into your set-apart place; they defile the dwelling place of your name down to the ground.Your set-apart cities have become wilderness, Zion has become wilderness, and Jerusalem has become a stunned waste.Look, your house is left to you, empty.THE THREAD
Remember your assembly, which you gained of old; the tribe of your inheritance, which you redeemed; this mount Zion, where you have settled.Both verses turn on זָכַר (zākhar), meaning “remember”: Lamentations says the footstool is not remembered, while the psalm asks that the congregation and Mount Zion be remembered. The shared root sets the unremembered footstool beside a plea for Zion and its people to be held in view.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us