Lamentations 1:14
The yoke of my transgressions is bound by his hand: they are wreathed, and come up upon my neck: he hath made my strength to fall, the Lord hath delivered me into their hands, from whom I am not able to rise up. The yoke of my transgressions is bound by his hand: they are wreathed, and come up upon my neck: he hath made my strength to fall, the Lord hath delivered me into their hands, from whom I am not able to rise up.
The verse belongs to Israel's funeral song, expressing the nation's downfall and captivity, after which its former glory never returned. It pictures transgressions as a yoke bound by God's hand and wreathed upon the neck, making strength fall and delivering Jerusalem and Judah into the hands of enemies and holders from whom they are unable to rise up. Jerusalem's transgressions are bound and wound around her neck by God's hand, bringing her strength down and leaving her powerless and unable to escape those who hold her. Judah's transgressions are bound and wound around the neck in the same way, bringing the people down and leaving them unable to rise, delivered by the Lord into the power of their enemies.
That suffering and defeat came as God's judgment for sins upon His apostate people. A yoke means service and is a symbol of bondage, so in heaven's sight sin is a yoke of bondage, here the servitude of transgressions bound by God upon the neck that makes strength fall. Christ never came under that service of sin, for He knew no sin, did no sin, and no guile was found in His mouth, which fitted Him to be represented by a red heifer upon which a yoke had never come.
Departing from the living God is suicidal to a nation as well as to an individual, bringing fixed doom from internal causes under the Lord's government of the nations, with its strength made to fall and itself delivered by the Lord into the hands of enemies from whom it cannot rise up. This humbling of the haughty produces a cry of distress over grievous rebellion, which must come before God's Word can enter with welcome to give light to those sitting in darkness and in the shadow of death and bring the Gentiles to His light.