Lamentations 1:15
The Lord hath trodden under foot all my mighty men in the midst of me: he hath called an assembly against me to crush my young men: the Lord hath trodden the virgin, the daughter of Judah, as in a winepress. The Lord hath trodden under foot all my mighty men in the midst of me: he hath called an assembly against me to crush my young men: the Lord hath trodden the virgin, the daughter of Judah, as in a winepress.
Lamentations belongs to sorrowful commemoration of the severe suffering that came upon Jerusalem's people after they turned from God, and it stands as Israel's funeral song whose fallen nation never regained its former glory. The verse describes Judah's defeat in which the Lord has brought low and trodden under foot all the mighty men in the midst of her. He has summoned an enemy force, an assembly of hostile powers, against her to crush her young men, and He has trampled the virgin daughter of Judah like grapes in a winepress.
That suffering and defeat is the Lord's own judgment upon Judah. It is His providential working as governor among the nations against a people that has departed from the living God and grievously rebelled. Its doom is fixed from internal causes by sin itself, even when the world explains the fall by diplomacy and military strength.
The crushing humbles the haughty into distress, where abroad the sword bereaves and at home there is as death. It forces confession of rebellion and vileness. That humbling must come before the Word can enter with welcome to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, so that the Lord may arise and the Gentiles may come to the light.