Lamentations 2:19
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.
Lamentations 2:19 belongs to a sad lament over Jerusalem, the apostate people of God, describing severe suffering under Babylonian destruction. That suffering included famine and hunger that left children fainting. The chapter's account of hunger and distress is evidence that the tribulation under the Babylonians was great. It was at least as great as the tribulation later connected with Jerusalem's destruction by Rome.
The phrase about the beginning of the watches names the first division of the night in the old Jewish reckoning, lasting from sunset to 10 P.M. That reckoning had only three watches, the beginning, the middle, and the morning. This differed from the later Roman reckoning of four watches from 6 P.M. to 6 A.M. The plea for the life of the young children uses the Hebrew word nephesh, which occurs 745 times in the Old Testament and is translated soul about 473 times. Here it is one of 118 places where it is rendered life or lives, showing that soul means life.
The verse calls the distressed people to pray earnestly through the night, pouring out their hearts before the Lord and pleading for the lives of their hungry children. The image of the heart poured out like water before the face of the Lord pictures urgent, heartfelt prayer in agony and supplication, with the heart opening fully to God. The verse presents prayer as an earnest, heart-poured appeal to God. Tears and prayer, like patient example, are quiet influences that can succeed where forceful efforts fail.
The verse belongs with the watchman's commission to warn the house of Israel. It belongs also with the truth that the sinning soul dies and children do not bear the father's guilt nor fathers the child's. Together these call for urgent action to save children. The verse calls mothers today to constant communion with God and parents to earnest night intercession for the life of their young children, asking the Lord to spare them, with fathers weeping and mourning for their whole household.
The prayer is urgent because followers must walk in the light. They must be alarmed that sin among them is exceedingly sinful, and stay awake with no time for lightness, vanity, or trifling as earth's history soon closes. It is urgent also because the enemy of righteousness has set traps even for the smallest ones.