Lamentations 2:9, commentary and pictures

Her fall left the city buried and broken, its defenses destroyed and its rulers carried away to live among foreign nations. Her law being gone means it was no longer honored and obeyed, especially in the profaning of the Sabbath that brought destruction upon her gates. The law of God and the gift of prophecy belong together and stand or fall together, for the true work of every prophet is to lift up the commandments as the test of all teaching and conduct. When His people turn from His law to their own ways He withdraws His Spirit and withholds visions, but He answers by His Spirit whenever they draw near in obedience. That silence of heaven was a threatened judgment for sin and among the heaviest calamities of His displeasure, leaving the people without His revealed will and voice.

Jerusalem's Ruin Portrayed

The verse portrays Jerusalem after its fall and captivity, with her gates sunk and buried in the ground, her bars destroyed and broken, and her king and her princes carried away to be among the Gentiles in foreign nations. In that ruin the law is no more and her prophets find no vision from the Lord, so that instruction from the law and divine communication through visions are absent. The defeat is her humiliation and loss of protection, marking the collapse of her religious and civic life. It belongs to the mourning of captivity, with the loss of visions named as part of the calamity and the heaviest of the judgments upon the people.

The kings and princes were taken among nations where God's law was not, while the city lay desolate under enemy control. This describes the loss of public worship and Sabbath observance in Zion during the captivity. It does not mean that no individual captive remained faithful and kept the Sabbath.

The verse belongs to the sad song commemorating the awful sufferings that came upon apostate Jerusalem and the apostate people of God who inhabited it. It stands in the closing portion of the writings of the weeping prophet Jeremiah, the book being attributed to him though some place its writing later.

Law and Vision Withdrawn

The law is no more means the law had ceased to be respected and obeyed among priests and people, especially by profaning the Sabbath, and that profanation brought the threatened destruction and burning of her gates. When God's law is rejected it is treated as absent, and those who refuse His commandments regard the things of the Spirit as foolishness and are left without divine vision. The law of God and the gift of prophecy are inseparable and flourish or fail together, for the gift is manifest among God's people only when His law is exalted. The primary work of every true prophet is to exalt the Ten Commandments, and God can give instruction through His prophets only when His law is fully recognized as the standard and test of teaching and action.

Where the law is not kept, visions of the Spirit are withheld, for God withdraws His gifts and withholds the Spirit of prophecy when His people depart from His law and follow their own ways. He always gives answers by His Spirit when they draw near to Him in obedience, so the withholding comes only with disobedience. When prophets seek a vision in vain and no answer comes by prophets, their silence is evidence that the Lord has forsaken His people in displeasure over disobedience, as Saul knew the Lord had departed when no answer came. Without visions the people are left without God's revealed will and instruction, unable to hear God's voice through His law and prophets and left to follow their own ways.

The loss of visions from the Lord came as a threatened judgment for sins and is named as one of the calamities marking God's judgment on His people. It is presented as the heaviest and greatest of these judgments, the cessation of divine communication through visions. That loss was one important cause of Jeremiah's lamentation and mourning over the terrible distress it brought upon the people.

Prophecy, Sorrow, and Warning

When prophetic warnings went unheeded, confusion, waste and desolation fell upon the city, with buried gates, broken defenses, exiled leaders, and silenced vision marking the outcome. Repeated rejection of divine law and the messages of the prophets brought ruin, leaving the law no longer upheld and no vision received from the Lord. The turning away from instruction therefore ended in the destruction of the city itself. The loss of protection and humiliation was complete when gates were destroyed, princes dwelt among foreign nations, the law was made void, and prophets heard no voice of God through law or vision. That withdrawal of prophetic gifts and visions was the heaviest of calamities, mourned as godly sorrow over having no prophetic word, with the captives grieving that their own conduct may have brought the disaster upon them.

The anguish portrayed proves that tribulation under the Babylonians equaled or exceeded the suffering at the later destruction of Jerusalem, so that later destruction could not have been the uniquely greatest tribulation spoken of in Matthew 24. The severity endured under Babylon was as great as the hardship later faced, showing that the destruction in A.D. 70 was not the greatest tribulation ever experienced by God's people.