Passage

Lamentations 1.1

Book: Lamentations · ASV / WEB / KJV / YLT

Immediate context (±2 verses)

ASV

1. How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people! She is become as a widow, that was great among the nations! She that was a princess among the provinces is become tributary!

She weepeth sore in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks; Among all her lovers she hath none to comfort her: All her friends have dealt treacherously with her; they are become her enemies. 3. Judah is gone into captivity because of affliction, and because of great servitude; She dwelleth among the nations, she findeth no rest: All her persecutors overtook her within the straits. (Lamentations 1:1-3, ASV)

WEB

1. How the city sits solitary, that was full of people! She has become as a widow, who was great among the nations! She who was a princess among the provinces has become tributary!

She weeps bitterly in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks; among all her lovers she has no one to comfort her: All her friends have dealt treacherously with her; they have become her enemies. 3. Judah has gone into captivity because of affliction, and because of great servitude; she dwells among the nations, she finds no rest: all her persecutors overtook her within the straits. (Lamentations 1:1-3, WEB)

KJV

1. How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people! how is she become as a widow! she that was great among the nations, and princess among the provinces, how is she become tributary!

She weepeth sore in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks: among all her lovers she hath none to comfort her: all her friends have dealt treacherously with her, they are become her enemies. 3. Judah is gone into captivity because of affliction, and because of great servitude: she dwelleth among the heathen, she findeth no rest: all her persecutors overtook her between the straits. ^{because of great: Heb. for the greatness of servitude} (Lamentations 1:1-3, KJV)

YLT

1. How hath she sat alone, The city abounding with people! She hath been as a widow, The mighty among nations! Princes among provinces, She hath become tributary!

She weepeth sore in the night, And her tear [is] on her cheeks, There is no comforter for her out of all her lovers, All her friends dealt treacherously by her, They have been to her for enemies. 3. Removed hath Judah because of affliction, And because of the abundance of her service; She hath dwelt among nations, She hath not found rest, All her pursuers have overtaken her between the straits. (Lamentations 1:1-3, YLT)

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Setting

Speaker: the poet as narrator. The book is anonymous. Tradition, from the Septuagint's opening note and the Talmud (Baba Bathra 15a), assigns it to Jeremiah, who lamented in an earlier crisis (2 Chronicles 35:25); many modern commentators treat the five poems as the work of one or more unnamed poets writing in the same years
Audience: the surviving community of Judah, and Yahweh himself, to whom the poems repeatedly turn in protest and prayer
Location: Judah; the poems speak from within or beside ruined Jerusalem, and the book names no place of composition
Time period: the aftermath of Jerusalem's fall to Nebuchadnezzar's Babylonian army in 587/586 BC, when the temple was burned and the walls broken down (2 Kings 25:8-10; Jeremiah 52:12-14). Most scholars date the poems before the first return from exile in 538 BC
Literary context: chapter 1, a 22-verse alphabetic acrostic in which each verse opens with the next letter of the Hebrew alphabet. A narrator speaks of Zion in the third person (1:1-11), and personified Zion herself speaks for most of the rest (1:12-22). This is the opening verse of the book.

Theological reading

"How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people! She is become as a widow, that was great among the nations! She that was a princess among the provinces is become tributary!" (Lamentations 1:1, ASV)

The dirge cry. The verse begins with 'ekah, "How!", the exclamation of the Hebrew funeral lament, and the word becomes the book's Hebrew title. The same word opens chapters 2 and 4, and Isaiah uses it of the same city: "How is the faithful city become a harlot!" (Isaiah 1:21).

Three reversals. The verse sets three pictures side by side: a city once full of people now sits alone; a city great among the nations is now like a widow; a princess among the provinces is now put to forced labour. Each line measures the loss by what Jerusalem used to be. The widow image matters because a widow in Israel had lost her protector; the poem leaves open, for now, whether Zion's husband has truly abandoned her.

Why it matters. The verse is the starting point for reading the whole book as a funeral for a city. It also answers the charge that biblical faith only celebrates God's blessings: Israel's own Scripture preserves its darkest hour in its most carefully crafted poetry.

Key words

Theologically-loaded Greek or Hebrew words in this verse may have entries in the lexicon. Curated to roughly 100 contested terms across the corpus, not every word.

None of the words in this verse has its own lexicon entry yet.

Notes

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Why these four translations

ris3n chose ASV, WEB, KJV, and YLT for two reasons together. They are the most literal English translations available (formal-equivalence: word-for-word renderings that preserve the Hebrew and Greek grammar rather than smoothing it into modern dynamic-equivalence idiom). And they are in the public domain in the United States, which means fair-use quotation at any length requires no publisher license. Modern licensed translations (NASB95, ESV, NIV) restrict volume of quotation under their copyright terms, so they are not used at stub-level coverage here. NASB95 appears only on hand-curated rich passage hubs under Lockman Foundation's fair-use allowance.

The four:

ASV (American Standard Version, 1901). The basis of the modern critical-text English tradition.
WEB (World English Bible, contemporary). Public-domain revision in the ASV line, in current English.
KJV (King James Version, 1611). Reformation-era, Textus Receptus base.
YLT (Young's Literal Translation, Robert Young, 1862). Hyper-literal preservation of Hebrew and Greek grammar; useful for word-study work even where English reads stiff.

See Bibles for the full per-translation history, translators, textual basis, strengths, and weaknesses.