Lamentations 2:21
What does Lamentations 2:21 mean?
A plain-English look at Lamentations 2:21 in WEB alongside six other public-domain English translations, with cross-references and chapter context.
What Lamentations 2:21 means
The streets are a graveyard: the young and the old lie together on the ground. Virgins and young men have fallen by the sword. The prayer acknowledges God’s agency—“Thou hast slain… thou hast slaughtered, and not pitied”—an admission that the carnage is the outworking of His anger. This is not a denial of enemy guilt but a confession that divine judgment stands behind it. The verse gives voice to the painful truth that God’s holiness can cut deeply into a sinful people, underscoring the urgency of repentance and the hope that the same God might yet remember mercy.
Parallel translations
WEB
World English Bible · 2000The youth and the old man lie on the ground in the streets; My virgins and my young men are fallen by the sword: Thou hast slain them in the day of thine anger; thou hast slaughtered, and not pitied.
KJV
King James Version · 1611The young and the old lie on the ground in the streets: my virgins and my young men are fallen by the sword; thou hast slain them in the day of thine anger; thou hast killed, and not pitied.
ASV
American Standard Version · 1901The youth and the old man lie on the ground in the streets; My virgins and my young men are fallen by the sword: Thou hast slain them in the day of thine anger; thou hast slaughtered, and not pitied.
BBE
Bible in Basic English · 1949The young men and the old are stretched on the earth in the streets; my virgins and my young men have been put to the sword: you have sent death on them in the day of your wrath, causing death without pity.
YLT
Young's Literal Translation · 1862Lain on the earth <FI>in<Fi> out-places have young and old, My virgins and my young men have fallen by the sword, Thou hast slain in a day of Thine anger, Thou hast slaughtered--Thou hast not pitied.
DRA
Douay-Rheims (Challoner) · 1752Sin. The child and the old man lie without on the ground: my virgins and my young men are fallen by the sword: thou hast slain them in the day of thy wrath: thou hast killed, and shewn them no pity.
DBY
Darby Bible · 1890The child and the old man lie on the ground in the streets; my virgins and my young men are fallen by the sword: thou hast slain [them] in the day of thine anger; thou hast killed, thou hast not spared.
Context
Following the shocking plea of verse 20, verse 21 catalogs the indiscriminate breadth of death: all ages and both sexes suffer. The confession that God has done this aligns with the chapter’s earlier insistence on divine agency in the judgment. This sets up the final verse’s image of terrors summoned like a festival assembly, sealing the completeness of the calamity—none escape. The flow guides the reader to face the totality of loss before the book moves, in later chapters, toward the faint beginnings of hope.
v.20See, O Jehovah, and behold to whom thou hast done thus! Shall the women eat their fruit, the children that are dandled in the hands? Shall the priest and the prophet be slain in the sanctuary of the Lord?
v.21This passage
v.22Thou hast called, as in the day of a solemn assembly, my terrors on every side; And there was none that escaped or remained in the day of Jehovah’s anger: Those that I have dandled and brought up hath mine enemy consumed.
Cross references
Related passages from across Scripture, drawn from the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge.
- Lamentations 1:18
Jehovah is righteous; for I have rebelled against his commandment: Hear, I pray you, all ye peoples, and behold my sorrow: My virgins and my young men are gone into captivity.
- Jeremiah 11:22
therefore thus saith Jehovah of hosts, Behold, I will punish them: the young men shall die by the sword; their sons and their daughters shall die by famine;
- Lamentations 2:17
Jehovah hath done that which he purposed; he hath fulfilled his word that he commanded in the days of old; He hath thrown down, and hath not pitied: And he hath caused the enemy to rejoice over thee; he hath exalted the horn of thine adversaries.
- Ezekiel 8:18
Therefore will I also deal in wrath; mine eye shall not spare, neither will I have pity; and though they cry in mine ears with a loud voice, yet will I not hear them.
- Isaiah 27:11
When the boughs thereof are withered, they shall be broken off; the women shall come, and set them on fire; for it is a people of no understanding: therefore he that made them will not have compassion upon them, and he that formed them will show them no favor.
- Esther 3:13
And letters were sent by posts into all the king’s provinces, to destroy, to slay, and to cause to perish, all Jews, both young and old, little children and women, in one day, even upon the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, which is the month Adar, and to take the spoil of them for a prey.
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