Lamentations 5:2 MEANING

(2) Turned.--Used here as in the sense of transferred.

Houses.--In Jer. Iii. 13, the Chaldaeans are said to have burnt the houses of Jerusalem, and those of the great men elsewhere; here, therefore, the "houses" spoken of are those of the farmers and peasants in the country.

Verse 2. - Our inheritance. The land had been "given" to Abraham (Genesis 13:25; 17:8), and was consequently inherited by Abraham's posterity. Our houses. Not as it the Chaldeans had actually taken up their abode in some of the houses of Jerusalem. The expressions are forcible, but inexact. The land was seized; the houses were destroyed (Jeremiah 52:13).

5:1-16 Is any afflicted? Let him pray; and let him in prayer pour out his complaint to God. The people of God do so here; they complain not of evils feared, but of evils felt. If penitent and patient under what we suffer for the sins of our fathers, we may expect that He who punishes, will return in mercy to us. They acknowledge, Woe unto us that we have sinned! All our woes are owing to our own sin and folly. Though our sins and God's just displeasure cause our sufferings, we may hope in his pardoning mercy, his sanctifying grace, and his kind providence. But the sins of a man's whole life will be punished with vengeance at last, unless he obtains an interest in Him who bare our sins in his own body on the tree.Our inheritance is turned to strangers,.... The land of Canaan in general, which was given to Abraham and his seed to be their inheritance; and their field, and vineyards in particular, which came to them by inheritance from their fathers, were now in the hands of the Chaldeans, strangers to God, and aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, as all Gentiles were, Ephesians 2:12;

our houses to aliens; which they had built or purchased, or their fathers had left them, were now inhabited by those of another country.