Lamentations 2:19 Meaning and Explanation

'Arise, cry out in the night.' The call is to prayer at the darkest hour, at the start of each night watch, when sleep would be easier than supplication. 'Pour out thine heart like water before the face of the LORD' — hold nothing back, empty the whole soul before him. This is how the grieving are taught to pray: not with composure but with everything spilled out.

And the prayer has a clear object: 'for the life of thy young children, that faint for hunger.' The lifted hands plead for the little ones perishing in the streets. Here grief becomes intercession. The poet does not let sorrow turn inward and stagnant; he turns it Godward and outward, into prayer for those who cannot pray for themselves. Lament, at its truest, becomes a cry on behalf of the helpless before the face of God.