Lamentations 4:6 Meaning and Explanation

The poet makes a sobering comparison: the punishment of his people exceeds even that of Sodom, the byword for wickedness destroyed. Sodom 'was overthrown as in a moment, and no hands stayed on her' — its destruction was swift, sudden, over in an instant. There was no prolonged agony.

Jerusalem's suffering, by contrast, has been drawn out through siege and famine, a slow torment of weeks and months. The lingering nature of the agony is what makes it, in this sense, greater. There may be a strange mercy hidden in the comparison: Sodom was ended without remedy, but Jerusalem still endures, still suffers, still has a remnant that might yet turn and live. The prolonged punishment is terrible, yet it is the punishment of a people not utterly destroyed but disciplined toward return.