The Sorrows of Captive Zion

11 How doth the city sit solitary [that] was full of people! She that was great among the nations is become as a widow; the princess among the provinces is become tributary! 2 She weepeth sore in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks; among all her lovers she hath no comforter; 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 pursuers have overtaken her within the straits. 4 The ways of Zion do mourn, because none come to the solemn assembly: all her gates are desolate; her priests sigh, her virgins are in grief; and as for her, she is in bitterness. 5 Her adversaries have become the head, her enemies prosper; for Jehovah hath afflicted her for the multitude of her transgressions: her children are gone into captivity before the adversary. 6 And from the daughter of Zion all her splendour is departed: her princes are become like harts that find no pasture; and they are gone without strength before the pursuer. 7 In the days of her affliction and of her wanderings, since her people fell into the hand of an adversary, and none did help her, Jerusalem remembereth all her precious things which she had in the days of old: the adversaries have seen her, they mock at her ruin. 8 Jerusalem hath grievously sinned; therefore is she removed as an impurity: all that honoured her despise her because they have seen her nakedness; and she sigheth, and turneth backward. 9 Her impurity was in her skirts, she remembered not her latter end; and she came down wonderfully: she hath no comforter. Jehovah, behold my affliction; for the enemy hath magnified himself. 10 The adversary hath spread out his hand upon all her precious things; for she hath seen the nations enter into her sanctuary, concerning whom thou didst command that they should not enter into thy congregation. 11 All her people sigh, they seek bread; they have given their precious things for food to revive [their] soul. See, Jehovah, and consider, for I am become vile.

12 Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is done unto me, whom Jehovah hath afflicted in the day of his fierce anger. 13 From on high hath he sent fire into my bones, and it prevaileth against them; he hath spread a net for my feet; he hath turned me back; he hath made me desolate [and] faint all the day. 14 The yoke of my transgressions is bound by his hand: they are wreathed, they are come up upon my neck; he hath made my strength to fail; the Lord hath delivered me into hands out of which I am not able to rise up. 15 The Lord hath cast down all my mighty men in the midst of me; he hath called an assembly against me to crush my young men; the Lord hath trodden as a winepress the virgin daughter of Judah. 16 For these things I weep; mine eye, mine eye runneth down with water: for the comforter that should revive my soul is far from me; my children are desolate, for the enemy hath prevailed. 17 Zion spreadeth forth her hands; there is none to comfort her; Jehovah hath commanded concerning Jacob, [that] his adversaries [should be] round about him; Jerusalem is as an impurity among them. 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. 19 I called for my lovers, they have deceived me; my priests and mine elders have expired in the city, while they sought them food to revive their soul. 20 See, Jehovah, for I am in distress, my bowels are troubled; my heart is turned within me, for I have grievously rebelled: without, the sword hath bereaved [me], within, it is as death. 21 They have heard that I sigh: I have no comforter: all mine enemies have heard of my calamity; they are glad that thou hast done it. Thou wilt bring the day that thou hast called, and they shall be like unto me. 22 Let all their wickedness come before thee; and do unto them, as thou hast done unto me for all my transgressions: for my sighs are many, and my heart is faint.

Zion's Sorrows Come from the LORD

21 How hath the Lord in his anger covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud! He hath cast down from the heavens unto the earth the beauty of Israel, and remembered not his footstool in the day of his anger. 2 The Lord hath swallowed up all the dwellings of Jacob, and hath not spared; he hath thrown down in his wrath the strongholds of the daughter of Judah: he hath brought [them] down to the ground; he hath profaned the kingdom and the princes thereof. 3 He hath cut off in fierce anger all the horn of Israel: he hath withdrawn his right hand from before the enemy; and he burned up Jacob like a flaming fire, devouring round about. 4 He hath bent his bow like an enemy; he stood with his right hand as an adversary, and hath slain all that was pleasant to the eye: in the tent of the daughter of Zion, he hath poured out his fury like fire. 5 The Lord is become as an enemy: he hath swallowed up Israel; he hath swallowed up all her palaces; he hath destroyed his strongholds, and hath multiplied in the daughter of Judah mourning and lamentation. 6 And he hath violently cast down his enclosure as a garden; he hath destroyed his place of assembly: Jehovah hath caused set feast and sabbath to be forgotten in Zion, and hath despised in the indignation of his anger king and priest. 7 The Lord hath cast off his altar, he hath rejected his sanctuary; he hath given up into the hand of the enemy the walls of her palaces: they have made a noise in the house of Jehovah, as on the day of a set feast. 8 Jehovah hath purposed to destroy the wall of the daughter of Zion: he hath stretched out the line, he hath not withdrawn his hand from destroying; and he hath made the rampart and the wall to lament: they languish together. 9 Her gates are sunk into the ground; he hath destroyed and broken her bars. Her king and her princes are among the nations: the law is no [more]; her prophets also find no vision from Jehovah.

10 The elders of the daughter of Zion sit upon the ground, they keep silence; they have cast dust upon their heads, they have girded themselves with sackcloth: the virgins of Jerusalem hang down their head to the ground. 11 Mine eyes are consumed with tears, my bowels are troubled; my liver is poured upon the earth, because of the ruin of the daughter of my people; because infant and suckling swoon in the streets of the city. 12 They say to their mothers, Where is corn and wine? when they swoon as the wounded in the streets of the city; when they pour out their soul into their mothers' bosom. 13 What shall I take to witness for thee? what shall I liken unto thee, daughter of Jerusalem? What shall I equal to thee, that I may comfort thee, virgin daughter of Zion? For thy ruin is great as the sea: who will heal thee? 14 Thy prophets have seen vanity and folly for thee; and they have not revealed thine iniquity, to turn away thy captivity; but have seen for thee burdens of falsehood and causes of expulsion. 15 All that pass by clap [their] hands at thee; they hiss and shake their head at the daughter of Jerusalem: Is this the city which they called, The perfection of beauty, The joy of the whole earth? 16 All thine enemies open their mouth against thee, they hiss and gnash the teeth: they say, We have swallowed [her] up; this is forsooth the day that we looked for: we have found, we have seen [it]. 17 Jehovah hath done what he had devised; he hath fulfilled his word which he had commanded from the days of old: he hath thrown down, and hath not spared, and he hath caused the enemy to rejoice over thee; he hath set up the horn of thine adversaries. 18 Their heart cried unto the Lord. O wall of the daughter of Zion, let tears run down like a torrent day and night: give thyself no respite; let not the apple of thine eye rest. 19 Arise, cry out in the night, in the beginning of the watches; pour out thy heart like water before the face of the Lord: lift up thy hands toward him for the life of thy young children, who faint from hunger at the top of all the streets. 20 See, Jehovah, and consider to whom thou hast done this! Shall the women eat their fruit, the infants that they nursed? Shall priest and prophet be slain in the sanctuary of the Lord? 21 The 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. 22 Thou hast called up, as on the day of a set feast, my terrors on every side; and in the day of Jehovah's anger there was none that escaped or remained: those that I have nursed and brought up hath mine enemy consumed.

101 For the law, having a shadow of the coming good things, not the image itself of the things, can never, by the same sacrifices which they offer continually yearly, perfect those who approach. 2 Since, would they not indeed have ceased being offered, on account of the worshippers once purged having no longer any conscience of sins? 3 But in these [there is] a calling to mind of sins yearly. 4 For blood of bulls and goats [is] incapable of taking away sins. 5 Wherefore coming into the world he says, Sacrifice and offering thou willedst not; but thou hast prepared me a body. 6 Thou tookest no pleasure in burnt-offerings and sacrifices for sin.

7 Then I said, Lo, I come (in [the] roll of the book it is written of me) to do, O God, thy will. 8 Above, saying Sacrifices and offerings and burnt-offerings and sacrifices for sin thou willedst not, neither tookest pleasure in (which are offered according to the law); 9 then he said, Lo, I come to do thy will. He takes away the first that he may establish the second; 10 by which will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. 11 And every priest stands daily ministering, and offering often the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. 12 But he, having offered one sacrifice for sins, sat down in perpetuity at [the] right hand of God, 13 waiting from henceforth until his enemies be set [for the] footstool of his feet. 14 For by one offering he has perfected in perpetuity the sanctified. 15 And the Holy Spirit also bears us witness [of it]; for after what was said: 16 This [is] the covenant which I will establish towards them after those days, saith [the] Lord: Giving my laws into their hearts, I will write them also in their understandings; 17 and their sins and their lawlessnesses I will never remember any more. 18 But where there [is] remission of these, [there is] no longer a sacrifice for sin.

Matthew Henry's Commentary on Hebrews 10:1-18

Commentary on Hebrews 10:1-10

(Read Hebrews 10:1-10)

The apostle having shown that the tabernacle, and ordinances of the covenant of Sinai, were only emblems and types of the gospel, concludes that the sacrifices the high priests offered continually, could not make the worshippers perfect, with respect to pardon, and the purifying of their consciences. But when "God manifested in the flesh," became the sacrifice, and his death upon the accursed tree the ransom, then the Sufferer being of infinite worth, his free-will sufferings were of infinite value. The atoning sacrifice must be one capable of consenting, and must of his own will place himself in the sinner's stead: Christ did so. The fountain of all that Christ has done for his people, is the sovereign will and grace of God. The righteousness brought in, and the sacrifice once offered by Christ, are of eternal power, and his salvation shall never be done away. They are of power to make all the comers thereunto perfect; they derive from the atoning blood, strength and motives for obedience, and inward comfort.

Commentary on Hebrews 10:11-18

(Read Hebrews 10:11-18)

Under the new covenant, or gospel dispensation, full and final pardon is to be had. This makes a vast difference between the new covenant and the old one. Under the old, sacrifices must be often repeated, and after all, only pardon as to this world was to be obtained by them. Under the new, one Sacrifice is enough to procure for all nations and ages, spiritual pardon, or being freed from punishment in the world to come. Well might this be called a new covenant. Let none suppose that human inventions can avail those who put them in the place of the sacrifice of the Son of God. What then remains, but that we seek an interest in this Sacrifice by faith; and the seal of it to our souls, by the sanctification of the Spirit unto obedience? So that by the law being written in our hearts, we may know that we are justified, and that God will no more remember our sins.