Discovery BoxLamentations 2:15-16 
Contextס (Samek)
2:15 All who passed by on the road
clapped their hands to mock you. 1
They sneered and shook their heads
at Daughter Jerusalem.
“Ha! Is this the city they called 2
‘The perfection of beauty, 3
the source of joy of the whole earth!’?” 4
פ (Pe)
2:16 All your enemies
gloated over you. 5
They sneered and gnashed their teeth;
they said, “We have destroyed 6 her!
Ha! We have waited a long time for this day.
We have lived to see it!” 7
1 tn Heb “clap their hands at you.” Clapping hands at someone was an expression of malicious glee, derision and mockery (Num 24:10; Job 27:23; Lam 2:15).
2 tn Heb “of which they said.”
3 tn Heb “perfection of beauty.” The noun יֹפִי (yofi, “beauty”) functions as a genitive of respect in relation to the preceding construct noun: Jerusalem was perfect in respect to its physical beauty.
4 tn Heb “the joy of all the earth.” This is similar to statements found in Pss 48:2 and 50:2.
5 tn Heb “they have opened wide their mouth against you.”
6 tn Heb “We have swallowed!”
7 tn Heb “We have attained, we have seen!” The verbs מָצָאנוּ רָאִינוּ (matsa’nu ra’inu) form a verbal hendiadys in which the first retains its full verbal sense and the second functions as an object complement. It forms a Hebrew idiom that means something like, “We have lived to see it!” The three asyndetic 1st person common plural statements in 2:16 (“We waited, we destroyed, we saw!”) are spoken in an impassioned, staccato style reflecting the delight of the conquerors.
