Lamentations 1:19
I called for my lovers, but they deceived me: my priests and mine elders gave up the ghost in the city, while they sought their meat to relieve their souls.
I called for my lovers, but they deceived me,.... Either her idols, with whom she had committed spiritual adultery, that is, idolatry; but these could not answer her expectations, and help her: or the Egyptians, that courted her friendship, and with whom she was in alliance, and in whom she trusted; and these, in the times of her distress, she called upon to make good their engagements, but they disappointed her, and stood not to their covenant and promises, but left her to stand and fall by herself; this Jerusalem said, according to the Targum, when she was delivered into the hands of Nebuchadnezzar; but these words, "they deceived me", it makes to be the Romans, that came with Titus and Vespasian, and built bulwarks against Jerusalem:
my priests and mine elders gave up the ghost in the city; or died in the city of Jerusalem; not by the sword of the enemy, but through famine; and so, in the Arabic language, the word {i} signifies to labour under famine, and want of food, and perish through it; and if this was the case of their priests that officiated in holy things, and of their elders or civil magistrates, what must be the case of the common people?
while they sought their meat to relieve their souls; or "fetch {k} them back"; which were just fainting and dying away through hunger; and who did expire while they were begging their bread, or inquiring in one place after another where they could get any, either freely or for money.
{i} "esurivit et fame ac inedia laboravit", Golius, col. 556.
{k} Mvpn ta wbyvyw "et reducerent animam suam", Montanus.