Without the fruit of the Holy Spirit, (love, peace, mercy, goodness) people turn bitter and lose all joy in life becoming vulnerable to attack. Those who are slain by the Spirit and abide in Him dwell in a protected spiritual place. When Christians fight Christians they devour each other and the only winner is Satan. God desires mercy but He requires justice and in Christ Jesus He gave the only sacrifice capable of justifying the sin of man and giving mercy and grace to all who accept Him. Without Jesus there is no covering for sin. Without joy in the Lord and the salvation He gives we have no strength.
Now their appearance is blacker than soot;
They go unrecognized in the streets;
Their skin clings to their bones,
It has become as dry as wood.
9 Those slain by the sword are better off
Than those who die of hunger;
For these pine away,
Stricken for lack of the fruits of the field.
10 The hands of the compassionate women
Have cooked their own children;
They became food for them
In the destruction of the daughter of my people.
11 The Lord has fulfilled His fury,
He has poured out His fierce anger.
He kindled a fire in Zion,
And it has devoured its foundations.
12 The kings of the earth,
And all inhabitants of the world,
Would not have believed
That the adversary and the enemy
Could enter the gates of Jerusalem—
13 Because of the sins of her prophets
And the iniquities of her priests,
Who shed in her midst
The blood of the just.
14 They wandered blind in the streets;
They have defiled themselves with blood,
So that no one would touch their garments.
15 They cried out to them,
"Go away, unclean!
Go away, go away,
Do not touch us!"
When they fled and wandered,
Those among the nations said,
"They shall no longer dwell here."
16 The face of the Lord scattered them;
He no longer regards them.
The people do not respect the priests
Nor show favor to the elders.
17 Still our eyes failed us,
Watching vainly for our help;
In our watching we watched
For a nation that could not save us.
18 They tracked our steps
So that we could not walk in our streets.
Our end was near;
Our days were over,
For our end had come.
19 Our pursuers were swifter
Than the eagles of the heavens.
They pursued us on the mountains
And lay in wait for us in the wilderness.
20 The breath of our nostrils, the anointed of the Lord,
Was caught in their pits,
Of whom we said, "Under his shadow
We shall live among the nations."
21 Rejoice and be glad, O daughter of Edom,
You who dwell in the land of Uz!
The cup shall also pass over to you
And you shall become drunk and make yourself naked.
22 The punishment of your iniquity is accomplished,
O daughter of Zion;
He will no longer send you into captivity.
He will punish your iniquity,
O daughter of Edom;
He will uncover your sins!
The NKJV Study Bible says this: Nazirites were men and women who specifically committed themselves to God for periods of special devotion. The siege of Jerusalem was so terrible that no one was exempt, not even the truly godly people like the Nazirites. Dying early in the siege was perhaps better than living through all of its horrors. The women who were forced to eat their own children began as compassionate women. This unimaginable horror could only have occurred in the most inhumane conditions of human suffering. The very people who should have been agents of righteousness became agents of sin. The priests and prophets were separated from the face of the Lord because they had helped cause the people of Judah to stumble. After the fall of Jerusalem in 586 b.c., the survivors in Judah turned to Pharaoh Hophra of Egypt to deliver them, thereby breaking covenant with Nebuchadnezzar and the specific word of God. The heir to the Davidic line was "the breath of life" to the nation. But King Zedekiah was captured while trying to escape, put in chains, blinded after watching his sons massacred, and marched off to Babylon to die. It is possible that the phrase daughter of Edom is a sarcastic, judgmental phrase. Edom may have thought so highly of herself that she believed she could assume the place of privilege her father Esau had lost, once Judah was destroyed.
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