my heart is faint
Lamentations 1:22
1:22 my heart is faint. It is noteworthy that Lamentations 1 has twenty-two verses, and so do Lamentations 2, 4, and 5. Each is an acrostic dirge, with each verse beginning with the corresponding letter of the twenty-two letter Hebrew alphabet. The implication is, apparently, that it would take the whole language (from A to Z, as it were) to express adequately the amazingly anomalous scene Jeremiah attempts to describe. No people had ever experienced such great blessing as Israel had experienced—nor such patient longsuffering and divine mercy, and now such deep humiliation. Furthermore, it was to this people alone that God had given the Law, and the entire written Word—and He had done that in their own twenty-two letter holy language. Yet they had rejected that divine Word. The very structure—as well as the sad theme—of these lamentations would burn this into their memory.
