I will bring distress to Ariel, and she will be a city of lamentation and mourning; and she will be to me like an Ariel, establishing that the normal religious observances will give way to mourning and lamentation when judgment comes. The wordplay on Ariel—from a name possibly meaning "altar-hearth" to its becoming a place of mourning—suggests the reversal that judgment brings. The making of Jerusalem like Ariel (perhaps suggesting its reduction to altar-like proportions, stripped of grandeur) emphasizes the totality of the reduction and humiliation. The oracle promises that Jerusalem's ceremonies will be interrupted and transformed into mourning and grief.

COMMUNITY REFLECTIONS

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