“He has abandoned His footstool”
How the Lord has covered the Daughter of Zion with the cloud of His anger!… He has abandoned His footstool in the day of His anger. (Lamentations 2:1 BSB)
What it sounds like today
An odd reference to God discarding a piece of furniture.
The cultural key
The line puzzles a modern reader: what footstool? In Israel's worship the LORD was pictured as enthroned in heaven with the temple, and above all the ark, as His 'footstool,' the place on earth where His feet rested. Worshipers were called to 'worship at His footstool' (Psalm 132:7), and David calls the ark itself 'the footstool of our God' (1 Chronicles 28:2). So when Lamentations says God 'has abandoned His footstool in the day of His anger,' it is a stunning confession: the LORD has walked away from His own sanctuary and handed it over to the enemy, letting the temple that was the very resting place of His presence be defiled and destroyed. The image measures the catastrophe, this is not merely a national defeat but God relinquishing His earthly throne-room. Grasping that the footstool is the temple turns a strange phrase into the theological heart of the lament.
Recovered meaning
God's 'footstool' is the temple, and the ark within it, the earthly resting place of His presence. Saying He 'abandoned His footstool' means the LORD gave up His own sanctuary to destruction, the deepest measure of the disaster.