Tafsiran Ratapan 1:4: Tze'enah Ure'enah, Rashi & Ibn Ezra

“The roads of Zion” [1:4]. The roads of Zion are overgrown with grass because people do not travel to the three pilgrim festivals of the year, that is to say, Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot. All of the gates are desolate. The priests sigh because Dthey do not have any worship or sacrifices. The maidens mourn that they used to dance on the fifteenth⁴The 1711 edition has “ninth” here, but that is a mistake. Both the 1622 edition and the original source have “fifteenth.” of Ab and on Yom Kippur.⁵Targum, Lamentations, 1:4.

Festival visitors. People who went up [to Yerusholayim] for the festivals.²³Alternatively, מועד refers to the Beis Hamikdosh, i.e., ‘for lack of Beis Hamikdosh visitors.’

"Be'e Mo'ed" (באי מועד) - refers to those who come during appointed times, specifically referring to the Tabernacle or the Temple. It is called "Mo'ed" because all of Israel gathers there. Similarly, we find expressions such as "Bikrav Mo'adecha" (בקרב מועדיך) - "within your appointed times" and "Sarfu Kol Mo'adei El ba'aretz" (שרפו כל מועדי אל בארץ) - "they have burned all the appointed times of God in the land."

Grieve. An expression of grief,²⁴Because the maidens were no longer able to go out and rejoice on the two most joyous days of the year, on the fifteenth of Menachem Av and on Yom Kippur. See Maseches Ta’anis, Mishnah 4:8. and there is no radical [=שֹׁרֶשׁ but the ‘gimel’ alone.