LAMENTATIONS

Lamentations is Jeremiah’s expression of utter grief over the total destruction of Judah, Jerusalem and the temple in 586 BC by the hands of the Babylonians. Lamentations bemoans the reality of a historic event, which was devastating and tragic, – because it was really needless.
Ever since the time of Moses God had clearly told Israel that their possession of the promised land was dependent on their allegiance to God and their obedience to the Law. In Leviticus God says that the only reason those seven nations lost their right to existence in Canaan was because of their entrenched idolatry, evil and societal injustice. God warns Israel that if they do alike, they too will lose the promised land (Lev 18:24-31). Before Moses dies he reminds the second generation of Israel that persistent denial of God and his Law will eventually lead to the loss of God’s blessing and their right to the promised land (Deut 28:15-68).
Judah had started well, but over the centuries is had deteriorated. God had sent many prophets to warn them, but repentance was only sporadic. The last prophet he sent is Jeremiah, who pleads with Judah for forty-one long years (627-586 BC) to repent and respond to God’s last call. Judah doesn’t respond and Jeremiah now has the doubtful honor of seeing all his prophecies of doom coming true before his very eyes, needlessly. Repentance would have averted the disaster. He sees his nation, city and temple completely destroyed and his people decimated in warfare, in a siege-induced famine and related epidemics. Those who survive are exiled to idolatrous Babylon. And he is left to bemoan the fact that for all his decades of passionate prophesying and embracing of sacrificial obedience (leading to rejection, ridicule, death threats, imprisonments and torture), his ministry could not bring about a change. He is feeling devastated, lonely, defeated, utterly fruitless and resents his years of what appears to be a meaningless self-sacrifice.
In Lamentations Jeremiah is spilling his emotions, his battle with what happened, his grief over the destroyed city and lost people. He puts to paper his inner turmoil, his deep depression, even his resentment against God, especially in Lam 3:1-21.
Lamentations surprisingly is a beautifully crafted acrostic poem. Each verse starts with a new letter of the alphabet, in English this would mean the first verse starting with A, the second with B, the third with C etc. He follows this pattern through 4 of the 5 chapters. But not only that, the five chapters of Lamentations are themselves arranged symmetrically as a chiasm: chapters 1 and 5 correspond, chapters 2 and 4 correspond, chapter 3 is the important middle chapter with special stress on the verses 22-33 as the mathematical center and heart of the entire structure, verses speaking of hope. How can a ‘spilling of one’s soul’ be so highly crafted? Is Jeremiah trying to find order in the chaos? Is he trying to seek beauty in the devastation? Is strong structure a support at times of loss of control? We cannot say.
Some things are abundantly clear in this book, though. Jeremiah doesn’t mince words when describing the reality of what happened, he doesn’t beautify, he doesn’t mellow things. He makes himself face exactly what happened, and exactly what this means, however painful. He embraces reality, he stays in truth, he accepts no deceiving comfort.
Jeremiah not for one second thinks that what happened was an arbitrary event. He knew it would happen, he knows why it had to happen. He knows that it was precisely God who made it happen, according to what He spoke before. It is not Babylon’s strength, it is not God’s lack of power or control that lead to this national disaster, it is persistent human sin. God is on the throne, which is both the reason for the devastation, but it is also the hope for the future, for God is gracious.
In spite of all the turmoil expressed in this lament, Jeremiah finds through to hope. It was God’s principled-ness and justice that brought the judgment, it will be God’s mercy and faithfulness that will bring about a restoration. Though Jeremiah will no longer live to see it with his own eyes, ‘The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases, his mercies never come to an end… The LORD is good to those who wait for him, to the soul that seeks him’ (Lam 3:22,25). Jeremiah models that it is in embracing God – his judgments and his ways – that comfort, peace and hope come (Lam 3:25-33).

The author of Lamentations

Though the author doesn’t state his name, it is clear that he is an eyewitness to the siege and destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BC and the subsequent deportation of most of the surviving Jews (Lam 1:13-15, 2:6, 2:9, 2:12, 4:1-12, 4:10). The author is also a person with God’s perspective on this devastating event: He states clearly that it was Judah’s sins against her God that was the reason for her calamity, not military superiority of Babylon (Lam 2:14, 4:13, Jer 5:31, 23:11-12).
All indicators point to Jeremiah:
• He is one of the few godly people left who fits this description.
• Both Jewish and Christian tradition holds that Jeremiah wrote Lamentations. From the Septuagint translation (250 BC) onward Lamentation receives a preamble saying: “And it happened, after Israel had been captured and deported and Jerusalem had been destroyed, Jeremiah sat down and cried and uttered this lament and said:”
• Jeremiah is known to have written at least one official lament before, the one for Josiah (2 Chr 35:25), probably out of a similar feeling of loss and depression.
• Jeremiah is also described as lamenting in Jer 7:29, Jer 8:21 and Jer 9:1.
• Lamentations also contains descriptions that have strong parallels to Jeremiah’s life (Lam 3:25-30, 3:52-63).
• There are similarities of language and metaphors between Lamentations and Jeremiah.

The occasion

Lamentations was written soon after the destruction of Jerusalem, in the midst of the grief that immediately followed. Jerusalem fell on 18th July 586BC and the city and temple were burned on Aug 15th 586 BC. It can therefore be assumed that Lamentations was written during this time or shortly after. The writing of Lamentations was probably Jeremiah’s way to come to terms with the devastating events that transpired. Though at the end of his life Jeremiah is taken to Egypt against his will, it is clear that Jeremiah’s three writings (the book of Kings, Jeremiah and Lamentations) were all written for the exiled Jews in Babylon. They were the Jews who still held on to the promise of God and who collected these and other writings carefully, leading to the formation of the Old Testament Canon.

The history leading up to Lamentations

How did Israel ever get to this moment of utter devastation? Actually, the roots of it are old: Ever since the time of Moses God had clearly told Israel that their possession of the promised land was dependent on their allegiance to God and their obedience to his Law.
In Leviticus God says that the only reason those seven nations lost their right to existence in Canaan was their entrenched idolatry, evil and societal injustice. From the start God warns Israel that if they behave the same, they, too will lose the promised land (Lev 18:24-31). Before Moses dies he reminds the second generation of Israel one more time that persistent denial of God and his Law will eventually lead to the loss of God’s blessing and their right to the promised land (Deut 28:15-68).
Judah had started well, but over the centuries is had deteriorated. God sent many prophets to warn them, but repentance was only sporadic. The last prophet he sent is Jeremiah, who pleads with Judah for forty-one long years (627-586 BC) to repent and respond to God’s last call.
Judah doesn’t respond and Jeremiah now has the doubtful honor of seeing all his prophecies of doom come true before his very eyes, needlessly. Repentance would have averted the disaster. But the last few kings of Judah are godless and refuse to believe Jeremiah’s predictions of doom, even when Babylon already looms large on the horizon.
Babylon defeats and conquers Judah in 605 BC, exiling many Judeans and installing Josiah’s son Jehoiakim as king. His rebellion against Babylon brings on the second siege and conquest in 597 BC, with more people exiled and Josiah’s son Zedekiah being installed as king under Babylon. Zedekiah’s renewed rebellion against Babylon brings on the devastating third siege of Jerusalem (11th Jan 588 BC to 18th July 586 BC) with subsequent conquest and total destruction of Jerusalem and the temple. The Babylonians respectfully free Jeremiah from prison, where he was held as a traitor.
Most surviving Jews are exiled, Babylon leaves only the poorest in Judah under governor Gedaliah to farm the land. When Gedaliah is murdered, they fear Babylon’s reprisal and move to Egypt, forcefully taking Jeremiah with them.

The structure of Lamentations

Surprisingly, Lamentations is a highly structured piece of poetry. The chapters are so called acrostic poems, starting each verse with a new letter of the Hebrew alphabet (22 letters total).

If ‘translated’ into English, the structure is as follows:

chapter 1      22 acrostic stanzas at 3 lines each                                                    a_____ _____ _____
b_____ _____ _____
c_____ _____ _____ etc.
chapter 2      22 acrostic stanzas at 3 lines each                                                   a_____ _____ _____
b_____ _____ _____
b_____ _____ _____ etc.
chapter 3      22 acrostic stanzas at 3 lines each                                                   a_____ a____ a____
b_____ b____ b____
c_____ c____ c____ etc.
chapter 4      22 acrostic stanzas at 2 lines each                                                    a_____ _____
b_____ _____
c_____ _____ etc.
chapter 5      22 stanzas at 1 line each                                                                                _____

Not only are chapters one to four acrostic poems, there is a chiastic overall structure (a symmetric arrangement patterned after the lamp stand in the tabernacle). So chapters 1 and 5 correspond, chapters 2 and 4 correspond, chapter 3 is the important middle chapter, with special stress on verses Lam 3:22-33 as the mathematical center and heart of the entire structure, verses speaking of hope.

Why such a high degree of organization? How can a lament, a ‘spilling of one’s soul’ be so highly crafted? Is Jeremiah trying to find order in the chaos? Is he trying to seek beauty in the devastation? Is strong structure a support at times of loss of control? Is he expressing the tragic completeness of the happening? The full range of suffering and grief? We cannot say.

Some important themes expressed in Lamentations

The reason for this judgment is Judah’s sin
This theme is particularly strong in chapter one: “the LORD has made her suffer for the multitude of her transgressions … my transgressions were bound into a yoke; by his hand they were fastened together … the LORD is in the right, I have rebelled against his word” (Lam 1:5, 1:14, 1:18, etc).
God’s judgment is not arbitrary, not spontaneous nor an uncontrolled outburst of anger. God is entirely principled in his wrath. God has multiply predicted it, has warned against it, has sent prophets to address it and has given ample opportunity to repent. Only when humans persistently refuse all conviction and repentance – stubbornly and willfully – God judges.

God is the Judge, the main Actor

Jeremiah clearly identifies God as the Judge and main Actor. This theme is especially repeated in chapter 2: “How the LORD in his anger has humiliated daughter Zion … he has withdrawn his right hand from them … the Lord has become like an enemy, he has destroyed Israel” (Lam 2:1, 2:3, 2:5, etc).
Not for one second does Jeremiah think that the military strength, prowess or superiority of Babylon was the reason for this disaster. Not for one second does Jeremiah think that the destruction of Jerusalem proves God’s weakness or inferiority. There is no trace of bemoaning the difficulties in defense or the tough luck of being pitted against such a strong enemy. It is never “Babylon has…” but always “God has…”.
This shockingly includes God judging, destroying his very own temple, worship, priesthood and sacrificial system: “He has broken down his booth … has destroyed his tabernacle, the LORD has abolished in Zion festival and sabbath, and in his fierce indignation has spurned king and priest… the Lord has scorned his altar, disowned his sanctuary” (Lam 2:6, 2:7).
Why would God do that? Why would he do something that all nations will interpret as a proof of the weakness of Israel’s God? What is God concerned with here, more than with his reputation? Twice in history God has his own temple wiped out (586 BC and 70 AD), and twice for very similar reasons. When the temple has become a false security, a religious eye wash that looks good but that is not only distracting people from the real thing, but actively opposing God – then the temple has to go.
It seems God is willing to smash false hopes, to dismantle eye washes. He clearly is more concerned with reality and with people getting truth than with keeping up the appearances.
As believers we so often feel obligated, especially when it comes to God, church and religion, to keep up the appearances, to not ‘give a bad witness’. That is a good intention, but not God’s will when it comes to hiding sin, tolerating wrong or making people trust in the wrong thing.

Facing reality

In Lamentations Jeremiah forces himself to fully face reality, to express the devastation he sees and his emotion about it truthfully.
He uses dramatic contrasts “How lonely sits the city once full of people!… She that was a princess among the provinces has become a vassal… her foes have become her masters” (Lam 1:1, 1:5). He uses powerful metaphors “the roads to Zion mourn… her princes have become like stags, they fled without strength before the pursuer” (Lam 1:4, 1:6). He uses dramatic questions “should women eat their offspring, the children they have borne? Should priest and prophet be killed in the sanctuary of the Lord?… What can I say for you?… Who can command and have it done, if the Lord has not ordained it?… Why should any who draw breath complain about the punishment of their sins?… Why have you forgotten us completely?” (Lam 2:20, 2:13, 3:37, 3:39, 5:20). He uses dramatic personification “Look and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow… from on high he sent fire; it went deep into my bones, he spread a net for my feet, he turned me back; he has left me stunned, faint all day long… the LORD is in the right, for I have rebelled against his word… I called to my lovers but they deceived me” (Lam 1:12, 1:18-19). He uses expressions of grief “my eyes are spent with weeping; my stomach churns; my bile is poured out on the ground because of the destruction of my people… Cry aloud to the Lord! O wall of daughter Zion! Let tears stream down like a torrent day and night! Give yourself no rest, you eyes no respite! Arise, cry out in the night… pour out your heart like water before the presence of the Lord! Lift your hands to him… my eyes flow with tears because of the destruction of my people” (Lam 2:11, 2:18-19, 3:48). He uses individualization of the disaster “we have become orphans, fatherless… our ancestors sinned, and we bear their iniquities… women are raped, virgins in the towns of Judah. Princes are hung by their hands, no respect is shown to elders. Young men are compelled to grind, boys stagger under loads of wood. The old men have left the city gate, the young men their music” (Lam 5:3, 5:7, 5:11-14).
What is the purpose of such expression of emotion and anguish? Lamentations is not a stoic denial of emotion, nor a Buddhist negation of emotion. Jeremiah forces himself to face un-beautified, unmitigated reality. Jeremiah expresses his emotions as real, as legitimate, as appropriate to what happened. Jeremiah models that to God all emotions can and even should be expressed. It allows God to reach in, to heal, to sooth, to challenge, to give light, to give perspective. Bringing emotions into the light make them able to be processed, able to be healed; but suppression of emotion makes them churn in the dark corners.

Jeremiah’s struggle

So Jeremiah sees his nation, city and temple completely destroyed and his people decimated in warfare, in a siege-induced famine and related epidemics. The survivors have been exiled to powerful, idolatrous Babylon.
He is left to bemoan the fact that for all his decades of passionate prophesying and embracing of sacrificial obedience (leading to rejection, ridicule, death threats, imprisonments and torture), his ministry could not bring about a change. He is feeling devastated, lonely, defeated, utterly fruitless and resents his years of what appears to be a meaningless self-sacrifice.
He puts his inner turmoil, his deep depression, even his resentment against God to paper, especially in Lam 3:1-21. His words are shockingly honest: “I am one who has seen affliction under the rod of God’s wrath, he has driven and brought me into darkness without any light; against me alone he turns his hand, again and again, all day long. He has made my flesh and my skin waste away, and broken my bones; he has besieged and enveloped me with bitterness and tribulation; he has made me sit in darkness like the dead. He has walled me about so that I cannot escape… though I call and cry for help; he shuts our my prayer; he has blocked my way with hewn stones, he has made my paths crooked. He is a bear lying in wait for me, a lion in hiding; he led me off my way and tore me to pieces; he has made me desolate… he has filled me with bitterness, he has sated me with wormwood. He has made me cower in ashes; my soul is bereft of peace; I have forgotten what happiness is; so I say: “Gone is my glory, and all that I had hoped for from the LORD. The thought of my affliction and my homelessness is wormwood and gall!”

What extreme things to say about God! Not exactly flattering. Is a text like this even inspired? We would have edited words like that out of the Bible. Yet God ensures that these words of anguish are recorded for all eternity to read, the very deepest doubts of so obedient a prophet. God surely doesn’t do public relations the way we would. Here is a human’s words, spilling his inner world of deep conflict, turmoil, doubt, disappointment, blaming, anger and even bitterness – and God turns it into the authoritative, eternal Word of God.
Does Jeremiah’s life justify this description? It surely does. From his youth he is despised, opposed, taunted and his life threatened, not only by political and spiritual leaders, but by his very own village and family. He keeps forgiving, keeps desiring Judah’s salvation, keeps interceding, keeps showing God’s heart to them in spite of ridicule, threats, beatings, oppression, imprisonments, torture and starvation by the hand of his own people.
Once Jerusalem falls, Jeremiah is vindicated, proven to be a true prophet. Yet what triumph is this? Being able to say to a few hundred starved people, who just lost everything that you were right after all? Jeremiah has no triumph, no honor (they deport him to Egypt!) and no joy in their defeat. All throughout Lamentations he continues to identify with his people, truly grieves for the devastation and bemoans his utter fruitlessness and the seemingly unsuccessful sacrifice of his entire life.
Jeremiah is forever stuck, and nothing ever really changes. He is stuck with a God who has given him the comfortless, lonely and heart-rending job of representing the heart of God till the bitter end. In all his conflict with God he remains God-centered, he is like the small child pummeling God’s chest, angry, discouraged, yet held. Jeremiah suffers with God.

God’s suffering

And maybe, after focusing so much on Jeremiah’s suffering, it is good to turn to think about God’s suffering. God is the ultimate love who sees his chosen people choose willful, stubborn, persistent idolatry and evil, till they push themselves across the line where God’s redemption is no longer possible.
God is the disappointed lover, the faithful wooer, the spurned and humiliated husband, the one who in the end has the bitter duty to kill off all that remains. How does God feel when his eight hundred and twenty year dream of a nation under God goes to shambles?
Yet God is ever the redeemer. He is proud of Jeremiah who in all the complexity of his conflicts and deep disappointments truly does represent the heart of God. He will use Lamentations, with its words of complete turmoil to comfort believers throughout the ages, those who have gone through brutalizing experiences or bereavement as maybe only few others have.

The middle of the chiasm

Jeremiah finds a way through this conflict: “But this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness” (Lam 3:21-23). For Jeremiah it is an act of the will to remind himself of the other reality that he knows is equally real, though it seems very far away in the midst of suffering. He puts his hope in God, accepts his portion, his role, his calling, embraces what God has appointed for him: “The LORD is my portion,” says my soul; therefore I will have hope in him. The LORD is good to those who wait for him, to the soul that seeks him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD” (Lam 3:25-26). This is faith, clawing, persevering and triumphant faith.
He is alone and isolated, but he can even call that good (Lam 3:27-30): “It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD. It is good for one to bear the yoke in youth, to sit alone in silence when the Lord has imposed it, to put one’s mouth to the dust (there may yet be hope), to give one’s cheek to the smiter, and be filled with insults.”
Jeremiah draws strength from God, he remains with God, he does not withdraw. He comes to the crystal-clear perspective, that God, though he may inflict things for a time, has no joy in human suffering as such (Lam 3:33), “Although he causes grief, he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love; for he does not willingly afflict or grieve anyone.” This verse is the very center of the chiasm, the heart of Lamentations. God doesn’t love suffering as such, suffering is never the goal; but in God suffering is never without purpose, it does something, it has meaning.

Color Coding Suggestions

• Who, when, where
• Contrasts, Comparisons, Reasons
• Emotions, Emphatic Statements
• Questions, Metaphors

Repeated Themes (Bracket type color coding)

• Descriptions of siege and destruction suffering, death, destruction, hunger, …
• Reasons for judgment idolatry, mixing up of religions, innocent bloodshed, perverted justice, alliances with nations
• Jeremiah’s life especially Jeremiah’s personal struggles, prayers, conflicts with God
• Descriptions of God

Meditation Passages

• Lam 3:10-20 Jeremiah in suffering, completely stuck, bitter, ‘blaming God’
• Lam 3:21-24 steadfast love, the LORD my portion
• Lam 3:25-30 God good to seeking, bear yoke in youth, sit in silence, there may yet be hope
• Lam 3:31-33 God does not reject forever, will have compassion, does not willingly afflict any one
• Lam 3:52-57 I called your name, “Do not fear!”
• Lam 5:21-22 Restore us to yourself, utterly rejected? Angry beyond measure?

Introduction

• How does the book feel? What emotions are expressed? Is it entirely hopeless?
• What function does it serve?
• Why would a lament be in the Bible? What is the point of writing a lamentation? Will it change anything?
• Lamentations is a unique thing in the Bible, no other book like it. It is an appendix to Jeremiah.
• Some describe it as a funeral service for the City Jerusalem, that has died

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Who wrote?

• Author not directly stated in text, but what can we know about him?
  • eyewitness to the siege, destruction and deportation (Lam 1:13-15, 2:6, 2:9, 2:12, 4:1-12, 4:10) in 586 BC.
  • a person with a godly perspective, recognizing that it was Judah’s sins against her God that was the reason for her calamity, not a superiority of Babylon (Lam 2:14, 4:13, Jer 5:31, 23:11-12)
• In the oldest arrangements of the Hebrew OT, Lamentations does not appear with the poetic books (as you would expect), but in the prophets – forming one volume with Jeremiah in spite of Lamentations containing only 2 verses of prophecy.
• It is both a Jewish and Christian tradition that Jeremiah wrote Lamentations (from Septuagint and Vulgate onwards Jeremiah’s name is in the title or preamble, as also in the Bangla Translation). The bridge reads: “And is happened, after Israel had been captured and deported and Jerusalem had been destroyed, Jeremiah sat down and cried and uttered this lament and said:”
• Jeremiah is known to have written at least one official lament, the one for Josiah (2 Chr 35:25), probably out of a similar feeling of loss and depression. Jeremiah is also described as lamenting in Jer 7:29, Jer 8:21, Jer 9:1
• Jeremiah was an eye-witness to the final siege of Jerusalem (Jer 38:20) and the aftermath of destruction and deportation (Jer 39:14, Jer 41-44). We know Jeremiah’s feelings for his nation (see Jer 9:1, 13:17)
• There are Lamentation passages with strong parallels to Jeremiah’s life, like Lam 3:25-30, 3:52-63.
• There are also a number of parallels of Lamentations and Jeremiah:
  • Lam 1:2              Jer 30:14 lovers care nothing for you
  • Lam 1:16, 2:11   Jer 9:1, 9:18 my eyes flow with tears
  • Lam 2:22           Jer 6:25 terror / enemies all around
  • Lam 1:9             Jer 13:22, 2:24 skirts lifted up, shamed
  • Lam 1:15            Jer 8:21 Virgin daughter of Zion
  • Lam 1:16, 2:11  Jer 9:1,18 tears
  • Lam 1:2              Jer 30:14 no one to comfort, dealt treacherously
  • Lam 4:21           Jer 49:12 Edom also punished
• Some suggest dual authorship because of the drastic change in Lam 3:19 from a mournful lament (God portrayed as cruelly severe) and Lam 3:19-39 which speak of hope and praise to God for his faithfulness and compassion. But the acrostic pattern denies this.

When written?

• Lamentations was written soon after the destruction of Jerusalem, in the midst of the grief that immediately followed.
• Jerusalem fell July 19 586BC and the city and temple were burned Aug 15 586 BC.
• It can therefore be assumed that this was written between Sept – Dec 586 BC (before Jeremiah is abducted to Egypt.)
• Some verses sound like some time later: Lam 5:8 slaves rule over us, there is no one to deliver us from their hand. Lam 5:13 young men compelled to grind / young boys stagger under loads,
• Maybe this describes the time between the conquest (July 19th), and the burning of the temple / walls (Aug 15th)
• Date usually given 586 – 582 BC.

To whom written?

• Probably to the exiles in Babylon (like Kings and Jeremiah)

Where from written?

• Probably Jerusalem, maybe Mizpah (Jer 40:6) where Gedaliah is, or Egypt (where Jeremiah is taken)

Literary kind?

• Entirely in poetry (> figurative interpretation)

Structure?

Chiastic overall structure, acrostic arrangement (Psa 119 is also an acrostic)

• chapter 1 22 acrostic stanzas at 3 lines each   a_____ _____ _____ 22v
• chapter 2 22 acrostic stanzas at 3 lines each  a_____ _____ _____ 22v
• chapter 3 22 acrostic stanzas at 3 lines each  a_____ a____ a____ 66v
• chapter 4 22 acrostic stanzas at 2 lines each  a_____ ______ 22v
• chapter 5 22 stanzas at 1 line each ______ 22v
• The mathematical center or punchline of the chiasm is Lam 3:31-33, speaking of hope (Lam 3:22-33)
• Lament was a known type of literature at this time, also Laments commemorating the fall of some of the great cities to enemy invaders. Example: lament over the destruction of Ur by the Sumerians.
• Why such a high degree of organization? Maybe when all things seem to fall apart there is comfort in structure. Revelation is the most strongly structured thing in the Bible next to Lamentations, maybe for the same reason.
• Or maybe this is expressing the completeness of the happening? The full range of suffering and grief?
• Lamentations’ very deliberate and orchestrated form contrasts with the passionate, dramatic outpourings of grief.
• Hebrew Alphabet
  • ALEPH ‘
  • BETH B
  • GIMEL G
  • DALETH D
  • HE H
  • WAW W
  • ZAYIN Z
  • CHETH CH
  • TETH T
  • YOD Y
  • KAPH K
  • LAMED L
  • MEM M
  • NUN N
  • SAMECH S
  • AYIN `
  • PE P
  • TSADE TS
  • QOPH Q
  • RESH R
  • SHIN SH
  • TAW T

Composition?

• Many contrasts Doom <=> Hope, past glory <=> present degradation (Lam 1:1, 1:5)
• Many personifications Lam 1:2
• Dramatic questions Lam 2:13, 2:20, 3:37, 3:38, 3:39, 5:20
• Powerful metaphors Lam 1:4, 1:6
• The book was read once a year in Jewish tradition to commemorate the destruction of the temple on 9th Ab.

Political condition?

• Probably the lowest point in Israel’s history so far, only rivaled by AD 70, now both Judah and Israel are deported and scattered among heathen nations.
• The promised land is lost after some 820 years of inhabiting it 1405-586 BC
• The temple and the sacrificial system destroyed. The law in its ceremonial aspects is unfulfillable now.
• No unified co-living, no self-appointed leadership under the rule of the “invincible” superpower Babylon and no hope that this should ever change other than the mere word of God through Jeremiah and others.
• Religious condition?
• Shattered hopes and smashed false securities in Israel’s chosenness, in God’s guaranteed favor
• Probably strong confusion, doubt, disappointment, hopelessness: Is God not All-powerful after all? How can his nation be conquered and humiliated by other heathen / idol worshiping nations? How can God allow this?
• How can God destroy his own temple, center, witness, sanctuary on earth, his own priesthood and commanded sacrificial system? Why would God abolish himself if he was the true God?
• Why would God remove them from the very ability to follow / fulfill his law? sacrifice? obey?
• Does this not prove all along that God is only a local deity like the rest, and currently by far not the strongest? why not sign up with Babylonian idolatry?
• How could God use a more godless / evil / suppressive / idol worshiping nation to punish Judah?
• Maybe also conviction, fulfilled predictions of destruction, of all things faithfully announced but not believed

Reigning kings?

• Judah none! You just lost the privilege of self-rule. It seems God’s promise of 2 Sam 7:16 and even Jer 33:17 is broken. Zedekiah was 597-586 BC, Gedaliah 586 BC till murdered.
• Babylon > Nebuchadnezzar (605-562 BC), Evil-Merodach (562 BC onward)
• Egypt > Neco II, in whom Judah trusted for deliverance, 594 BC Psamtik II, 588 BC Hophra, 568 BC Amasis

Contemporary prophets?

• Daniel > to Babylonian & Medo-Persian Court 605-536 BC
• Ezekiel > Judah’s exiles in Babylon 593-560 BC

Main ideas?

• Lament over the defeat & total destruction of Judah, Jerusalem, temple, loss of land, people and self-government
• God has announced, allowed and brought about this destruction > he controls history & the superpowers
• The reason for the destruction is Judah’s stubborn sin and refusal to repent
• Acknowledging God’s rightness, justice, mercy > trust in him still for restoration

Main reasons?

• To lament & describe the defeat & total destruction of Jerusalem
• To affirm God’s character of faithfulness, mercy & justice in all this
• To call to repent, to submit under God’s judgment & to trust God again
• To answer the questions and doubts: “how could this happen? Why did God allow this? Is he not powerful?” and so give assurance, a frame, a hope to overwhelmed Judah in exile

Some repeated themes

Rough Overview

• Lam 1 Jerusalem Description / Reasons for judgment
• Lam 2 Jerusalem God as the actor behind the judgement
• Lam 3 Jeremiah Jeremiah’s personal words Lam 3:1-21 bitter complaint out of total misery, Lam 3:22-41 God’s mercy, trusting God, depending on him, Lam 3:42-66 imprecatory prayer
• Lam 4 Jerusalem Description of judgment
• Lam 5 Jerusalem Effect on society, crying to God

Reasons for the judgment ch 1 especially

• Lam 1:5 the Lord has made her suffer for the multitude of her transgressions
• Lam 1:14 my transgressions were bound into a yoke; by his hand they were fastened together;…
• Lam 1:18 the LORD is in the right, for I have rebelled against his word
• Lam 1:20 distressed … because I have been very rebellious.
• Lam 1:22 as you have dealt with me because of all my transgression
• Lam 2:14 your prophets have seen for you false and deceptive visions; they have not exposed your iniquity to restore you fortunes, but have seen oracles for you that are false and misleading
• Lam 3:42 We have transgressed and rebelled, and you have not forgiven.
• Lam 4:13 It was for the sins of her prophets and her priests, who shed the blood of the righteous in the midst of her
• God’s judgment is – as always – totally lawful, according to the covenant, the cause-effect relations, according to every prediction God made. Nothing is arbitrary, nothing is spontaneous, nothing is an uncontrolled anger outburst. God is entirely principled in his wrath. He executes nothing that was not announced over decades (often centuries), warned about repeatedly, given multiple opportunities to repent. Only when all other measures fail (conviction, prophets, partial judgments) and the refusal to repent is persistent, stubborn and willful, God judges.
• How is my anger? How do I lead? Discipline children? Correct others? ‘Make people cooperate’? Anger is first an emotion over which I have no more control than over ‘being hungry’. But in the way I feed it, nurture it, hold on to it, let it run, act on it, don’t address it … it can become a definite sin.

Description of the sad reality of the siege, defeat, slaughter, total destruction, aftermath

• full of dramatic contrasts
  • Lam 1:1 once full of people > lonely … was great > now like a widow … was a princess > now a vassal
  • Lam 1:5 her foes have become her masters
• powerful metaphors
  • Lam 1:4 the roads to Zion mourn
  • Lam 1:6 her princes have become like stags, fled without strength before the pursuer
• dramatic questions
  • Lam 2:20 should women eat their offspring, the children they have borne? Should priest and prophet be killed in the sanctuary of the Lord?
  • Lam 2:13 what can I say for you? To what can I liken you? For vast as the sea is your ruin; who can heal you?
  • Lam 3:37 who can command and have it done, if the Lord has not ordained it?
  • Lam 3:38 is it not from the mouth of the Most High that good and bad come?
  • Lam 3:39 why should any who draw breath complain about the punishment of their sins?
  • Lam 5:20 why have you forgotten us completely? Why have you forsaken us these many days?
• dramatic personification
  • Lam 1:12 Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? Look and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow, … from on high he sent fire; it went deep into my bones, he spread a net for my feet, he turned me back; he has left me stunned, faint all day long
  • Lam 1:18 the LORD is in the right, for I have rebelled against his word
  • Lam 1:19 I called to my lovers but they deceived me regarding Jerusalem / its people / Jeremiah himself
• expressions of grief over the destroyed city and people – Emotion ch 2 especially
  • Lam 1:16 for these things I weep; my eyes flow with tears for a comforter is far from me, one to revive my courage …
  • Lam 2:11 my eyes are spent with weeping; my stomach churns; my bile is poured out on the ground because of the destruction of my people
  • Lam 2:18 Cry aloud to the Lord! O wall of daughter Zion! Let tears stream down like a torrent day and night! Give yourself no rest, you eyes no respite!
  • Lam 2:19 Arise, cry out in the night, … pour out your heart like water before the presence of the Lord! Lift your hands to him.
• Jeremiah is not even a trace pleased, vindictive, he does not rejoice at seeing his word finally come to this oppressive, torturous people!
  • Lam 3:48 my eyes flow with tears because of the destruction of my people
  • Lam 3:51 My eyes cause me grief at the fate of all the young women in any city
• Free expression of emotion, even extreme emotion. There is nowhere a stoic denial of emotion, nor a Buddhist negation of emotion. Emotion is a good thing. It’s neither forbidden, not immature, nor a sign of un-spirituality. Emotions are legitimate, real, indicators of something. But they are not the measure of all things, they are not guidance, they are unsteady and subject to change, even quick change.
  To God all emotions can and even should be expressed. It allows God to reach in, to heal, to balm, to challenge, to give light, to give perspective. Bringing it into the light makes it processable, suppression makes it churn in the dark corners.
• Individualization of the disaster ch 5 especially
  • Lam 5:3 we have become orphans, fatherless
  • Lam 5:7 our ancestors sinned, and we bear their iniquities
  • Lam 5:11 women are raped, virgins in the towns of Judah
  • Lam 5:12 princes are hung by their hands, no respect is shown to elders
  • Lam 5:13 young men are compelled to grind, boys stagger under loads of wood
  • Lam 5:14 old men have left the city gate, young men their music
• In war times the vulnerable suffer more, children, women … that’s part of reality. War is breakdown of lawfulness, of protection of rights.

God as Judge, main Actor

• God himself has judged, destroyed and brought in the foe … ch 2 especially
• God is the sovereign Actor, here merciless Judge. This theme is massively stressed:
  • Lam 1:14 my transgressions were bound into a yoke; by his hand they were fastened together; they weigh on my neck, the Lord handed me over to those whom I cannot withstand
  • Lam 1:15 the Lord has rejected all my warriors in the midst of me; h proclaimed a time against me … the Lord has trodden as in a wine press the virgin daughter Judah
  • Lam 2:1 how the Lord in his anger has humiliated daughter Zion!
  • Lam 2:2 the Lord has destroyed without mercy all the dwellings of Jacob; in his wrath he has broken down the stronghold
  • Lam 2:3 he has cut down in his fierce anger all the might of Israel; he has withdrawn his right hand from them
  • Lam 2:5 the Lord has become like an enemy, he has destroyed Israel …
  • Lam 2:8 the LORD determined to lay in ruins the wall of daughter Zion …
  • Lam 2:22 God invited enemies
  • Lam 3:34 you have wrapped yourself with anger and pursued us, killing without pity
  • Lam 3:37 Who can command and have it done, if the LORD has not ordained it?
  • Lam 3:44 you have wrapped yourself with a cloud so that no prayer can pass through
• It is never: ‘Babylon has …’, it is ‘God has…’. This is a worldview exactly like Jeremiah’s and the Bible’s in general: God is the one we ultimately contend with, he is the source, the reason, the cause, he is the solution. That includes God judging, destroying his very own temple, worship, priesthood, sacrificial system, center
• Lam 2:6 He has broken down his booth … has destroyed his tabernacle, the LORD has abolished in Zion festival & sabbath, and in his fierce indignation has spurned king and priest.
• Lam 2:7 the Lord has scorned his altar, disowned his sanctuary …
• Why would God do that? Why do something all nations will understand as a proof of this God’s weakness? What is God concerned with here, more than with his reputation? … And by the way, he does that twice in history, and twice for very similar reasons, 586 BC and 70 AD, he has his temple wiped out, that has become a false security and a thing that is religious but really opposing God.
  • > He is more concerned with smashing false hopes, dismantling ‘eye washes’, with people getting truth than with keeping up the appearances. He is more concerned with reality and truth than with a good name and appearances. God is not Greek.
• We feel so obligated, especially when it comes to God, church and religion, to keep up the appearances, to not ‘give a bad witness’. That is principally good, but never when it comes to hiding sin or tolerating wrong.
• We are so impressed with appearances, so concerned with appearance, so wrong in our evaluations, in both what we applaud and what we look down on!
• What type of questions would arise in the minds of the Jews / exiles?
  • How could God ever allow this?
• How could this happen?
  • How can a nation less righteous and heathen be used to punish God’s chosen people?
  • Is God not more powerful than Babylon?
  • How come a nation worshiping idols is victorious?
  • Has God abandoned us?
  • Have his promises fallen through?
  • What happened to our calling?
  • Babylon is the present world, maybe they are right? … Babylon used to march prisoners in the main square to demoralized them / disciple them into their thinking … not unlike Rome in the NT
• God counters many doubts / wrong conclusions that can easily come up given the current happenings:
• God is the powerful / sovereign / all-controlling Actor behind this destruction. He has not fallen off the throne. He has not been overpowered by some Babylonian stronger god. He is neither surprised nor shocked nor overwhelmed nor helpless. He is powerful, all-powerful, acting, sovereignly controlling, moving super-powers like figures on a chess board.
• This destruction does NOT prove that God is only a local deity / a weak deity / a deity among others that seem more powerful for now / on the level with other nations’ gods.
• This destruction was fully brought about by God himself, it was laid out in the “if then” of the law, it was predicted, announced, warned about, explained, given chance to repent, when become irreversible executed judgment against his very own nation. This is not “things slipping out of the hands of God”, but this is his very word, spoken for centuries, fulfilled by his powerful hand
• Jeremiah grieves deeply for Jerusalem but never implies the judgment to be in any way unjustified (though in the personal parts (ch 3), he says the persecution of him was unjustified)

Jeremiah’s struggle

• Jeremiah’s expressions of grief over himself within the situation:
  • Lam 3:1 I am the one who has seen affliction under the rod of God’s wrath
  • Lam 3:2 he has driven and brought me into darkness without any light
  • Lam 3:3 against me alone he turns his hand, again and again, all day long
  • Lam 3:4 he has made my flesh and my skin waste away, and broken my bones
  • Lam 3:5 he has besieged and enveloped me with bitterness and tribulation
  • Lam 3:6 he has made me sit in darkness like the dead
  • Lam 3:7 he has walled me about so that I cannot escape; he has put heavy chains on me
  • Lam 3:8 though I call and cry for help; he shuts our my prayer;
  • Lam 3:9 he has blocked my way with hewn stones, he has made my paths crooked.
  • Lam 3:10 he is a bear lying in wait for me, a lion in hiding
  • Lam 3:11 he led me off my way and tore me to pieces; he has made me desolate;
  • Lam 3:12 he has bent his bow and set me as a mark for his arrow.
  • Lam 3:13 He shot into my vitals the arrows of his quiver;
  • Lam 3:14 I have become the laughingstock of all my people, the object of their taunt-songs all day long.
  • Lam 3:15 he has filled me with bitterness, he has sated me with wormwood.
  • Lam 3:16 he has made my teeth grind on gravel, and made me cower in ashes;
  • Lam 3:17 my soul is bereft of peace; I have forgotten what happiness is;
  • Lam 3:18 so I say: “Gone is my glory, and all that I had hoped for from the LORD
  • Lam 3:19 the thought of my affliction and my homelessness is wormwood and gall!
  • Lam 3:20 my soul continually thinks of it and is bowed down within me.
• What extreme things to say about God!
• Not exactly compliments! Yet God ensures that this is put to record for all eternity to read the very deepest doubts of a so obedient prophet. God surely doesn’t do ‘PR’ our way!
• Jeremiah’s inner world of deep conflict / unpeace / disappointment with God / anger / even bitterness and charging God with wrong

Does Jeremiah’s life justify this description?

• Lam 3:59-66 … you have seen all their malice, all their plots against me! You have heard their taunts … pay them back for their deeds … give them anguish of heart, your curse be on them!
• What is he still worried about? Now that “all is over” … but maybe it really is not over, in a sense he is now more vulnerable to angry sufferers than ever. Maybe the very honor shown to Jeremiah by Babylon further endangers him now? And other Babylon favored didn’t last long > Gedaliah
• In a sense once Jerusalem falls Jeremiah is vindicated, proven to be a true prophet. He should have regained respect and honor in the sight of people … but reality is quite different.
• First of all, he has triumphed, but: > what triumph is this? A triumph of being able to say to 4000 starved people, having just lost their entire families, land and homes that you were right after all? He is proven right, but there is no joy in that, no triumph, no honor.
• Jeremiah, and that needs to be said to show that he truly is a prophet representing the heart of God: he is not vindictive at all in all of Lamentations or Jeremiah. We don’t get from him a “See, I told you so!? I was right after all! Now you finally get what you deserve! If you had listened to me, you wouldn’t be a mess now!”
• He truly truly grieves for the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of his people, a people, mind you, that have ignored, ridiculed, taunted, beaten and tortured him for decades, … a people that never took him serious, that consistently chose to ignore the word of God. But he truly cries for their destruction.
• Maybe this is one of the things that makes Jeremiah be so in conflict internally and with God: he is stuck, he in a sense is the looser either way.
• If they would believe and obey him, he will see none of his predictions true. But either way they don’t
• If they ignore him, he will live to see his family, his people, his city, his nation go into complete ruin after 820 y. He will witness them loose everything, he will see most of the population starve to death, be killed in war and siege, see the end of every promise and hope of God for his chosen nation
• What comfort is it to have been right? What joy is their in ‘your vindication’, the very vindication is the end of your world as you know it.
• But really even when he is fully vindicated they will NOT believe nor respect him, they persist in idolatry, they force him to go back to where God said they should never return – Egypt! The full circle of destroyed hopes, of lost calling, of history gone to nothing
• And in all this process, his entire life, he watches this happening, increasingly severe, increasingly violent, never knowing whether he survives the next day.
• The word of God is his life, his honor, but also his point of conflict, his problem.
• And things keep getting worse. Remember in Job: when you think things are really bad, they can get worse!
• And there is no soothing, no comfort, no relief, no private happiness, no respite at home, no family, not the joy of a marriage, not the joy of children, just relentlessly being God’s representative, and the very representation is your biggest trouble.
• Jeremiah is forever stuck, and nothing ever really changes. I think his prime conflict is with God, who has given him this oh so powerful but oh so lonely and heart-rending job of representing him in the last hours of a dream.
• But also let us stand amazed at how through all this conflict he becomes the very message of God, he truly represents the heart of God to his people, he really sees with God’s eyes, he owns an eternal perspective, he can in the midst of a children-eating starvation rejoice about a God who has promised a hope again … he really becomes God’s mouthpiece, the Revealer of God’s heart, the one who suffers like God.

God’s suffering

• And maybe, after focusing so much on Jeremiah’s suffering, we must turn to God and say: He is the one who really suffers through this whole ordeal.
• God is the ultimate love, that sees his chosen people go into complete ridiculous stubbornness and push themselves across the line where they are beyond God’s redemption.
• God is the disappointed lover, the faithful wooer, the spurned and humiliated husband, the one who in the end has the bitter duty to kill off all that remains. How do you think God feels when his 820 year dreams goes completely to shambles?
• Jeremiah, in all the complexity of his conflicts and deep disappointments truly IS God’s representative.
• People have also pointed out that there are quite significant parallels of Jeremiah and Jesus
• Jeremiah, like Jesus, speaks to a people steeped in self-appointed religiosity, but drifting towards complete destruction. Jeremiah, like Jesus, speaks an unpopular message to people who have the power to kill him.
• Jeremiah, like Jesus, calls on the conscience, conviction of his hearers quite unsuccessfully, both have a very uncomfortable thing to say … both predict the destruction of religiosity and an amazing redemption beyond

Testimony

• American woman staying on, eventually caught in the Serbia war, while her own country bombed Serbia. Becomes a danger to her host family, then escapes alone over the border during war into a neigbhoring country.
• Then falling into deep depression. When she could read nothing anymore (literally nauseated when trying to even open a book like ‘Philip Yancey, Where is God when it hurts?’), she could read Lamentations. And Lamentations only. Through Lamentations she found back to God
• There are things in the Bible speaking to types of people, having gone through experiences that we may not have gone through.
• When we read that, we may really not understand at all, or be shocked and what God says or at what people express > but this could well be because the Bible addresses all issues and all people
• Plea for a respect for the Word of God. If you don’t understand it, say: I don’t understand this right now, God might show me later. Don’t say: this is nonsense and God could never have said that. Maybe this was written by somebody experiencing something you (thankfully) never had to experience. People violated, people raped, people bereaved and brutalized all find comfort in the Bible. God addresses so much more than what you (up to now) experienced.
• Need for humility before the word of God that has stood for millenia and has been died for by countless believers

The middle of the chiasm

• Jeremiah finds through (“But this I call to mind…”, Lam 3:21, an act of the will to remind us of the other reality that we know it equally real, though it seems very far away in the midst of suffering) to a confession of the steadfast love of God, the stubbornly committed mercy of God, the renewed faithfulness of God.
• Jeremiah put his hope in God, accepts his portion, his role, his calling, embraces what God has appointed (the story of his life! The great achievement of Jeremiah!). This is faith, the clawing, persevering faith, the second kind of faith in Heb 11:35b onward).
• He is alone and isolated, but he can even call that good (Lam 3:27-30): “It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD. It is good for one to bear the yoke in youth, to sit alone in silence when the Lord has imposed it, to put one’s mouth to the dust (there may yet be hope), to give one’s cheek to the smiter, and be filled with insults.”
• This ‘drawing on strength from God’, that David also knew (1 Ki 30:6 ‘and David strengthened himself in the Lord’), this ability to remain with God, to not withdraw, to not reject him as the center is crucial. It is make or break.
• This is exactly what our modern youth can’t ‘to sit alone in silence when the Lord has imposed it’, many are utterly unable to bear this for even a short time!
• And then again, just to make sure, the crystal-clear perspective, that God, though he may inflict things for a time, he has no joy in human suffering as such (Lam 3:33), ‘Although he causes grief, he will have compassion according tot he abundance of his steadfast love; for he does not willingly afflict or grieve anyone.’ This is the smack middle of the chiasm!! Lam 3:33
• This amazing verse also shows, though, that ‘absence of suffering’ is not the highest good, there are things higher than that (like revelation of God! Remember Job?), there may be reasons and causes for which suffering is needed, a pathway, … but: suffering is never a goal in itself. This is not a glorification of asceticism or self-inflicted pain.

Application

What can we learn from Lamentations?

• What do you think? Have you found it depressing?
• Need for grieving … taking time, time to cry, time to complain, time to feel horrible, time to doubt, time to voice what one never voices. Grief comes in waves. Allow the waves. Chapter 5 seems to be another wave, maybe that’s why the breakdown of the acrostic arrangement.
• Need to be silent, need to speak, we speak about people who died, we need to celebrate who they were, thank God for what we received through them, need for memorial, need for honesty
• This is a plea to speak out before God, to yell at God … don’t stay calm and cool and think you can figure it out on your own and control it > it will be festering bitterness. Rather complain, charge God with wrong, but talk to him, pummel his chest.
• Need to be honest before God, with all disappointments, with bitterness. Do speak things out! … “eating things” will not help, it will create festering wounds, bitterness roaming subconsciously, eating away your life
• Learning from Jeremiah’s personal struggle (not unlike Job) > no cold distant ‘drawing conclusions’ to save myself from further pain … “you have chosen iniquity rather than suffering”.
• Even in the very hard sentences of God there is incredible comfort (see Jeremiah). Comfort of being taken seriously, comfort of growing deeper with God, in understanding him more, in joining His emotions more.
• Sometimes our lives will feel like a “flight forward”
• Sometimes our lives will feel like God got us stuck alright, feel like a bug on my back with God holding you down
• Job: deeper revelation through suffering … there are things which cannot be learned other than suffering and identification with God … do you think Job was sorry after all was over? Do you think Jeremiah was sorry after all was over? We open a ‘poor Jeremiah’ club, but just know that Jeremiah will not joinINg your club.
• Need for mercy for people going through conflicts I never faced … careful with “closed theology”
• Beauty comforts … Lamentations is beautiful, it really is. Beauty comforts. Nature comforts > time in God’s beauty / music / art / painting / massage / creation for healing.
• Even when we think this is the end of history / the end of my country, there is always God who leads on.
• Many times in history it looked like “all was destroyed”, “all was gone”, and promptly something new arose from the ashes. Example: Migrations of peoples bringing down the Roman Empire … then Irish monks re-evangelizing Europe
  • Example: cruel Viking North conquering Europe … slave girls had preached them the gospel.
  • Example: Current Europe, may not exist 100 years from now, but what will exist is God’s church alive and growing in a hundred corners of this world that we don’t even know the name of right now. Empires come, empires go
• History is in God’s hands. Disasters do come. But God has always a way to go on for those who are his.
• German proverb: “God’s mills mill slowly, but mill excellently.”
• Injustice and oppression will not last forever, God will limit it. Even “invincible” empires will fall. There is no power so entrenched that God could not rise up another one against it. God is sovereign over history and super powers.
• Though empires war against each other, how long they last is ultimately dependent on: the inner strength, lawfulness, justice, how much of the population can live how reasonably well. The true destruction is a rotting from the inside.
• Even after major events and confirmations there will always be people who interpret everything differently. But God will make sure that those who only want to know “little” will know what they need to know.
• And yet, even as the prophet’s heart breaks, with life seemingly coming apart, he pauses to proclaim a ringing testimony of deep faith in the goodness and mercy of God. The future sparkles with the promise of renewal and restoration – a promise as certain as the dawn. “Great is your faithfulness” (Lam 3:23)
• God has never failed him in the past. God has promised to remain faithful in the future. In the light of the God he knows and loves, Jeremiah finds hope and comfort.