Lamentations Manuscript
CLICK HERE TO LISTEN OR WATCH THESE LESSONS
Contents
An Invitation to Come Home
Lamentations 1–3
Some well-known lines from the book of Ecclesiastes tell us that there is “a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance” (Ecclesiastes 3:4). For Jeremiah, the inspired author of the book of Lamentations, it is time to weep and mourn.
He is writing to the survivors of the fall of Jerusalem in 586 BC; this little book of Lamentations gives a voice to the devastating pain they now feel. It will also remind them that even in the darkest days there is a glimmer of hope—there is an invitation from the Lord to come home.
The book of Lamentations appears to be a collection of poems written by Jeremiah. Each of the five chapters is a separate poem. The first four poems are acrostic in design, with each verse or group of verses beginning with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Evidently, Jeremiah was not just a courageous prophet but also a very capable poet.
The poem in chapter 1 focuses on the suffering of the people living in Jerusalem when it fell to the Babylonian army. Jeremiah writes about their anguish here in verse 1: “Like a widow has she [Jerusalem] become.” He goes on in verse 5:
Her foes have become the head;her enemies prosper,because the Lord has afflicted herfor the multitude of her transgressions;her children have gone away,captives before the foe.
Verse 7 indicates that what makes the hardship even worse is the memory of “all the precious things that were hers from days of old.” Verse 10 adds, “The enemy has stretched out his hands over all her precious things; for she has seen the nations enter her sanctuary.”
They have lost their glorious temple and the beautiful city of Jerusalem. And by the way, the people recognize this loss is absolutely justified. The city is pictured as speaking in verse 18, saying, “The Lord is in the right, for I have rebelled against his word.”
Jerusalem does not excuse her sins of idolatry, but she also pleads with God to bring judgment upon her enemies. Listen to verse 21: “All my enemies have heard of my trouble; they are glad that you have done it. . . . now let them be as I am.” So, this first poem is all about the dreadful anguish felt throughout the land.
The second chapter of Lamentations—and the second poem—reemphasizes divine judgment. The first nine verses of this poem highlight the just anger of God at His disobedient people; and remember, beloved, their covenant with God promised terrible consequences if they rebelled against Him.
So, we read here in verse 1 how “the Lord in his anger has set the daughter of Zion under a cloud!” Verse 4 says, “He has poured out his fury like fire”; and verse 7 declares, “The Lord has scorned his altar, disowned his sanctuary; he has delivered into the hand of the enemy the walls of her palaces.” Every aspect of Judah’s life has fallen under the judgment of God.[1]
Now even though the nation is getting exactly what he prophesied they would receive from the Lord, Jeremiah is not whistling a happy tune as he writes these poems. He is weeping—these are the lamentations of Jeremiah.
He even laments over the false prophets who refused to tell the truth—verse 14:
Your prophets have seen for youfalse and deceptive visions;they have not exposed your iniquityto restore your fortunes.
Then verse 17 notes, “The Lord has done what he purposed; he has carried out his word, which he commanded long ago.”[2] So, what should they do about it? Well, first of all, verse 19 says, “Pour out your heart like water before the presence of the Lord!” Get a box of tissues and your Bible, and go have a good cry before the Lord because of your sin.
And with that, chapter 3 now delivers a declaration ofhope. This chapter has been called “the heart and soul of the book of Lamentations.”[3]
All the other chapters are twenty-two verses long, following that acrostic pattern where each verse starts with the next letter in the Hebrew alphabet—and there are twenty-two letters in the Hebrew alphabet. But this chapter is different; three verses are built around each letter in the Hebrew alphabet, so chapter 3 ends up with 66 verses, making it three times longer than any other chapter in this book.
Now you might forget everything I just said about how many letters are in the Hebrew alphabet and the acrostic pattern of these poems, and that is okay. But here is what I do not want you to forget: the longest chapter in this book is a poem offering sinners—like the people of Judah, and like you and me—hope.
Here in chapter 3, again and again, we read that the Lord is the one holding the rod of discipline. Jeremiah is speaking for Judah as a whole, and he gives a long list of the afflictions God has brought upon them. He writes, “I am . . . under the rod of his wrath” (verse 1); “[God] has made my flesh . . . waste away” (verse 4); “He has walled me about so that I cannot escape” (verse 7); “He has filled me with bitterness” (verse 15); “My soul is [deprived] of peace” (verse 17).
You might be saying, “That doesn’t sound very hopeful to me!” Well, hope begins to stir in your heart when you realize that God is in control of His judgment against your sin. The rod of discipline is held in the hand of God.
There is a sudden shift here at verse 21, and Jeremiah says, “But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope.” What is he going to call to mind? Here it is:
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;his mercies never come to an end;they are new every morning;great is your faithfulness.“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,“therefore I will hope in him.”The Lord is good to those who wait for him,to the soul who seeks him. (verses 22-25)
Hope is available because God is available. God is faithful to His promises. In fact, that is why He judged His people—He kept His word when they defied Him and abandoned Him. But He did not abandon them.
Jeremiah writes here in verse 31:
For the Lord will not cast off forever, but, though he causes grief, he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love.
So, how should we respond to this truth? Well, Jeremiah tells us what our next step should be here in verse 40: “Let us test and examine our ways, and return to the Lord!” Let us examine ourselves to see where, and how, and why we went astray, and then let us return to Him in repentance, confessing our sin and asking for His gracious forgiveness.
Maybe today, beloved, you are feeling the weight of God’s discipline because you have walked away from His Word. You have been living a disobedient life in some area; and even though you are a believer in Christ, you have not been living like it. You ought to thank God He does not ignore your rebellion but steps in to correct you and restore you to fellowship with Him.
The weight you might be feeling today—that lost sense of peace in your soul—is an invitation to come back into fellowship with God. Jeremiah’s poem invites the people of Judah—and you and me—to spiritually come home.
God’s invitation is expressed in an old hymn of the faith:
Why should we tarry when Jesus is pleading,
Pleading for you and for me?
Why should we linger and heed not His mercies,
Mercies for you and for me?
Come home, come home,
Ye who are weary, come home;
Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling,
Calling, oh, sinner come home![4]
The Path to Restoration
Lamentations 4–5
Someone once said with humor that experience is the comb we receive after we have lost our hair. Someone else said experience is something you learn one lesson at a time, and the tuition is often higher than you want to pay.
Then there is the old adage that experience is all that is left after you have lost everything else. And that pretty much sums up the people of Judah following the fall and destruction of Jerusalem. They have lost everything—their nation, their capital, their temple, their land, their dignity, and their freedom. They have paid a high tuition for the lessons.
But let me tell you, you can learn a lot from experience. It’s a great teacher; and if the survivors of Judah are good students, they are going to allow their experience to help them on the path to restoration. That path is laid out for them by Jeremiah in chapters 4 and 5 of the book of Lamentations.
The first step for the people of Judah is to remember how far they have fallen. This might seem like a depressing homework assignment, but it will confront them with the reality of how far they have traveled away from God and His Word. They need to look around and realize how needy they are. Beloved, God does not want them to become comfortable in a place they are not supposed to be. And He does not want that for us either.
Now in case the people do not have very good memories, Jeremiah begins to describe their losses. For instance, here in verse 1 of chapter 4, he writes, “How the gold has grown dim, how the pure gold is changed! The holy stones lie scattered at the head of every street.” In other words, their great, gold-covered temple is now in ruins.
But it’s not just the temple. What about the people? Even today we speak about some people being worth their weight in gold. That expression comes right out of verse 2, where Jeremiah describes the people of Jerusalem as “the precious sons of Zion, worth their weight in fine gold.” But now, he says, they are treated by their captors as if they are no more valuable than clay pots.
By the way, the world is doing the same thing today. Your life is no more valuable to the world than a clay pot—people will use you and then throw you away. But to God, your value is like fine gold; and when you walk with Him, life has meaning and value.
Jeremiah describes for his readers the horrors of their defeat by Babylon. He says here in verse 9, “Happier were the victims of the sword, than the victims of hunger.” The siege of Jerusalem had brought the city such a terrible famine that people even resorted to cannibalism.
As sickening as it is for the survivors to remember these things, it is important that they do so. Like the prodigal son in the pigpen who finally comes to his senses and recognizes his humiliating condition, the people of Judah need to wake up and recognize how far they have fallen.
The second step Jeremiah outlines for his people is to recognize the reasons for their misery. He says in verse 13, “This was for the sins of her prophets and the iniquities of her priests.”
These religious leaders were spiritually blind (verse 14). It is a sad day when the spiritual and religious leaders of any nation are blind to the truth—when they are unwilling to tell people what is right and what is wrong, according to God’s Word. These leaders in Jerusalem were corrupt and self-seeking, and they had led the nation astray.
But don’t misunderstand—the people were willing followers. They got the leaders they wanted and deserved. And what they wanted were leaders who lived just as wickedly as they did.
You take a genuine step toward recovery when you stop blaming everybody else for your sinful choices. Jeremiah does not want the people to continue playing any kind of blame game here. They have no one to blame but themselves.
It is often said that if God seems far from you, it’s not because He moved; it’s because you moved. Your sin pushed you away from Him.
So, Jeremiah wants the people to remember how far they have fallen, and he wants them to recognize the reason for their misery. Now Jeremiah offers a third step in the path to restoration—he invites them to reach out for the forgiveness of God.
This final chapter of Lamentations is another poem—and this poem is actually a prayer. It is spoken by Jeremiah, but it is a model prayer for God’s people. You cannot pray this prayer unless you admit your sin and humbly accept the consequences of that sin. But neither can you pray this prayer without understanding there is hope for the future.
You can break this prayer down into two sections. Part 1 is a request for the Lord to remember their suffering. And beloved, there is nothing wrong with telling the Lord everything you are experiencing. Then Part 2 is a request for the Lord to restore their standing.
The prayer begins in verse 1: “Remember, O Lord, what has befallen us;look, and see our disgrace!” That disgrace is described in verse 2: “Our inheritance has been turned over to strangers,our homes to foreigners.”
In other words, they don’t own anything now. They are entirely at the mercy of the Babylonians. Verse 4 says, “We must pay for the water we drink”; and verse 9 adds, “We get our bread at the peril of our lives.” Verse 13 reads, “Young men are compelled to grind at the mill,and boys stagger under loads of wood.”
Verse 15 describes it all in one brief statement: “The joy of our hearts has ceased;our dancing has been turned to mourning.”
Maybe you are there right now—your dancing has turned to mourning. Your sin has brought you to a low place in life, and you realize it is not your parents’ fault, or your spouse’s fault, or your attorney’s fault, or even God’s fault. You realize, like the prodigal son, that you have gotten there by your own choices in life.
But while you are there in that pigpen, so to speak, you might be wondering the same thing the people of Judah wondered as they prayed, “[God] why do you forget us forever?” (verse 20). You might be wondering if God has forgotten all about you.
God does not forget, like we do. God does not suffer from memory loss, like we do. The words here imply a request—a reaching out to God—to act on their behalf.
And that action from God is described in verse 21: “Restore us to yourself, O Lord, that we may be restored!Renew our days as of old.” This request indicates repentance. They have done what they can—and should. Now God is the only one who can restore them—and He will. In fact, the only thing that could keep Him from answering their request is if, as verse 22 says, He has “utterly rejected” them. And we know that is not possible because God will be faithful to His promises and to His people (see Leviticus 26:44; Jeremiah 31:31-37).
I wonder today if God is dealing with your heart? Maybe this Wisdom Journey has discovered you—and you are far from God. If you have never put your faith in Jesus Christ as your Savior, do that right now. Call out to Him for salvation and forgiveness. He will keep His word, and His promise is, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Romans 10:13).
If you are a Christian who has strayed from the Lord in disobedience, and you have been learning some hard lessons from experience, follow these same steps toward restoration:
- Remember how far you have fallen.
- Recognize the reason for your misery.
- Then reach out for the forgiveness of God.
With that, we come to the conclusion of the book of Lamentations.
Endnotes
[1] Irving L. Jensen, Jeremiah and Lamentations (Moody Press, 1966, 1974), 132.
[2] Deuteronomy 28
[3] Eric Kress and Paul Tautges, The Discipline of Mercy: Seeking God in the Wake of Sin’s Misery (Kress Biblical Resources, 2010), 7.
[4] Will L. Thompson, “Softly and Tenderly Jesus Is Calling.”