Deeper Commentary
Lamentations 1:1 How the city sits solitary, that was full of people!-
The LXX is clear that Lamentations was written by Jeremiah after and during the fall of Jerusalem. But Lamentations was not God's word to Jeremiah. God had ceased speaking through him by the time Jerusalem was in ruins. It is Jeremiah's lament... Jer. 1:3 is clear that God was no longer speaking through him after Zedekiah had been deposed: "... and he spoke to him again when Josiah's son Jehoiakim was king. After that, the LORD spoke to him many times, until the eleventh year of the reign of Zedekiah son of Josiah. In the fifth month of that year the people of Jerusalem were taken into exile". At the point of Lamentations, Jeremiah says that God wasn't speaking through the prophets [surely including himself]: "her prophets find no vision from Yahweh" (Lam. 2:9). Yahweh never speaks in Lamentations- that must be given its true weight, as this is most unusual for any Bible book. There is no theology of suffering, indeed hardly any theology, in most of the laments. They are Jeremiah's laments... Jeremiah's prophecies explained why everything Jeremiah now laments was to happen. He had been preaching that message for over 40 years. He knew exactly why the women would be raped, the former lovers of Zion would mock and abuse her, why her prophets and priests would be slain, why the temple would be destroyed and the feasts cease. He had also spoken of how an unfaithful Judah would react to these judgments, considering them excessive punishment for their sins- sin which they accepted was there but which they considered a crime not meriting the punishment. Jeremiah had been specifically told not to lament when it happened; and not to in any way entreat God to change the judgments. He had been given wonderful prophecies of restoration, which would involve the potential establishment of God's Kingdom on earth under a Messiah ruling in Zion. That was to be the perspective of the faithful. He had told the early exiles to settle down in Babylon, build houses, plant vineyards and live towards their return after 70 years. He had made yokes and worn them, to symbolize how Judah must come beneath the yoke of Babylon. But knowing all this... he laments, and speaks exactly what God had warned Judah not to say when the judgments came. And yet despite this weakness, there is much positive in Lamentations- not least, his total identity with a people whom he knew to be bad, and who had sought to slay him, imprisoned him and persecuted him. But he so felt for them- despite having been given the option of an honourable, comfortable retirement in Babylon, to accept which would have been an act of obedience to God's command through him to surrender to Babylon and accept exile there. And in Lam. 3 we see his personal rallying of faith in the fact that through it all, God is love and His grace will not fail, at least, not to Jeremiah personally. But he ends on no note of hope; and throughout, he misquotes Job, who he sees as some kind of hero, even though Job's speeches were terribly wrong and led to his condemnation by both God and Elihu. All we find at best is a recognition of sin in a general sense, as Job also recognized, but a complaint that the crime : punishment relationship was deeply out of order.
Lamentations is full of acrostics. "Chapters 1 and 2 have three
lines in each of their 22 verses, and the first line of each verse begins
with a different letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Chapter 3 also has 66
lines,
with the first three lines each beginning with the first letter of the
alphabet, the second three lines beginning with the second letter of the
alphabet and so forth. Chapter 4 has two lines per verse, with only the
first line of each verse beginning with the successive letter of the
alphabet. Chapter 5 is unique in that it has 22 lines (the number of the
letters in the Hebrew alphabet), but the alphabetic structure is not
used". Lamentations 1-4 each have a clear acrostic structure, but
Lamentations 5 doesn't- possibly because Lamentations 5 is a transcript of
Jeremiah's actual prayer, from the heart, not poetry after the event, but
a transcript of his words as they were. For man doesn't structure his
desperate prayers as acrostics. Perhaps the idea was to present total
grief.
She has become a widow, she who was once great among the nations! She who was a princess among the provinces has become a tributary!- The idea of God being destroyed in the destruction of His people (see on Jer. 6:26 "Daughter of My people, clothe yourself with sackcloth, and wallow in ashes! Mourn, as for an only son, most bitter lamentation; for the destroyer shall suddenly come upon us") may be the basis of the descriptions of Zion as being left widowed (Lam. 1:1; Is. 54:1-8). We ask the question- if she was a widow, who died? Her husband, God, was as it were dead. The very idea of the death of God is awful and obnoxious. But this was and is the depth of God’s feelings at His peoples’ destruction. But it could be that here we have Jeremiah in the utter depth of depression, feeling his God was dead. Earlier, in his own prophecies, he had spoken forth God's perspective; that Judah had been as a whore, never really loving Him and endlessly going off with other men (the surrounding nations and their idols), and thereby they forsook Yahweh and broke the marriage covenant. But here Jeremiah feels that Israel are a forsaken widow whose husband has died. He describes her as a gracious princess; when actually God through himself had described her repeatedly as a whore. And so the Lamentations begin with Jeremiah at rock bottom, as were all Judah. He felt God was dead. OMIT: But we see him progress onwards from that, through the various stages of grief, to the begging for forgiveness and restoration at the very end of the book.
Lamentations 1:2 She weeps bitterly in the night, and her tears are on her
cheeks- The phrase is only used in Num. 14:1, of Israel weeping all
night when they were told they were not to enter the promised land because
of their lack of faith. And this was their fault, not God's.
Among all her lovers she has none to comfort her: all her friends have dealt treacherously with her; they are become her enemies- This is one of many cases of self-justification in Lamentations (Lam. 1:2,19; Lam. 2:14; 4:13; 5:7), which contradicts the prophetic position, whereby blame is placed upon Judah, whereas now Jeremiah laments the situation as if Judah is being hard done by. In this case, for having lovers at all, in her unfaithfulness to Yahweh (Ez. 16,23 etc.). Disappointment in her lovers reflects a lack of engagement with Jer. 4:30: "Jerusalem, you are doomed! Why do you dress in scarlet? Why do you put on jewelry and paint your eyes? You are making yourself beautiful for nothing! Your lovers have rejected you and want to kill you". LXX "her friends have dealt deceitfully with her, they are become her enemies" again connects with Job's friends, "You, my friends, you deceive me like streams that go dry" (Job 6:15 GNB).
Lamentations 1:3 Judah is gone into captivity because of affliction-
We expect to read that Judah went into exile for her sins, but Jeremiah cannot bring himself to say this. He says she was exiled because of her afflictions, which is rather a circular argument. This reflects Jeremiah's difficulty in accepting the full import of Judah's sins. It's as if Lamentations is almost an expression of resentment and even disagreement with the very words Jeremiah has spoken in his prophecy. No wonder he alludes so often to Job's words during the period when he was cursing God. Just quoting or alluding to a Bible character doesn't at all justify any man.
Or we can go with Adele Berlin, one of the sharpest minds of our age when it comes to Hebrew Old Testament interpretation: "Judah has gone into exile after affliction and hard servitude". In this case, there is the suggestion that the "affliction" of the siege of Jerusalem, the Babylonian invasion and being made a servant, in servitude to Babylon, was surely quite enough judgment for sin- but God had gone further and then also sent Judah into exile. This criticism of God's judgments is of course quite at variance with Jeremiah's own prophetic words earlier. He is going to argue throughout, like Job, that God has 'overdone' His judgment for sin. He has failed to learn the lesson of Job, whom he frequently alludes to but doesn't seem to understand the lessons from the book of Job. He has minimized sin and its condemnation, and ignored God's words which he himself had spoken.
The same word is used of Jeremiah's affliction (Lam. 3:1,19); he was setting himself up as Judah's representative in the hope they too would pass through his pattern of depression, the stages of grief, and then repentance and begging for the restoration of the Kingdom which we find at the end in Lam. 5:16-21. See on Lam. 1:1.
And because of great servitude- This was the exaggeration of depression. For Judah were not abused in Babylon, nor were they put to slave labour as they were in Egypt; rather did they prosper so much that most didn't want to return at the restoration. They preferred life in Babylon. Jeremiah had himself explained that because they had served idols, therefore they were to serve Babylon (s.w. Jer. 25:6,11). Their "servitude" was therefore but the extension of their own choices. He had himself urged Zedekiah and the people to willingly serve the Babylonians in recognition of their own sins (s.w. Jer. 40:9); it was their refusal to do so that had resulted in their servitude in exile. As we all do in depression, Jeremiah was unbalanced here, focusing upon one aspect of a situation which he had himself recognized as absolutely legitimate.
She dwells among the nations, she finds no rest- This was written therefore at the end of Jeremiah's life when the exile was established, as he faced his own death in Egypt. He too as Israel's representative (:1) dwelt among the nations. But again his depression leads to exaggeration; there is no evidence that the Jews were moved around the Babylonian empire, making them find no rest. He himself had urged them to build houses in Babylon and settle down there. Being restless was a result of breaking the covenant (s.w. Dt. 28:65 "And among those nations you will not find peace, and there will be no rest for the soles of your feet") which Jeremiah had repeatedly accused them of doing. They were suffering far less than their iniquities deserved. They refused to repent and in that sense they had no rest to their souls. If they had accepted the yoke of Babylon, then they could have rested in their own land (s.w. Jer. 27:11). In reality, the exiles preferred to "rest" in Babylon and very few responded to the call to return when it came. Jeremiah alludes to Dt. 28:65, even quotes it- but fails to join the dots and see the picture, that the exile was quite in line with the conditions of covenant relationship with Yahweh.
All her persecutors overtook her within the narrows- This alludes to the overtaking of Zedekiah as he fled Jerusalem; he was representative of his people. But as Jeremiah well knew, in another part of his brain, Zedekiah's shameful flight and capture was completely his fault for not responding to Jeremiah's pleas to him.
Lamentations 1:4 The ways of Zion do mourn, because none come to the
solemn assembly- God had
clearly stated that He would end these assemblies because He hated how
they had been kept: "Won’t the day of Yahweh be darkness for you, and not
light?... I hate, I despise your feasts, and I can’t tolerate your solemn
assemblies" (Am. 5:20,21). Jeremiah fails to factor in these prophecies.
We too can know God's word on one level, but not feel it on another. Just
as Job finally realized that he had only heard of God by the hearing of
the ear, without his eye 'seeing' it all.
So Jeremiah is here giving a very positive take on the gatherings
held in the temple. Ezekiel was shown in vision how the priests and elders
were solemnly worshipping idols within the temple. And so God said that He
"hated" their "solemn assemblies" (s.w. Is. 1:14). Yet in depression,
Jeremiah laments that these "solemn assemblies" were no more (Lam. 1:4;
2:6). It was in fact better that none came to them.
All her gates are desolate, her priests do sigh: her virgins are afflicted, and she herself is in bitterness- See on :13. The "ways of Zion" were "desolate" because the curse for breaking the covenant was that Israel's "ways" would be "desolate" (Lev. 26:22 s.w.). Jeremiah multiple times used the word for "desolate" as the judgment which was to come; because "they [Judah] have made it desolate... the whole land is [will be] made desolate" (Jer. 12:11). But now he faces the reality of what he had so often preached, he finds it unbearable. For "afflicted", see on :12. Jeremiah laments particularly the suffering of Zion's young women or "virgins". But he himself had prophesied of their future joy under the new covenant and restoration: "Then shall the virgin rejoice in the dance, and the young men and the old together; for I will turn their mourning into joy, and will comfort them, and make them rejoice from their sorrow" (Jer. 31:13). All these terms are found throughout Lamentations- virgin, young men, mourning, comfort, sorrow. But Jeremiah makes no reference to this as their hope. He sees only present reality, despite knowing God's ultimate plan.
Lamentations 1:5 Her adversaries are become the head, her enemies prosper;
for Yahweh has afflicted her for the multitude of her transgressions: her
young children are gone into captivity before the adversary-
These
terms are all allusive to the curses for breaking the covenant (Dt.
28:44); Judah could have been the head of her adversaries had she been
obedient to the covenant (Dt. 28:13). And Jeremiah recognizes this, on one
hand, and yet laments that the curses have come true.
Like us, he understands very well why judgment
for sin has come; but he resents it bitterly.
Jeremiah is using the same wrong reasoning here as Job, that God smiles on the wicked and punishes the righteous. Jeremiah throughout Lamentations not only quotes Job, but he alludes to Job's arguments throughout. We know Job was well known to Jeremiah because in Jer. 20:14-18 he quotes verbatim Job's desire for death in Job 3:1-3 "Cursed be the day wherein I was born; let not the day wherein my mother bare me be blessed" etc. "I am the man who has seen affliction..." (Lam. 3:1) clearly presents Jeremiah as Job. But Job was wrong in his reasoning; both God and Elihu on God's behalf call him to repentance for his words. He failed to accept that his surface level sins, as he thought, and his "sins of youth" were all the same culpable. He failed to surrender to God's "counsel" or plan to save him, by bitterly lamenting his suffering. Jeremiah quotes Job, as if to say "Job in the earlier scriptures felt like this, so I can". He doesn't interpret Job rightly and fails to see that the turning of Job's captivity meant he was representative of Judah and their final restoration.
Jeremiah mentions Babylon by name around 160 times in his prophecy, but in Lamentations he never once says the word. He repeatedly speaks of God as the source of their judgment.
Lamentations 1:6 From the daughter of Zion all her majesty is departed:
her princes are become like harts that find no pasture-
It was these
very princes who had persecuted Jeremiah and sought to kill him (Jer.
37:15; 38:4,25,27) as they did other prophets (Jer. 26:21). It is to
Jeremiah's spiritual credit that he did not rejoice at all in the fall of
his enemies but rather shared God's broken heart for the lost and the
evil.
They are gone without strength before the pursuer- Another allusion to the princes fleeing Jerusalem with Zedekiah, only to be pursued, overtaken and slain. And Jeremiah finds this tragic and grieves for it. Only a heart with true love in it could come to these feelings. Those who were once leaders were now chased. And yet we note that these "princes" included the likes of Daniel and his friends, taken captive earlier, who were to be used so significantly in God's purpose as a result of this exile.
Lamentations 1:7 Jerusalem remembers in the days of her affliction and of her miseries all her pleasant things that were from the days of old. When her people fell into the hand of the adversary, no one helped her; the adversaries saw her, they mocked at her desolations- The lack of help from Egypt and the nations to whom Judah had prostituted herself was quite clearly because Judah ought to have trusted in Yahweh and not them. So many times Jeremiah had predicted that Jerusalem would be mocked by her. We learn from this that it is one thing to preach a message, but quite another to actually see it come true. Jeremiah's ministry had begun with the warning that his prophetic words would have within them the power of great destruction, and he had been promised Divine psychological strengthening for his ministry. But he seems not to have wanted to make use of that.
Lamentations 1:8 Jerusalem has grievously sinned; therefore she has become
as an unclean thing; all who honoured her despise her, because they have
seen her nakedness: yes, she sighs, and turns backward- She turned
backward in shame, but her nakedness was apparent. Jeremiah had used this
very figure, with the crudest of language, in Jer. 13:22,23 (see notes
there). Jerusalem had been a whore and was to be judged as one, naked
before her lovers. But now it actually happened... Jeremiah balked at the
seriousness of sin, and how judgment really does come for sin.
The image of a menstrual woman, unclean
because of her blood (:9), needed to be understood by Jeremiah in the
terms he himself had earlier supplied: "Your clothes are stained with the
blood of the poor and innocent" (Jer. 2:34). He himself had used the
figure of nakedness to describe the exposure of sin (Jer. 13:26, also Nah.
3:5). But now he laments that this has happened to her, and seems to
consider it all unfair. She is the whore who has been stripped naked,
according to Hosea, and when this happens, she is publically revealed as
being in menstruation and unclean. First her underclothes ["skirts"] are
revealed as bloodstained, and then she is left totally naked before all.
It leaves her ashamed and pining away alone, looking for shelter and
finding none, mocked by those who had once slept with her and used her
[her "lovers"]. And as the final indignity, those one time lovers then
rape her as she lays there (:10). The "breach" of Zion and entrance of Gentiles into the Most
Holy and their desecration of it is seen as the final rape of Zion; even
though earlier, as Ezekiel laments, the Jews had worshipped idols in the
most holy place and painted [erotic?] idolatrous pictures on the walls.
She cries out to passers by and to God, but there is no help. And those
lovers were the Babylonians, whose idols she had once served- as Jeremiah
himself had made clear (Jer. 3:7,8,11,12). It's a terrible image. But this
is what condemnation will look like, complete exposure of sin to the
world. If we confess our sins and are transparent before God and man, this
will not be our fate. But Jeremiah complains about God's role in this:
"the Lord has given me into the hands of those against whom I am unable to
stand" (:14). Is not Jeremiah wrongly claiming their innocence by calling
them a virgin when God through him has called them a whore? He even accuses God of being the rapist: "Like a winepress
the Lord trod dear maiden Judah". The blood of the winepress is to be associated with the blood she
was covered in. And he blames God, rather like Job cursing God. Jeremiah
may have justified this crass language in light of his [willful?]
misreading of the book of Job.
God foresaw the spirit of the questions of Lamentations, especially this outcry from Jeremiah about the rape of Zion: "If you ask why all this has happened to you—why your clothes have been torn off and you have been raped—it is because your sin is so terrible... The LORD himself will strip off your clothes and expose you to shame" (Jer. 13:22,26). And yet all this horrible imagery points up the challenge of :18, to confess that in all this, "Yahweh is right". That is the humility required in true confession of sin.
So often Jeremiah's prophecies envisaged Judah arguing back with God that they were in fact faithful to Him and undeserving of rejection. Yet this is exactly what Jeremiah is doing in Lamentations. He himself had portrayed them as a whore and not a virgin: "You even look like a prostitute; you have no shame. And now you say to me, 'You are my father, and you have loved me ever since I was a child. You won't always be angry; you won't be mad at me forever.' Israel, that is what you said, but you did all the evil you could" (Jer. 3:3-5 GNB). Judah thought that because God was their Father, He could easily overlook them being a whore. And that's exactly what Jeremiah is doing by calling them God's virgin.
Lamentations 1:9 Her filthiness was in her skirts; she didn’t remember her
latter end; therefore is she come down wonderfully; she has no comforter:
see, Yahweh, my affliction; for the enemy has magnified himself-
The filthiness of her skirts is an
allusion to menstruation, explaining why she was a "removed" woman (:8).
Judah had not heeded Jeremiah's words, and so when she was sinning, she
acted as if judgment would never come in her "latter end". Which is really
what we all do when we sin. Jeremiah's own prophecies had predicted that
when the judgments came, Judah would consider them extreme and would
complain. He had explained already: "What will you say, when He shall
punish you? You have provoked them to be captains and rulers over you...
If you [then] say in your heart, Why are these things come on me? For the
greatness of your iniquity are your skirts lifted up" (Jer. 13:20,21). Now
it had happened, and Jeremiah more than any was indeed complaining. He is
a parade example of how we can know God's word so well, even proclaiming
it to others, knowing as Jeremiah did its' inspiration... and still do
exactly what that word warns us not to, and not get the point when it is
clearly spelt out to us. Lamentations is basically five chapters of doing
what Jeremiah had been told not to do.
As
noted on Jer. 13:22,23, Judah had behaved as the worst harlot, with no
thought to her future. And now that future had come. On one hand, Jeremiah
saw perfectly that the situation was because of their sin; and yet he
struggled with seeing the judgments actually come. And he asks Yahweh to
see his affliction. Again, this reflects his love for his people, that he
should feel afflicted for those who had refused to hear his message. And
yet he feels there is "no comforter", despite surely being aware of
Isaiah's prophecy that Yahweh would comfort Zion at the restoration (s.w.
Is. 51:3,12 "I, even I, am He that comforts you"; Is. 66:13 "so will I
comfort you"; Is. 40:1; 49:13; 52:9). "Comfort" is the same word as
"repent"; and God had said that He would repent (s.w.) if Judah repented
(Jer. 18:8; 26:3). The real problem was that Judah had not repented, and
Jeremiah refused to factor that into his feelings; see on Lam. 2:13.
Jeremiah has earlier used the
word for "comfort / repent": "For this... I will not repent [s.w.
'comfort'] nor will I turn back" (Jer. 4:28). "No man repented him [s.w.
'comfort'] of his wickedness" (Jer. 8:6). God had said that if they
repented He would 'repent / comfort' of the evil He planned to do (Jer.
26:3,13). We live in the same situation. And so Jeremiah warned them that
there would be none to comfort them (Jer. 16:7); but now he complains
bitterly when it happens. And the lament that "there is no comforter"
appears five times here (:2,9,16,17,21). This is a major theme. Perhaps
Jeremiah feels that he and his readers are the only mourners over the
scene, the only 'comforters'. But Isaiah's offer of the Divine comforter
was surely known to Jeremiah; and he appears to be lamenting that this
promise had not been at all fulfilled. Jeremiah goes on to say that
comfort is impossible: "To what can I liken you, that I may comfort you, O
virgin daughter Zion" (Lam. 2:13). The tone is of despair, without hope,
and the assumption that Judah's suffering is without parallel. Even though
Isaiah and even Jeremiah himself had prophesied of the final "hope of
Israel", when "I will turn their mourning into joy and I will comfort
them" (Jer. 31:13). Jeremiah was wrong to say there was no comfort. Judah
under judgment are described as refusing comfort: "The LORD says, "A sound
is heard in Ramah, the sound of bitter weeping. Rachel is crying for her
children; they are gone, and she refuses to be comforted" (Jer. 31:15).
The comfort was in the hope of the Kingdom being restored. Jeremiah's
complaint that hope had perished was a denial of his earlier message about
the amazing hope of Israel in
Jer. 31:17: "There is hope for your future; your children will come back
home. I, the LORD, have spoken".
We can know all that but like Jeremiah, wallow in despair because we want immediate resolution. Jeremiah was commanded not to make lamentation for the punishment of his people (Jer. 16:5). But he here does so. But through that disobedience he is led to a better perspective; because I suggest that Lam. 3:22-39 is a turning point. Jeremiah rallies himself with the trust that God's grace has not ended (:22), salvation must be waited for (:26), because God has not cast off His people eternally (:31). Laments typically feature prayers begging for God to intervene, but this is notably lacking at this point. Or we could argue that just asking God to "see" the situation is the same as a request.
The repeated request for Yahweh to "see" (:11,20 also) rather ignores the reason why Yahweh was not 'looking'; their sins had separated between God and themselves, as other prophets have made clear. Lam. 3:44 acknowledges this cloud between God and His people but appears to blame God for it. It was repentance that would remove it.
The appeals to God to "see My affliction" (:9,11) can on one hand be read as the woman Zion interrupting the narrator, complaining that God was not acting towards them as He did when they were oppressed by the Egyptians and He said that "I have surely seen the afflictions of my people”. Or we can read them as Jeremiah's own words, in outbursts of total identity with Zion.
Lamentations 1:10 The adversary has spread out his hand on all her
pleasant things- This is the language of rape, the rapist spreading
out his hand upon the victim. See on :8,9,10.
For she has seen that the nations are entered into her sanctuary, concerning whom You commanded that they should not enter into Your assembly- Jeremiah sees this as tragic, and yet he was fully aware that Judah had placed Gentile idols in Yahweh's holy place (Jer. 32:34). The reference is specifically to Moab and Amon who were banned from entering the assembly, who along with Edom had assisted the Babylonians in desecrating the sanctuary- possibly, in their case, in vengeance for having been excluded from it.
Lamentations 1:11 All her people sigh, they seek bread; they have given
their pleasant things for food to refresh the soul: look, Yahweh, and see;
for I am become abject- Their "pleasant things" in :10 refer to their
private parts. Jeremiah appears to excuse their prostitution by saying
they did it because they were hungry. And yet his own prophecies had
clarified that they were unlike whores who sold their bodies for money,
but they even paid men to sleep with them. His feeling so abject was
partly because of his refusal to face up to how sinful Judah had really
been. But he reasons with all the obsessiveness of depression that they
had prostituted themselves just to refresh (s.w. return or repent) their
soul. Quite clearly they could do this through repentance and not sin. But
he was utterly taken up with lamenting the judgments which had come and
chose not (at this stage) to consider that all this was because of their
sins. "I am become abject" could be
rendered "I am become worthless". It is the same word as in :8, "despise".
She became what her enemies made her; they despised her, and she felt
despised. She absorbed their opinion of her. AV "I am become vile" makes
us think of Job saying that he "abhors" himself, "Behold I am vile" (Job
40:4). But this was the statement of his repentance, and Jeremiah is
taking a phrase out of context here from Job.
Lamentations 1:12 Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? Look, and see
if there is any sorrow like my sorrow, which is brought on me-
We note the appeal for pity to 'passers by', and disappointment that they show no pity but only mock (Lam. 2:15). But Jeremiah surely knew that Ezekiel had used the same word to describe how Zion had been as a whore to all who "passed by" (Ez. 16:25). And how God had warned that those who passed by the ruined temple would hiss at it, lamenting how Judah had broken covenant with their God (1 Kings 9:18, repeated in Zeph. 2:15). Jeremiah himself had prophesied that when Zion was desolated, the passers by would mock at it (Jer. 9:18). And remember that these passers by were the one time adulterous lovers of Zion the whore. Appealing to them for pity and being hurt they showed no pity... is hardly the attitude of someone who takes responsibility for their sins. It's like lamenting the judgment of sin or the results of the curse... because we have minimized our sin. This means that the confessions in :5,8 were largely theoretical: "Yahweh has afflicted her for the multitude of her transgressions... Jerusalem has grievously sinned; therefore...". Just as we like Job might give lip service to the idea that "We're all sinners", but bitterly lament the consequences.
The extent to which Jeremiah’s heart bled for his people is reflected in Jer. 9:1-3. He wished he had more moisture in his body, so that he could weep both day and night for Judah- and yet he goes on to describe them as proceeding from evil to evil in an ever downward spiral, shooting lies everywhere… Everyone is special, nobody is like anyone else. This is how God sees His children, and we should reflect this perspective. It is this which will make us arrestingly different from the people with whom we daily walk. We will cry out with Jeremiah: “Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by?”, unmoved and lost as they are in their own petty issues (Lam. 1:12). Everyone is special, nobody is like anyone else. This is how God sees His children, and we should reflect this perspective. It is this which will make us arrestingly different from the people with whom we daily walk.
With which Yahweh has afflicted me in the day of His fierce anger- The same word for how the people were "afflicted" (:4,5). Jeremiah was to be representative of Judah (see on :1). LXX "The Lord who spoke by me has afflicted me in the day of his fierce anger". This is Jeremiah lamenting the things he had spoken in his prophecies.
Lamentations 1:13 From on high has He sent fire into my bones, and it
prevails against them-
Jeremiah sees the fire that razed the
temple as being fire God had sent into his bones. The fire which Jeremiah
laments in fact came from his own mouth: "They have said that the prophets
are nothing but windbags and that they have no message from the LORD. The
LORD God Almighty said to me, "Jeremiah, because these people have said
such things, I will make my words like a fire in your mouth. The people
will be like wood, and the fire will burn them up" (Jer. 5:13,14 GNB). He
seems to almost resent his own earlier inspiration. He had complained that
he had sought not to speak God's word, but had found it a fire in his
bones: "If I say, I will not make mention of Him, nor speak any more in
His name; then there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in
my bones, and I am weary with forbearing, and I can’t" (Jer. 20:9). The
wrath and fire of God was expressed through Jeremiah's own prophetic
words: "The LORD Almighty said to me, "Israel will be stripped clean like
a vineyard from which every grape has been picked. So you must rescue
everyone you can while there is still time". I answered, "Who would listen
to me if I spoke to them and warned them? They are stubborn and refuse to
listen to your message; they laugh at what you tell me to say. Your anger
against them burns in me too, LORD, and I can't hold it in any longer."
Then the LORD said to me, "Pour out my anger on the children in the
streets and on the gatherings of the young people. Husbands and wives will
be taken away, and even the very old will not be spared" (Jer. 6:9-11
GNB).
This verse reads like a list of grievances against God, accusing Him of a list of things. The sending of fire into Zion's bones is how the dry bones were produced (Ez. 37:4); it is the fire of judgment which Jeremiah had himself predicted. Jeremiah is so identified with Judah, feeling their condemnation within his own bones. He was indeed a patriot and nationalist. His identity with them is the Lord's with us; "For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones" (Eph. 5:30). Expositors often claim that there are different voices in Lamentations, of the author, a narrator, of Zion and of the daughter of Zion; as if it is a play for voices. Admittedly, the pronouns do indeed change. My suggestion however is that it's all Jeremiah, and the changes of pronouns are a reflection of his deep self identity with the suffering Zion, leading to emotional outbursts of identity with her and her children. This kind of random emotional outburst is typical of those going through grief. Jeremiah parallels "me" and "them". He felt the burning of Jerusalem was a burning of his very bones. Such was his identity with a sinful people; see on :1. And such was his spirituality that there is never a hint of satisfaction in seeing those who had rejected and persecuted him getting their totally just deserts.
He has spread a net for my feet, He has turned me back- This again is Job's complaint; "God has subverted me, and has surrounded me with His net" (Job 19:6). We sense here an anger with God, as if God had set a trap for him into which he had innocently fallen; and he says this in the midst of very strong identification with his people. It's as if he like the Jews of Ez. 18 felt that God had deceived him and his people. And yet Jeremiah had so clearly warned them of the judgment to come. It was hardly a trap for the unsuspecting and uninformed. Such anger with God was expressed by Job, and yet at the end of the book God says that Job only spoke what was right about Him. It's as if God accepted the cranky words of depression, and saw the anger with Himself as just part of the grieving process. The important thing was to move through the process stage by stage. And the end point in this grief was repentance and zeal for restoration (Lam. 5:16-21). Jeremiah's path was intended to be that of all the people whom he represented.
He has made me desolate and faint all the day-
Lamentations 1:14 The yoke of my transgressions is bound by His hand; they
are knit together, they have come up on my neck; He has made my strength
to fail: the Lord has delivered me into their hands, against whom I am not
able to stand-
LXX "He has watched over my sins ". GNB: "He took note of all my sins and tied them all together; He hung them around my neck, and I grew weak beneath the weight". There is clear resentment here that God had put all his sins together, including sins of youth. Likewise in :22 LXX "they have made a gleaning for all my sins". He is making the same mistake as Job. In one breath he accepts he is a sinner and must suffer, in the next, he complains that the weight of those sins is being made too heavy. Just as we are not unaware of our sins, but still lament their consequence. And only theoretically accept the truth of a Lord and Saviour who carries the full weight of our sins. All that are so heavy laden are bidden come to Him and find rest. Time and again, like Job in his speeches, they show a general awareness of sin (Lam. 1:5,14,18; 3:39,40; 5:16). But there is no specific confession, e.g. of adultery, sexual immorality, abuse in various forms. The specific issues which Jeremiah himself in his prophecies has confronted them with. There is rather a general appeal to God to reconsider and to accept their argument that the punishment is greater than their sin deserved. And there is no answer from God- the exile continued. They wrongly conclude, as did Job, that their God was somehow absent and engaged elsewhere.
Or we could argue that the anger with God of :13 now starts to mellow as increasingly Jeremiah recognizes his personal sins. He doesn't yet repent in so many words, but he does recognize his sins. This was the path Judah and the exiles were intended to likewise take, coming like Jeremiah to recognize that they had no strength; and that somehow, God was in all this- for "the Lord has delivered me into their hands".
Lamentations 1:15 The Lord has set at nothing all my mighty men in the
midst of me; He has called a solemn assembly against me to crush my young
men: the Lord has trodden as in a wine press the virgin daughter of Judah-
Instead of feeling that God was dead (see on :1), Jeremiah now
accepts that God has done the judgments, He had trodden the wine press.
"My young men" may mean that his own personal male children had been
killed in the invasion (also implied in :16). But it could be that he
considered the young men of Judah as his children.
We could render: "He proclaimed a time against
me to crush my young men". It was Jeremiah who had made that proclamation.
But now he weeps because it has come true (:16). He seems to have
forgotten or regret his earlier words about the young men: "I am full of
the wrath of Yahweh. I am weary with holding in. Pour it out on the youths
in the street, and on the assembly of young men together... the young men
shall die by the sword... let their young men be struck of the sword in
battle" (Jer. 6:11; 11:22; 18:21). Jeremiah seems to ignore his own
prophecy that the young men would only be revived when Judah entered the
new covenant: "Then shall the virgin rejoice in the dance, and the young
men and the old together; for I will turn their mourning into joy, and
will comfort them" (Jer. 31:13).
The language of treading a virgin in a wine press, with the red grape juice recalling blood, is surely a picture of violent rape of a virgin. We note the language of rape on :10 "The adversary has spread out his hand on all her pleasant things". And :8 has presented her as naked. It is true that the treading of the wine press is a figure for Divine judgment, but this is now given some sexual overtone; the accusation is terrible, that Yahweh virgin raped His own daughter. And yet there is confession of sin in :18. These extreme images perhaps reflect Jeremiah's hyperactivity disorder, flipping quickly between opposite emotions.
Lamentations 1:16 For these things I weep; my eye, my eye runs down with
water-
In Ez. 24:23 Judah is commanded not to weep but to lament beyond
tears and all external mourning; they would mourn internally for their
sins (s.w. Ez. 33:10). We wonder why Jeremiah wrote Lamentations, which
appears to be a record of his external mourning. Whilst the book was
inspired by God, at times Jeremiah there appears to be lamenting in a way
inappropriate. He 'wept' (Lam. 1:16), whereas in Ez. 24:23 Judah were told
not to externally weep. He did not take on board the idea that there was
to be no mourning or weeping externally, but rather deep internal
recognition of their sins. It seems the Jews were not obedient to
Ezekiel's command not to externally weep but to internally mourn their own
sinfulness; the same word for "weep" is used of how they did weep by the
rivers of Babylon (Ps. 137:1).
Because the comforter who should refresh my soul is far from me- "Should" reflects his bitter disappointment with God, ignoring all we discussed earlier about how they had refused God's comfort. He feels there is "no comforter", when he implies there ought to have been. That comforter was God. Yet he says this despite surely being aware of Isaiah's prophecy that Yahweh would comfort Zion at the restoration (s.w. Is. 51:3,12 "I, even I, am He that comforts you"; Is. 66:13 "so will I comfort you"; Is. 40:1; 49:13; 52:9). "Comfort" is the same word as "repent"; and God had said that He would repent (s.w.) if Judah repented (Jer. 18:8; 26:3). The real problem was that Judah had not repented. And yet Jeremiah appears to blame God for not being present as comforter. omit: This all sets us up for the climax of the book in Lam. 5:16-21, when Jeremiah confesses sin and looks for restoration. And there are plenty of moments before then in the Lamentations when he comes closer and closer to that final realization, which for us too is the end point of the path of every depression and struggle with God.
My children are desolate, because the enemy has prevailed- Perhaps Jeremiah's children were literally killed. Or maybe even in his depression and anger with God, he still manifested God; God's children were his children. But in that case, the enemy as it were prevailed [Heb. 'was stronger'] over God, whereas finally at the restoration, God shall prevail over His enemies (Is. 42:13 s.w.). LXX "my sons have been destroyed, because the enemy has prevailed" is yet another link to Job.
Lamentations 1:17 Zion spreads forth her hands; there is none to comfort
her-
As explained on :16, God was there to comfort- if they repented. But
in the obsession of his depression, Jeremiah focused on just one part of
the picture. There was none to comfort her; but that was because she would
not repent and accept His comfort.
Yahweh has commanded concerning Jacob, that those who are around him should be his adversaries- Jeremiah appears here to be slipping back into the common mindset, that a nation's god would support them and save them always. But Yahweh had a huge moral dimension to Him, which the pagan gods didn't. He called for enemies to come upon His people.
Jeremiah often laments the "adversaries" of Judah and he sees
Yahweh as behind them. Again he is taking ideas from the book of Job,
where the Satan [adversary] is empowered by God to bring the adversity,
but God is constantly understood as the one behind it. As Job also wrongly
said, "The Lord has become as an enemy" (Lam. 2:5). And Jeremiah thinks he
can complain about it, as Job wrongly did. There should have been no
surprises that it was effectively God who was behind the Babylonians: "All
your lovers have forgotten you; they no longer care about you. I have
attacked you like an enemy; your punishment has been harsh because your
sins are many and your wickedness is great" (Jer. 30:14).
Jerusalem is among them as an unclean thing- And therefore, the implication is, Yahweh was not protecting them. But so often Jeremiah had previously lamented the unclean state of Jerusalem. GNB "They treat me like some filthy thing"- when the prophets had repeatedly revealed her filth and she had refused to repent. Jeremiah repeatedly laments the daughter of Zion's loss of virginity, the desecration of her holiness and her defilement by the Babylonians- but he and Ezekiel had pointed out that they had already defiled themselves by their whoredoms. Jeremiah reasons as if that had never happened, and wrongly thinks that their status as God's people meant that they in fact had not lost their virginity.
I want to make what to me is a critical observation and lesson. Throughout all these requests for God to "see" Zion, the mistake is asking God to see them as they saw themselves [e.g. a desecrated, innocent virgin]. But God doesn't see as man sees. We are to try to see ourselves as God sees us. He saw them as a whore who had long ago lost her virginity and holiness through generations of unfaithfulness to Him. They had already desecrated the most holy place; but they see the entrance of Gentiles into it as akin to the penetrative rape of Zion. This is a big element in the experience of unanswered prayer; we are asking God to see us as we see ourselves, and refusing to see ourselves from His perspective. That of course is partly a result of our humanity, for only at the last day will we know ourselves as God knows us. As Paul says, now we see ourselves in a darkened mirror, and only then "face to face", "then shall I know as also I am known" [by God]. Jeremiah's attempts throughout Lamentations to persuade God to "see" things from his viewpoint and reverse the judgments in a moment were wrong. Instead he should have focused on his own prophecies about a future resurrection into a restored Kingdom. For "the LORD said, "Jeremiah, do not pray for these people. Do not cry or pray on their behalf; do not plead with me, for I will not listen to you" (Jer. 7:16).
Lamentations 1:18 Yahweh is righteous; for I have rebelled against His
commandment: please hear, all you peoples, and see my sorrow: my virgins
and my young men are gone into captivity-
It is indeed so that a confession that God is 'right' is a critical part of repentance. There is in this lament on one hand a complaint about the degree of punishment for sin, and yet also an expression of repentance. But the quality of that repentance isn't great; it is nuanced by the continual complaint that the judgment is greater than the sin deserved. We see a similarity with Job- this was his problem, as it is ours, to accept we are sinners and to make some degree of repentance, whilst retaining our inner conviction that our punishment is greater than our sin deserves. But the lesson of Gen. 3 is that "just" one sin must lead to death and no right to life. Repentance is to confess that God is right; the Greek word homologeo translated "confession" means "to say the same thing as" or "to agree with" God. David's repentance was a statement that God is justified in His words and blameless in His judgments (Ps. 51:4). "You are just / right... we are before You in our guilt" (Ezra 9:15). "You are just / right in all that came upon us... we have acted wickedly" (Neh. 9:33). Refusal to confess our sins is to make God a liar (1 Jn. 1:10); to confess sin is therefore to say that God is truthful. This is why those who repented are described as 'justifying God', declaring Him right or just (Lk. 7:29). To repent is to submit to the rightness or 'righteousness' of God (Rom. 10:3). Pharaoh's brief repentance expressed this: "I have sinned; Yahweh is righteous, and I and my people are wicked" (Ex. 9:27). Repentance is therefore a declaration of God's glory, accepting that He indeed is true: "Achan, My son, please give glory to Yahweh the God of Israel, and make confession to Him" (Josh. 7:19). We think of God talking about Job's repentance as speaking of Him what was "right" (Job 42:6).
This rebellion could refer to the words previously
recorded in this lament, but they could also be a reference to Jeremiah's
historical failure at the time of Jer. 15. In Jer. 15:15, Jeremiah asks for vengeance on his
persecutors, and in Jer. 15:18 accuses God of deceiving him. God’s
response is to ask him to repent of this, so that he can resume his
prophetic work: “If you [Jeremiah] return, I will restore you, and you
shall stand before me [prophetic language]. If you utter what is precious,
and not what is base, you shall be as my mouth” (Jer. 15:19). Perhaps
Jeremiah had this incident in mind when he commented: “The Lord is in the
right, for I have rebelled against his word” (Lam. 1:18). This indicates
that at least in Jeremiah’s case, he was not irresistibly carried along by
the Spirit in some kind of ecstasy, having no option but to speak God’s
word. His speaking of God’s word required that he shared the essentially
loving and gracious spirit / disposition of his God.
Lamentations 1:19 I called for my lovers, but they deceived me: my priests
and my elders gave up the spirit in the city, while they sought themselves
food to refresh their souls-
Even in condemnation, Judah still called to her lovers as well as to God for help. This is significant. There is no word of repentance for having had those lovers, with all the unfaithfulness against Yahweh implied by having lovers. God foresaw this looking to their lovers for help after He has judged Zion. His comment is absolutely not sympathetic to them, unlike the tone of Lamentations: "Then the people of Judah and of Jerusalem will go to the gods to whom they offer sacrifices and will cry out to them for help. But those gods will not be able to save them when this destruction comes... Jeremiah, don't pray to me or plead with me on behalf of these people. When they are in trouble and call to me for help, I will not listen to them" (Jer. 11:11-14). And is not Jeremiah doing just this in Lamentations?
Jeremiah laments the situation as if Judah is being hard done by. Judah should never have had lovers, for this was unfaithfulness to Yahweh as Jeremiah himself has earlier made clear. This is one of many cases of self-justification in Lamentations (Lam. 1:2,19; Lam. 2:14; 4:13; 5:7), which contradicts the prophetic position, whereby blame is placed upon Judah. The priests and elders had been condemned by Jeremiah for their extreme wickedness, and their death in the city by famine had been explicitly predicted by Jeremiah. The reason of course was because they had sinned so badly and impenitently. So Jeremiah's confession of sin in :18 is soon drowned out, within his mind, by the sheer pain of the punishment for it, which he still feels to be unfair. And this is how repentance seems to go in practice; rarely is it just a momentary confession. There are waves and cycles to it, whereby we return time and again to our own self-justification and sense that the punishment for sin is disproportionate. OMIT This is the significance of the book ending with the confession of sin in Lam. 5:16-21 which is not then followed by another cycle of complaint at God's judgments of sin.
Lamentations 1:20 See, Yahweh; for I am in distress; my heart is troubled;
my heart is turned within me; for I have grievously rebelled: abroad the
sword bereaves, at home there is as death- Jeremiah seemed to
imagine that all the exiles were taken away to be slaughtered. That was
true of some of the elders, but the exile generally was not to death
camps. But clearly whilst these things were not totally true for him, he
felt so totally identified with his condemned people that he speaks
exactly as he imagined they felt. Remember he had written a letter
to the first group of exiles in Babylon, encouraging them to build houses
and plant vineyards there. They were not sent to death camps as he wrongly
puts on God.
What Jeremiah here speaks of himself personally he will later apply to all Judah. "My heart is turned... my heart is sick" (:22) is alluded to in Lam. 5:15,17: "Our hearts... are turned... our hearts are sick". We are deeply impressed by his total identity with a people who had betrayed and tortured him. Just as the Lord achieves such total identity with us. This is especially so in that Jeremiah felt he bore their sins: "The yoke of my transgressions... have come up [weigh] on my neck" (Lam. 1:14) was the weight born by the people upon whose necks the yoke was likewise heavy: "On our necks" (Lam. 5:5). This is the more wonderful when we realize that God had offered Jeremiah a respectable retirement in Babylon, but he had instead chosen to suffer affliction with God's sinful people. This is the spirit of the cross. Lam. 5, the final prayer, has many references to "our" sufferings, e.g. "we get our bread at the peril of our lives" (Lam. 5:9) means Jeremiah was part of this; whereas initially Jeremiah describes the sufferings of the people: "her people sigh, they seek bread; they trade their treasures for food" (Lam. 1:11). Identity with others is perhaps the peak of spiritual maturity, and was seen in the Lord's death identified with us, which was the peak of His maturity.
LXX "my belly is troubled" recalls Job's complaint that "My bowels boiled, and rested not" (Job 30:27). And yet Jeremiah in the next breath admits that "for I have been grievously rebellious" (LXX). Jeremiah mixes flashes of true repentance with complaint that the punishment is far worse than the sins deserve; just as we do so often.
Lamentations 1:21 They have heard that I sigh; there is none to comfort
me; all my enemies have heard of my trouble; they are glad that You have
done it: You will bring the day that You have proclaimed, and they shall
be like me-
We could render "Bring the day that You have announced", alluding to Jeremiah's prophecies about the fall of Babylon. But he is totally ignoring the basic prophetic sequence- that Babylon would judge the Jews, they would be exiles there, would repent- and only then, specifically at the end of 70 years, Babylon would be judged. We would expect this first lament to end with a detailed statement of repentance, a begging for forgiveness. Instead it ends on the note of wishing for the enemies of Judah to be bitterly judged, even though Jeremiah understands that those enemies are effectively God. Again he is like Job, who wrongly fantasized about having his day in court with God, and seeing Him condemned.
Here we have Jeremiah totally absorbed with the feelings
of the exiles, absolutely united with them in representation. Again we
note the complaint that there is no comforter, when in fact there was- if
they would repent and accept God's comfort.
Is. 40:1,2 speaks a message of comfort to the
exiles: “Comfort, comfort my people, says your God”. But [in full allusion
to this prophecy], the exiles were like Rachael who refused to be
comforted over her loss (Jer. 31:15); they claimed they found “none to
comfort” (Lam. 1:2,16,17,21). But they were like Rachel who refused to be
comforted, although the verses previous to that in Jer. 31 invite Israel
to be not like Rachel but as the young woman who takes a tambourine and
goes forth rejoicing in what God could do for her in restoring her. But they were
willfully refusing the comfort
of God’s repeated word of hope and restoration. They didn’t grasp the
plain teaching of the prophetic word because they didn’t want to- it
demanded too much of them, and a giving up of the comfortable Babylon
life. Hence Is. 43:19 laments: “I am doing a new thing: now it springs
forth [in the decree to return to Zion?], do you not perceive it?”. And do
we "not perceive it?" time and again in our own lives, as to the
potentials God is opening up?
Lamentations 1:22 Let all their wickedness come before You; do to them, as
You have done to me for all my transgressions: for my
sighs are many, and
my heart is faint- Jeremiah's heart was "faint within me" both before
(Jer. 8:18) and after (Lam. 1:22) the destruction of Jerusalem. He was so
sure that the prophetic word would be fulfilled, that he even felt as if it had come true
before it did. It was the heart of Judah which was faint (Is. 1:5), and
Jeremiah identified totally with their feelings in sorrow with them. He
eagerly asks God to judge the Babylonian confederacy for their sins. Yet
there are many chapters in Jeremiah where he had prophesied that this
would indeed happen, although as noted there, there was always an appeal
and hope for their repentance. But Jeremiah is still at the stage of
anger, with God and with any perceived instrument He had used.
LXX "they have made a gleaning for all my sins". This is as Job feeling God was searching out his sins and reviewing the sins of his youth, unfairly putting them all together, as also expressed in :14. If we were to put all our sins together committed from youth onwards, including of course sins of the mind, sins of omission as well as commission... the total is huge. And we see pointed up the amazing achievement of the Lord Jesus, perfect in all ways despite having our nature... Indeed we are heavy laden and desperately must come to Him to find rest to our souls.
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