March 25, Lamentations 1
"Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? Look and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow, which was brought upon me, which the LORD inflicted on the day of his fierce anger." - Lamentations 1:12
As a minister, I've been to a lot of funerals over the years. Between speaking at many and attending others, I've heard many of the songs over and over. Some songs are more fitting for such occasions, and families select them again and again.
The book of Lamentations is a collection of funeral songs unlike the ones in our day and time. These laments are formal, carefully crafted poems that express the deep, dark emotions of a ruined city and a fallen nation.
Jeremiah has been considered the author of these sad chapters since ancient times. We know that he was heartbroken over the fall of Jerusalem and the death, destruction and captivity that came as a result of Israel/Judah's hardhearted impenitence. Who better to chronicle the dark emotions of the tragedy than the one we call "the weeping prophet"?
In the first half of Chapter 1, the narrator describes the city of Jerusalem, weeping as a widow bereft of her husband and family. She had been the bejeweled princess of the great empire of Solomon. But now she has become a slave. She is lonely, impoverished and miserable. Her friends have become her enemies. Her lovers (the pagans and their idols she embraced) have forsaken her. Once respected, she is now mocked. There is no joy left in the city, no celebrations, no worshipers streaming into the city, and no temple for them to visit. Her memories of past glory are bitter. They remind her of how much she has lost.
How did this happen? Why did it happen? If you come to Lamentations right after reading Jeremiah, you know very well why Jerusalem and the rest of Judah suffered such shame and loss. The narrator tells us: “Jerusalem sinned grievously; therefore she became filthy.” Like an unfaithful spouse or harlot, she endures comfortless shame. The invaders have plundered all her precious things and defiled the holy place of her long-neglected religion. Driven by hunger, she has traded her treasures for food. In her misery, she cries out, “Look, O LORD, and see, for I am despised.”
The voice changes in the second half of the chapter from the narrator to Jerusalem herself. She invites passersby to see her pitiful state. She was plunged to the depths of her sorrow when the Lord in fierce anger inflicted such severe punishment on her people. She clearly sees God’s hand in what has happened. The Lord gave her into the strong enemy’s hands. The Lord crushed her young men. He crushed the virgin daughter of Judah like grapes in a wine press.
She weeps and acknowledges the LORD was right to do what he did because she had been very rebellious. She groans and mourns, but there is no one to offer her comfort or sympathy. The neighbors are glad she has suffered. She asked God to deal with her ungodly neighbors just as he had dealt with her because of her sins.
How could this happen? How did the city where God had once set his name and glory come to such a terrible fall and affliction? Consider what may be the most instructive line in this sad chapter. How did Jerusalem come to such shame and ruin? The answer is in verse 9: “She took no thought of her future.” She did not consider the consequences of disobeying and forsaking God. She committed her sin without regard for the terrible fall and comfortless affliction it would bring. She was warned, but she chose to ignore the warning. Surely that line is a pointed and painful reminder to all of us who have known better and done wrong anyway. Is our own situation as hopeless as ruined Jerusalem acknowledged hers to be?
I cannot end this essay on such a dark, hopeless note. Please before you go, consider with me the words of the text verse coming from another sufferer besides fallen Jerusalem. Can you imagine Jesus on the cross saying these words? “Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? Look and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow, which was brought upon me, which the LORD inflicted on the day of his fierce anger.” Can you see it? Jerusalem said her transgressions were bound into a yoke and fastened on her neck. But Isaiah foresaw that another would wear the yoke and suffer the punishment for our sins: “The LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” Peter wrote about Jesus on the cross: “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.”
This chapter confronts us with the outcome of sinful disobedience. Sin ruins and destroys us, and we cannot escape. But Jesus came and died on the cross to give hope to hopeless ones, and to cleanse filthy ones and to reconcile rebels like us to himself. Praise God for that!
Copyright © 2024 by Michael B. McElroy. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Today in God's Word—March 2024
East Tallassee Church of Christ
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