Outline
Introduction
I. Sorrow Is Ever Present
___A. Rebellion brings ruin
___B. The deep purple of grief
Discussion
II. The Time of the Writing
III. The Five Divisions of this Book
___A. The Way of Wickedness
______1. Moses’ threat fulfilled
______2. The forsaken people
___B. The Wrath of God
______1. Poured out on sin
______2. The forsaken God
___C. The Weight of Sorrow
______1. Compromise and decay
______2. What else but repent?
______3. Wrong does not produce happiness
______4. Three avenues
___D. The Want of Help
______1. Left without standing
______2. No real help without God
___E. The Wreck of Sin
______1. When the Lord no longer guards
______2. A cloud of doom
Conclusion
IV. Key Word and Plea
___A. “How!”
___B. Search and turn
___C. “I will therefore hope in Him.”
Introduction
The human family is slow to learn! People see suffering in others but convince themselves that it will not be their lot; they know that multitudes have fallen into the abyss toward which their course is leading them, but they think that they shall find a chasm bridge for their steps; they behold the bones of those who have sinned before them bleaching beside their own roadside yet continue to walk in the paths of evil. The punishment of Adam and Eve should have warned their children about the retribution for sin that must be expected, but look at the behavior of Cain! The flood should have warned Noah sufficiently to have kept him in the narrow path, but after the flood, he got drunk! Themany tragedies that befall the Jewish people (in Egypt, in the wilderness, and in Canaan, under the judges, and during the period of the kings) should have made their descendants behave, but alas, instead of learning that engaging in sin was folly, they seem to convince themselves that the folly was that their ancestors got caught. They became more subtle, cunning, and secretive with their crimes and thus thought to escape detection and punishment, rather than cease from sin to receive the reward of the righteous. Too, the judgment of God was not speedily executed, and many concluded that He had forgotten or that He would be lenient with them.
When Jeremiah penned Lamentations, there had set in such a period of retribution as the Jewish people had not imagined possible. They had despised God’s mercy, rejected His offer and sinned out their days of opportunity, and the vengeance of God had been taken upon the city and its inhabitants. As he viewed the ruin that rebellion against God had caused and saw in memory what might have been the state had the warnings been heeded, he broke forth into sobs of grief and disappointment. Humiliation rolled over him as a tidal wave, but he knew that the sentence was just and the punishment proper.
Reading the material verse by verse, one seems to be but pulling back a curtain that hides disagreeable and loathsome things from eyes that must see but dread to look. As the veil is drawn back, there is a gazing into the deep purple of grief from the first, “How does the city sit solitary, that was full of people?” to the last, “But have You utterly rejected us; are You very rough against us?” (1:1; 5:22). Between these two, the first and last statements in the book, lies such a scene of continual crying that could have been portrayed only by one whose schooling had been in sorrow and whose discipline had been administered by disappointment. The old Devil certainly knows how to make life miserable and had done a full day’s work on the Jewish nation as a whole and upon Jeremiah in particular.
Discussion
The Time of the Writing
Lamentations must have been written shortly after the fall of Jerusalem for the terrible scene was so fresh that it had lost none of its ugliness and horror in the mind of the writer. Tortured at beholding a city lying in unbelievable waste and knowing its inhabitants to be enduring reproach defying full description, he penned this account of the destruction and the desolation.
The Five Divisions
The five divisions are not necessarily connected, except in subject matter, so as to tell a complete story, but they are more a series of wails of unrestrained crying at seemingly irreparable loss. They are as five monuments erected to remind the Jews of God’s righteous judgment against the sins of His people. They may be given descriptive titles, as, chapter 1, “The Way of Wickedness”; chapter 2, “The Wrath of God”; chapter 3, “The Weight of Sorrow”; chapter 4, “The Want of Help”; and chapter 5, “The Wreck of Iniquity.” No writing sets forth more vividly or more in detail the grief the human heart can endure. The sorrow of the Lord is equal to that of Jeremiah, and far surpasses it, but it is not as wailingly told. This may rightly be called “The Masterpiece of Anguish” of all the literature of the world. A consideration of these divisions will develop an understanding of the place of the book in the eternal purpose and plan of God, as to why it was written and why it has been preserved.
Chapter one: The Way of Wickedness
As the prophet viewed Jerusalem and Judah, the once prosperous populous city was now “a ghost town,” the happy wife a widow, the queen a slave girl, and those considered friends were disclaiming all alliance and were as taunting captors gloating over a downfall. Surprise, wonder, and amazement were the emotions wrapped up in the introductory word, “How!” What had happened? The Holy One no longer dwelt in Jerusalem, and the roads that once brought happy worshipers into her precincts were now deserted. Why this change? Moses’s threat, “Because you serve not the Lord your God with joyfulness, and with gladness of heart, for the abundance of all things; therefore, You shall serve your enemies which the Lord shall send against you, in hunger, and in thirst, and in nakedness, and in want of all things: and He will put a yoke of iron upon your neck, until He has destroyed you” (Deuteronomy 28:47-48), had been carried out. Jerusalem is now a hiss and a byword and clothing herself in shame. With her walls a shambles and her inhabitants enslaved in a strange land, all because of rebellion and sin, the weeping prophet cries, “Is it nothing to you all you that pass by?” (1:12) From the very beginning, every word of the writer seems to be a groan, and every sentiment the echo of a broken heart.
Is this the kind of world that God ordained? Did He want man’s life to be no more than a period of weeping and his days to be but an accumulation of tears and sighs? Surely not! Something had caused this condition to come up on the people of God. Had He forsaken His own? Did He no longer care what became of them? The writer makes full acknowledgment of what had caused all this trouble: we have sinned. This is the way of wickedness. These things they endured were some of the very real fruits of transgression. “Jerusalem has grievously sinned; therefore, she is removed” (1:8). The fine gold has tarnished, and the supposed impregnable fort has been captured.
Chapter 2: The Wrath of God
The obvious desolations that bespoke the dire straits into which the Jewish people had been brought showed how terrible are the disasters that befall men and nations when they swerve from God’s course and methods. The wrath of the Almighty is poured out upon those who sin because their behavior is a direct slap at God and because of what transgression does to and for all concerned. It defiles, desecrates, distresses, and defeats all who have part in it, as well as countless innocent bystanders who are caught up in it without their knowledge or approval. Its greatest error is in the fact that it makes the Almighty One to become an enemy because sin causes Him to turn His face from His people and forsake His Mercy Seat in their midst. In this division of Lamentations, with the worship becoming insincere, the worshipers corrupt, and the offerings unworthy, God is not found by those who needed Him. Even false prophets, seeing no vision but posing as true prophets, pronounced only falsehoods, and the wasted city was lying in unnatural darkness, languishing in despair and crying on its bed in its night of evil. Since tears come easily when situations seem hopeless and when the eyes of others cannot see, so the heart of Jerusalem is poured out like water. There may have been no definite requests, because deepest grief often finds no suitable words for expressing itself, but she weeps in humiliation and in wounded pride. Her former ways had led into shame and defeat. The one who said, “Of saddest words of tongue or pen, the saddest of these: ‘It might have been’” might well have obtained his information from Lamentations. Jerusalem should not have come to this sad plight; she was God’s forsaken because she had forsaken God. Oh, that men might foresee the awfulness of God’s wrath and so live as to avoid its having to be poured out on them and on those they can possibly influence. When that wrath is revealed upon all the nations that forget Him, upon those who know Him not, and upon those who do not obey the gospel of his Son, Jesus Christ, the full meaning of being God-forsaken will be understood by those who have been God-forsaking (2 Thessalonians 1:7-10).
Chapter 3: The Weight of Sorrow
Religious compromise caused moral decay, or vice versa; at any rate, they go hand in hand, and the sins of the people had purchased the burdens they were now bearing. The only relief would have been in turning away from evil and in calling upon the Lord in His appointed way. The prophet, therefore, enumerating many of the sorrows, calls upon the people to do something about their condition. The humbling of self under the chastening hand of the Lord revives hope in those who are exercised thereby, although the awful burden beats down to the dust, surrounds with bars like a prison, and inflicts pain at every turn. In reading the third chapter of the book one would be reminded of Paul’s word, “O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” (Romans 7:24). No command issued from the Eternal Father that they should repent and no promise was spoken at the time that repentance would avail anything, but the prophet called upon those who read his message to do it anyway. What else could they do? The measure of their oppression seemed more than they could bear and their punishment beyond strength to endure. Such an extremity reduced them to their proper size in their own eyes, and praying to God was, and is, produced by such reduction.
But why were they so distressed? Was it that God just wanted to see them grovel in the dust? Certainly not. It is not that God willed to see human suffering (3:33), but that their course had left Him with no choice. Wrong does not produce happiness, else there would be no advantage in right; so, when they would not pursue the way of God that would make them happy, they alone were to blame for the unhappiness that had to follow (3:39).
Listening to such preaching as this that was being done by the writer of the book was galling, and three courses were open to them: 1) they could continue to be galled, which was uncomfortable; or, 2) they could change their ways, which was the right thing to do; or, 3) they could close the mouth of the prophet, which they attempted to do by putting him into a deep pit. Is this reaction so different from today?
Chapter 4: The Want of Help
As gold tarnishes, so the healthy lose their strength, and the beautiful see their skin wrinkling and turning dark. These are ways the prophet employs to describe the tragic period through which they were passing. Under the pretense of true piety and noble service, the priest persecuted and destroyed the just and walked through the street so contaminated with innocent blood that even the heathens avoided them. So horrible was the scene that Jeremiah graciously dropped the curtain and did no longer dwell thereon; instead, he declared that the tormented people were looking for relief. This was wonderful; but they were expecting the help to come from men. Why would they not learn that their help was only in the Lord? Their apostasy was complete: they knew not God, sought not after Him, and looked to men for their salvation. Once and again they had withstood God, and now He had left them without standing before Him. Their present lesson was being learned through much difficulty that previous positions are forfeited unless those who occupy them are faithful. Jesus later said, “He that endures unto the end, the same shall be saved” (Mark 13:13); and in Revelation, “Be faithful unto death, and I will give you a crown of life” (2:10).
The desolate city and the homeless nation fitly picture all who are abiding in sin. They are away from spiritual Zion and wandering among bitter and determined foes who are bent on their destruction. They realize that they need help, but they do not know about or will not come to the Lord who can abundantly supply it. All aid that men find apart from God will support no better than a broken reed will support the weight of a cripple.
Chapter 5: The Wreck of Sin
If Ezekiel drove home the thought, “They shall know that I am Jehovah,” the writer of this book lent his power to, “The Lord turned the captivity to Zion” (2:8; 3:40; 5:21). What ruin followed when the Lord no longer guarded! Foreigners marched in, men became slaves, women were abused, children were orphaned, age was dishonored, and joy vanished away. The worship that once characterized a happy people was no more, and grief was accentuated by the heathenism of contemporary practices.
Ignorance would make those who denied God to blame their sorrows on chance or on fate, but sincere faith would see in them a working of the spirit of moral defiance and delinquency that could usher to no other place than grief. Sin had wrecked their nation, their worship, and their lives, and clouds of doom had settled down upon them. Famine, humiliation, dishonor, and abuse were the galling effects of turning away from God and increasing the sins of their ancestors. They had sinned, and God was angry.
Conclusion
The Key Word
The key word in Lamentations is an astonished, “How!” The author does not use it as though he were asking a question, but as being unspeakably amazed at the destruction he had to witness. He uses the word as if to say, “Can it be possible that this is real? Can anything like this happen but in fancy? I must be dreaming.” But he was not dreaming; he was awake; what he saw was really before him. Unhappy Judah was in anguish; the fragments of her national glory littered the ground; honor had been dragged into the dirt to Babylon; unbelievers in God were having a field day of mockery; and each thought in Jeremiah’s mind caused new tears. But, to show astonishment at Jerusalem and Judah could not have been the purpose of the book. Then what was it? Simply to show that the righteous judgment of God, repeatedly forewarned, occasioned by sin, is terrible in its retribution.
Search and Turn
The great plea of the book is worded, “Let us search and try our ways, and turn again to the Lord” (3:40). In the midst of agonizing sorrow, the question is asked, “Why does a man complain for the punishment of his sins?” (3:39). Some improvement should be made upon the things that have to be accepted instead of complaining about the results of one’s failures. Men complain about their disappointed hopes, their spiritual weaknesses, their business failures, their seasons of affliction, and their lots in life. Such complaining is sinning against reason, against goodness, against divine faithfulness, and against opportunity: against reason because there is no power that is as able to manage for them as is the Omnipotent God in Whom they believe; against goodness because the manifestations of God’s goodness are exceedingly abundant throughout infancy, childhood, youth, and age; against divine faithfulness because the loving Father has promised to withhold no good thing and to supply all one’s needs according to His riches in glory; against opportunity because there is a better use to which one can put time and talent then fault-finding, bickering, and criticizing. What is the supplication of this inspired writer? That the renewing grace of contentment be cultivated by the spirit of the words, “I will bless the Lord at all times . . .” (Psalms 34:1). To this end a passiveness in the Father’s hands results in all things working together for good and for the ultimate victory of all who commit themselves to His keeping (Romans 8:28).
Since man’s state in every land and from generation to generation is overshadowed by dark and foreboding clouds of imminent and impending doom, these five elegies, composed under pressure of extreme agony for a prostrated kingdom, a ruined city, and a disgraced populace, are as meaningful to touchable hearts today as they were to the Jews, who, during Babylonian captivity, sat in a great shadow. Like them of old, people today may see a great light. Beyond their cloud, the sun was shining and would break through to light their way again if they would return to the Lord as they should have done.
Hope in Him
“I will therefore hope in Him” (3:24) should be the watchword of all who are bowed down in sorrow. As the good man’s portion, lot, or inheritance, the Lord is able to satisfy the deepest longings of human hearts, presently to abide with all righteous people everywhere, completely to fill to overflowing the cup of each believer, sure to guard against any foe that might arise, and common to be within reach of all alike. Why not; therefore, hope in Him? He can supply strength for every duty, comfort for every trial, deliverance for every danger, victory for every battle, and heaven for every soul. Why not let Him supply these priceless treasures to you?
Questions for Class Discussion
- At what period in Jewish history was this book written?
- Does its title adequately describe it? Explain.
- To what man is the book commonly ascribed?
- Describe Jerusalem and Judah at this time (1:11).
- What has caused the evil that has befallen the city and its people? (1:8)
- List some of the bitter fruits of rebellion (1:18-22).
- Relate the things the Lord had done as given in 2:1-9.
- When sorrow reaches its limit, what is man’s condition? (2:11)
- Why did the prophet not lose hope? (3:22-36)
- How was Jeremiah treated? (3:52-55)
- Tell of the extent of the famine the people suffered (4:4; 5:10).
- Unto whom did the people look for help when they increased in sin? (4:17)
- Since the Edomites mocked Judah’s plight, what would be their own? (4:21-22)
- Give the gist of Jeremiah’s prayer (chapter 5).
- What is the key word in the book? (1:1)
- Describe the plea the book presents.