Lamentations – The Cry Of A Broken Heart
Feature 1 – July/August 2024 – Grace & Truth Magazine
Lamentations – The Cry Of A Broken Heart
Lamentations may seem by man’s standards one of the less appealing books in the Bible. The very title of the book indicates that it will not provide happy reading material. However, there are valid reasons for us to seek to understand this little-known book. Life is not spent on a mountaintop, all the while free from troubles. The Bible informs us that there is “a time to weep, and a time to laugh” (Eccl. 3:4 KJV ). Although we might choose to avoid the valley of tears, we must not forget that our Lord Jesus is known to us as the “Man of Sorrows” (Isa. 53:3). Times of weeping are painful but necessary. They enable us to develop compassion for others.
The prophet Jeremiah was the author of Lamentations and is often referred to as “the weeping prophet.” His ministry began about 627 BC during the reign of Josiah, and he lived to see four further kings – Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin and Zedekiah – occupy the throne of Judah. Jeremiah’s father was Hilkiah, one of “the priests that were in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin” (Jer. 1:1). The first chapter of the book bearing his name describes his call to be a prophet and his feelings of inadequacy.
Before looking at Lamentations, it might be helpful to view the book in its context by providing a few background details.
Jeremiah’s Day
Jeremiah ministered after the ten tribes of Israel, known as “the northern kingdom,” had been taken captive by the Assyrians. The people of the southern kingdom, comprising the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, still occupied their land, but spiritually were far from God. The word of the Lord had been rejected, and the people were performing religious acts without any reality of heart. Jeremiah repeatedly appealed to them to return to their God, but they remained deaf to his pleadings. He warned them of imminent captivity – not from the Assyrians but from the Babylonians. The prophet plainly told the people of the southern kingdom that they would face exile in Babylon for 70 years (25:11-12) because they had refused to hear God’s words (v.8). Jeremiah was not the only prophet to be despised, for “all” God’s servants had received similar treatment (v.4). In spite of many appeals, the people refused to hearken; they closed their ears to the tender warnings which were given.
The prophetic book of Jeremiah not only foretells coming judgment but also supplies a historic framework. In it we can read of the fall of Jerusalem after the Babylonian siege. Jeremiah had pleaded with the leaders to submit to the Babylonians, but they thought they knew best and refused to surrender. His countrymen even accused the prophet of being a traitor. When the city fell, the Babylonians meted out cruel treatment on many, but Jeremiah was treated kindly and was not taken into exile. Later, he warned the remnant left in the land not to escape to Egypt (Jer. 42), but they refused to listen and took Jeremiah with them. Although we are not told so in as many words, we presume he died in Egypt.
It is interesting to compare Jeremiah with the Lord Jesus Christ. When Jesus was here on earth, some actually believed that He was Jeremiah (Mt. 16:14). Although Jeremiah had lived centuries before, his character was evidently known. Like Jeremiah, Jesus wept over Jerusalem and lamented that the people refused to heed His warnings (23:37-38; Lk. 19:41). Jeremiah felt his own sorrow was unique as he cried, “Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow” (Lam. 1:12). This one verse surely reminds us of our Savior. Was “any sorrow” like His? We can never understand how He was weighed down as He faced the cross where God “made Him to be sin for us” (2 Cor. 5:21). Surely we can hear His voice in these heart-rending words Jeremiah spoke, “Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow … wherewith the Lord hath afflicted me in the day of His fierce anger” (Lam. 1:12). The heart of each believer should be touched in thinking of what He endured for us.
We can understand how Jeremiah must have felt heartbroken. His people refused to heed the warnings he had given them for their own good. As a consequence, disaster lay before them. Sometimes it can help to pour out our own grief. This is exactly what Jeremiah did as he penned Lamentations, having witnessed the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians.
The Book Of Lamentations
The book’s structure is interesting, for it is written in poetic form. The Old Testament Hebrew alphabet has 22 letters. Chapters 1, 2 and 4 of Lamentations each contain 22 verses and are written as an acrostic – each verse beginning with a different letter – in alphabetical order. Chapter 3 has 66 verses and is also written in the form of an acrostic. However, in this case three verses begin with the same letter, following the order of the alphabet, all the way through. Although chapter 5 contains 22 verses, it is not written as an acrostic.
Lamentations 1: Jeremiah, without any delay, expressed his sorrow at Jerusalem’s desolation. The great and prosperous city was no more! There was no comfort to offer because the people were suffering on account of their sins (vv.1-5). Spiritual adultery had been committed. As a judgment of God the temple had been sacked, and the inhabitants of the city were suffering the effects of famine. It was too late for them to appeal to God for mercy because just judgment had to fall upon them. Jeremiah felt it keenly and exclaimed, “For my sighs are many, and my heart is faint” (v.22).
Lamentations 2: The theme of God’s judgment on His guilty people is continued. No pity had been shown. The temple had been destroyed, and the altar for sacrifice lay in ruins. The gates of the city no longer served their purpose (v.9), while children were weak through lack of food (v.12). Once Jerusalem had been “the joy of the whole earth” – but that was no longer true (v.15). Well might “tears run down like a river day and night” at such a scene (v.18). With dead bodies lying in the streets, it was indeed “a solemn day” (v.22).
The last verse of this chapter is particularly interesting. “Those that I have swaddled and brought up hath mine enemy consumed” (v.22). This refers to babies who had been tenderly wrapped up for their protection by their mothers but had been torn from those loving arms and killed by the enemy. Does this not remind us of the Babe at Bethlehem who was “wrapped … in swaddling clothes, and laid … in a manger” (Lk. 2:7)? Contrast that expression of love with the treatment meted out on Him in manhood by those who scourged Him before leading Him to the cross.
Lamentations 3: Personification is used in this chapter, with Jeremiah expressing the sufferings of the city as his own. But although “hope is perished” (v.18), the “mercies” of God could still provide him with “hope” (v.22,21). “The LORD is good unto them that wait for Him,” he declared (v.25), and He “will not cast off for ever” (v.31). God was right to have punished His people for their sin, and they had no grounds for complaining against Him (v.39). After this brief interlude of hope, Jeremiah again returned to his dominant theme, encouraging his guilty fellow-citizens to acknowledge their sin, and pleading with God to see what the enemy had done.
Lamentations 4: This chapter resembles the first two, both in its construction and in its theme. The earlier sins of the prophets and the priests (v.13) accounted, in part, for the hand of God in judgment. Experiencing desperate famine, the people of Jerusalem had been forced to resort to cannibalism (v.10). Judah’s king, “the anointed of the LORD,” had been taken to Babylon as a prisoner (v.20). But “the punishment” (v.22) meted out on Jerusalem was enough, and Jeremiah anticipated God righteously dealing with those who had taunted and tormented His people.
Lamentations 5: In the opening part of this final chapter Jeremiah enumerated the many painful experiences his people had endured. “Our necks are under persecution,” he lamented (v.5). But in the last four verses there is a slight change of mood. Jeremiah found comfort in his unchanging God as he confessed, “Thou, O Lord, remainest for ever” (v.19). “Turn Thou us unto Thee, O LORD,” he pleaded (v.21), but at the time of writing the reality remained before his eyes. He felt his people had been “utterly rejected” because God was “very wroth” with them (v.22).
Concluding Thoughts
Sin has very serious consequences, and we cannot trifle with it. The principle of reaping what we sow is true in the spiritual realm and in the natural realm (Gal. 6:7-8). There is a price to pay for our disobedience, “for the wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23). If we are true believers our sins have been pardoned through the atoning work of our Lord Jesus Christ at the cross. However, if we live carelessly and disobediently we must not suppose we are beyond God’s intervention in our lives.
Although Lamentations presents a very dark scene, some wonderful gems can be found in the middle chapter. Are we not familiar with the thought of “the LORD’s mercies” being “new every morning”? Truly “His compassions fail not,” and we can exclaim, “Great is Thy faithfulness” (Lam. 3:22-23)!
The next few verses are also a great source of encouragement and instruction. We need to be able to say, “The LORD is my portion” (v.24). “The LORD is good unto them that wait for Him, to the soul that seeketh Him” (v.25). Two more “good” things are brought to our attention. “It is good” to “both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the LORD” (v.26). It is also “good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth” (v.27). Here we have yet another reminder of the Lord Jesus who invites us to take His yoke upon us and walk with Him along life’s troubled pathway. He declared, “My yoke is easy, and My burden is light” (Mt. 11:30). Nobody can understand our sorrows as He can.
By Martin Girard
Jeremiah, having considered God’s mercies – that He has tempered His judgment with grace – can declare, “The LORD is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in Him” (Lam. 3:24 KJV). All else might fail, but He will abide. It is the confidence of Habakkuk (Hab. 3:17-18), and the abiding contentment of Paul (Phil. 4:11). Thus is one enabled to rejoice in the Lord even when no other source of joy remains. He becomes the soul’s portion: “The LORD is the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup” (Ps. 16:5). Little wonder that Psalm 23:5 asserts, “My cup runneth over.” How could it be otherwise, when He it is who fills it? “The LORD is good unto them that wait for Him, to the soul that seeketh Him. It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the LORD” (Lam. 3:25-26). The reason the truths here taught are so little entered into is simply because waiting upon God is largely lost among Christians. Consequently, little or nothing is known in a practical way of His goodness in meeting felt need and of His ability to satisfy the soul that seeks His face.It is perhaps needless to say that when Jeremiah wrote “it is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the LORD” that he was not referring to soul-salvation, but to deliverance from the troubles and perplexities of the way. Nowhere in Scripture is the eternal salvation of the soul put before us as something to be waited for in patience and quietness. —Harry A. Ironside, “The Lamentations Of Jeremiah” (adapted)