Lamentations Commentary

Most of us have not experienced the death of our nation, and we know little of the agony of utter despair; but others in our world have experienced total devastation as their cities or nations have been destroyed by wars, earthquakes, tsunamis, or hurricanes. Reading the book of Lamentations can give us a point of entry into their experiences. It can help us to face the darkest aspects of human existence.

Setting

After a long siege, the Babylonian army breached Jerusalem’s defenses and took control. They deported many of the people of Judah to exile in Babylon, and they destroyed the city of Jerusalem, including the Temple of God. Only a few survivors remained in the land, including Jeremiah the prophet. Nothing else was left, and the hopes of God’s people were nearly dead.

Summary

The book of Lamentations is a collection of five highly structured and emotionally powerful poems that lament Jerusalem’s destruction.

Chapter 1 describes Jerusalem’s ruins. Jerusalem is personified as a once-famous princess who is now a wounded slave, lamenting the contrast between her past and present with intense agony and shame. She acknowledges that she has earned her distress, and she prays that the Lord will relieve her miserable condition.

Chapter 2 summarizes the shameful situation in Jerusalem. The author agonizes as he watches starving children, weeping mothers, lying prophets, and mocking enemies. This tragedy happened because God withdrew his mercy and kept his promise to judge his people when they sinned against him.

Chapter 3 is an eyewitness account of God’s wrath. The author is sickened by the carnage; he is without hope and crushed by shame. Then he realizes that God’s anger will not last forever, and hope floods his soul. God’s faithfulness, love, kindness, and goodness are the ultimate, saving reality. Yet the hurt remains, and tears flow abundantly as he prays.

Chapter 4 is a gloomy description of the devastation before and after the walls of Jerusalem were breached, in contrast to the city’s years of glory. God was justly punishing the vicious sins of his people, and they could not escape his judgment.

Chapter 5 is a prayer that asks God to carefully consider the people’s plight. It ends with a plea for salvation, if salvation is still available.

The first four of these poems are acrostics based on the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet, with each successive stanza beginning with the next letter (a feature that is lost in translation). Chapter 5 has twenty-two verses but is not an acrostic. In all five poems, pain and distress are paired with faith and hope. The suffering of the present seems more real than the possibility of redemption in the future, but God’s love and faithfulness remain.

Authorship

The book of Lamentations does not identify its author. The poems are situated in a context immediately before and after the fall of Jerusalem in 586 BC. Jeremiah was in Jerusalem during this time of calamity, and he has long been identified as the author. It may have been written with the help of Baruch, Jeremiah’s assistant and scribe. Second Chronicles indicates that Jeremiah also wrote laments at the time of King Josiah’s death (2 Chr 35:25). The author of Lamentations freely pours out his emotions, as does Jeremiah in the book that bears his name, and both books reflect on the future of the nation.

There are a number of other parallels between the books of Jeremiah and Lamentations. Compare the treatment of the following themes: troubled widows (1:1; 5:3; cp. Jer 15:8; 18:21); weeping people (1:2, 16; 2:18; 3:48-49; cp. Jer 4:8; 6:26; 9:1; 13:17; 14:17; 25:34); sin (1:5, 10, 18, 22; 3:42; 4:13-14; 5:7; cp. Jer 2:34; 4:17; 14:20; 30:14-16; 31:29; 51:51); punishment (2:2-22; 3:39; 5:14-16; cp. Jer 6:11, 25; 7:14; 16:2-4; 18:21; 51:30, 34; 52:14); false prophets (2:14; cp. Jer 23:25-29; 29:8-9); bitterness (3:19; cp. Jer 9:15); pits (3:53, 55; cp. Jer 37:16; 38:6-13); and clay pots (4:2; cp. Jer 19:11). Although some Old Testament scholars ascribe Lamentations to a much later author, such parallels support Jeremiah’s authorship.

Meaning and Message

What positive meaning can be gained from staring at fire-blackened stones or from walking among starving children and wailing mothers? How does one sort through the memories of false prophets who promised rescue from the Babylonian army encamped around Jerusalem? How does one make sense of the priests wandering the city searching for food, when those priests had previously conveyed confidence that the sacrifices they offered would provide victory and success? How can one believe in God’s goodness when corpses lie everywhere?

The author of Lamentations did find meaning in the calamity. God’s people had brought it on themselves through their false worship and immoral behavior. God was angry because of this rejection of his sovereignty and violation of their covenant with him. As a result, God had judged them, as he had promised to do (see Deut 28:32-53). God’s punishment was righteous and just (see Lam 1:18); he does not tolerate human rebellion.

But what about the future? Those who truly seek God have hope. In the midst of utter sorrow, those in anguish can plead before God and experience his mercy, forgiveness, and restoration. Misery threatens to overwhelm the soul, but hope brings light. God is eternal, and he is sovereign over the universe. Though doubts and fears continue to assault the human spirit, God remains dependable. God’s anger, which is just, is temporary. His anger ceases when confession and repentance begin, and it becomes possible to sing of God’s great faithfulness (Lam 3:21-26).

An Exposition, with Practical Observations, of The Lamentations of Jeremiah

Since what Solomon says, though contrary to the common opinion of the world, is certainly true, that sorrow is better than laughter, and it is better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of feasting, we should come to the reading and consideration of the melancholy chapters of this book, not only willingly, but with an expectation to edify ourselves by them; and, that we may do this, we must compose ourselves to a holy sadness and resolve to weep with the weeping prophet. Let us consider, I. The title of this book; in the Hebrew it has one, but is called (as the books of Moses are) from the first word Ecah - How; but the Jewish commentators call it, as the Greeks do, and we from them, Kinoth - Lamentations. As we have sacred odes or songs of joy, so have we sacred elegies or songs of lamentation; such variety of methods has Infinite Wisdom taken to work upon us and move our affections, and so soften our hearts and make them susceptible of the impressions of divine truths, as the wax of the seal. We have not only piped unto you, but have mourned likewise, Mat 11:17. II. The penman of this book; it was Jeremiah the prophet, who is here Jeremiah the poet, and vates signifies both; therefore this book is fitly adjoined to the book of his prophecy, and is as an appendix to it. We had there at large the predictions of the desolations of Judah and Jerusalem, and then the history of them, to show how punctually the predictions were accomplished, for the confirming of our faith: now here we have the expressions of his sorrow upon occasion of them, to show that he was very sincere in the protestations he had often made that he did not desire the woeful day, but that, on the contrary, the prospect of it filled him with bitterness. When he saw these calamities at a distance, he wished that his head were waters and his eyes fountains of tears; and, when they came, he made it to appear that he did not dissemble in that wish, and that he was far from being disaffected to his country, which was the crime his enemies charged him with. Though his country had been very unkind to him, and though the ruin of it was both a proof that he was a true prophet and a punishment of them for prosecuting him as a false prophet, which might have tempted him to rejoice in it, yet he sadly lamented it, and herein showed a better temper than that which Jonah was of with respect to Nineveh. III. The occasion of these Lamentations was the destruction of Judah and Jerusalem by the Chaldean army and the dissolution of the Jewish state both civil and ecclesiastical thereby. Some of the rabbies will have these to be the Lamentations which Jeremiah penned upon occasion of the death of Josiah, which are mentioned Ch2 35:25. But, though it is true that that opened the door to all the following calamities, yet these Lamentations seem to be penned in the sight, not in the foresight, of those calamities - when they had already come, not when they were at a distance; and these is nothing of Josiah in them, and his praise, as was no question, in the lamentations for him. No, it is Jerusalem's funeral that this is an elegy upon. Others of them will have these Lamentations to be contained in the roll which Baruch wrote from Jeremiah's mouth, and which Jehoiakim burnt, and they suggest that at first there were in it only the 1st, 2nd, and 4th chatpers, but that the 3rd and 5th were the many like words that were afterwards added; but this is a groundless fancy; that roll is expressly said to be a repetition and summary of the prophet's sermons, Jer 36:2. IV. The composition of it; it is not only poetical, but alphabetical, all except the 5th chatper, as some of David's psalms are; each verse begins with a several letter in the order of the Hebrew alphabet, the first aleph, the second beth, etc., but the 3rd chapter is a triple alphabet, the first three beginning with aleph, the next three with beth, etc., which was a help to memory (it being designed that these mournful ditties should be got by heart) and was an elegance in writing then valued and therefore not now to be despised. They observe that in the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th chapters, the letter pe is put before ain, which in all the Hebrew alphabets follows it, for a reason of which Dr. Lightfoot offers this conjecture, That the letter ajin, which is the numeral letter for Septuagint, was thus, by being displaced, made remarkable, to put them in mind of the seventy years at the end of which God would turn again their captivity. V. The use of it: of great use, no doubt, it was to the pious Jews in their sufferings, furnishing them with spiritual language to express their natural grief by, helping to preserve the lively remembrance of Zion among them, and their children that never saw it, when they were in Babylon, directing their tears into the right channel (for they are here taught to mourn for sin and mourn to God), and withal encouraging their hopes that God would yet return and have mercy upon them; and it is of use to us, to affect us with godly sorrow for the calamities of the church of God, as becomes those that are living members of it and are resolved to take our lot with it.

In the Hebrew Bible these Elegies of Jeremiah, five in number, are placed among the Chetuvim, or "Holy Writings" ("the Psalms," &c., Luk 24:44), between Ruth and Ecclesiastes. But though in classification of compositions it belongs to the Chetuvim, it probably followed the prophecies of Jeremiah originally. For thus alone can we account for the prophetical books being enumerated by JOSEPHUS [Against Apion, 1.1.8] as thirteen: he must have reckoned Jeremiah and Lamentations as one book, as also Judges and Ruth, the two books of Samuel, &c., Ezra and Nehemiah. The Lamentations naturally follow the book which sets forth the circumstances forming the subject of the Elegies. Similar lamentations occur in Sa2 1:19, &c.; Sa2 3:33. The Jews read it in their synagogues on the ninth of the month Ab, which is a fast for the destruction of their holy city. As in Ch2 35:25, "lamentations" are said to have been "written" by Jeremiah on the death of Josiah, besides it having been made "an ordinance in Israel" that "singing women" should "speak" of that king in lamentations; JOSEPHUS [Antiquities, 10.5.1], JEROME, &c., thought that they are contained in the present collection. But plainly the subject here is the overthrow of the Jewish city and people, as the Septuagint expressly states in an introductory verse to their version. The probability is that there is embodied in these Lamentations much of the language of Jeremiah's original Elegy on Josiah, as Ch2 35:25 states; but it is now applied to the more universal calamity of the whole state, of which Josiah's sad death was the forerunner. Thus Lam 4:20, originally applied to Josiah, was "written," in its subsequent reference, not so much of him, as of the throne of Judah in general, the last representative of which, Zedekiah, had just been carried away. The language, which is true of good Josiah, is too strong in favor of Zedekiah, except when viewed as representative of the crown in general. It was natural to embody the language of the Elegy on Josiah in the more general lamentations, as his death was the presage of the last disaster that overthrew the throne and state.

The title more frequently given by the Jews to these Elegies is, "How" (Hebrew, Eechah), from the first word, as the Pentateuch is similarly called by the first Hebrew word of Gen 1:1. The Septuagint calls it "Lamentations," from which we derive the name. It refers not merely to the events which occurred at the capture of the city, but to the sufferings of the citizens (the penalty of national sin) from the very beginning of the siege; and perhaps from before it, under Manasseh and Josiah (Ch2 33:11; Ch2 35:20-25); under Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim, and Zedekiah (Ch2 36:3-4, Ch2 36:6-7, Ch2 36:10-11, &c.). LOWTH says, "Every letter is written with a tear, every word the sound of a broken heart." The style is midway between the simple elevation of prophetic writing and the loftier rhythm of Moses, David, and Habakkuk. Terse conciseness marks the Hebrew original, notwithstanding Jeremiah's diffuseness in his other writings. The Elegies are grouped in stanzas as they arose in his mind, without any artificial system of arrangement as to the thoughts. The five Elegies are acrostic: each is divided into twenty-two stanzas or verses. In the first three Elegies the stanzas consist of triplets of lines (excepting Lam 1:7; Lam 2:19, which contain each four lines) each beginning with the letters of the Hebrew alphabet in regular order (twenty-two in number). In three instances (Lam 2:16-17; Lam 3:46-51; Lam 4:16-17) two letters are transposed. In the third Elegy, each line of the three forming every stanza begins with the same letter. The stanzas in the fourth and fifth Elegies consist of two lines each. The fifth Elegy, though having twenty-two stanzas (the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet), just as the first four, yet is not alphabetical; and its lines are shorter than those of the others, which are longer than are found in other Hebrew poems, and contain twelve syllables, marked by a cÃ&brvbrsura about the middle, dividing them into two somewhat unequal parts. The alphabetical arrangement was adopted originally to assist the memory. GROTIUS thinks the reason for the inversion of two of the Hebrew letters in Lam 2:16-17; Lam 3:46-51; Lam 4:16-17, is that the Chaldeans, like the Arabians, used a different order from the Hebrews; in the first Elegy, Jeremiah speaks as a Hebrew, in the following ones, as one subject to the Chaldeans. This is doubtful.

Next: Lamentations Chapter 1