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| This is the New King James text of the passages. |
Lamentations 1:1-3:36
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An introduction to Lamentations; it's poetry!
Virtually all conservative Bible scholars agree, Jeremiah is the author of Lamentations, writing it after watching the city of Jerusalem fall to the Babylonians in 586 B.C. These 5 chapters reflect his thoughts on the fall. It is interesting to note that Lamentations is poetry. There is a distinct rhythm to the verses; but wait - there's more. In chapters 1, 2 and 4, each of the 22 verses begins with a word in Hebrew which begins with the next successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet...just like Psalms 119 (see notes); that's called an acrostic style. The verses in chapters 1 and 2 have 3 lines each while the verses in chapter 4 have 2 lines each. Chapter 3 has 66 verses instead of 22. The same letter of the Hebrew alphabet is used in groups of 3 verses until all 22 letters are used in order. Chapter 5 is written free style. Like I said, it's poetry.
You may want to read the account of the demise of Jerusalem in Jeremiah's own words before reading Lamentations. (click here)
It's sad to see what happened (Lamentations 1)
1 How lonely sits the city
That was full of people!
How like a widow is she,
Who was great among the nations!
The princess among the provinces
Has become a slave!
2 She weeps bitterly in the night,
Her tears are on her cheeks;
Among all her lovers
She has none to comfort her.
All her friends have dealt treacherously with her;
They have become her enemies.
3 Judah has gone into captivity,
Under affliction and hard servitude;
She dwells among the nations,
She finds no rest;
All her persecutors overtake her in dire straits.
4 The roads to Zion mourn
Because no one comes to the set feasts.
All her gates are desolate;
Her priests sigh,
Her virgins are afflicted,
And she is in bitterness.
5 Her adversaries have become the master,
Her enemies prosper;
For the LORD has afflicted her
Because of the multitude of her transgressions.
Her children have gone into captivity before the enemy.
6 And from the daughter of Zion
All her splendor has departed.
Her princes have become like deer
That find no pasture,
That flee without strength
Before the pursuer.
7 In the days of her affliction and roaming,
Jerusalem remembers all her pleasant things
That she had in the days of old.
When her people fell into the hand of the enemy,
With no one to help her,
The adversaries saw her
And mocked at her downfall.
8 Jerusalem has sinned gravely,
Therefore she has become vile.
All who honored her despise her
Because they have seen her nakedness;
Yes, she sighs and turns away.
9 Her uncleanness is in her skirts;
She did not consider her destiny;
Therefore her collapse was awesome;
She had no comforter.
“O LORD, behold my affliction,
For the enemy is exalted!”
10 The adversary has spread his hand
Over all her pleasant things;
For she has seen the nations enter her sanctuary,
Those whom You commanded
Not to enter Your assembly.
11 All her people sigh,
They seek bread;
They have given their valuables for food to restore life.
“See, O LORD, and consider,
For I am scorned.”
12 “Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by?
Behold and see
If there is any sorrow like my sorrow,
Which has been brought on me,
Which the LORD has inflicted
In the day of His fierce anger.
13 “From above He has sent fire into my bones,
And it overpowered them;
He has spread a net for my feet
And turned me back;
He has made me desolate
And faint all the day.
14 “The yoke of my transgressions was bound;
They were woven together by His hands,
And thrust upon my neck.
He made my strength fail;
The Lord delivered me into the hands of those whom I am not able to withstand.
15 “The Lord has trampled underfoot all my mighty men in my midst;
He has called an assembly against me
To crush my young men;
The Lord trampled as in a winepress
The virgin daughter of Judah.
16 “For these things I weep;
My eye, my eye overflows with water;
Because the comforter, who should restore my life,
Is far from me.
My children are desolate
Because the enemy prevailed.”
17 Zion spreads out her hands,
But no one comforts her;
The LORD has commanded concerning Jacob
That those around him become his adversaries;
Jerusalem has become an unclean thing among them.
18 “The LORD is righteous,
For I rebelled against His commandment.
Hear now, all peoples,
And behold my sorrow;
My virgins and my young men
Have gone into captivity.
19 “I called for my lovers,
But they deceived me;
My priests and my elders
Breathed their last in the city,
While they sought food
To restore their life.
20 “See, O LORD, that I am in distress;
My soul is troubled;
My heart is overturned within me,
For I have been very rebellious.
Outside the sword bereaves,
At home it is like death.
21 “They have heard that I sigh,
But no one comforts me.
All my enemies have heard of my trouble;
They are glad that You have done it.
Bring on the day You have announced,
That they may become like me.
22 “Let all their wickedness come before You,
And do to them as You have done to me
For all my transgressions;
For my sighs are many,
And my heart is faint.”
Very early into one's reading of Lamentations, there's simply no question regarding the name of this book. It's one big, long lament by Jeremiah. In these two chapters, sometimes he speaks of Jerusalem in the third person; sometimes he personifies Jerusalem and refers to the city in the first person. How many ways can it be expressed? Well...poetry tends to many times make the same point over and over again; this poem does just that.
Here's Lamentations in a nutshell:
We see in verse 3, "Judah has gone into captivity, Under affliction and hard servitude; She dwells among the nations, She finds no rest; All her persecutors overtake her in dire straits." In this chapter, Jeremiah expresses that while it is a horrific sight, Jerusalem had it coming for their persistent disobedience before God. God has orchestrated the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians. Verse 8 says, "Jerusalem has sinned gravely, Therefore she has become vile. All who honored her despise her Because they have seen her nakedness; Yes, she sighs and turns away."
So...what exactly was Jerusalem's sin for which she was judged by God? We saw Jeremiah's warning leading up to the fall of Jerusalem - IDOLATRY! They just could not resist a lifestyle of going after the pagan gods of their neighbors. Hmmmm...despise their neighbors, but love their gods - weird, huh? Isaiah and Jeremiah often referred to this idolatrous practice as spiritual harlotry, and there's your reference to just that in verse 9 which begins with, "Her uncleanness is in her skirts..." Jerusalem sold herself into idolatry the same way a harlot sells herself into prostitution.
How bad was it in Jerusalem as Jeremiah laments over it? Notice verse 11, "All her people sigh, They seek bread; They have given their valuables for food to restore life. 'See, O LORD, and consider, For I am scorned.'" All of Jerusalem's inhabitants were forced to barter off their riches just for food in the time leading up to their collapse. After all, they had been surrounded by the Babylonian army - no one in or out of the city. Food became very scarce.
Jeremiah had continually warned Jerusalem before the fall to repent, but they wouldn't listen. Now Jeremiah observes in verse 15, "The Lord has trampled underfoot all my mighty men in my midst; He has called an assembly against me To crush my young men; The Lord trampled as in a winepress The virgin daughter of Judah." Those same leaders in Jerusalem that scoffed at Jeremiah's prophecies of warnings are now "trampled under foot" by the Babylonians. Though the Babylonians were the conquerors, Jeremiah credits "the Lord" with the fall. Jerusalem was helpless before the mighty Babylonian army...described colorfully in verse 17, "Jerusalem is as a menstruous woman among them." That's the literal implication of the Hebrew word used there as seen in the KJV. To the Jews, that was the epitome of helplessness. The NKJV lightens it a bit with its translation, "Jerusalem has become an unclean thing among them."
In verses 21-22, Jeremiah calls upon God to punish the enemies of Jerusalem - those wicked Babylonians whom God had used as his instruments of judgment. And they did end up getting their just rewards, but not until about 50 years or so later.
God's judgment on Jerusalem was thorough (Lamentations 2)
1 How the Lord has covered the daughter of Zion
With a cloud in His anger!
He cast down from heaven to the earth
The beauty of Israel,
And did not remember His footstool
In the day of His anger.
2 The Lord has swallowed up and has not pitied
All the dwelling places of Jacob.
He has thrown down in His wrath
The strongholds of the daughter of Judah;
He has brought them down to the ground;
He has profaned the kingdom and its princes.
3 He has cut off in fierce anger
Every horn of Israel;
He has drawn back His right hand
From before the enemy.
He has blazed against Jacob like a flaming fire
Devouring all around.
4 Standing like an enemy, He has bent His bow;
With His right hand, like an adversary,
He has slain all who were pleasing to His eye;
On the tent of the daughter of Zion,
He has poured out His fury like fire.
5 The Lord was like an enemy.
He has swallowed up Israel,
He has swallowed up all her palaces;
He has destroyed her strongholds,
And has increased mourning and lamentation
In the daughter of Judah.
6 He has done violence to His tabernacle,
As if it were a garden;
He has destroyed His place of assembly;
The LORD has caused
The appointed feasts and Sabbaths to be forgotten in Zion.
In His burning indignation He has spurned the king and the priest.
7 The Lord has spurned His altar,
He has abandoned His sanctuary;
He has given up the walls of her palaces
Into the hand of the enemy.
They have made a noise in the house of the LORD
As on the day of a set feast.
8 The LORD has purposed to destroy
The wall of the daughter of Zion.
He has stretched out a line;
He has not withdrawn His hand from destroying;
Therefore He has caused the rampart and wall to lament;
They languished together.
9 Her gates have sunk into the ground;
He has destroyed and broken her bars.
Her king and her princes are among the nations;
The Law is no more,
And her prophets find no vision from the LORD.
10 The elders of the daughter of Zion
Sit on the ground and keep silence;
They throw dust on their heads
And gird themselves with sackcloth.
The virgins of Jerusalem
Bow their heads to the ground.
11 My eyes fail with tears,
My heart is troubled;
My bile is poured on the ground
Because of the destruction of the daughter of my people,
Because the children and the infants
Faint in the streets of the city.
12 They say to their mothers,
“Where is grain and wine?”
As they swoon like the wounded
In the streets of the city,
As their life is poured out
In their mothers’ bosom.
13 How shall I console you?
To what shall I liken you,
O daughter of Jerusalem?
What shall I compare with you, that I may comfort you,
O virgin daughter of Zion?
For your ruin is spread wide as the sea;
Who can heal you?
14 Your prophets have seen for you
False and deceptive visions;
They have not uncovered your iniquity,
To bring back your captives,
But have envisioned for you false prophecies and delusions.
15 All who pass by clap their hands at you;
They hiss and shake their heads
At the daughter of Jerusalem:
“Is this the city that is called
‘The perfection of beauty,
The joy of the whole earth’?”
16 All your enemies have opened their mouth against you;
They hiss and gnash their teeth.
They say, “We have swallowed her up!
Surely this is the day we have waited for;
We have found it, we have seen it!|”
17 The LORD has done what He purposed;
He has fulfilled His word
Which He commanded in days of old.
He has thrown down and has not pitied,
And He has caused an enemy to rejoice over you;
He has exalted the horn of your adversaries.
18 Their heart cried out to the Lord,
“O wall of the daughter of Zion,
Let tears run down like a river day and night;
Give yourself no relief;
Give your eyes no rest.
19 “Arise, cry out in the night,
At the beginning of the watches;
Pour out your heart like water before the face of the Lord.
Lift your hands toward Him
For the life of your young children,
Who faint from hunger at the head of every street.”
20 “See, O LORD, and consider!
To whom have You done this?
Should the women eat their offspring,
The children they have cuddled?
Should the priest and prophet be slain
In the sanctuary of the Lord?
21 “Young and old lie
On the ground in the streets;
My virgins and my young men
Have fallen by the sword;
You have slain them in the day of Your anger,
You have slaughtered and not pitied.
22 “You have invited as to a feast day
The terrors that surround me.
In the day of the LORD’S anger
There was no refugee or survivor.
Those whom I have borne and brought up
My enemies have destroyed.”
Verse 5 says, "The Lord was like an enemy. He has swallowed up Israel, He has swallowed up all her palaces; He has destroyed her strongholds, And has increased mourning and lamentation In the daughter of Judah." Again, while Jerusalem fell at the hand of the Babylonians, Jeremiah is clear that it was all the Lord's doing. Notice verse 17, "The LORD has done what He purposed; He has fulfilled His word Which He commanded in days of old. He has thrown down and has not pitied, And He has caused an enemy to rejoice over you; He has exalted the horn of your adversaries."
In this chapter, Jeremiah emphasizes the thoroughness of the devastation of Jerusalem. It wasn't just conquered; it was ransacked in the process, accompanied by horrendous suffering. The once-proud Jerusalem was now viewed as a disgrace, as seen in verse 15, "All who pass by clap their hands at you; They hiss and shake their heads At the daughter of Jerusalem: 'Is this the city that is called "The perfection of beauty, The joy of the whole earth"?'" Even though Jerusalem had fallen away from the proper worship of their God, Jehovah, prior to their fall, they still had a sense of pride in believing the Messianic promise (see notes on Davidic Covenant) that one day Jerusalem would rule the world. No longer did the prospects seem likely that Jerusalem would be "the joy of the whole earth."
You will notice that God gets the credit, not the Babylonians, for the fall of Jerusalem. Babylon was simply the tool God used to chastise Israel for their centuries of disobedience.
Jeremiah's personal grief (Lamentations 3:1-36)
1 I am the man who has seen affliction by the rod of His wrath.
2 He has led me and made me walk
In darkness and not in light.
3 Surely He has turned His hand against me
Time and time again throughout the day.
4 He has aged my flesh and my skin,
And broken my bones.
5 He has besieged me
And surrounded me with bitterness and woe.
6 He has set me in dark places
Like the dead of long ago.
7 He has hedged me in so that I cannot get out;
He has made my chain heavy.
8 Even when I cry and shout,
He shuts out my prayer.
9 He has blocked my ways with hewn stone;
He has made my paths crooked.
10 He has been to me a bear lying in wait,
Like a lion in ambush.
11 He has turned aside my ways and torn me in pieces;
He has made me desolate.
12 He has bent His bow
And set me up as a target for the arrow.
13 He has caused the arrows of His quiver
To pierce my loins.
14 I have become the ridicule of all my people—
Their taunting song all the day.
15 He has filled me with bitterness,
He has made me drink wormwood.
16 He has also broken my teeth with gravel,
And covered me with ashes.
17 You have moved my soul far from peace;
I have forgotten prosperity.
18 And I said, “My strength and my hope
Have perished from the LORD.”
19 Remember my affliction and roaming,
The wormwood and the gall.
20 My soul still remembers
And sinks within me.
21 This I recall to my mind,
Therefore I have hope.
22 Through the LORD’S mercies we are not consumed,
Because His compassions fail not.
23 They are new every morning;
Great is Your faithfulness.
24 “The LORD is my portion,” says my soul,
“Therefore I hope in Him!”
25 The LORD is good to those who wait for Him,
To the soul who seeks Him.
26 It is good that one should hope and wait quietly
For the salvation of the LORD.
27 It is good for a man to bear
The yoke in his youth.
28 Let him sit alone and keep silent,
Because God has laid it on him;
29 Let him put his mouth in the dust—
There may yet be hope.
30 Let him give his cheek to the one who strikes him,
And be full of reproach.
31 For the Lord will not cast off forever.
32 Though He causes grief,
Yet He will show compassion
According to the multitude of His mercies.
33 For He does not afflict willingly,
Nor grieve the children of men.
34 To crush under one’s feet
All the prisoners of the earth,
35 To turn aside the justice due a man
Before the face of the Most High,
36 Or subvert a man in his cause—
The Lord does not approve.
This chapter has 66 verses. Every three verses begins with a word beginning with the next successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet. In other words, it's poetry. Jeremiah talks about his personal suffering on behalf of fallen Jerusalem with lots of metaphors. It reads like one of David's Psalms.
You do see from his personal comments that he was not well liked in his hometown. What's up with that!? At the time of the writing of Lamentations, everything Jeremiah had prophesied regarding the fall of Jerusalem had happened. Doesn't a prophet get a little bit of credit for being right? The answer is a resounding "NO!" Right down to the end, the Jewish leadership treated Jeremiah like the enemy - no vindication from them. However, in the midst of all this doom-and-gloom poetry, Jeremiah includes a couple of verses that reflect his dependence on God in verses 22-23, "Through the LORD’S mercies we are not consumed, Because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning; Great is Your faithfulness." He continues on with this lesson: Even though things may be bad around you, the Lord will help you through the tough times.