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| This is the New King James text of the passages. |
Lamentations 3:37-5:22 Listen 
For background information on Lamentations, click here to read the introduction.
Jeremiah's personal grief (Lamentations 3:37-66)
37 Who is he who speaks and it comes to pass,
When the Lord has not commanded it?
38 Is it not from the mouth of the Most High
That woe and well-being proceed?
39 Why should a living man complain,
A man for the punishment of his sins?
40 Let us search out and examine our ways,
And turn back to the LORD;
41 Let us lift our hearts and hands
To God in heaven.
42 We have transgressed and rebelled;
You have not pardoned.
43 You have covered Yourself with anger
And pursued us;
You have slain and not pitied.
44 You have covered Yourself with a cloud,
That prayer should not pass through.
45 You have made us an offscouring and refuse
In the midst of the peoples.
46 All our enemies
Have opened their mouths against us.
47 Fear and a snare have come upon us,
Desolation and destruction.
48 My eyes overflow with rivers of water
For the destruction of the daughter of my people.
49 My eyes flow and do not cease,
Without interruption,
50 Till the LORD from heaven
Looks down and sees.
51 My eyes bring suffering to my soul
Because of all the daughters of my city.
52 My enemies without cause
Hunted me down like a bird.
53 They silenced my life in the pit
And threw stones at me.
54 The waters flowed over my head;
I said, “I am cut off!”
55 I called on Your name, O LORD,
From the lowest pit.
56 You have heard my voice:
“Do not hide Your ear
From my sighing, from my cry for help.”
57 You drew near on the day I called on You,
And said, “Do not fear!”
58 O Lord, You have pleaded the case for my soul;
You have redeemed my life.
59 O LORD, You have seen how I am wronged;
Judge my case.
60 You have seen all their vengeance,
All their schemes against me.
61 You have heard their reproach, O LORD,
All their schemes against me,
62 The lips of my enemies
And their whispering against me all the day.
63 Look at their sitting down and their rising up;
I am their taunting song.
64 Repay them, O LORD,
According to the work of their hands.
65 Give them a veiled heart;
Your curse be upon them!
66 In Your anger,
Pursue and destroy them
From under the heavens of the LORD.
You will recall that this chapter has 66 verses, and that every three verses begins with a word beginning with the next successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Jeremiah talks about his personal suffering on behalf of fallen Jerusalem. (To read the notes on the first 36 verses of this chapter, click here.)
As Jeremiah continues his laments, he makes a personal suggestion in verses 40-41, "Let us search out and examine our ways, And turn back to the LORD; Let us lift our hearts and hands To God in heaven." It's still the answer for the people of Jerusalem, repent! Jeremiah has had a tough life. When he proclaimed the prophecies God had given him, his own people made his life miserable; they put him into a dungeon and even tried to kill him. Could it be that Jeremiah is asking for vindication in these verses before those leaders of Jerusalem who had made his life so miserable prior to the fall? It would appear so.
There's a meaningful lesson for us in verses 42-45:
42 We have transgressed and rebelled;
You have not pardoned.
43 You have covered Yourself with anger
And pursued us;
You have slain and not pitied.
44 You have covered Yourself with a cloud,
That prayer should not pass through.
45 You have made us an offscouring and refuse
In the midst of the peoples.
Notice in verse 42 that God has "not pardoned" BECAUSE they had "transgressed" and "rebelled." In that state of rebellion, God was as an enemy to them (verse 43), and their prayers were not answered (verse 44). I'm reminded of Proverbs 28:9 (see notes), "One who turns away his ear from hearing the law, Even his prayer is an abomination." In other words, the first step to answered prayers is to have a heart that is right before God.
But wait...there's more here - VENGEANCE! Notice particularly verses 64-66:
64 Repay them, O LORD,
According to the work of their hands.
65 Give them a veiled heart;
Your curse be upon them!
66 In Your anger,
Pursue and destroy them
From under the heavens of the LORD.
Lest you misunderstand Jeremiah, let's look at some similar requests:
Jeremiah 11:20 But, O LORD of hosts, You who judge righteously, Testing the mind and the heart, Let me see Your vengeance on them, For to You I have revealed my cause.
Jeremiah 12:3 But You, O LORD, know me; You have seen me, And You have tested my heart toward You. Pull them out like sheep for the slaughter, And prepare them for the day of slaughter.
Jeremiah 15:15 O LORD, You know; Remember me and visit me, And take vengeance for me on my persecutors. In Your enduring patience, do not take me away. Know that for Your sake I have suffered rebuke.
Jeremiah 17:18 Let them be ashamed who persecute me, But do not let me be put to shame; Let them be dismayed, But do not let me be dismayed. Bring on them the day of doom, And destroy them with double destruction!
Jeremiah 18:21 Therefore deliver up their children to the famine, And pour out their blood By the force of the sword; Let their wives become widows And bereaved of their children. Let their men be put to death, Their young men be slain By the sword in battle.
Jeremiah 18:22 Let a cry be heard from their houses, When You bring a troop suddenly upon them; For they have dug a pit to take me, And hidden snares for my feet.
Jeremiah 18:23 Yet, LORD, You know all their counsel Which is against me, to slay me. Provide no atonement for their iniquity, Nor blot out their sin from Your sight; But let them be overthrown before You. Deal thus with them In the time of Your anger.
Keep this in mind: Jeremiah was calling upon God to do the vindicating and to ration out the appropriate measure of vengeance. After all, Jeremiah endured years of abuse from the leadership of Judah simply because he stood for God.
Incidentally, Jeremiah refers in verse 53 to the time in Jeremiah 38 (see notes) when he was cast into the dungeon (aka cistern). We see Jeremiah pleading his case against his enemies in verses 58-66. Ironically, his enemies were the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem who rejected his message. Not only did they reject, they persecuted him for his prophecies. They do get their just due in Jeremiah 52 (see notes).
Tough, tough conditions in Jerusalem (Lamentations 4)
1 How the gold has become dim!
How changed the fine gold!
The stones of the sanctuary are scattered
At the head of every street.
2 The precious sons of Zion,
Valuable as fine gold,
How they are regarded as clay pots,
The work of the hands of the potter!
3 Even the jackals present their breasts
To nurse their young;
But the daughter of my people is cruel,
Like ostriches in the wilderness.
4 The tongue of the infant clings
To the roof of its mouth for thirst;
The young children ask for bread,
But no one breaks it for them.
5 Those who ate delicacies
Are desolate in the streets;
Those who were brought up in scarlet
Embrace ash heaps.
6 The punishment of the iniquity of the daughter of my people
Is greater than the punishment of the sin of Sodom,
Which was overthrown in a moment,
With no hand to help her!
7 Her Nazirites were brighter than snow
And whiter than milk;
They were more ruddy in body than rubies,
Like sapphire in their appearance.
8 Now their appearance is blacker than soot;
They go unrecognized in the streets;
Their skin clings to their bones,
It has become as dry as wood.
9 Those slain by the sword are better off
Than those who die of hunger;
For these pine away,
Stricken for lack of the fruits of the field.
10 The hands of the compassionate women
Have cooked their own children;
They became food for them
In the destruction of the daughter of my people.
11 The LORD has fulfilled His fury,
He has poured out His fierce anger.
He kindled a fire in Zion,
And it has devoured its foundations.
12 The kings of the earth,
And all inhabitants of the world,
Would not have believed
That the adversary and the enemy
Could enter the gates of Jerusalem—
13 Because of the sins of her prophets
And the iniquities of her priests,
Who shed in her midst
The blood of the just.
14 They wandered blind in the streets;
They have defiled themselves with blood,
So that no one would touch their garments.
15 They cried out to them,
“Go away, unclean!
Go away, go away,
Do not touch us!”
When they fled and wandered,
Those among the nations said,
“They shall no longer dwell here.”
16 The face of the LORD scattered them;
He no longer regards them.
The people do not respect the priests
Nor show favor to the elders.
17 Still our eyes failed us,
Watching vainly for our help;
In our watching we watched
For a nation that could not save us.
18 They tracked our steps
So that we could not walk in our streets.
Our end was near;
Our days were over,
For our end had come.
19 Our pursuers were swifter
Than the eagles of the heavens.
They pursued us on the mountains
And lay in wait for us in the wilderness.
20 The breath of our nostrils, the anointed of the LORD,
Was caught in their pits,
Of whom we said, “Under his shadow
We shall live among the nations.”
21 Rejoice and be glad, O daughter of Edom,
You who dwell in the land of Uz!
The cup shall also pass over to you
And you shall become drunk and make yourself naked.
22 The punishment of your iniquity is accomplished,
O daughter of Zion;
He will no longer send you into captivity.
He will punish your iniquity,
O daughter of Edom;
He will uncover your sins!
This chapter goes back to the acrostic style of chapters 1 and 2. There are 22 verses; each verse is arranged alphabetically with all the verses beginning with a word having as its first letter the successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet - 22 letters. It's poetry, sad poetry. These verses show us how tough it was in Jerusalem at the time of the fall. Nebuchadnezzar's army simply surrounded the city of Jerusalem, and over a period of 18 months they ran out of food according to Jeremiah 52:4-6 (see notes). Add to that a drought, and we see unbearable conditions in Jerusalem. Notice verse 4, "The tongue of the infant clings To the roof of its mouth for thirst; The young children ask for bread, But no one breaks it for them." Imprisoned in Jerusalem without food - the babies were starving for nourishment. And then...the unthinkable in verse 10, "The hands of the compassionate women Have cooked their own children; They became food for them In the destruction of the daughter of my people." That's right - cannibalism right there in Jerusalem. As a matter of fact, everyone suffered the same discomfort prior to their fall due to this starvation tactic used by the Babylonians - even the leadership. Verses 7-8 indicate that the appearance of the leaders of Jerusalem (Hebrew: "naziyr" i.e. consecrated ones, translated in the NKJV as Nazirites) were visibly malnourished and poorly groomed.
And why did all of this befall Jerusalem? Because they rejected God, they were given into the hands of the Babylonians. That is made clear in verse 11, "The LORD has fulfilled His fury, He has poured out His fierce anger. He kindled a fire in Zion, And it has devoured its foundations." The Babylonians were only used as a tool of God to chastise the rebellion of Judah.
Conditions after the fall (Lamentations 5)
1 Remember, O LORD, what has come upon us;
Look, and behold our reproach!
2 Our inheritance has been turned over to aliens,
And our houses to foreigners.
3 We have become orphans and waifs,
Our mothers are like widows.
4 We pay for the water we drink,
And our wood comes at a price.
5 They pursue at our heels;
We labor and have no rest.
6 We have given our hand to the Egyptians
And the Assyrians, to be satisfied with bread.
7 Our fathers sinned and are no more,
But we bear their iniquities.
8 Servants rule over us;
There is none to deliver us from their hand.
9 We get our bread at the risk of our lives,
Because of the sword in the wilderness.
10 Our skin is hot as an oven,
Because of the fever of famine.
11 They ravished the women in Zion,
The maidens in the cities of Judah.
12 Princes were hung up by their hands,
And elders were not respected.
13 Young men ground at the millstones;
Boys staggered under loads of wood.
14 The elders have ceased gathering at the gate,
And the young men from their music.
15 The joy of our heart has ceased;
Our dance has turned into mourning.
16 The crown has fallen from our head.
Woe to us, for we have sinned!
17 Because of this our heart is faint;
Because of these things our eyes grow dim;
18 Because of Mount Zion which is desolate,
With foxes walking about on it.
19 You, O LORD, remain forever;
Your throne from generation to generation.
20 Why do You forget us forever,
And forsake us for so long a time?
21 Turn us back to You, O LORD, and we will be restored;
Renew our days as of old,
22 Unless You have utterly rejected us,
And are very angry with us!
No more acrostic style in this chapter - it's all free-form writing. Jeremiah talks about the dire conditions of Babylonian captivity in Jerusalem. Don't dwell here with visual images; it's a heartbreaking chapter (if chapter 4 wasn't already). It's simple, forthright reading, but it's a very sad chapter. That's why the book is called "Lamentations."
Jeremiah concludes in verses 19-22 by pleading before God, "We did get what we deserved, but won't you restore us to the way it was back in the good ol' days?" Hey! When leadership is bad, everyone suffers - women, children...everyone. Notice the last verse of Lamentations, verse 22, "Unless You have utterly rejected us, And are very angry with us!" There was no question in Jeremiah's mind: God had brought about Jerusalem's destruction because these Jews had rejected God.