Solomon’s Jerusalem – the end of an era
Until the death of Solomon in 931 B.C., a glorious city of Jerusalem overlooked a great empire blessed by the LORD God, but then the politics of Israel divided the great land.
In just a few generations Israel (Samaria) succumbed in 722 B.C. and Judah when Jerusalem was sieged and the Temple burned in ~586 B.C.
Prophesy: Affliction Now!
אֵיכָה יָשְׁבָה בָדָד הָעִיר רַבָּתִי עָם הָיְתָה כְּאַלְמָנָה רַּבָּתִי בַגּוֹיִם שָׂרָתִי בַּמְּדִינוֹת הָיְתָה לָמַֽס׃ ס
Lamentations of the Prophet Jeremiah Eicha 1:1 WLC
Our Loud Cries, “HOW?”
Jerusalem falls [~586 B.C.]. Three years later the Jews and Jeremiah are forced to depart to Egypt. For forty years from (ca. 645–605 B.C.) Jeremiah had preached to Judah of the LORD’s judgment against it.
The Septuagint [Greek O.T.] introduces the crying out loud of Lamentations:
“And it came to pass, after Israel had been carried away captive…Jeremiah sat weeping [cf. 3:48, 49, etc.]…lamented…and said…”
Introduction to Eicha (Lamentations) 1 :: Septuagint (LXX)
How lonely sits the city
Lamentations 1:1 NASB
That was full of people!
She has become like a widow
Who was once great among the nations!
She who was a princess among the provinces
Has become a forced laborer!
Lamentations for the lonely cities
You may have felt that recently for a virtually empty NYC New Year’s Eve broadcast. Or perhaps the closed shops of your town caused anxiety that maybe you should where a mask in public.
What we knew as home and comfort, security and blessing — all those things have changed until God knows when.
The affliction of our hearts in this year of our Lord 2021 still struggles with COVID and countless crowds of displaced people have NO place to work. Some will be evicted from their meager subsistence in cold rooms rented from the rich princes of our darkness.
All the world suffers a great loss of normalcy as we cry out, “HOW?”
Will we find hope in our despair?
For in A.D. 2021, we feel just as lonely and afflicted as those forced from Jerusalem in 586 B.C. and also in A.D. 70, Jews and Christians into a crumbling Roman Empire.
Our journey into this unknown world of COVID doesn’t look so hopeful just now.
excerpts from Lamentations
She weeps bitterly in the night,
And her tears are on her cheeks;
She has no one to comfort her..
3 Judah has gone into exile out of affliction..
All her gates are deserted..
Her little ones have gone away
As captives led by the enemy.
6 All of her splendor
Is gone from the daughter of Zion;
Her leaders have become like deer
That have found no pasture,
And they have fled without strength
From the pursuer.
Social Distancing
Fleeing from the world’s uncleanness
It was never just the Jews fleeing Jerusalem or multi-ethnic victims of a holocaust perpetrated by a 20th century thousand-year empire who suffered affliction.
Solomon suggested that there is nothing new under the sun.
Sieges of our empty cities of our empires in the time of Assyria or Rome, the U.S. or China, and even current afflictions of our political princes and their followers or victims do not surprise Almighty God.
In every era some in all nations some will succumb to war and hunger. Souls suffering by circumstance must flee from the wrath that is to come.
A pandemic of sin forces social distancing from the love of the LORD and each other. Throughout the self-idolatrous nations of their ‘mother earth,’ a covert COVID infested world will do what is right in their own eyes.
Wail out from the depths of your soul
The funeral dirge of your affliction
For it is not only for the sins of Jerusalem
But for the afflictions of the world
Fleeing from the Lord God.
Roger@ talkofJesus.com Jan. A.D. 2021
to be continued... NEXT: in COVID - the Affliction of Social Distancing - part 2 we will define affliction & look to Scripture for our cure.
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