We began by outlining his Lament over Jerusalem and continued with Judgment on Jerusalem and Hope through God’s Mercy, where Jeremiah pleas for mercy based on his own suffering. After the four elegies he described the suffering of God’s people.
Terrors of the Besieged City
Judah refused to listen to God’s warnings through Jeremiah and other prophets to repent.
Other nations battle over control of Jerusalem, which is eventually destroyed. Jeremiah then writes four acrostic elegies.
He gives a defeated people songs crying out to the LORD.
“Why,” they ask, has the Lord rejected his defenders of Jerusalem, his holy altar and chosen people?
Lord, remember what has happened to us.
Lamentations 5:1a CSB
We should have expected it! This evil of the nations has threatened us before, but now it is too late.
The Lord allowed it. Like our own national mournings, Jerusalem’s falls become reason for lament.
Lamentations 5:
Look, and see our disgrace!
Lamentations 5:1b
2 Our inheritance has been turned over to strangers,
our houses to foreigners.
Everything for which we have worked, all of our hopes for the future – gone.
3 We have become orphans, fatherless;
our mothers are widows.
4 We must pay for the water we drink;
our wood comes at a price.
5 We are closely pursued;
we are tired, and no one offers us rest.
Now I ask us: if the Lord has allowed this destruction of our hopes in past generations, why do we not remember the widows and fatherless forced from their homes in this day?
7 Our fathers sinned; they no longer exist, but we bear their punishment.
Woe to us
Jeremiah continues by telling of men risking their lives to obtain food and of women raped. He laments that princes are hung by former slaves who now rule and they see that young boys are made into slaves.
15 Joy has left our hearts;
our dancing has turned to mourning.
16 The crown has fallen from our head.
Woe to us, for we have sinned.
Lamentations 5:15b
Woe אוֹי is a crying out, a lament.
The prophet Isaiah had also spoken the Lord’s judgment:
The look on their faces testifies against them,
Isaiah 3:9
and like Sodom, they flaunt their sin;
they do not conceal it.
Woe to them,
for they have brought disaster on themselves.
The Lord had warned these descendants of Jacob, transgressors of the Law of Moses
Now His blessings are replaced by woe. Yet Jeremiah closes his lament with a prayer for restoration, a ray of hope for the remnant of Jacob.
You, Lord, are enthroned forever
21 Lord, bring us back to yourself…
Shouldn’t this be the plea of each of us?
5:21 הֲשִׁיבֵנוּ יְהוָה אֵלֶיךָ ונשֶׂוב
shuwb Yĕhovah shuwb
Restore us to yourself, O LORD, that we may be restored! – NASB
… so we may return; renew our days as in former times… – 5:21b CSB
Ah, here is the hope of Jeremiah for the glory and blessings of the past.
unless You have rejected us
Let us go back to the Jerusalem of old. Judah’s king has fallen and Jerusalem reduced to ruble. All of this defeated generation must pray for favor from a foreign land. Yet the prophet closes his lament with humble dependence upon the Lord God. Jeremiah accepts the judgment of God on this generation.
Lord, bring us back to yourself…
22 unless you have completely rejected us
Lamentations 5:22 CSB
and are intensely angry with us.
Is God your lord or does your sin provoke His intense anger?
Why do you cry out to God when you will not bow down to His will?
Redemption for our sin
“I will pour out my wrath on sin,” says the Lord. Yet what of our sin which provokes the wrath of God?
- Jerusalem sinned greatly, Therefore she has become an unclean thing. Lamentations 1:5
- Our fathers sinned, and are no more; It is we who have borne their iniquities. Lamentations 5:7
- The crown has fallen from our head; Woe to us, for we have sinned! Lamentations 5:16
- … The sin of Judah is inscribed with an iron stylus. With a diamond point it is engraved on the tablet of their hearts and on the horns of their altars… Jeremiah 17:1
Because you people sinned against the LORD and did not listen to His voice, therefore this thing has happened to you.
Jeremiah 40:3b NASB
the Messiah Redeemer
Just prior to a later destruction of Jerusalem, the only Son of God was hung on a Cross for our sins. There He had cried out:
“ELI, ELI, LAMA SABACHTHANI?” that is:
My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?
Matthew 27:46
Of all laments for sin, this one only redeems.
In his earlier prophecies, Jeremiah had predicted Jesus the Messiah and Redeemer of Israel to come in a later day.
Jeremiah 31:
Proclaim, praise, and say,
“Lord, save your people,
the remnant of Israel!”
Lament Turned to Joy
15 This is what the Lord says:
A voice was heard in Ramah,
a lament with bitter weeping—
Rachel weeping for her children,
refusing to be comforted for her children
because they are no more.
16 This is what the Lord says:
Keep your voice from weeping
and your eyes from tears,
for the reward for your work will come—
Do you recall fulfillment of this scripture at the birth of Jesus when King Herod of Judah ordered the slaughter of the innocents in Bethlehem?
28 Just as I watched over them to uproot and to tear them down, to demolish and to destroy, and to cause disaster, so will I watch over them to build and to plant them”—this is the Lord’s declaration.
The New Covenant
31 “Look, the days are coming”—this is the Lord’s declaration—“when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.
Jeremiah 31:31 CSB
“I will put my teaching within them and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.
This is the work of the Holy Spirit, given after Jesus’ Sacrifice and resurrection.
Though Jeremiah laments the fall of God’s chosen because of their sin, the prophet reassures the faithful remnant that the Lord is faithful.
51:5 כִּ֠י לֹֽא־אַלְמָ֨ן יִשְׂרָאֵ֤ל וִֽיהוּדָה֙ מֵֽאֱלֹהָ֔יו מֵֽיְהוָ֖ה צְבָאֹ֑ות כִּ֤י אַרְצָם֙ מָלְאָ֣ה אָשָׁ֔ם מִקְּדֹ֖ושׁ יִשְׂרָאֵֽל׃
For neither Israel nor Judah has been forsaken
By his God, the LORD of hosts,
Although their land is full of guilt
Be ore the Holy One of Israel.
Jesus was innocent of sin, even unto death on a Cross for the sins of the world. The Messiah of God had been betrayed by a zealous Disciple named Judas, who would repent of his sin too late.
Jeremiah had also spoken of this time:
Then what was spoken through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled: They took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him whose price was set by the Israelites, and they gave them for the potter’s field, as the Lord directed me.
Matthew 27:9-10
The LORD has not rejected us, but sent us a pure and perfected Redeemer in Christ Jesus. Do not betray the Lord’s grace given for you on a Cross for your sin. Worship the Lord your God — Father, Son and Holy Spirit. For the Prophets have lamented for our sins and predicted our Savior.
Amen.
