We stood and watched the house burn. I was a pastor in South Georgia, a little town called Dawson. Just a couple of houses down from the parsonage where my daughter, wife, and I lived, a house was on fire. I cannot remember if it was the firetrucks or a concerned church member who alerted us to what was happening, but we quickly found ourselves standing across the street with some members of the church and the young lady who had grown up in that house.
And we watched the house burn.
The girl was in tears. We tried to comfort her and encourage her as best we could. I said something like, “I am so sorry. I truly am. But I thank God that nobody was in the house, that nobody was hurt.”
An elderly lady in our church was standing there. She decided that I needed help in understanding what was happening. “It is not losing the house that is hurting her. It is losing all the memories that happened in the house.”
That is always how it goes with such tragedies, is it not? It is not the home, it is the memory of all that happened in that home, of lives lived in that home.
In other words, there are emotional and mental realities that transcend wood and paint and nails and shingles. It is about more than these things.
In 586 BC, Jerusalem, the capital of Judah, and the temple was destroyed. The Jews were taken into captivity in Babylon. The loss of their home was devastating. And, here too, it was not merely the physical devastation, though that was hard enough. It was more than that. But, in fact, it was more than even memories and emotions that so inflicted the Jews. That temple represented the presence of God with His people.
In other words, for God’s people, the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple was, above all else, a spiritual upheaval, a spiritual devastation, with deep theological and psychological ramifications. The loss of that city and the loss of the temple said something about their relationship with God and about what was happening in their relationship with Him.
Lamentations reflects the depths of the Jews’ woe concerning the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple and the exile of the people of God to Babylon. The first three verses of the book carefully lay out the fundamental components of the calamity.
The Calamity of Jerusalem: Desolation
In the first verse, the desolation of Jerusalem is contrasted with its previous glory.
1 How lonely sits the city that was full of people! How like a widow has she become, she who was great among the nations! She who was a princess among the provinces has become a slave.
Note the contrast:
- She was full and now she is empty.
- She had a spouse (implied) and now she is a widow.
- She was great and now she is fallen.
- She was a princess and now she is a slave.
This is the desolation of Jerusalem. She has fallen, and great was her fall!
A 2019 article reports:
Researchers digging at UNC Charlotte’s ongoing archaeological excavation on Mount Zion in Jerusalem have announced a second significant discovery from the 2019 season–clear evidence of the Babylonian conquest of the city from 587/586 BCE.
The discovery is of a deposit including layers of ash, arrowheads dating from the period, as well as Iron Age potsherds, lamps and a significant piece of period jewelry–a gold and silver tassel or earring. There are also signs of a significant Iron Age structure in the associated area, but the building, beneath layers from later periods, has yet to be excavated…
By all accounts the Babylonian conquest of the city by the Neo-Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar was ferocious and resulted in a great loss of life, with the razing of the city and the burning of houses, and the plundering and dismantling of King Solomon’s Temple to God. The local ruler of the Kingdom of Judah, King Zedekiah, made an attempt to flee the city with his retinue but was eventually caught and taken captive to Babylon…
The Babylonian siege of Jerusalem lasted for quite a while even though many of the inhabitants wanted to give up.
“King Zedekiah simply was not willing to pay tribute to Nebuchadnezzar and the direct result of this was the destruction of the city and the Temple,” said Gibson…[1]
The fall of Jerusalem was devastating and total. Even the structure of Lamentations highlights the thoroughness of the fall.
Robert Alter makes the interesting point that “Lamentations is unique among books of the Bible in that four of the five chapters are composed as alphabetic acrostics…” Those would be chapters 1, 2, 4, and 5, each of which have 22 letters, the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet. Chapter three is “a triple acrostic, showing three lines that begin with each of the letters in the Hebrew alphabet in their conventional sequence.” As to why the book is structed around the Hebrew alphabet, in order, from beginning to end, Alter writes: “Could it be that the progress from aleph to taw was felt to imply a comprehensive listing of all the disasters that had befallen the people?”[2] In other words, the very structure of the book speaks of the totality of the calamity that befell the people of God.
The first mark of the fall of Jerusalem that Lamentations highlights is devastation.
The Calamity of Jerusalem: Guilt
Furthermore, the guilt of Jerusalem is highlighted as well.
2 She weeps bitterly in the night, with tears 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.
The idea is that the kingdom of Judah was looking to other nations for her security and safety. Robert Laurin sees these “lovers” and “friends” as referring “to those surrounding nations—Edom, Moab, Ammon, Tyre, and Sidon—which had initially cooperated with Judah in her resistance against the Babylonian armies…but who had abandoned her in her time of need…”[3]
The language of “friends” is fairly innocuous, but the language of “lovers” suggests that Judah’s looking toward these earthly powers was an act of spiritual adultery and unfaithfulness. They were her lovers.
Paul Ferris observes:
The image of an unfaithful bride is used by preexilic prophets in reference to the tendency of the covenant community to look to values, systems, and structures, including international alliances, rather than to Yahweh for security…Those who had left Judah and continued their syncretism in the security of Egypt concluded that the problems experienced in Judah were the direct result of ceasing to worship Astarte, the “Queen of Heaven,” goddess of fertility and sexuality…[4]
Amazingly, some attributed the calamity of Jerusalem to the Jews’ abandonment of the worship of a false god, Astarte. In reality, the calamity was attributable to their abandonment of the one true God!
In highlighting Judah’s unfaithfulness and linking it to her desolation, the writer (traditionally thought to be Jeremiah) was bringing another powerful element into play: guilt.
Judah was guilty of sin and her guilt was tied to her desolation.
It would be most helpful if we could come to see sin as unfaithfulness, as adultery, as what the Bible calls “whoring.” Consider Jeremiah’s cry against Jerusalem from Jeremiah 13.
27 I have seen your abominations, your adulteries and neighings, your lewd whorings, on the hills in the field. Woe to you, O Jerusalem! How long will it be before you are made clean?
This image and language (and terms and images connected to it) is used many, many times in scripture. It would also be helpful at this point to remember that the church is called “the bride of Christ” (Revelation 19:7). Therefore, sin against Christ is adultery, is unfaithfulness.
We tend to find ways of downplaying the heinousness of sin and the base nature of our unfaithfulness to Christ. But if the objects of our affection that pull us away from Christ—be they material or spiritual or attitudinal—were called our “lovers,” it might just jolt us into a deeper realization of what is at stake when we turn from the Lord.
The people of God are to be faithful to the Lord. Sin is adultery, always.
The Calamity of Jerusalem: Exile
And there is yet another concept that frames the book of Lamentations: exile. Judah was desolate because of her adulterous guilt and Judah was desolate because her people were carried off into exile.
3 Judah has gone into exile because of affliction and hard servitude; she dwells now among the nations, but finds no resting place; her pursuers have all overtaken her in the midst of her distress.
Sin destroys. Sin scatters. Sin takes us far from home
The presence of the temple in Jerusalem meant primarily the nearness of God. God was among His people. They were near to Him and He was near to him.
Exile speaks of farness, of distance, of separation.
The people of Judah would be scattered and, specifically, would be carried away into Babylon.
The scriptures will pick up this spatial dimension and apply it to sin and our separation from God when it speaks of humanity as “far off” from God.
and in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side. (Luke 16:23)
But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ (Luke 18:13)
But the heart yearns for God’s nearness, as the psalmist writes in Psalm 22.
19 But you, O Lord, do not be far off! O you my help, come quickly to my aid!
We are born, then, in exile, born far from God. And, whether we know to call what we yearn for “God” or not, we yearn for God!
Sin desolates. Sin scatters. Sin brings guilt. Sin is adultery. Sin takes us far from God.
But we dare not end this beginning consideration of Lamentations with lament! We have seen God come near in Jesus. We have seen and we know that we need not live in exile.
Beautifully, powerfully, in Ephesians 2, Paul writes:
13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
In Jesus, the exile is over!
In Jesus, we who were scattered because of our guilt and shame have been brought near, indeed, have been brought home. It is Jesus who makes this possible. It is Jesus who makes the way. It is Jesus who is the way.
We were far off.
We were exiles.
Now we have a family.
Now we call God Father.
“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 8:1)
[1] https://inside.charlotte.edu/news-features/2019-08-12/evidence-587586-bce-babylonian-conquest-jerusalem-found-mount-zion/
[2] Alter, Robert. The Hebrew Bible. Volume 3. (New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 2019), p.643.
[3] Lauren, Robert B. “Lamentations.” The Broadman Bible Commentary. Gen. Ed. Clifton J. Allen. Volume 6. (Nashville, TN: Broadman Press, 1971), p.210.
[4] Ferris, Paul W., Jr. “Lamentations.” Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary. Gen. Ed. John H. Walton. Volume 4. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2009), p.380.