Lamentations 1

 ⁴ The roads to Zion mourn, for none come to the festival; all her gates are desolate; her priests groan; her virgins have been afflicted, and she herself suffers bitterly. ⁵ Her foes have become the head; her enemies prosper, because the Lord has afflicted her for the multitude of her transgressions; her children have gone away, captives before the foe. ⁶ From the daughter of Zion all her majesty has departed. Her princes have become like deer that find no pasture; they fled without strength before the pursuer. ⁷ Jerusalem remembers in the days of her affliction and wandering all the precious things that were hers from days of old. When her people fell into the hand of the foe, and there was none to help her, her foes gloated over her; they mocked at her downfall. ⁸ Jerusalem sinned grievously; therefore she became filthy; all who honored her despise her, for they have seen her nakedness; she herself groans and turns her face away. ⁹ Her uncleanness was in her skirts; she took no thought of her future; therefore her fall is terrible; she has no comforter. “O Lord, behold my affliction, for the enemy has triumphed!” ¹⁰ The enemy has stretched out his hands over all her precious things; for she has seen the nations enter her sanctuary, those whom you forbade to enter your congregation. ¹¹ All her people groan as they search for bread; they trade their treasures for food to revive their strength. “Look, O Lord, and see, for I am despised.”

On May 11, 1895, Stephen Crane published his book of poems, The Black Riders and Other Lines. The first poem reads:

Black riders came from the sea.

There was clang and clang of spear and shield,

And clash and clash of hoof and heel,

Wild shouts and the wave of hair

In the rush upon the wind:

Thus the ride of Sin.[1]

Crane was an atheist, but he certainly got the nature of sin right here! By depicting sin as “black riders”—heavily armed, loud, chaotic, emerging from the sea—Crane rightly pointed to the ruthless and destructive nature of sin.

Sin destroys.

Sin ravages.

Sin wreaks havoc.

This is certainly the picture of Judah’s sins that emerges from Lamentations 1.

Judah’s sins were great and many.

Interspersed throughout chapter one’s devastating depiction of Judah’s destruction are glimpses of the sin that invited such judgment and such pain. Consider verse 4–6.

⁴ The roads to Zion mourn, for none come to the festival; all her gates are desolate; her priests groan; her virgins have been afflicted, and she herself suffers bitterly. ⁵ Her foes have become the head; her enemies prosper, because the Lord has afflicted her for the multitude of her transgressions; her children have gone away, captives before the foe. ⁶ From the daughter of Zion all her majesty has departed. Her princes have become like deer that find no pasture; they fled without strength before the pursuer.

Verses 4 and 6, and, indeed, most of verse 5, highlight Judah’s desolation, the result of her sins. Judah:

• mourns,
• no longer celebrates,
• has priests who groan,
• has virgins who have been “afflicted,”
• suffers bitterly,
• is taken over by her foes,
• sees her enemies prosper,
• loses her children to the enemy,
• loses her majesty,
• loses her princes.

And right in the middle, there in the middle of verse 5, we read: “because the Lord has afflicted her for the multitude of her transgressions.”

They are experiencing divine judgment, and that judgment comes upon them because of “the multitude of her transgressions.” Verse 5 does not define the nature of her sin, but it does hint at the magnitude of it: “the multitude of her transgressions.”

In Isaiah 59, the people of God speak vividly of the multitude of their sins and of its dehumanizing effects.

¹¹ We all growl like bears; we moan and moan like doves; we hope for justice, but there is none; for salvation, but it is far from us. ¹² For our transgressions are multiplied before you, and our sins testify against us; for our transgressions are with us, and we know our iniquities: ¹³ transgressing, and denying the Lord, and turning back from following our God, speaking oppression and revolt, conceiving and uttering from the heart lying words.

What a bleak, bleak picture! The thoroughness of sin is also depicted in Genesis 6, in these words that precede the great flood.

⁵ The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

These words offer us no hiding place: “wickedness…was great,” “every intention…only evil continually.”

Perhaps we are tempted to say, “Well, we do not growl like bears. Surely, not every intention of the thoughts of our hearts are only evil! We sin, sure, and we fail, on occasion, but surely our transgressions are not multiplied before Goe!” Yet, James, in James 2, offers a truly sobering thought:

¹⁰ For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it.

The implication of this is inescapable: The sin of us all is multiplied before God. This must be understood if the beauty of grace is to be understood. We do not need “a little bit” of forgiveness. We need an ocean of grace! And, in Jesus, this is what we receive!

Judah had become impure.

We receive another picture of Judah’s sin in verses 7–9.

⁷ Jerusalem remembers in the days of her affliction and wandering all the precious things that were hers from days of old. When her people fell into the hand of the foe, and there was none to help her, her foes gloated over her; they mocked at her downfall. ⁸ Jerusalem sinned grievously; therefore she became filthy; all who honored her despise her, for they have seen her nakedness; she herself groans and turns her face away. ^9a Her uncleanness was in her skirts…

In verses 8 and 9, we learn of Jerusalem’s sins:

• that they were grievous,
• that they rendered her “filthy,”
• that they brought the reproach of those who saw her,
• that they were revealed and exposed,
• that they brought shame upon her,
• that they rendered her “unclean” and impure.

That Jerusalem’s “uncleanness was in her skirts” has been the cause of no small degree of speculation. This could a picture of the personified (as a wicked woman) city’s menstruation (thereby rendering her unclean), or of her sexual promiscuity, or, some suggest, of her enemies sexually assaulting her. It is likely a reference to the first or second of these. She became “filthy” because she “sinned grievously.” Verse 2 references Judah’s “lovers,” and employs the imagery of adultery. Verses 8 and 9 should therefore likely be read as a continuation of that thought.

S.J. Parrott observes:

Jerusalem’s uncleanness in her skirts refers to some sort of impurity. It is not evident that this is menstruation blood. It could be the impurity of sexual impropriety. Either way, the boundary of the body is contaminated.[2]

Indeed, Jerusalem’s sin has rendered her impure, contaminated. This is what sin does.

And this sin is seen, her “nakedness” is seen, uncovered. Emanuel Swedenborg wrote that “Jerusalem denotes the church, in this case the church which is in falses derived from evil” and that “[t]o uncover the skirts denotes to take away externals that the interiors may appear; the nakedness which shall be shown to the nations, and the ignominy which shall be shown to the kingdoms, are infernal loves, which are the loves of self and of the world, which defile the interiors.”[3]

In Lamentations, this image is utilized in the context of Babylon’s destruction of Jerusalem and of the Babylonian exile. Interestingly, in Isaiah 47, the same image of uncovering and exposing will be used of Babylon herself, when God moves to avenge His people against her.

¹ Come down and sit in the dust, O virgin daughter of Babylon; sit on the ground without a throne, O daughter of the Chaldeans! For you shall no more be called tender and delicate. ² Take the millstones and grind flour, put off your veil, strip off your robe, uncover your legs, pass through the rivers. ³ Your nakedness shall be uncovered, and your disgrace shall be seen. I will take vengeance, and I will spare no one. ⁴ Our Redeemer—the Lord of hosts is his name—is the Holy One of Israel.

Sin is forever working toward visibility, even if conceived and nurtured in the dark. It will become known. It will be seen: always by God but oftentimes by others as well.

Judah was focused on present pleasure and was thereby blinded to future judgment.

Verse 9 offers another fascinating image.

⁹ Her uncleanness was in her skirts; she took no thought of her future; therefore her fall is terrible; she has no comforter. “O Lord, behold my affliction, for the enemy has triumphed!” ¹⁰ The enemy has stretched out his hands over all her precious things; for she has seen the nations enter her sanctuary, those whom you forbade to enter your congregation. ¹¹ All her people groan as they search for bread; they trade their treasures for food to revive their strength. “Look, O Lord, and see, for I am despised.”

Judah “took not thought of her future; therefore her fall is terrible…”

Sin is focused inordinately on the present. It does not think of the future. If we are not careful, we can become so focused on our sin that time itself seems to shrink.

Judah “took no thought of her future.” The only thing that led her to do so was her collapse and subjugation to her enemies. Indeed, consequences cause us to think of the future: “How long with this last? When will this end?” But, in our sin, we do not think of such things. We are fixated on the present and on our gratification in it.

Anna Lemke has pointed to some fascinating research concerning how addictive and impulsive behaviors erode our ability to wait for gratification and lead us to fixate on the future.

High-dopamine goods mess with our ability to delay gratification, a phenomenon called delay discounting…

Addictions researcher Warren K. Bickel and his colleagues asked people addicted to opioids and healthy controls to complete a story that started with the line: “After awakening, Bill began to think about his future. In general, he expected to . . .”

Opioid-addicted study participants referred to a future that was on average nine days long. Healthy controls referred to a future that was on average 4.7 years long. This striking difference illustrates how “temporal horizons” shrink when we’re under the sway of an addictive drug.

Conversely, when I ask my patients what was the deciding moment for them to try to get into recovery, they’ll say something that expresses a long view of time. As one patient told me who’d been snorting heroin for the past year, “I suddenly realized I’d been using heroin for a year, and I thought to myself, if I don’t stop now, I may be doing this for the rest of my life.”…

In today’s dopamine-rich ecosystem, we’ve all become primed for immediate gratification. We want to buy something, and the next day it shows up on our doorstep. We want to know something, and the next second the answer appears on our screen. Are we losing the knack of puzzling things out, or being frustrated while we search for the answer, or having to wait for the things we want?[4]

Beware the deluding power of sin!

In Jeremiah 29, the Lord tells His people that He has a great future for them and great plans for them:

¹¹ For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. ¹² Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. ¹³ You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. ¹⁴ I will be found by you, declares the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, declares the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.

Sin robs us of our future, of relationship, or hope, of peace.

God would have His children walk with Him! And Jesus makes this possible. Jesus is the way to forgiveness, and wholeness, and joy!

 

[1] Stephen Crane.  Stories and Collected Poems. (New York: Quality Paperback Book Club, 1997), p.3.

[2] Parrott, S.J. The Conceptualization of Dress in Prophetic Metaphors. (Leiden: Brill, 2023), p.53.

[3] Swedenborg, Emanuel. Arcana Coelestia. Volume IX. (New York, NY: American Swedenborg Printing and Publishing Society, 1857), p.595.

[4] Lembke, Anna. Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence. (pp. 102-104). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.