Lamentations 1

We would like to make several brief notes from this chapter.  Note that all five chapters of Lamentations are acrostics, related to the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet.  Thus the number of verses in each is divisible by twenty-two.

·        1:1: The pictures in Scripture are always full of insight.  Such is the case here.  It is common, regardless of whether you think it proper or not, that when a woman is separated from her husband (by death or divorce) that she has an identity crisis, so to speak.  My mother experienced this.  She was married to a pastor who was loved dearly by his congregation.  When he died she was suddenly no longer in the inner circle of her church as she had been through her husband.  With some people (not all) she lost her status.  When the next pastor arrived with his wife and family mom felt more comfortable to keep her distance.  For Jeremiah, the great city of Jerusalem, being burned by the Babylonians, quickly had become nothing in her own eyes.  That is why The roads to Zion mourn because no one comes to the set feasts (1:4)..  That which was something had become nothing.

·        1:7: In the end, no one came to help Jerusalem.  Even worse, those who should have been the closest instead ridiculed Jerusalem.  This was true of Ammon and Moab and especially Edom (Lam. 4:21-22).  Jerusalem was scorned ( v11) and the neighbors were glad (v21).

·        1:12-16: My thought is: “this sounds like Christ.”  The people who passed by the cross saw One afflicted by the LORD in the day of His fierce anger.  Everything in this passage fits, even to v16: the comforter, who should restore my life, is far from me.  Why is there such a connection?  We know that the interpretation of the passage relates to Zion after the destruction by the Babylonians?  It is not because it is some sort of prophecy or dual-fulfilment.  It is because the Messiah has truly suffered vicariously, in the place of the people of Israel.  His identification with them in their sin, being numbered with the transgressors, is full, even to the extent that He suffers as they suffer.  This is more evidence that Jesus of Nazareth was, in fact, Israel’s Messiah!

·        1:17-18: The LORD commanded … that those around (Jacob) become his adversaries.  Why did God do that?  Was it simply because He is sovereign and can do whatever He wants?  No!  If that were the reason then God would be unrighteous.  He did it because Zion rebelled and for that reason He is righteous.  God does not afflict willingly (from the heart, Lam. 3:33).  Keep that in mind when you are thinking about the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart or the fact that Jesus died according to the determined will of God.

·        1:21: The day You have announced is the day of the Lord when God will judge the nations after He has cleansed His own people.  For both reasons it is a day a righteous Jew hopes and prays for.