Lamentations 2

Again, just a few comments on this chapter.

·        2:4: The term fury is special.  It is a term similar to the terms wrath or anger but which the prophets were led by the Spirit to use when they prophesied the Assyrian and Babylonian conquests.  The term is related to fire and is used to say that God’s anger and wrath have increased to levels that are hard to imagine.  Lam. 2:1-10 is a description of God’s fury in Jeremiah’s day.  God actually forgot His footstool (v1), the temple, the place of worship (Ps. 99:5).  The God of pity (compassion) showed no pity (v2).  He blazed (burned hot against Jacob (v3).  He swallowed up Israel (v5).  He did violence to His tabernacle (v6), spurned His altar and abandoned His sanctuary (v7).  These three were what He had commanded His people to build and use in worship and yet God destroyed them.  He purposed to destroy Zion (v8).  When He finished there was no more king, no more Law, and no more vision (v9). 

·        2:13: How shall I console you?  The answer to that question is in the great words of Isa. 40:1: Comfort ye My people Israel.  The only comfort will come from the same One who made Zion a desolation.  After Israel receives double for her sin God will faithfully restore her.  For Jeremiah that seems, and is, a long way off.

·        2:14: A read of Jeremiah will bear out this verse: it was the prophets who promised peace when, in fact, God’s message was not one of peace.  It was a hard message to take when Jeremiah preached that their only hope of living was to give themselves up to Nebuchadnezzar.  Hard, perhaps, but the truth!  The Jews already in Babylon were given a hard message, to settle down and seek the best for the communities where they lived.  It was a hard massage for them; they preferred to go home to Israel.  But it was the truth.  The gospel calls men to leave behind their false hopes, hopes that are like a spider’s web (Job 8:14).  And many people find it hard to leave behind their money or fame or self-esteem or whatever it is they trust.  Hard.  And yet the only hope for mankind to reconcile with his Creator is through Christ.  Hard but true.

·        2:15: The exalted city of God, Zion (Ps. 48:2) is brought low.  At the same time God exalted Jacob’s enemies AS HE PROMISED (Deut. 28,32).  Again, there is a message for today.  The gospel promises everlasting life for those who will glorify God by faith in Christ.  Rejecting the gospel also brings a promise with it and the Bible, God’s word to mankind, is very clear.  It is a promise of judgment.  The choice to experience God’s wrath is grievous; and it is for a sound reason.  As we noted: God does not chasten us willingly.  It is a holy and righteous response to rebellion.  Read Lam. 2:18-19 and consider how very real was the affliction of Jerusalem.  There is a ready solution, one perfectly suitable provision made for sin.  It is found in Christ!