Lamentations 2:1

WHAT THE LORD HAD DONE TO ZION[1]

"This chapter is all taken up with God. In Lamentations 2:1-12, all the woes are bemoaned as being God's work, and His alone; and Lamentations 2:13-17 give a short resume of this; Lamentations 2:18f urges the city to cry to God for help; and, in Lamentations 2:20-22, she does so."[2] "The main point of this chapter is that it was God Himself who destroyed the people and their city; and the writer seldom strays very far from that main point."[3]

Significantly, the details of this chapter could hardly have been provided by any other than an eyewitness of the destruction, which points squarely to Jeremiah as the author, as traditionally accepted. Green also noticed this: "The tone of it places this chapter very near the year 587 B.C. when the tragedy occurred. In fact, it appears to be an eyewitness account of that tragedy."[4] The chapter has been subdivided variously by different scholars; but we shall follow this outline: (1) a graphic picture of the divine visitation (Lamentations 2:1-10); (2) details regarding the distress and despair of the people (Lamentations 2:11-17); and (3) the prayer of the people to God for help (Lamentations 2:18-22). "This prayer is different from the one in the previous chapter, "Because the element of imprecation is missing from it."[5]

Lamentations 2:1-10

GRAPHIC PICTURE OF THE DIVINE VISITATION UPON JUDAH

"Now hath the Lord covered the daughter of Zion

with a cloud in his anger!

He hath cast down from heaven unto the earth the beauty of Israel,

And hath not remembered his footstool in the day of his anger.

The Lord hath swallowed up all the habitations of Jacob,

and hath not pitied:

He hath thrown down in his wrath

the strongholds of the daughter of Judah;

He hath brought them down to the ground;

he hath profaned the kingdom and the princes thereof.

He hath cut off in fierce anger all the horn of Israel;

He hath drawn back his right hand from before the enemy:

And he hath burned up Jacob like a flaming fire,

which devoureth round about.

He hath bent his bow like an enemy,

he hath stood with his right hand as an adversary,

and hath slain all that were pleasant to the eye:

In the tent of the daughter of Zion

he hath poured out his wrath like fire.

The Lord is become as an enemy, he hath swallowed up Israel;

He hath swallowed up all her palaces,

he hath destroyed all his strongholds;

And he hath multiplied in the daughter of Judah

mourning and lamentation.

And he hath violently taken away his tabernacle,

as if it were of a garden;

he hath destroyed his place of assembly:

Jehovah hath caused solemn assembly and sabbath

to be forgotten in Zion,

And hath despised in the indignation of his anger

the king and the priest.

The Lord hath cast off his altar,

he hath abhorred his sanctuary;

He hath given up into the hand of the enemy

the walls of her palaces:

They have made a noise in the house of Jehovah,

as in the day of a solemn assembly.

Jehovah hath purposed to destroy

the wall of the daughter of Zion;

He hath stretched out the line,

he hath not withdrawn his hand from destroying:

And he hath made the rampart and the wall to lament;

they languish together.

Her gates are sunk into the ground;

he hath destroyed and broken her bars:

Her king and her princes are among the nations

where the law is not;

Yea, her prophets find no vision from Jehovah.

The elders of the daughter of Zion sit upon the ground;

they keep silence;

They cast up dust upon their heads;

they have girded themselves with sackcloth:

The virgins of Jerusalem hang down their heads to the ground."

The word "anger" occurs three times in this paragraph and the word "wrath" is found twice. Of all the attributes of God which appear in his word, none is more generally neglected and denied than this very one, namely, that the fierce anger of God will ultimately rage against human wickedness, as exhibited in these verses.

The God of American Pulpits today is generally extolled as a namby-pamby, an old fuddy duddy, somewhat like an over-indulgent old grandfather, too lazy, indifferent or unconcerned to do anything whatever, no matter what crimes of blood and lust roar like a tornado under his very nose. The Bible does not support such an image of God!

Yes, He is a God who loves mankind, who gave His Son upon the Cross for human redemption. He is a God of mercy, forgiveness, grace and forbearance, but when any man or any nation has fully demonstrated final rejection of God's love and their rebellion against His eternal law, that wonderful, loving, forgiving God will at last appear in His character as the enemy of that man or that nation.

The background of all these terrible things that happened to Jacob is the almost unbelievable wickedness of the Chosen People. A major part of the Old Testament is little more than a brief summary of that wickedness:

"The Lord hath covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in his anger" (Lamentations 2:1). During the exodus, God had shielded the Chosen People with a cloud, the dark side of which confronted Egypt; but now it is the remnant of Israel that faces the ugly side of the cloud! Throughout this chapter there appears the screaming fact that it is God Himself who has brought all of the evil upon His sinful people. "That was the wormwood and the gall in their terrible affliction."[6]

"Cast down from heaven unto the earth" (Lamentations 2:2). What a change there was from the glory of Solomon to the very bottom of the social ladder. Israel at this point had become the slaves of the Gentiles.

"He hath thrown down ... the strongholds ... of Judah" (Lamentations 2:3). But was it not Babylon that did that? No! It was God who did it; Babylon was merely God's instrument.

"He hath cut off all the horn of Israel" (Lamentations 2:3). The horn was a well-known symbol of power. Cheyne noted that a better rendition would be "every horn."[7] "It referred to all the strongholds, especially the fortresses."[8] We especially liked Hiller's blunt rendition, "God lopped off the horns of Israel."[9] Or, as we might paraphrase it: "God dehorned His sinful people."

"He hath burned up Jacob like a flaming fire" (Lamentations 2:3). The conception that God's anger is like a terrible fire is not merely an Old Testament metaphor. "To the wicked God, at any time, may become a consuming fire (Hebrews 12:29; Deuteronomy 4:24)."[10]

"God, in these verses, is represented as a furious warrior, who with irresistible power destroyed everything that Judah had trusted in. They had stopped trusting in God, and instead were relying on might (Lamentations 2:2), palaces (Lamentations 2:5), strongholds (Lamentations 2:5), the physical Temple (Lamentations 2:6)."[11] All these were destroyed.

"He hath violently taken away his tabernacle, as if it were of a garden" (Lamentations 2:6). Solomon's temple was not God's tabernacle to begin with, but Solomon's corrupted replacement of it. Nevertheless the Jews had trusted in it as their security and salvation. The wonder expressed here is that God removed it and destroyed it so easily, "as if of a garden." "God removed his Temple as easily as a farmer removes a vintage booth (a tiny arbor), which had served its purpose, from a garden."[12] In summer time, one may often see such little shelters near orchards and gardens, where the sellers of fruits, etc, could be sheltered from the sun.

This terrible destruction of the Temple sends the Bible student back to the very origin of it in the mind of David; and the undeniable fact that David and his son Solomon were wrong in the building of it. (See 2 Samuel 7).

"They have made a noise in the house of Jehovah, as in the day of a solemn assembly" (Lamentations 2:7). This `noise,' however was different. It was the boisterous, profane and obscene cries of the Chaldean soldiers screaming and shouting their delight as they looted and destroyed the marvelous treasures of the Temple. It was a horrible contrast with the sweet songs of the Temple virgins and the solemn liturgies of the priesthood.

"The triumphant shouts of the enemy bore some resemblance to the sounds on a solemn feast day, but O how sad a contrast it was"![13]

"God purposed to destroy the wall of the daughter of Zion" (Lamentations 2:8). "Nebuchadnezzar and his Babylonian armies are here ignored! The capture of Jerusalem, far from being God's defeat, was a victory for his righteousness. See Isaiah 42:24ff. God's judicial displeasure against iniquity is a grim reality indeed for those who render themselves liable to receive it."[14]

"Her king and her princes are among the nations where the law is not" (Lamentations 2:9). The ridiculous rendition of the Revised Standard Version (RSV) reads, "The law is no more," being not only a false translation but an outright falsehood also. The Law of Moses never ceased, until the Son of God nailed it to the cross. And, as the Lord said, "Till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass away from the law, till all things be accomplished" (Matthew 5:18). The tragedy of this crooked mistake in the RSV is that it is used by radical critics as, "Notable evidence that the Torah was not regarded (when Lamentations was written) as a thing given through Moses in the far-off past."[15] Thoughtful scholars will not be deceived by this tragic rendition in the Revised Standard Version. We thank God that the Anchor Bible gave us another acceptable translation of this passage; "The king and the princes are among the heathen (where) there is no instruction."[16] With regard to the word "where" which the translators have supplied in the ASV, and which this writer supplied in the Anchor Bible, it does not occur in the KJV, where it was considered unnecessary, because the word Gentiles stands adjacent to and in front of the words there is no law, plainly indicating that it was among them, the Gentiles, that God's Law was not. There was never, in the long history of Israel after Sinai a single hour in which the Law of Moses did not exist.

"The elders ... sit upon the ground ... the virgins hang down their heads" (Lamentations 2:10). "The elders open not their mouth in the gate as usual ... overwhelmed with grief ... in token of great grief, as did the friends of Job, they sit upon the ground and keep silent."[17]