Reading: Lament 2 (Video Slides)

#32 Lament 2: The Divine Declarations

The Lamentations (of Jeremiah?)

• Traditionally ascribed to Jeremiah: hence their location in biblical literature immediately following Jeremiah
• Four acrostic laments (1-4) plus another lament (5)
  -  1 (22 X 3 couplets, only the first of which begins with the successive letter): Jerusalem is like a lonely widow suffering from many oppressions
  - 2 (22 X 3 couplets, only the first of which begins with the successive letter): Yahweh’s covenant anger and the resulting judgment
  - 3 (22 X 3 lines, each of which begins with the successive letter): Personalized pain because of Yahweh’s judgment, coupled with an expectation of restoration
  - 4 (22 X 2 couplets, only the first of which begins with the successive letter): the pain of Jerusalem’s ruin personalized
  - 5 (22 couplets, not acrostic): a prayer of repentance, seeking Yahweh’s deliverance

Lamentations 2

¹ How the Lord has covered Daughter Zion
    with the cloud of his anger!
He has hurled down the splendor of Israel
    from heaven to earth;
he has not remembered his footstool
    in the day of his anger.

² Without pity the Lord has swallowed up
    all the dwellings of Jacob;
in his wrath he has torn down
    the strongholds of Daughter Judah.
He has brought her kingdom and its princes
    down to the ground in dishonor.

³ In fierce anger he has cut off
    every horn of Israel.
He has withdrawn his right hand
    at the approach of the enemy.
He has burned in Jacob like a flaming fire
    that consumes everything around it.

⁴ Like an enemy he has strung his bow;
    his right hand is ready.
Like a foe he has slain
    all who were pleasing to the eye;
he has poured out his wrath like fire
    on the tent of Daughter Zion.

⁵ The Lord is like an enemy;
    he has swallowed up Israel.
He has swallowed up all her palaces
    and destroyed her strongholds.
He has multiplied mourning and lamentation
    for Daughter Judah.

⁶ He has laid waste his dwelling like a garden;
    he has destroyed his place of meeting.
The Lord has made Zion forget
    her appointed festivals and her Sabbaths;
in his fierce anger he has spurned
    both king and priest.

⁷ The Lord has rejected his altar
    and abandoned his sanctuary.
He has given the walls of her palaces
    into the hands of the enemy;
they have raised a shout in the house of the Lord
    as on the day of an appointed festival.

⁸ The Lord determined to tear down
    the wall around Daughter Zion.
He stretched out a measuring line
    and did not withhold his hand from destroying.
He made ramparts and walls lament;
    together they wasted away.

⁹ Her gates have sunk into the ground;
    their bars he has broken and destroyed.
Her king and her princes are exiled among the nations,
    the law is no more,
and her prophets no longer find
    visions from the Lord.

¹⁰ The elders of Daughter Zion
    sit on the ground in silence;
they have sprinkled dust on their heads
    and put on sackcloth.
The young women of Jerusalem
    have bowed their heads to the ground.

¹¹ My eyes fail from weeping,
    I am in torment within;
my heart is poured out on the ground
    because my people are destroyed,
because children and infants faint
    in the streets of the city.

¹² They say to their mothers,
    “Where is bread and wine?”
as they faint like the wounded
    in the streets of the city,
as their lives ebb away
    in their mothers’ arms.

¹³ What can I say for you?
    With what can I compare you, Daughter Jerusalem?
To what can I liken you,
    that I may comfort you, Virgin Daughter Zion?
Your wound is as deep as the sea.
    Who can heal you?

¹⁴ The visions of your prophets
    were false and worthless;
they did not expose your sin
    to ward off your captivity.
The prophecies they gave you
    were false and misleading.

¹⁵ All who pass your way
    clap their hands at you;
they scoff and shake their heads
    at Daughter Jerusalem:
“Is this the city that was called
    the perfection of beauty,
    the joy of the whole earth?”

¹⁶ All your enemies open their mouths
    wide against you;
they scoff and gnash their teeth
    and say, “We have swallowed her up.
This is the day we have waited for;
    we have lived to see it.”

¹⁷ The Lord has done what he planned;
    he has fulfilled his word, which he decreed long ago.
He has overthrown you without pity,
    he has let the enemy gloat over you,
    he has exalted the horn of your foes.

¹⁸ The hearts of the people
    cry out to the Lord.
You walls of Daughter Zion,
    let your tears flow like a river day and night;
give yourself no relief,
    your eyes no rest.

¹⁹ Arise, cry out in the night,
    as the watches of the night begin;
pour out your heart like water
    in the presence of the Lord.
Lift up your hands to him
    for the lives of your children,
who faint from hunger
    at every street corner.

²⁰ “Look, Lord, and consider:
    Whom have you ever treated like this?
Should women eat their offspring,
    the children they have cared for?
Should priest and prophet be killed
    in the sanctuary of the Lord?

²¹ “Young and old lie together
    in the dust of the streets;
my young men and young women
    have fallen by the sword.
You have slain them in the day of your anger;
    you have slaughtered them without pity.

²² “As you summon to a feast day,
    so you summoned against me terrors on every side.
In the day of the Lord’s anger
    no one escaped or survived;
those I cared for and reared
    my enemy has destroyed.”

Reflections on Lament 2

• Now the voice and perspective of Yahweh are most prominent.
• The key theme is that Yahweh has actively accosted Jerusalem to tear it down (through the actions of the Babylonian armies), but this has happened because God’s people have forgotten who they are and Whose they are.
• The reason for Yahweh’s judgment is the woman’s own sinfulness, so Yahweh is justified in these actions that have resulted in torture and pain and loneliness and helplessness.
• These things are all a result of the curses of the Sinai Covenant coming to pass.