Lamentations 4:1-12. Today we start Jeremiah’s third poem of sorrow. The first 11 or 12 verses describe the personal horror in Jerusalem. Some experts like to include verse 12 with the first eleven verses and some link it to the last twelve. Of Course this is one poem not an essay with paragraphs. I think verse 12 fits with what is before and what is after it. We don’t necessarily think of poems as having sections necessarily but if you have read the “Intro to Lamentations” you know that ancient eastern poetry was more about structure than things like rhyming. The main structure on these first four poems relates to the Hebrew alphabet (for more on this read the “Intro to lamentations”) but there may be another pattern in the first eleven verses of this poem that we can see.

As I was reading through this first part of the poem I notices some similar ideas in certain verses. Hebrew poets like to use parallel language and ideas in their writing, even non-poetic writing. Some times the parallel ideas are direct and sometime they are opposites. Sometimes the parallel ideas are next to each other, two lines in a verse or two verses in a row. But other times the parallel ideas are separated from each other by other verses, but there is still a pattern, the different parallel ideas in different verses reflect each other. Let’s say we give the ideas names: A1, B1, C1, D1. If we give the parallel ideas names we might call them A2, B2, C2, D2. If we use this reflecting pattern they would be arranged like this: A1-B1-C1-D1-D2-C2-B2-A2. It’s like there is a mirror between the two different “D” ideas. Sometimes the idea in the middle doesn’t have a parallel and the pattern looks like this: A1-B1-C1-D-C2-B2-A2. In that case the D idea is often the main point of the verses and the other ideas reflect around it. Cool Huh! Scholars give this arrangement the name “Chiasm” or Chiasmus”. The name comes from the Greek letter Chi which looks like an “X”. Notice that the X mirrors itself.

As I was reading verses 1-11 it occurred to me that there might be a chiasm here, the books I use to help me understand didn’t mention it but I still think it might be there.   Verse 1 Talks about the people of Jerusalem like they are gold and jewels. But the experts cant explain how the gold got dark, thy realize that gold does not tarnish. Notice too that the jewels are poured out on the street corners. An interesting place to find jewels. If verses 1-11 are a chiasm then verse 11 would be the parallel idea. In verse 11 we see a description of Yahweh in anger and wrath (yea, yea, I know, no body likes to think of God that way, read back a few posts for an explanation). In verse 11 we see the wrath described as a fire that burned the city to it’s foundation. It’s interesting when I think of a fire destroying an ancient city. Most of the structures would have been made of stones, at least the walls. I’m not sure all of the walls would fall down in a fire, at least not right away. They probably used wood to hold up window and door openings so there would be quite a bit of mess as the beams as well as the roof or floors burned up. There would also be a big mess from smoke, soot would be everywhere, even on any gold that was out and managed to not melt onto the floor. Anyway I think that could explain the “dark” gold in verse 1.

Verse 2 clearly uses gold to describe the “sons of Zion” (Jerusalem or maybe even a reference to the hill the Temple was on, then we might even see them as “God’s children”) or at least their value. But now they seem like common ordinary pots, like the cheep red ones we find outside. Notice too that the sons of Zion had been “precious” the pots were made by the hands of a potter. In verse 10 we see the “daughter of my people” being destroyed. Notice that it is singular, just one, this may be a reference to Jerusalem (The word translated “daughter” is used 42 times in the Old Testament for a village or town, usually associated with the name of another town. In Isaiah 22:4 though it may be a reference to Jerusalem). Because of the destruction caring women have boiled their own children to use them as food. We don’t know if the child died and was then eaten or if the women killed the children then ate them. Since the women are described as caring they probably killed them to keep them from starving to death but then realized their bodies could be eaten. It’s a very ugly picture of the desperation in the city during the siege. By the way notice the use of the word “hand”. So we have the parallels of “daughter/son” and hands. Also the people were no longer precious in verse 2 and they are clearly very far from that in verse 10.

In verse 3 we see that the daughter has become cruel. Even a mean animal like a jackal nurses it’s young, but the daughter is like ostriches. I know the word daughter is singular here but this time it is probably referring to actual women of the city. The “daughter” is compared to ostriches. The connection here is that ostriches lay eggs in the sand and bury them. They then move on and completely forget where the eggs where and seems to have no concern for them, they are on their own (see Job 39:13-18). In verse 9 we are told that it is better be killed by a sword than to dies slowly of starvation. The parallel is clear people are starving and suffering as they do.

In verse 4 children are starving and dying of thirst. The interesting think is that Jerusalem had a good water supply in the city and water should not have been a problem. Even the women had enough to boil their children. If the children were dying of thirst it was from neglect not because there wasn’t any water. In verse 8 we see a continuation of a description from verse 7 of people described as “consecrated ones”. The word translated “consecrate” means devoted or dedicated, separate, or untrimmed (like a tree or vine). It is used in the Old Testament for a person who wanted to spend some special time in their life honoring God. They would not eat certain things, participate in certain activities, and would not shave their beards or cut their hair. If you know the story of Sampson he was a Nazarite (though not really dedicated to God). One translation uses the word “prince” to translate this word and that may be most accurate here, we might say “special people” or “the rich and famous”. In verse 8 these “special people” the rich and famous are dirty and unrecognized in the street. And they are starving too. The parallel in these verses is that everyone is starving unknown little children and the special people too.

In verse 5 we more special people. The fact that they wore purple tells us that they were either royalty or very rich. Purple dye was extremely expensive in the ancient world and only kings and very rich people wore purple. Also notice what they had been used to eating, delicacies; all the fun expensive really good food. These people were now living on the street not in palaces and were sitting in ashes. This may mean they were digging through the trash for food (in ancient Jerusalem trash was burned). Ashes were also put on clothes to show sorrow and since the ashes are related to their clothes in the verse that is probably what Jeremiah means here. Anyway it is clear that their good and easy life is over. Verse 7 as I mentioned before is about the “special people”. This verse is dedicated to the appearance of these guys and they look better than the most beautiful stars on Oscar night. In verse 8 we see them lose their shine and become black like soot from a fire. Here the parallel is the loss of power and praise.

That leaves one more verse in the chiasm, verse 6. It is all by itself with no parallel verse. Often that means that it is the real focus or point of what has been written. We have seen a lot of personal pain and suffering, both physical and emotional. In this verse we see the “Why”. The people had great iniquity. The word translated “iniquity” means fault or mischief. It’s root means twisted or warped or perverse. The people of Jerusalem were living twisted, warped, perverted lives. We are told that their sins (a word that means to miss the bull’s eye, God perfect target for our lives) were worse than the sins of the people in Sodom. The story of Sodom is told in Genesis 18-19. In those chapters we read the story of a guy named Lot, the nephew of Abraham. He lived in Sodom and one day some angles, who looked like men to the average person, went to Lots house. The men of Sodom heard that Lot had visitors and insisted that he sent them out so they could sexually attack them (we are talking homosexual rape here). Lot would be expected to protect any guests in his house. Lot had little hope of fighting off the mob surround his house so in a totally sick move he offered them his two young daughters instead. The crowd refused and pressed for the men instead. Fortunately for lot these were no ordinary men, they were angles, with the power of God behind them. The angle caused the men of the city to go blind and in a reversal of roles rescued Lot. The next morning the angels instructed Lot and his family to flee the area Sodom and its neighbor Gomorrah would be destroyed. With no warning both cities were wiped off the map by fire from heaven, the area is still desolate to this day. No one lifted a hand to help Sodom and Jerusalem could expect the same.

Verse 12 shows the surprise and horror of the world at the destruction of Jerusalem. It had been centuries since kings and queens had come to Jerusalem to sit at the feet of Solomon and hear the wisdom God had given him. But the world must have remembered. Jerusalem, even at the time of its destruction, was special and now it was destroyed. We saw a lot of ordinary people and some rich and famous in verses 1-11 all suffered and for the same reason, sin. As we saw in a post a couple of days ago, sin is the real enemy, sin is the source of all destruction. God is patient but he will deal with rebellion and disobedience, sometimes right away in an instant, sometimes over the course of many years. His goal is always the same though, to see people return to him. In what is almost the final battle against sin, the Great Tribulation, predicted by the prophets and described in the book of Revelation, God still wants people to turn back to him. Four times in the description of that time of judgment and wrath we are told the people still did not “repent”, turn back to God, it is clearly something God was hoping for. God loves people, but sin is a problem that he must deal with. The penalty of sin is death, physical and spiritual (separation from God for all eternity). We all pay the price of the first, it is appointed for us to die physically (Hebrews 9:27) but Jesus paid the price for the second. It was enough for all but not all will accept his gift of eternity with God. That is a sad situation. God want us to return but still many will keep on walking away. No wonder Jeremiah was so distraught, he had spent his whole life calling people back to God only to see them continue to walk away.

God thank you for calling me to you. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to share this message of love with the world. Help many people turn back to you. Help many people enjoy the peace and goodness of your forever kingdom.

Lamentations 3:41-66. Yesterday’s reading ended with Jeremiah challenging the reader to remember that we have offended God, any judgment from God is deserved, and an encouragement to return to Yahweh (LORD, the one true God). The beginning of today’s reading is the beginning of returning to God, at least in the example of Jeremiah.

In verse 41 we see Jeremiah lifting up not just his hands but his heart to God. Lifting hands up toward Heaven was a common action when praying (talking to God). It’s almost like trying to hand God an imaginary gift. Of course Jeremiah didn’t literally lit up his heart in his hand but he did direct the desires of his inner self (his heart) toward God. What Jeremiah was telling God and anyone watching by lifting up his hands was that he was turning his life over to God. By telling us that his heart was involved he is showing us by example how to “return to the LORD” (Yahweh, v. 40). By the way the word translated “to” in verse 40 is a special prepositions that tells us the return was total and not just half-hearted.

Verses 42-47 describe the situation when Jeremiah offers this prayer. God is angry (be sure to read the last couple of day’s posts if you haven’t), he has hunted down the Israelites and destroyed them (at least some of them), there has been no mercy, and God has put up a wall between himself and the people of Judah; he’s not even listening to their prayers. They have become like useless trash and the people of the world are talking trash about them. This is a very desperate situation; the Israelites were to be an example to the world of how good and gracious God is, they were to help the world understand the nature of God (pure) and the consequences (spiritual death or separation from God) of sin (rebellion toward God). They were also to help the world understand that God also is loving and has a solution for the problem (the Messiah, or chosen one, a particular Israelite who would take the punishment for sin upon himself (Isaiah 53:6). From the New Testament we know this chosen one was Jesus. In verse 47 Jeremiah sums up the situation the people of Judah are in a panic, there is no where safe to go, there is destruction everywhere.

In verses 49-51 Jeremiah’s only response is to cry. And he will keep crying until Yahweh looks down from heaven and sees. There are two different words used in verse 50 that relate to God checking out what is going on. The first one indicates looking at or seeing the situation. Remember God had put up a wall around himself (literally “covered himself with a cloud”, v. 44). Jeremiah’s sadness will not let up until God looks through the cloud and “sees” from heaven. The second word used seems to indicate that he not only sees but also thinks about and acts on what he sees. IN the next part of the poem Jeremiah is going to get very personal, talking about his own personal experiences and trouble, but so far in today’s reading he has been using plural pronouns, “us” and “we”. We can see in verse 51 that jeremiah is not just concerned about his own personal situation but also all the “daughters of [his] city”.

In verse 52-54 we see just a peek at the trouble Jeremiah experienced over the years that he delivered God’s messages to the people of Judah. His enemies hunted him down and threw him in a pit. Notice that he tells us that the treatment was undeserved (“no cause”) and that the enemies were doing it because they didn’t like the message God was giving through him (“to silence me”). They put him in an underground room used to store water and sealed up the entrance with a stone. Jeremiah though he was going to die in there. If you read through the book of Jeremiah you know this actually happened near the time of the final destruction of Jerusalem (Jeremiah 38). In that account of the incident we are told there was no water in the cistern only mud. But it was wet enough that Jeremiah sunk in quite a ways. When you step in mud that is pretty wet some water separates out and Jeremiah may have sunk in far enough that the water started to cover his head. Remember though that this account in Lamentations is a poem and he may have been using the language a little more loosely. He certainly felt that might be swallowed up by the mud and die (“cut off”).  It was not the only time Jeremiah was hunted down and mistreated either so there may have been another time he was thrown in a pit full of water. Jeremiah probably only gives one example because that is enough to get his point across. Remember that this is a poem about his sorrow and not a history book about his life.

Verses 55-57 give us Jeremiah’s response this time of great fear, he prayed. The prayer was personal and honest and desperate. Jeremiah was at his lowest, in the pit thinking he was about to die , and he called on God by his personal name, Yahweh. In verse 56 Jeremiah is confident that God could hear him but pleaded with him to actually listen; to act on the prayer. Remember in verse 44 we were told that God wasn’t listening to the prayers of the Israelites anymore, the connection was still there but because of their continual rebellion and disobedience (sin) God wasn’t responding. In verse 57 we see that God did responds and in just the way Jeremiah hoped, God told him not to worry.

In verse 58 we see the answer to his original prayer, Jeremiah’s life was spared. In verses 59-63 he then asks God to deal with the men who had mistreated him. In these verses we see two things, first Jeremiah’s enemies had made a habit of mistreating him and scheming against him. Second Jeremiah repeatedly asks God to deal with these guys according to what he had seen and knew.

Jeremiah trusted God to do what was right and in verses 64-66 we are told by Jeremiah what he was sure Yahweh would do. His enemies would be “paid back”; their punishment would be based on their actions. But there was more, all of us act in ways that are offensive to God, all of us disobey and show disrespect for God (sin). If God paid us each back based on what we have done we would all be banished from his presence forever (Romans 3:23; Romans 6:23, remember death is the idea of separation, in this case separation from God forever). But there is a way out, Jesus (Romans 5:8, “Christ” means the same thing as “messiah”, Jesus is the Christ or messiah). Although Jesus death was enough to pay for all the sins of all who have ever lived (1 John 2:2) unfortunately not everyone takes advantage of his sacrifice. In John 1:12 we are told that only those who accept Jesus gift; actually believe in who he is and what he has done (“believe in his name”, see “What’s in a Name?”) will be saved and spend forever with God (see also John 3:18; Romans 10:9-10). Remember in verse 40 Jeremiah encouraged us all to think about our ways and return to Yahweh.

In verse 65 Jeremiah was sure that his enemies would not turn back to God (“repent”). He had lifted his heart up to God but he was sure they wouldn’t. the way Jeremiah expresses this in verse 65 is that God would give them a “hard heart” (think “a bad attitude”; they would not admit they were guilty) and there for God’s curse or assurance of punishment would be on them. Some people like to say that verse like Lamentations 3:65 prove that God causes people to reject him; he makes them do it. In Mark 4:12 Jesus told his followers that he was teaching the crowd in parable “so that while seeing they will not understand and while hearing they will not understand, because if they do they might return and be forgiven” (Jesus is quoting Isaiah 6:9-10).   Some experts think that Jesus used parables to keep people “in the dark” about what he was saying. That is interesting since a parable is a story that uses something we understand to explain something we don’t understand. In Matthew 13:13-15 we have Matthew’s telling of the same story and he adds detail that Mark left out. In Mark the quote from Isaiah that Jesus made is longer. In verse 15 we find some important information, the hearts of the people were dull (not accepting, the word means callous or covered with tar, feelings were not getting through). They were not instantaneously made callous but had become that way. The result was ears that couldn’t hear. Also they had closed their eyes so they couldn’t see. This also seems to have affected their ability to hear. Matthew also tells us it affected their “hearts”. What we learn from Matthew is that it was the habit of not responding to God that caused the people not to respond to God. The people ignored the message and finally got to a point where they were callous to it. You cannot respond to what you cannot feel and they had made themselves insensitive to sin. Callouses are caused from constant pressure from some source, they are formed like blisters but it’s a longer process. In the case of the hearts callous to sin the pressure is from God. It is God who constantly causes consequences for our sin. By ignoring the reminders the people cause their hearts (conscience) to become callous or unfeeling. That is why we can say God “hardened their hearts” he kept the pressure on but it was the person who didn’t back off and stop rubbing up against God’s rules. The end result is that they don’t turn back to God and God will deal with them by not allowing them into his heaven.

In Hebrews 9:27 we are told that everyone must die once (talking about the separation of our soul or spirit from our physical body) and after that comes the judgment of God. In Revelation 21 we see this judgment where God is sitting on his throne as ruler and judge of the universe. The souls (the part of you that is really you, the part that thinks and feels and hopes) of all mankind are brought before God. Certain books are opened up, one is called the Lamb’s Book of Life (see “The Old Testament Connection” for an explanation of the “lamb”) and the others are descried as records of all of everyone’s actions. In ancient times cities had citizenship records. The name of everyone born in a city was written in a book, when they died their names were crossed off. That is what we see in the Lamb’s Book of Life. It is the citizenship record for Heaven, although Heaven is much bigger that a city it is represented by a city called the New Jerusalem (Revelation 22). Jesus (the lamb of God, John 1:29, 36) is the king of this city. In Revelation 3:3 Jesus tells people in a certain church to turn back to him. In Revelation 3:5 he tells those same people that if they do what he has told them to do he will not erase their names from his book of Life. The picture we get here is one of a book with all of the names of everyone who has ever lived. The names of those that respond to God and turn their lives over to him will stay in the book of life but the names of the people who don’t turn back to God will eventually be erased (when they die physically). In the final judgment then people who have given their lives to God will remain citizens of Heaven forever. The rest will be judged according to their deeds. The judgment isn’t a scale, though, one sin and you are out. If you are climbing a rock wall with out a net or safety line it doesn’t matter how many good holds you get, one slip and you are dead, and we all slip. That is why God created a safety line for us but we need to put it on. Those that don’t die, in this case the death is spiritual, eternal separation from God and his goodness. The consequences of sin are sever and that is why God uses harsh tactic to get through to us, he wants us to live not perish (2 Peter 3:9). And the way to live is to turn back to him; give you sins and your eternity to Jesus.

God thank you for dealing with sin. Help us all listen to you and not become callous. Let my life attract people to you. I know that some people will reject me if I live for you. That is very serious. Don’t let me live a disobedient life that might drive people away though. Thank you for your patience with me, with us. Help me be patient until you return. And let me be sad for a lost and dying world.