Lamentations 1:1-11. Be sure to check out the “Intro to Lamentations”. In verse 1 the author observes the city after the destruction brought on by Nebuchadnezzar and his general, Nebuzaradan. For those who doubt that Jeremiah was the author, who better that the faithful prophet who stayed behind to minister to the remaining inhabitants, to write such words of sadness. Jeremiah spent over 40 years trying to get the inhabitants of Jerusalem and Judah to honor God and now this.
The city of Jerusalem is compared to a widow in verse one. It once was a great city. In the days of Solomon (the last king of the united nation of Israel) the city was so prosperous that silver was almost worthless, and Solomon was so famous for his wisdom that royalty would come great distances to give him lavish gifts and sit in his courtyard and listen to him speak. Jerusalem was like a princess among the nations. Now there were no more gifts and the people of Judah who were left were there to tend the neglected fields. They were alone like a widow and worked like slaves.
In verse 2 we see the idea of loneliness continue. The verse uses the idea of “lovers”. Judah had been abandoned by her “lovers”. It is interesting when you take the ideas of widows and lovers together. God designed humans to find the closest kind of love in the marriage relationship. A man and woman were to make a lifelong commitment to each other and live as a unit (Genesis 2:24; Matthew 19:4-6). It was one man with one woman forever. In Genesis 2:25 Moses points out that the husband and wife were “naked and not ashamed”. The close physical relationship that God included as part of marriage reflected the absolute bond between the husband and wife. In the law of Moses being physically involved beyond your marriage (adultery) was condemned and had harsh penalties (like death) and a physical relationship before marriage required the couple to become married immediately. Human marriage is more that just a convenient way to have a close friend or lots of fun it was also created by God to serve as an example.
In Ephesians 5:22-32 Paul is instructing husbands and wives about their relationship to one another and then he tells us that that relationship is also an example of the relationship between Jesus and his followers. Now Paul wasn’t talking about the physical part of a marriage he was talking about the love, care and dedication parts. But maybe the physical part of a marriage, with it’s complete surrender to the other person (that’s the way God designed it anyway, 1 Corinthians 7:3-4) mirrors the complete sacrificial dedication Jesus has to us and the complete sacrificial dedication we shouldd have to him. God told the Israelites that they were to have one God and one only, his name was Yahweh. Jesus is the human embodiment (literally “God in a Bod”, God incarnate) of Yahweh. John tells us in the “Beginning was the Word. The Word was with God and the Word was God. And the word became flesh and lived among us” (John 1:1, 14). John goes on a few verses later to identify Jesus as that “Word”. Human marriage is a great and awesome thing here and now but it is also a way we can understand the possibilities of our relationship with God, that is why the exclusivity part is so important. And God built us so that we understand that. Ignoring God’s plan for marriage not only messes up the spiritual example it messes up our lives too.
That is why it is interesting that the first two verses use the idea of a widow and the idea of ‘lovers”. Just as “lovers” are false partners for us as people (we should have one “lover”, our husband of wife) the “lovers” that the people of Jerusalem had, their false gods, were false too and of no help or comfort. Her friend had also deserted her. In the history of Israel both the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom were warned not to trust in foreign allies, they were to rely on God for protection. Unfortunately they often turned to their neighbors for help. In fact Zedekiah looked to Egypt for help when he rebelled against Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar came and Egypt did not resulting in the fall of Jerusalem.
In verses 3-5 we see a lot of pain and suffering in Jerusalem. In verse 6 we see there is no longer any greatness to the city and that her “princes have fled”. That was literally what happened at the end of t siege. The army broke out of the city and fled with Zedekiah the king. But they were weak from the siege and caught 15 miles away near Jericho. In verse 7 we see the pain of remembering how great they had once been.
In verse 5 we are told that the pain and suffering that Jerusalem was experiencing was from the “LORD”, Yahweh. Their God was rejecting them, punishing them. God’s actions were not arbitrary though, the people had “transgressed”. That word means “rebelled, revolted, offended, or trespassed.” In verse 8-9 we are told more about how the people of Jerusalem had offended God, they had sinned greatly. The word “sin” means to miss the mark or bull’s-eye. The people of Jerusalem had missed the target by a lot. In these verses we return to the faithful marriage idea. Remember Jerusalem had had many lovers, false gods, and was now useless or dirty to God. Those who had such great things to say about Jerusalem now despised her. The word despised means to “pour out”, maybe we should think of this as “dumped”. Jerusalem had been used and dumped by her sweet talking false gods. The picture goes from bad to worse in theses verses because the people of Jerusalem and Judah are being described like a prostitute from the streets. Everyone had seen her nakedness, she was dirty, and only living for the moment. She didn’t even have respect for herself. The middle of verse 9 tells us this was a huge step down, from princess to prostitute with no friend, no protector, a very sad decline.
At the end of verse 9 Jeremiah shares a little of his feeling about the situation. He cries out to Yahweh (LORD) and says, “Do you see what bothers me? The bad guy, the foreigner with his false gods, thinks he is “the man”, the king of the universe.” That really was the attitude of Nebuchadnezzar as you can see in Daniel 4:30. Jeremiah was bothered by the physical trouble in Jerusalem but he was more troubled by the bad name all of this was giving to God. In verse 10 Jeremiah is upset over what happened to the Temple. In the rules that God gave to Moses about the Tabernacle (the sort of portable church or temple that was used for centuries before the permanent Temple was built) there were strict rule about who could go where and who could touch what in the tabernacle. These rules were transferred to the Temple when it was built. Not even all Jews could go all places in the Temple and the part of the Temple that represented God personal presence was completely off limits except for once a year when the chief priest alone could enter and make a sacrifice showing a realization of the sins of all the Israelites. Jeremiah got to witness the unbelieving troops of the Babylonian army ripping the Temple apart and taking all of the stuff of value inside, breaking many of the items into pieces before taking them. Jeremiah is very very upset about God’s reputation in these verses.
Verse 11 returns to the people remaining in Jerusalem. These people are concerned about something completely different, lunch. All they care about is themselves and getting some food. Clearly they have missed the what is really important in life. They were trading eternity for another sucky day. Jeremiah now is the one who feels despised. This is a different word than the one translated “despised” in verse 8. This word means to be “insignificant, worthless, or light”. Jeremiah feels like his whole 40 years of messages have been for nothing.
It is important to understand that God has given us certain things in our lives to help us understand our relationship with him. Marriage is one of those things. Ideas like adultery, fornication, and prostitution lose their ability to help us understand the reality of our relationship with God when we destroy their meaning in our societies. God has gone a long way to make these ideas “stick” by hardwiring us for life the way he designed it, but he also has given us freedom and a will and we can override and perhaps even overwrite what he has told us. At the end of the day though, violating God’s design for our personal lives leaves us destroyed and empty whether we admit it or not. God is very serious about protecting the pictures he has given us to help us see and understand him. God made life the way it is not to limit us but to free us. Our lives, as they are, are headed for an eternity separated from God and all of his goodness. Because he loves us he wants us to understand and return to him. In the language of our day he wants us to see that we are cheaters and that we need to stop it. If we do he is willing to take us back and help us be faithful to him. God love is miraculous. We should all be as concerned as Jeremiah was with preserving a true picture of he one true God. Only when people truly see can the have that relationship with God fixed forever.
God help me be more concerned with your reputation that with my own rest. Let me live to help other see you not for my next meal. Let me remain faithful to you in all my life. Thank you for the lessons you have built into our existence. Help me learn from the life you have made for us about the forever life I can have with you. Thank you for your love and dedication.