Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Lamentations Verse-by-Verse

I apply the approach I used to meditating verse-by-verse on Psalm 119 to the book of Lamentations. Be aware that these meditations are not exegesis of the text, and that I feel free to wander to places the verse suggests that may not have been in the mind of the author when writing.

  • Praying – Lamentations 1:17

    Praying – Lamentations 1:17

    17 Zion lifted her hands in prayer, but there was no one to comfort her; the LORD ordered Jacob’s enemies to beset him on every side. In their midst Jerusalem became an unclean thing to be shunned.

    Lamentations 1:17 [The Revised English Bible (Cambridge; New York; Melbourne; Madrid; Cape Town; Singapore; São Paulo; Delhi; Dubai; Tokyo: Cambridge University Press, 1996)]

    “I’m praying.”

    This is one of the most common comments among Christians, combined with “I’ll pray for you,” or “you’re on the prayer list.”

    Honorable (or dishonorable) mention goes to “We’re sending thoughts and prayers.”

    To back up our prayer claims we tell stories of answered prayer, whether from scripture or from our own lives. Daniel in the Lion’s Den makes a good example. Spending the night with hungry lions and coming out uneaten is quite a feat!

    We’re less likely to talk about the times in scripture when praying didn’t come out so well. This verse is a good example.

    Zion is praying, and we know the outcome. Exile is coming. The verse says God has commanded it. The prayers are not answered, not positively. Destruction comes.

    Why is that?

    One reason is that people are doggedly pursuing a path of destruction. If I get drunk, jump in my car, don’t wear my seatbelt, and proceed to drive recklessly, there are certain likely results. The best is actually if I get pulled over and charged with DUI. The worst is death—mine, or that of an innocent person.

    But I prayed!

    Yes. And God was probably trying to get through with an answer, but as I drove down the path to destruction, I wasn’t able to hear the answer.

    Our verse says that the Lord ordered Jacob’s enemies to beset him on every side. Was God really trying to destroy Judah? It’s worthwhile studying this entire period of Israel’s history, not to condemn, but to learn from it.

    Often God has us beset on every side, by wise counselors, by the prompting of the Holy Spirit, and by the unrelenting force of the laws of nature. If we don’t allow those barriers to derail our ride to destruction, who do we have to blame?

    For years, I worked in IT, helping small businesses. I regularly told people that I could provide security tools and practices. Antivirus software could protect them. The one thing I regularly couldn’t protect someone from was their own actions. If you have a password and a secondary code that are both required for access, and you go ahead and give both of these to a bad actor, no amount of other security will protect you.

    I remember a call from a client who said she had just accidentally opened what she was sure was a bad email attachment. I asked her what she had done. “Just what you told me to do. I shut down the computer as soon as I realized it.” I was able to get her system cleaned up and running in less than an hour. (The bad payload was ransomware with high potential to make one’s life miserable.)

    At another office I walked up to a workstation to do some routine maintenance and noticed suspicious activity right on screen. I asked the user how long this had been going on. “Oh, I don’t know. Probably all day.” More than 12 hours and considerable expense later, the business got its network back. (Secure backups are wonderful!)

    The software was there, the tools were there, the policies were there. Two very different results.

    “I’m praying, Lord!”

    “Yes, but are you listening?”

    (Featured image generated by Firefly 4 Ultra according to a prompt generated by Gemini.)

  • Alone – Lamentations 1:16

    Alone – Lamentations 1:16

    This is why I weep over my plight,
    why tears stream from my eyes:
    because any who might comfort me and renew my strength
    are far away from me;
    my children have become desolate,
    for the enemy is victorious.

    (Lamentations 1:16, REB)

    “Aloneness” has different meanings to different people.

    I’m an introvert. This doesn’t mean I don’t like people, but social events are tiring for me. I particularly dislike social events that don’t have a program. Being expected to make small talk, or to show interest in random topics, makes me want to run and hide.

    My wife has said that at a party, she assumes I’ll find a chair in a corner and tune out the scene.

    So there is a positive sense to being alone, alone to think, alone to plan, alone to rest. Alone by choice.

    Then there is the aloneness that is the result of abandonment. When things start going wrong you find out quickly who cares and who doesn’t. People forget you exist because you’re no longer involved in what is important to them from day to day. There is a descending spiral, as you seem too anxious and needy when a visitor does appear. They may not have the energy to fill the loneliness in your heart.

    We tell others that there is no friend like Jesus. Yet sometimes we need the physical person in the room. “When I was in prison, you visited me,” says Jesus in Matthew 25:36. As Jesus often does, he reverses the situation as we see it. We’re thinking of seeing Jesus in the person who is visiting. I need a little encouragement from a real human, that physical person. But here Jesus is telling people what a good thing they did when the visited Him, Jesus, in prison.

    When did that happen? When the visited the person who is alone. When you did it for the least, the most insignificant, the least lovely. It’s not even limited to those unjustly in prison. When you visited the least important person in prison. Even if they fully deserved to be there.

    I follow my meditations when writing about these passages, and the meditations can go quite far afield. I want to bring this back to Judah and the exile, which underlies the text. Their country is destroyed. They have not friends. Potential friends only see targets and victims. Nobody is there to help because all those who were friends are destroyed or driven away. Judah is devastated and alone.

    And yet …

    They are still God’s people. We see this book preserved about mourning and lament, and we see the devastation, and restoration, partial though it appears. And we can look at this from the other side. What do you and I do about devastation? Do we ignore it and hope it doesn’t come to us? Or do we seek to change it?

    As I think about this, I’m drawn away from my own attitude about aloneness and I’m led to ask myself how often I visit someone who is shut in. How often do I encourage someone who is discouraged? How often is my voice raised in defense of the weak, the hopeless, the victims? Do I care even for those whose problems seem to be of their own making?

    I was talking to one of my authors recently and he told me he was headed to the Mexican border, where he would pray for refugees who were waiting there. He couldn’t even get to touch them, but he could pray, and he did.

    So what will I do for those who, to the world, are insignificant? What will you do?

  • Worthless – Lamentations 1:15

    Worthless – Lamentations 1:15

    15 The Lord treated with scorn
    all the mighty men within my walls;
    he marshalled rank on rank against me
    to crush my young warriors.
    The Lord trod down, like grapes in the winepress,
    the virgin daughter of Judah.

    The Revised English Bible (Cambridge; New York; Melbourne; Madrid; Cape Town; Singapore; São Paulo; Delhi; Dubai; Tokyo: Cambridge University Press, 1996), La 1:15.

    I’m meditating on these verses, intending to write one meditation per day, though I haven’t been keeping up. It can seem like the elements of just staying alive are “marshalled rank on rank against me.” If it’s not one thing, it’s another!

    Now in the historical context of this book at this verse, this is about the people suffering conquest and exile, and that by cruel conquerors. I want to emphasize that a key reason for this book being in the Bible, in my opinion, is to let people know it’s OK, and even healthy to acknowledge difficulties. Running around pretending things are fine when they aren’t isn’t healthy, and it isn’t productive. You can’t fix what you don’t recognize.

    But in meditating I started to think about the way we talk about troubles in our lives. I’m talking especially about those of us who are in some kind of ministry work. What do we say when obstacles are put in our way?

    Well, I’ve noted quite a variety, depending on who is talking and their attitude at the time.

    • I must be doing something right for the Lord, because the devil’s after me!
    • I must have missed God’s calling or instructions, because I can’t get through these barriers.
    • I need more people to pray for me, because prayer is powerful, so more prayer is more powerful!
    • I must keep my faith face on so nobody knows the trouble I’m seeing. (With apologies to the hymn!)
    • I must be very open and honest about this so other people realize that they’re not alone in having troubles.

    How do you know just how to react?

    How do you know, for example, whether the devil’s after you, or whether you’re encountering hardship because you have lost your way?

    You don’t. But that doesn’t really matter that much, because what you have to do is hold on to the one who does know. You’re probably going to be off the best path very frequently. It’s going to feel like the world is coming at you “rank on rank.”

    What do you do? I can give you all the advice: pray more, listen for the Holy Spirit, use your God-given brain, seek and accept help from others, be willing to correct your program.

    That’s good. I like to attempt those things. But most importantly, as the song says, “Put your hand in the hand of the man who stilled the waters.” He’s the one who can handle the problems that are coming at you rank-on-rank. Panic will get you nowhere. He will.

    (Featured image generated by Adobe Firefly Image 5, from a prompt generated by Google Gemini.)

  • Bound – Lamentations 1:14

    Bound – Lamentations 1:14

    14 ‘My sins were bound like a yoke
    tied fast by his own hand;
    set upon my neck,
    it caused my strength to fail.
    The LORD abandoned me to my sins,
    and in their grip I could not stand.

    Lamentations 1:14 (REB)

    I’ve actually been meditating on this verse over the last few weeks while I haven’t been posting. I think it’s rather important. I first thought about sin/sins in the way I’m going to speak of them here when I read Ezekiel 23:49 and several other passages that suggest that what the people suffer is simply their own sins brought back on them.

    Now this is a more graphic passage, in that we have the imagery of a animal, such as an ox, pulling a load that is secured by a yoke. This is a lamentation, so it’s important to “hear” the poet telling us about living under the yoke.

    Frequently we think of sins in the plural, and see them as a sort of list of infractions against ritual or formal rules. We could imagine a workplace where a series of annoying or even stupid rules occur. Since we’re thinking about God, we imagine that we have to check off the boxes because that’s how you get to heaven.

    This is not just a mistaken, but an inadequate view in so many ways. When there are suboptimal rules in a workplace, freedom is to be found in finding a better job, thus working in a better environment. You can compare workplaces according to how rewarding they are as a work environment. So you can compare “better” and “worse” workers on a checklist, and “better” and “worse” workplaces in a similar way. Freedom comes by escape to a better place.

    But when we talk about “sin” in the biblical place, this is the wrong view. Note here that the sins are bound to the person. The penalty is, in one sense, a complete lack of freedom. The ox cannot escape the yoke, and the lament is that the Israelites were unable to escape the yoke made by their own transgressions. Finally, we have the observation that the punishment here is God abandoning the people to their sins. This is what is causing their strength to fail. It is not some invented judgment or punishment. It is rather the result of their actions.

    But this takes us back further to the specific nature of sin, again as displayed in the Bible story. We think generally of making a list of our faults and failings and trying to overcome them. I once had a terrible temper. In fact, I still do. If I overcome that temper, I’ll be that much closer to God, right?

    Not so. It’s a good thing to tame one’s temper, but the problem is that that’s just an item checked off the list. It all goes back to the basic rebellion, the desire to be independent of God and of God’s commands. And the gap made by that is great.

    We’re not in the workplace, deciding whether we like it, or perhaps that we should move on to a better employer. We’re in God’s universe. The rules are the rules of life. As it says in Deuteronomy 30:15, we’re offered a choice of a way of life and good or death and evil. We don’t have the option of choosing a whole other plan.

    This is a great lamentation. We’re abandoned, not to some externally planned torment, but to the results of our own rebellion against the way of life, the way that is life.

    The starting point to recovery is simple. It’s coming to the point of sincerely making this lamentation.

  • Fire – Lamentations 1:13

    Fire – Lamentations 1:13

    “From on high he sent fire,
        sent it down into my bones.
    He spread a net for my feet
        and turned me back.
    He made me desolate,
        faint all the day long.

    Lamentations 1:13 (NIV)

    Fire is one of those ambiguous words when used in symbolism. For Elijah on Mt Carmel, the God who answered with fire was to be regarded as the true God. The fire, in one sense, showed an acceptance of the sacrifice as well as the power of the God to whom that sacrifice was offered. (1 Kings

    Jeremiah spoke of a fire in his bones: “But if I say, “I will not mention his word or speak anymore in his name,” his word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot” (Jeremiah 20:9 NIV, emphasis added). It’s hard to tell if we are to see this fire as positive or negative. I’ve heard many speakers use the phrase “a fire in my bones,” with varied emphasis. It may be used to claim a divine source for the message.

    Hebrews 12:29 describes God as a consuming fire. If you read this entire passage, you’ll find that it has a positive and a negative side. It’s a fire that removes impurities and even weaknesses, but what remains is what is pure and lasting. (Note the related use of “shaking” in the same chapter.

    There are many references to fire in scripture, and they vary from the pillar of fire that guided the Israelites to the fires of hell that consume all evil.

    Here, the fire is a subject of lament. It is part of the judgment that has come on Israel. This lamentation speaks of God’s actions. We often argue about whether God does one particular thing or another. If you feel that you are suffering a form of fire of God’s judgment, is this something God is doing, or that God is permitting and using?

    I find it unhelpful to be concerned about what precisely is an intentional act of God. We like to place logical layers between us and God so as to absolve God of some portion of the responsibility for what happens in the universe. I see God as responsible, and on reading a verse like Isaiah 45:7, I don’t see God as unwilling to take that responsibility.

    In fact, understanding that God is fundamentally sovereign, and by extension responsible, is a critical aspect of monotheism. Instead of pacifying demons or various forces, we look at God as the one in charge.

    Does this always make us comfortable? Not even close! I don’t think it’s supposed to make us comfortable. In fact, I see very little evidence that God is working for comfort in this life. Rather God is working toward righteousness.

    And that is an enormous goal. And thus we lament. As strangers and wanderers here, our jouney isn’t always easy.

    God’s fire is refining (Malachi 3:2-3). Refining is rarely fun!

  • Sorrow Like My Sorrow – Lamentations 1:12

    Sorrow Like My Sorrow – Lamentations 1:12

    12 Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? Look and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow, which was brought upon me, which the LORD inflicted on the day of his fierce anger.

    The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989), La 1:12.

    There are several things I could discuss about this verse, but I’ve been thinking about the sorrow. When we are in trouble, many of us feel that we are suffering in ways nobody else can understand.

    In one sense, your sorrow is your own. You experience sorrow in individual ways. Your feelings are your own feelings. But very often when we think this we are missing the suffering of others, suffering we don’t understand and that might even be suffering worse than we are.

    The problem is that there is no real way to measure pain, suffering, and grief. Is what I have experienced more or less than what you have experienced? Neither of us really know. We can’t measure our suffering against our ability to endure.

    Despite all that, I am often shamed when I’m complaining, even just in my own mind, and then find out someone else is experiencing something I perceive to be worse. But I still don’t know the weight of that suffering to another person even when I know it is great.

    In lamentation, we long to have our suffering acknowledged. It is part of being seen and recognized. In scripture the hoped-for recognition is from God. That is the purpose of lamentation. We recognize and express the reality, and we look for the recognition of our pain.

    I will confess that I really don’t like to talk about difficulties. I prefer to keep on a proper “faith face” that suggests everything is fine whether it is or not. That face is often what we put on to avoid lamentation.

    So, honest face or faith face?

    (Featured image generated by Jetpack AI.)

  • Look LORD! – Lamentations 1:11

    Look LORD! – Lamentations 1:11

    11 All her people groan as they search for bread; they trade their treasures for food to revive their strength. Look, O LORD, and see how worthless I have become.

    The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989), La 1:11.

    I’m using the NRSV rendering of this verse, but I would use something like “contemptible” for “worthless” in the final line of the verse.

    We often hear a line like this from a child: “Look at me!” It’s a call for attention, for affirmation, and for reassurance. In the child it doesn’t come from a place of lament, or even all that likely from a place of failure. It’s simply a desire to be acknowledged in whatever way.

    As believers, we ultimately find our value in our creator. We want to be affirmed. We want God to notice. Job’s cry through his complaints is that God needs to respond to him, to notice him and react. In the end, Job gets no answers to his spoken questions. What he gets is the clear evidence that God is there and aware of him.

    For Israel in the exile one of the greatest threats was the loss of identity. So many people lost their identity in that same time frame. Centuries later you couldn’t really identify Moabites, Ammonites, or Philistines, for example. But you can still identify the descendants of the people of Judah.

    Surviving this is intimately tied to lament. Lament acknowledges that things have gone wrong. It is our realization of how bad things have become. I’m sure some readers, should they continue to read this series at all, will be impatient at the dismal tone of these verses. Surely I could summarize everything up to 3:22 in one or two posts and then we could get on to the positive.

    But sometimes our problems aren’t solved in that short of a period of time. One of the things that prevents solving problems and growing from them is the failure to acknowledge them.

    Are you ready to say, “Look, LORD!” and then be honest with yourself about what the Lord sees? When that is done, healing can begin.

    (Featured image generated by Jetpack AI.)

  • Sanctuary – Lamentations 1:10

    Sanctuary – Lamentations 1:10

    10 Enemies have stretched out their hands
    over all her precious things;
    she has even seen the nations
    invade her sanctuary,
    those whom you forbade
    to enter your congregation.

    The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989), La 1:10.

    Most of us have things that we consider our own, private, and often held closely. Sometimes, for example, this is our family. Sometimes it is our family home.

    A few months ago Jody and I experienced an attempt to break into our house by someone who intended to do us violence. The individual was experiencing mental issues that made him feel we were a threat. The situation worked itself out, but we still have habits that were changed due to that experience. Somehow, we don’t feel quite as secure. Someone didn’t enter, but did seriously threaten our home, our sanctuary.

    Often when we discuss safety, we emphasize the safety of our property and most importantly our home. In communities a century or so ago in the United States you might have just one church, and in times of trouble, that church might be regarded as a sanctuary.

    Judah had a sanctuary, the temple in Jerusalem. They believed that many bad things might happen to them, but the temple was secure. As long as the temple was there, they could never be completely destroyed. Jeremiah (chapter 7) tells them that if they are far from the Lord, they can’t depend on the Lord’s temple to save them.

    As Christians we speak of Christ being in us, and us in Christ. In 1 Peter 2:5 we’re called to be living stones, to be built into a spiritual house. For us, there is to be a sanctuary in us and around us that travels with us. It’s the presence of Jesus with us.

    Are you living as a spiritual house? A sanctuary?

  • Future – Lamentations 1:9

    Future – Lamentations 1:9

    9 Her uncleanness was in her skirts; she took no thought of her future; her downfall was appalling, with none to comfort her. “O LORD, look at my affliction, for the enemy has triumphed!”

    The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989), La 1:9.

    The phrase that took my attention from the first time I looked at this verse in preparation for writing this reflection was this: “She took no thought of her future.”

    How many times have any of us looked back at a decision we made when we were younger and thought, “You know, I really didn’t think of my future when I did that!”

    Henry Hazlitt, in his book Economics in One Lesson says (and I summarize) that all economic fallacies result from one or both of two central fallacies: 1) looking only at the immediate consequences of an act or proposal, and 2) looking at the consequences only for a particular group to the neglect of others. (He discusses this issue in chapter 1 extensively.)

    Now some may be wondering why I’m quoting an economist while doing a reflection on scripture. Stated briefly, I do this because I think all of God’s universe operates according to God’s laws (not that we all obey them!), and that this is an excellent example. The failure to look to the future is a good example of this. Whether your situation is spiritual or strictly temporal, the same principles will apply.

    This one line is an important lament. Why didn’t I think of the consequences? If we learned this lesson from the book–to recognize when bad decisions have led to difficulties, it would be well worth it.

  • Despised – Lamentations 1:8

    Despised – Lamentations 1:8

    8 Jerusalem sinned grievously,
    so she has become a mockery;
    all who honored her despise her,
    for they have seen her nakedness;
    she herself groans,
    and turns her face away.

    The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989), La 1:8.

    One of the problems of having a high opinion of oneself is that people may eventually find out that you’re human after all, that you have failings and limitations like anyone else. It’s good to figure this out as early as possible and avoid overrating yourself.

    Jerusalem was confident in God’s favor, even though the prophets had told them repeatedly that they were offending their God, and that trouble was coming. There came the time when those who had given Jerusalem and Judea honor came to despise her.

    All of us have this very potential. We come to consider ourselves superior, better than others. Then something happens and we find that honor has turned to contempt. Those who thought well of us now look at us as an example of failure.

    “All have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory,” says Paul (Romans 3:23). This gives special meaning to the idea of glory for a Christian. The goal, the standard is God’s glory. “Eye has not seen, neither has the ear heard, neither has it entered into the heart of man, the things that God has prepared …” (1 Corinthians 2:9). In the face of sayings like this we seek our own honor, our own glory, and may even get the praise of others for some time. But against what God has planned, our attainments are always small. The person who jumps three feet into the air in trying to jump over the moon is not superior to the one who jumps two feet. Both failed.

    When I moved from my undergraduate school to the University to go to graduate school I had an opportunity to learn this lesson. It’s a really minor event that has stuck with me ever since. My brother and I attended church at the visitors’ center at Old Faithful. Everyone there was a visitor to the park, so we all introduced ourselves and said where we had come from and where we were going. I was headed to graduate school after receiving my BA in Biblical Languages. I was headed to the Graduate school, co-located with our denomination’s seminary, to study further. After the service someone brought a text to me to ask about the “original Hebrew.” I don’t recall the specific verse, but it was a piece of poetry from Job. I talked to him about it for about five minutes. After we left, my brother and I were walking around Old Faithful and it suddenly hit me. I said to my brother, “Do you know that I talked to that guy for five minutes, and I never answered his question? In fact, I have no idea what the answer is!”

    I wondered whether he realized how empty my “answer” was, or whether my many words around it satisfied him. But I knew the glory was empty.

    I wish I could say I learned my lesson and expressed my level of knowledge with more humility from then on. But that would be a lie. Nonetheless, I have valued that lesson.

    It only takes time for praise and glory to turn to failure and shame. But there is always a remedy. That is for later. First, in this book, we learn to lament honestly, to recognize where we are, so that we can turn from there to the real glory.

    (Featured image generated by Jetpack AI.)