Lamentations 2:1-22

How the Lord in his anger 

has set the daughter of Zion under a cloud! 

He has cast down from heaven to earth 

the splendor of Israel; 

he has not remembered his footstool 

in the day of his anger. 

2  The Lord has swallowed up without mercy 

all the habitations of Jacob; 

in his wrath he has broken down 

the strongholds of the daughter of Judah; 

he has brought down to the ground in dishonor 

the kingdom and its rulers.

It is simply not part of our American, Wild West culture to find a way out of pain by going through the pain. In our society the worst thing we can do is feel bad, be a downer, harsh everyone else’s buzz. If you feel you absolutely must grieve, then do it privately and silently. Stuff it all down inside and do your best to ignore it. And there are even parts of American evangelical culture that would discourage you from sharing your unhappiness because that sort of stuff just doesn’t sell Jesus to a skeptical public. 

Jeremiah’s second lament recounts many of the same calamities as the first. There is something healthy about this. Healing comes through memory, not forgetfulness, and a vital part of the grieving process is honestly confronting what has been lost. The second lament deals with a particular kind of sorrow, the sorrow that comes from remembering the days that are no more. As he lamented the irrecoverable past, the prophet would have recognized the truth in this line from Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892): “A sorrow’s crown of sorrow is remembering happier things.”

Working through grief is never a straight line through the pain. You always find yourself circling back to the same memories and the same sense of loss. That is one of our major take away from these poems. They keep circling back and keep crying out to God. Grieving takes time. It demands your honesty. And it is a repetitive process.

Jerusalem seemed to have lost everything. She had lost her glorious temple, and with it a place to meet with God and make sacrifice for sin. “Lamentations 2 is a further response to the affliction of [Lady] Zion. Israel’s splendor was thrown down from the heavens to the earth, the kingship and its officials were stuck to the earth, Zion’s gateways sank into the earth, its elders were sitting down on the earth, its girls lowered their head to the earth. Of Lamentations’ fifteen references to ‘Zion,’ with Zion usually treated as feminine (“Mount Zion” comes only once in the book), seven come in Lamentations 2.”

To put it in plain words, the link between heaven and earth has been severed. This means the connection to their one and only God was gone. He had withdrawn from his earthly temple. And so there are sections of chapter 2 that emphasize the earthbound nature of the destroyed Jerusalem:

How the LORD in his anger has set the daughter of Zion under a cloud! He has cast down from heaven to earth the splendor of Israel; he has not remembered his footstool in the day of his anger…. He has laid waste his booth like a garden, laid in ruins his meeting place; the LORD has made Zion forget festival and Sabbath, and in his fierce indignation has spurned king and priest. The LORD has scorned his altar, disowned his sanctuary. (2:1, 6, 7a)

Jerusalem had lost her homes and her ramparts, her palaces and her gates, all pillaged and burned to the ground: 

The LORD has swallowed up without mercy all the habitations of Jacob; in his wrath he has broken down the strongholds of the daughter of Judah; he has brought down to the ground in dishonor the kingdom and its rulers. He has cut down in fierce anger all the might of Israel; he has withdrawn from them his right hand in the face of the enemy; he has burned like a flaming fire in Jacob, consuming all around… . He has swallowed up all its palaces; he has laid in ruins its strongholds, and he has multiplied in the daughter of Judah mourning and lamentation… . He has delivered into the hand of the enemy the walls of her palaces; they raised a clamor in the house of the Lord as on the day of festival. The LORD determined to lay in ruins the wall of the daughter of Zion; he stretched out the measuring line; he did not restrain his hand from destroying; he caused rampart and wall to lament; they languished together. Her gates have sunk into the ground; he has ruined and broken her bars. (vv. 2, 3, 5b, 7b– 9a) The city had lost her leaders, both political and spiritual: Her king and princes are among the nations; the law is no more, and her prophets find no vision from the LORD. (v. 9b)

As far as the prophets were concerned, perhaps it was just as well, for they had ceased to speak for God:

Your prophets have seen for you false and deceptive visions; they have not exposed your iniquity to restore your fortunes, but have seen for you oracles that are false and misleading. (v. 14; cf. Jeremiah 23: 16– 22; 27: 10, 15)

Jeremiah had warned them repeatedly that God’s words were not in the mouths of the happy talk preachers (Jer. 23:16-17):

16 Thus says the Lord of hosts: “Do not listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you, filling you with vain hopes. They speak visions of their own minds, not from the mouth of the Lord. 17 They say continually to those who despise the word of the Lord, ‘It shall be well with you’; and to everyone who stubbornly follows his own heart, they say, ‘No disaster shall come upon you.’”

But the loss of King Jehoiachin was catastrophic, for it seemed to mark the end of the house of David, and the end of God’s covenant. Jerusalem lost her dignity. She lost her relationship with YHWH. She was scorned by the nations:

All who pass along the way clap their hands at you; they hiss and wag their heads at the daughter of Jerusalem: “Is this the city that was called the perfection of beauty, the joy of all the earth?” All your enemies rail against you; The elders of the daughter of Zion sit on the ground in silence; they have thrown dust on their heads and put on sackcloth; the young women of Jerusalem have bowed their heads to the ground. (v. 10)

“The people who used to say these [complementary] things about Jerusalem were the Judahites themselves. Much later, after Herod’s glorification of the city, other people said it, but there was nothing outstandingly spectacular about the material Jerusalem in First Testament times. Even though the temple of Solomon was a marvelous building, the wonder of Jerusalem mostly lay in what it meant as the place where Yahweh dwelt. In this sense, Zion was indeed “the total embodiment of beauty” (Ps 50:2), “the greatest joy in all the earth” (Ps 48:2[3]). Both phrases are similar to the expressions in this verse. In their worship, Judahites indeed used to acclaim Zion in this way.”

Worst of all was the effect that the invasion had on the people of the city, especially the women and children. What had happened to them was so shocking that none of the survivors could think of anything to say. All they could do was assume a posture of lamentation:

The elders of the daughter of Zion sit on the ground in silence; they have thrown dust on their heads and put on sackcloth; the young women of Jerusalem have bowed their heads to the ground. (v. 10)

The prophet, too, was devastated by what he had seen, and joined the mourners:

My eyes are spent with weeping; my stomach churns; my bile is poured out to the ground because of the destruction of the daughter of my people. (v. 11a; cf. Jeremiah 14:17)

What the people of Jerusalem had witnessed was an appalling loss of life, a famine in the city that led to starvation:

Infants and babies faint in the streets of the city. They cry to their mothers, “Where is bread and wine?” as they faint like a wounded man in the streets of the city, as their life is poured out on their mothers’ bosom. (vv. 11b, 12)

During the last days of the siege the poet had seen it for himself— children dying “on their mothers’ bosom.” What was amazing about these losses was that they were all the Lord’s doing. To be sure, they were the result of Judah’s sin. But the reality still had to be faced: God had turned against his own people. He had not simply allowed his own city to be defeated— he had helped destroy it. God had used the Babylonians to do the destroying, of course, but he was still the ultimate cause of Jerusalem’s affliction. God had hurled down the temple and torn down the battlements. God had burned the city and left its people to die in the streets:

He has bent his bow like an enemy, with his right hand set like a foe; and he has killed all who were delightful in our eyes in the tent of the daughter of Zion; he has poured out his fury like fire. The LORD has become like an enemy; he has swallowed up Israel. (vv. 4, 5a)

In a strange twist on the Old Testament motif of the divine warrior, God was not fighting for his people, but against them. If the people had only listened to Jeremiah, they would not have been surprised to find God as their enemy. The prophet had long predicted that Judah would be judged for her sins. When judgment finally came, he said:

The LORD has done what he purposed; he has carried out his word, which he commanded long ago; he has thrown down without pity; he has made the enemy rejoice over you and exalted the might of your foes. (v. 17)

The sufferings of Jerusalem were part of God’s decree— not only the eternal decree of his divine will, but also the decree he issued through his prophet Jeremiah. Since it was in keeping with his decree, the fall of Jerusalem revealed many of the perfections of God. It was an act of divine justice, intended to repay a wayward people for their rebellion. Yet it was also an act of divine love, intended to chasten God’s people and thus to turn them away from their sins. Through the sufferings of defeat and exile, God’s people learned not to place their confidence in kings or temples, but only in God himself.

Extreme hardship often plays a similar role in the life of the Christian. Suffering is one of the benefits of belonging to God by adoption in Jesus Christ. Indeed, it is one of the surest proofs of sonship: “For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives” (Hebrews 12: 6). Being trained by suffering draws the believer into closer fellowship with God the Father.

The physical destruction of the land, the architecture, and the society as a whole was simply a reflection of this spiritual reality in which Israel had been living for the better part of two centuries. They had allowed their covenant relationship with God to shrivel. God had been patient and repeatedly warned them to return to him. But they refused to let go of the idols of their culture. Our sin leads us into desolate places. Often, all we have left in those desolate places is the theodicy of our own lamentations and a longing to return to God’s nearness.

Even when suffering is intended for good, however, it can be hard to accept. The pitiable fall of Jerusalem left the prophet Jeremiah with far more questions than answers.

What can I say for you, to what compare you, O daughter of Jerusalem? What can I liken to you, that I may comfort you, O virgin daughter of Zion? For your ruin is vast as the sea; who can heal you? (2: 13)

The last of Jeremiah’s questions— “Who can heal you?”— echoed a medical complaint he had made long before: “Is there no balm in Gilead?” (Jeremiah 8: 4-6, 22):

You shall say to them, Thus says the Lord: When men fall, do they not rise again? If one turns away, does he not return? 5 Why then has this people turned away in perpetual backsliding? They hold fast to deceit; they refuse to return. 6 I have paid attention and listened, but they have not spoken rightly; no man relents of his evil, saying, ‘What have I done?’ Everyone turns to his own course, like a horse plunging headlong into battle.

Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then has the health of the daughter of my people not been restored?

There was only one who could possibly answer the prophet’s cry for healing, and that was God himself. Even Jeremiah was unsure how the city might be healed. The one thing— the only thing— he could do was pray, begging for God’s grace in the midst of God’s justice. First the prophet invited others to join him:

Their heart cried to the LORD. O wall of the daughter of Zion, let tears stream down like a torrent day and night! Give yourself no rest, your eyes no respite! Arise, cry out in the night, at the beginning of the night watches! Pour out your heart like water before the presence of the LORD! Lift your hands to him for the lives of your children, who faint for hunger at the head of every street. (Lamentations 2: 18, 19; cf. Jeremiah 9: 17– 20)

Then Jeremiah turned his suffering into intercession, which is the general movement of the book of Lamentations. The prayer at the end of the second lament is a desperate recounting of utmost woe. It is the prayer of someone suffering a crisis of faith because he has witnessed unspeakable horrors, of someone who has no answers, only questions:

Look, O LORD, and see! With whom have you dealt thus? Should women eat the fruit of their womb, the children of their tender care? Should priest and prophet be killed in the sanctuary of the LORD? In the dust of the streets lie the young and the old; my young women and my young men have fallen by the sword; you have killed them in the day of your anger, slaughtering without pity. You summoned as if to a festival day my terrors on every side, and on the day of the anger of the LORD no one escaped or survived; those whom I held and raised my enemy destroyed.” (vv. 20– 22)

The second lament thus ends with cannibalism and sacrilege, with unburied corpses mounded in the streets— the fearful results of divine wrath. Jeremiah hardly knows how to pray about such things, but at least he can bring them to the Lord’s remembrance.

God, however, has already answered. He answered this terrible destruction a century before he brought it upon them. Before Jeremiah, the prophet Isaiah warned that the day of the Lord was coming, and Judah would drink the foaming cup of the wine of God’s wrath. But then, beginning in Isaiah 40, God speaks into the rubble and foulness of fallen Jerusalem:

Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. 2Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins. 3A voice cries: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. 4Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. 5And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

The glory of the Lord did indeed visit Jerusalem. He revealed himself and Jerusalem again made their final rejection of God. They hated him. They killed him. And he defeated sin and death through his death and resurrection. And because he has died, risen, ascended, and been glorified, he has all authority to promise his people a new city:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. 2 And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. 4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” 

5 And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” 6 And he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment. 7 The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be my son.