Lamentations 4:1-22
How the gold has grown dim,
how the pure gold is changed!
The holy stones lie scattered
at the head of every street.
2 The precious sons of Zion,
worth their weight in fine gold,
how they are regarded as earthen pots,
the work of a potter’s hands!
The sudden shift from chapter 3 to chapter 4 is characteristic of the book of Lamentations. This does not mean there are no connections from chapter to chapter. In chapters 3 and 4, Jeremiah’s personal suffering aligns with that of the community (with the community’s suffering being more prominent in chapter 4). In addition, the prophets pilgrimage from the pit to deliverance gives survivors courage to face the ongoing disaster. There will be an end to their pain as well (4:22).
The third lament ends with a cry for vengeance; the fourth returns to the situation in Jerusalem. It opens by drawing a memorable comparison:
How the gold has grown dim, how the pure gold is changed! The holy stones lie scattered at the head of every street. (4:1)
Although gold does not tarnish, it does lose its shine when it is covered with dust and grime and blood, which is precisely what happened to the golden articles and building blocks from Jerusalem’s temple. They were trampled in the city’s dusty streets, for her glory had departed.
How far Jerusalem had come from her past glories. David passed the kingdom to Solomon with these words, “I go the way of all the earth; be strong, therefore, and prove yourself a man. And keep the charge of the Lord your God; to walk in His ways, to keep His statutes, His commandments, His judgments, and His testimonies” (1 Kin. 2:2–3). In proving himself a man, Solomon requested wisdom from the Lord. It was a request that pleased the Lord and led to the building of the temple to exacting specifications. “And the temple, when it was being built, was built with stone finished at the quarry, so that no hammer or chisel or any iron tool was heard in the temple while it was being built” (1 Kin. 6:7). It was to be the temple of the God of peace, built without noise, without clamoring. Yet it was thrown down with barbaric axes and battering rams. The trauma that Jeremiah described was beyond imagining.
He looks at each stone, having been so carefully hewn, so brilliantly fitted together, now wrenched from its position and tumbled carelessly into the streets of Jerusalem as though they were random chunks of nothing. He was pained to see them out of place, no longer joined together for the glory of God. The apostle Peter in speaking to the body of believers under the persecution of Nero said, “You also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (1 Pet. 2:5). Peter was catching the vision that the temple was not merely a piece of architecture but was a corporate body of living stones, people fitted together, their rough edges hewn silently by the work of God, that they might form a spiritual house for His work on earth.
Far more precious than gold were the young men of Jerusalem. Yet they, too, were trampled underfoot, like fragments of broken pottery. “The precious sons of Zion, worth their weight in fine gold, how they are regarded as earthen pots, the work of a potter’s hands!” (v. 2)
The connection with Jeremiah’s ministry is unmistakable. Many years before, the prophet had gone to the potter’s house, purchased a clay jar, and dashed it into a thousand pieces (Jeremiah 19). That was meant to be a sign of impending judgment:
Thus says the Lord, “Go, buy a potter’s earthenware flask, and take some of the elders of the people and some of the elders of the priests, 2 and go out to the Valley of the Son of Hinnom at the entry of the Potsherd Gate, and proclaim there the words that I tell you. 3 You shall say, ‘Hear the word of the Lord, O kings of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem. Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I am bringing such disaster upon this place that the ears of everyone who hears of it will tingle. 4 Because the people have forsaken me and have profaned this place by making offerings in it to other gods whom neither they nor their fathers nor the kings of Judah have known; and because they have filled this place with the blood of innocents, 5 and have built the high places of Baal to burn their sons in the fire as burnt offerings to Baal, which I did not command or decree, nor did it come into my mind— 6 therefore, behold, days are coming, declares the Lord, when this place shall no more be called Topheth, or the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter. 7 And in this place I will make void the plans of Judah and Jerusalem, and will cause their people to fall by the sword before their enemies, and by the hand of those who seek their life. I will give their dead bodies for food to the birds of the air and to the beasts of the earth. 8 And I will make this city a horror, a thing to be hissed at. Everyone who passes by it will be horrified and will hiss because of all its wounds. 9 And I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and their daughters, and everyone shall eat the flesh of his neighbor in the siege and in the distress, with which their enemies and those who seek their life afflict them.’ 10 “Then you shall break the flask in the sight of the men who go with you….
And that situation happened exactly the way Jeremiah said it would: God’s people were treated like so many shards of broken pottery. Most of the other events described in the fourth lament have been mentioned earlier in this study. So again, it is helpful to remember that grieving our way through trauma is never a straight line. We find ourselves looping back through the horror. We have to pass through and revisit our trauma as we pour it out before God. You have to keep working through the pain.
Lamentations 4 contains yet another, even more horrific description of famine in the streets of Jerusalem (4:3-10):
Even jackals offer the breast; they nurse their young, but the daughter of my people has become cruel, like the ostriches in the wilderness. The tongue of the nursing infant sticks to the roof of its mouth for thirst; the children beg for food, but no one gives to them. Those who once feasted on delicacies perish in the streets; those who were brought up in purple embrace ash heaps. For the chastisement of the daughter of my people has been greater than the punishment of Sodom, which was overthrown in a moment, and no hands were wrung for her. Her princes were purer than snow, whiter than milk; their bodies were more ruddy than coral, the beauty of their form was like sapphire. Now their face is blacker than soot; they are not recognized in the streets; their skin has shriveled on their bones; it has become as dry as wood. Happier were the victims of the sword than the victims of hunger, who wasted away, pierced by lack of the fruits of the field. The hands of compassionate women have boiled their own children; they became their food during the destruction of the daughter of my people. (cf. Jeremiah 14:1– 6; 19:9; 52:6)
Hunger gnawed away at the bones of Jerusalem’s citizens. The living envied the dead as they scavenged for food in the city garbage dump. They became walking skeletons. Indeed, they could hardly be recognized, for their skin was blackened from malnutrition and exposure. Even maternal instinct wasted away, for children not only died in their mothers’ arms— they died at their mothers’ hands.
Once again the prophet makes it clear that this was all the Lord’s doing. God himself had set the city ablaze:
The LORD gave full vent to his wrath; he poured out his hot anger, and he kindled a fire in Zion that consumed its foundations. (v. 11)
Jerusalem was suffering at the hands of God’s justice. But what had aroused his anger? More than anything else, what had invited divine judgment was the negligence of the city’s spiritual leaders:
The kings of the earth did not believe, nor any of the inhabitants of the world, that foe or enemy could enter the gates of Jerusalem. This was for the sins of her prophets and the iniquities of her priests, who shed in the midst of her the blood of the righteous. (vv. 12, 13)
The prophets had sinned, leaving the people to starve for God’s Word as well as for food. The temple priests had shed innocent blood. Thus they had to bear the humiliation of God’s wrath:
They wandered, blind, through the streets; they were so defiled with blood that no one was able to touch their garments. “Away! Unclean!” people cried at them. “Away! Away! Do not touch!” So they became fugitives and wanderers; people said among the nations, “They shall stay with us no longer.” The LORD himself has scattered them; he will regard them no more; no honor was shown to the priests, no favor to the elders. (vv. 14– 16)
The priests and the elders are pictured as being covered in blood. That can be a literal picture given the slaughter that has taken place in what is left of the city. But it is certainly also a ceremonial picture of their uncleanness before the Lord. In which case, the blood represents the blood of all the victims the priests and the elders and the people have willingly sacrificed before the demon gods.
The king, too, had failed to provide godly leadership. He had established unholy alliances with godless nations like Egypt, and the help he was promised never came:
Our eyes failed, ever watching vainly for help; in our watching we watched for a nation which could not save. They dogged our steps so that we could not walk in our streets; our end drew near; our days were numbered, for our end had come. Our pursuers were swifter than the eagles in the heavens; they chased us on the mountains; they lay in wait for us in the wilderness. (vv. 17– 19; cf. Lamentations 1: 3, 19; Jeremiah 27:1– 7)
In the end, the king himself was betrayed into the hands of his enemies:
The breath of our nostrils, the LORD’s anointed, was captured in their pits, of whom we said, “Under his shadow we shall live among the nations.” (v. 20)
The king was God’s little “m” messiah. As long as Judah had a king from the line of David, they had a visible representation of God’s covenant with them. But when the king was captured, blinded, and led off in chains to a Babylonian prison, finally the people knew that God had turned his back on them. The people of God thus learned the futility of merely political solutions to spiritual problems.
What is striking about this section of Lamentations is the failure of all three branches of Israel’s leadership. Going back at least to the days of Eusebius of Caesarea (c. 260– c. 340), careful students of the Bible have identified three offices in Old Testament Israel— prophet, priest, and king. God gave his people prophets, priests, and kings to lead them both spiritually and politically. Often when one leader failed, another leader was able to get the nation back on course. When King David sinned, for example, the prophet Nathan rebuked him and led him to repentance (2 Samuel 12). Or, to give another example, King Joash repaired the temple when the priests allowed it to deteriorate (2 Kings 12).
One of the reasons Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians was because the prophets, priests, and kings had all forsaken divine guidance. The kings had become cowards and apostates. The prophets— save Jeremiah— no longer spoke for God. And the priests were abusing their sacred office. What Jeremiah lamented, therefore, was an appalling lack of spiritual leadership.
Ultimately, what Jeremiah was looking for was the kind of leadership that can only be found in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the true prophet, the holy priest, and the servant king. Thus viewing the Old Testament in terms of these three offices is a good way to understand his work. The Westminster Shorter Catechism provides a helpful description of the prophetic, priestly, and kingly ministries of Christ:
Q. 23. What offices doth Christ execute as our Redeemer?
A. 23. Christ, as our Redeemer, executeth the offices of a prophet, of a priest, and of a king, both in his estate of humiliation and exaltation.
Q. 24. How doth Christ execute the office of a prophet?
A. 24. Christ executeth the office of a prophet, in revealing to us, by his word and Spirit, the will of God for our salvation.
Q. 25. How doth Christ execute the office of a priest?
A.25. Christ executeth the office of a priest, in his once offering up of himself a sacrifice to satisfy divine justice, and reconcile us to God; and in making continual intercession for us.
Q. 26. How doth Christ execute the office of a king?
A. 26. Christ executeth the office of a king, in subduing us to himself, in ruling and defending us, and in restraining and conquering all his and our enemies.
At their best, the prophets, priests, and kings of the Old Testament foreshadowed Christ’s coming. At their worst, they showed why his coming was so necessary. As we have seen, Lamentations does not have all the answers to the problem of suffering. One thing it does do, however, is raise some of the kinds of questions God has answered in Jesus Christ. In this case, Lamentations helps to show why Jesus is the true prophet, the holy priest, and the servant king God’s people have always needed. Unlike Judah’s lying prophets, he always gives God’s true Word. Unlike her unholy priests, he has offered perfect atonement for sin, once and for all. And unlike her selfish kings, he bravely defends his people from all their enemies.
Surprisingly, the fourth lament ends on a hopeful note. Notwithstanding Judah’s desperate lack of effective leadership, one of her oldest enemies would be defeated:
Rejoice and be glad, O daughter of Edom, you who dwell in the land of Uz; but to you also the cup shall pass; you shall become drunk and strip yourself bare. (4:21)
Because of their treachery against Judah, the Edomites would be forced to drink the wine of God’s fury (cf. Jeremiah 25:15– 29; 49:7– 22). Mixed in with this cry for vengeance is a promise that Judah’s exile will end:
The punishment of your iniquity, O daughter of Zion, is accomplished; he will keep you in exile no longer; but your iniquity, O daughter of Edom, he will punish; he will uncover your sins. (Lamentations 4: 22)
One day the punishment will be over, and the exile will come to an end. Thus there is hope for Zion, the city of God, which is not so much a place as it is a people— the populace of God’s eternal kingdom.
This promise was fulfilled in Israel’s history, but only partially. After seventy years of exile, God’s people were released from captivity and returned to Jerusalem. But God’s people still wait for their God to establish his eternal city. While we live in the ruined city of humanity, we wait for the new Jerusalem, the glorious haven described in Bernard of Cluny’s famous twelfth-century hymn:
Jerusalem the golden, with milk and honey blest, Beneath your contemplation sink heart and voice oppressed. I know not, O I know not, what joys await us there; What radiancy of glory, what bliss beyond compare. O sweet and blessed country, the home of God’s elect!
O sweet and blessed country that eager hearts expect! Jesus, in mercy bring us to that dear land of rest; Who are, with God the Father and Spirit, ever blest.
