Lamentations

The compassion of God shining through the misery and consequences of sin: a funeral dirge for Jerusalem.

Lamentations is five poems of grief over the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar in 588 BC. The city that was once full of people sits solitary as a widow. The temple is burned, the priests and elders are dead, children faint for hunger in the streets, and mothers have eaten their own children in the siege. The poet does not hide the horror, and he does not excuse it: “The LORD is righteous; for I have rebelled against his commandment” (1:18).

At the very center of the book, in the middle of the third poem, the darkness breaks: “It is of the LORD’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness” (3:22–23). The hope is not in circumstances, which are unchanged, but in the character of God.

Lamentations teaches how to grieve before God. It gives words to sorrow, confession, and hope, and it ends with a prayer: “Turn thou us unto thee, O LORD, and we shall be turned; renew our days as of old” (5:21).

Writer: Jeremiah
Written: Immediately after Jerusalem’s destruction, about 588 BC in the traditional chronology.
Name: Mournings; expressions of grief

Title and authorship

The Hebrew title is Ekah, “How!”—the cry of lament that opens chapters 1, 2, and 4. The rabbis also called it Qinoth, “Lamentations,” the name reflected in the Greek and English titles. In English Bibles it is “The Lamentations of Jeremiah.”

Jeremiah wrote Lamentations. Scripture records that he lamented for Josiah (2 Chronicles 35:25), the Greek translation opens with a note naming him, and Jewish tradition has always ascribed the book to him. The eyewitness detail fits a man who lived through the siege.

Historical background

Jerusalem immediately after its destruction in the fifth month of Zedekiah’s eleventh year (588 BC in the traditional chronology; 2 Kings 25:8–10).

The survivors of Jerusalem’s fall and the exiles, and every generation that must reckon with God’s judgment and mercy.

The siege of Jerusalem

Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem for about eighteen months. Famine became so severe that mothers ate their children (2:20; 4:10), as Moses had warned (Deuteronomy 28:53–57). The walls were breached, Zedekiah was captured fleeing toward Jericho, and the temple was burned a month later.

The ninth of Ab

Jews read Lamentations each year on the ninth day of the month Ab, the traditional date of the destruction of both Solomon’s temple and Herod’s temple (AD 70), with fasting and mourning.

Funeral poetry

Chapters 1–4 use the qinah or lament meter, a limping rhythm in which the second half of each line is shorter than the first, like a sob.

Key passages

Lamentations 1:12

“Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow.”

Lamentations 2:5–6

The LORD was as an enemy; He violently took away His tabernacle—the consequences of sin.

Lamentations 3:22–23

His compassions fail not; they are new every morning. Great is thy faithfulness.

Outline

1 · The lonely city

Jerusalem is pictured in bereavement, abandonment, and humiliation.

2 · The cause of calamity

The ruin is seen in relation to the Lord’s righteous judgment.

3 · Affliction and hope

The suffering speaker remembers the Lord’s compassion and calls for examination and return.

4 · Glory brought low

The former splendor of the city is contrasted with its degraded condition.

5 · A prayer for restoration

The community brings its shame before the Lord and asks him to turn it again.

Original language

אֵיכָה (ekah, H349) — “How”

An exclamation of grief and astonishment, used at the opening of funeral laments. “How doth the city sit solitary” (1:1).

רַחֲמִים (rachamim, H7356) — “compassions”

Tender mercies, from the word for womb—the deep, maternal compassion of God. “His compassions fail not” (3:22).

אֱמוּנָה (emunah, H530) — “faithfulness”

Firmness, steadfastness, from aman. “Great is thy faithfulness” (3:23). Habakkuk uses the same word: the just shall live by his faith (2:4).

Doctrinal study

God’s righteousness in judgment

Lamentations never accuses God of injustice. Jerusalem “hath grievously sinned” (1:8), the prophets saw false visions and did not discover her iniquity (2:14), and “Wherefore doth a living man complain, a man for the punishment of his sins?” (3:39). Judgment vindicates God’s holiness.

Hope in God’s character

“The LORD is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in him” (3:24). “For the Lord will not cast off for ever: but though he cause grief, yet will he have compassion” (3:31–32). Chastening is real, but it is not the last word for God’s people.

Is it nothing to you?

Jerusalem’s cry to those passing by (1:12) has long been applied to Christ on the cross, bearing a sorrow like no other. The same city that was destroyed for its sin later crucified its King outside its walls.

Commentary notes

The acrostic structure

Chapters 1, 2, and 4 each have twenty-two verses, one for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Chapter 3 has sixty-six verses, three for each letter. Chapter 5 has twenty-two verses but is not an acrostic. Grief is given order—an A-to-Z of sorrow.

Five movements

Chapter 1: the city as a weeping widow (grief). Chapter 2: the LORD’s anger (the cause). Chapter 3: the prophet’s affliction and hope (hope). Chapter 4: gold dimmed (repentance). Chapter 5: the people’s prayer (prayer).

The consequences of backsliding

The first chapter reads like a catalog of what sin produces: loneliness, debt, weeping, enemies, no comfort, no rest, no worship, bitterness, loss of beauty and reputation, regrets, a ruined testimony, moral bankruptcy, mockery, and death. Some can be corrected sooner and some later, when one gets right with God.

Christ in the book

• The Man of sorrows—“behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow” (1:12)
• The one smitten on the cheek and filled with reproach (3:30; Matthew 26:67)

Applications

Historical

• Jeremiah mourns the destruction of Jerusalem, the burning of the temple, and the sufferings of its people under the Babylonian siege.
• The poems belong beside the final chapter of Jeremiah and the accounts of Jerusalem’s fall in Kings and Chronicles.
• Siege and exile are described through human suffering rather than abstract summaries; the cost of national rebellion is made personal.

Doctrinal

• The suffering heart of God over the sin of Jerusalem, and a picture of Jerusalem during the Tribulation, besieged by enemy forces before its deliverance (Zechariah 14:2; Luke 21:20–24).
• The poems affirm both the righteousness of God’s judgment and the continuance of his covenant mercy.
• The suffering of Jerusalem also supplies a prophetic pattern for later distress and deliverance, while remaining rooted in the Babylonian catastrophe.

Devotional

• God’s heart grieves over sin in His people. We must remember that the result of sin is destruction, and also that God’s compassion rises above our sin when we turn to Him.
• The laments provide language for expressing grief to God while continuing to seek his mercy.
• Hope is recovered by recalling who God is, examining the heart, and seeking restoration rather than minimizing sin’s effects.

Answering the critics

Some critics question Jeremiah’s authorship, suggesting several anonymous poets, but serious objections are few.

Tradition, the Septuagint heading, and the book’s eyewitness perspective all point to Jeremiah, and nothing in the text contradicts it. The book has been left largely alone even by critics.