That is why it is a serious mistake to blame God for the pain and suffering experienced by humanity. Upon genuine repentance there will be forgiveness and deliverance (3:34-66). Lamentations is a chronicle of a nation that rebelled against God and, as a result, was cut off from Him and His Almighty power to bless and prosper. All rights reserved. 3. The first four are written as acrostics. Jeremiah states categorically that God had rejected His people because of their continuing rebellion against Him. In the Hebrew Bible , Lamentations stands with Ruth, the Song of Solomon , Ecclesiastes , and Esther and with them makes up the Megillot , five scrolls that are read on various festivals of the Jewish religious year . There is no situation too difficult for God to resolve. After the sacking of Jerusalem, the leading Jews insisted on going to Egypt—an act that was clearly against God’s explicit command—and they forced Jeremiah to go with them (Jeremiah 42:19; 43:7). is the problem of human suffering. How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! This theme is found throughout the Bible. The book is partly a traditional "city lament" mourning the desertion of the city by God, its destruction, and the ultimate return of the divinity, and partly a funeral dirge in which the bereaved bewails and addresses the dead. Sin has terrible consequences, and God wants mankind to avoid the penalty of sin and instead turn to Him with humility. Lamentations also mentions “the day You have announced” (1:21), the time when Israel’s enemies will also be punished and God will intervene in the world’s affairs. The results of repentance from sins for the descendants of Jacob (and all peoples) will be compelling and dramatic: One of the marvellous lessons in the Bible is that no matter how overwhelming the problems appear to be, we can count on God. The Book of Lamentations is a collection of poetic laments for the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE. Indeed, God himself is inflicting this pain upon his own people (2:1–8; 3:32). (A large number of the Psalms are lament poems, and every prophetic book except Haggai includes one or more examples of the lament genre.) For more on how to effectively study the Bible and practice what it teaches read the articles in the section on “The Practical and Priceless Benefits of Bible Study.”. Lamentations has much to say about pain. For He does not afflict willingly, nor [willingly] grieve the children of men” (3:32-33). The Expositor’s Bible Commentary (Revised Edition) states with reference to this verse: “The grounds of this confident expectation are the many manifestations of God’s hesed—his “loyal love”—and rahmim—“compassions”—which never expire or wear out. However, contained within its pages are meaningful lessons about God and the truths that govern our lives. The first chapter uses standard alphabetical order. In the Hebrew Scriptures it appears in the third division, called the Writings, in a section called the Festival Scrolls (Megilloth) between Ruth and Ecclesiastes. Repentance will not persuade God to be gracious, since he is free to give or withhold grace as he chooses. While the author of Lamentations remains nameless within the book, strong evidence from both inside and outside the text points to When people rebel against His eternal law, they automatically suffer the penalties of disobedience. Solomon’s Temple, which had stood for approximately 400 years, was burned to the ground. The poet acknowledges that this suffering is a just punishment, still God is held to have had choice over whether to act in this way and at this time. It is the first word of the book (see 2 Samuel 1:19-27). [10] Dobbs-Allsopp describes this meter as "the rhythmic dominance of unbalanced and enjambed lines". Through the LORD’s mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. The Hebrew word means “loud cries.” The word could also be translated as “how,” in the sense of dismay, as will b… (A large number of the Psalms are lament poems, and every prophetic book except Haggai includes one or more examples of the lament genre.) The book consists of five separate poems. Not only is judgment declared upon “all the dwelling places of Jacob,” but “He has cut off in fierce anger every horn of Israel” (Lamentations 2:2-3). Sufferers in the face of grief are not urged to a confidence in the goodness of God; in fact God is accountable for the disaster. Jerusalem’s desolation described (1:1-11). The name implies that the topic is expressing grief over something (to lament). Hope arises from a recollection of God's past goodness, but although this justifies a cry to God to act in deliverance, there is no guarantee that he will. Main Theme and Purpose of Lamentations. Two of its defining characteristic features are the alphabetic acrostic and its qinah meter. Finally he writes, By failure to take seriously the canonical shape of the book, the actual historical response to the destruction by those who treasured Lamentations as scripture has been overlooked. “The book expresses with pathetic tenderness the prophet’s grief for the desolation of the city and Temple of Jerusalem, the captivity of the people, the miseries of famine, the cessation of public worship, and the other calamities with which his countrymen had been visited for their sins. The Book of Lamentations is a reflection by the Prophet Jeremiah on the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 586 BC, with the subsequent Babylonian Exile. A lament for the destruction of Jerusalem, the temple and the people (2:1-17). "The Alphabetic Acrostic in the Book of Lamentations", Book of Lamentations with Hebrew/English and MP3 chanting of the entire book in Hebrew, New American Bible Revised Edition (NABRE), https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Book_of_Lamentations&oldid=996485188, Articles with unsourced statements from October 2014, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, Translations maintaining acrostic structure, Translations maintaining metrical rhythm (qinah), Translations maintaining both acrostics and qinah, This page was last edited on 26 December 2020, at 21:57. These ; even fewer attempt to capture this the name implies that the author was the. 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