Today in our journey along Route 66 we come to the book of Lamentations. In Hebrew the book is called “ekhah”, which translates into English as “alas”, which is also the first word of the text of Lamentations. This book commemorates the destruction of the First Temple in 586 BCE.
Author
Internal evidence does not ascribe this book to any author. However, ancient Jewish and Christian tradition ascribes the authorship of this book to Jeremiah. This is based partly on such texts as 2 Chronicles 35:25 which refers to Jeremiah composing laments. There are also references to lament in the book of Jeremiah (7:29; 8:21; 9:1,10,20). The traditional attribution to Jeremiah is also based on the similarity of vocabulary and style between the books of Jeremiah and Lamentations. And finally, since Jeremiah was a witness to the destruction of Jerusalem, it seems reasonable to conclude that he might be the author of the book that so vividly describes that event.
However, modern scholars do not accept the idea that Jeremiah was the author of this book. The reason for this is: (1) there is no internal claim to authorship in the book of Lamentations. And (2) the references to Jeremiah and lament in 2 Chronicles and the book of Jeremiah do not refer to Jeremiah writing laments for the city of Jerusalem. Therefore, modern scholars ascribe each chapter of Lamentations to a different anonymous author, whose identity, they say, is impossible to ascertain.
Date
The earliest possible date for the book is 586 BCE when Jerusalem was completely overrun by the Babylonians and the Temple was destroyed. The latest possible date would seem to be 516 BCE when the rebuilt Jerusalem temple was re-dedicated. The graphic immediacy of Lamentations would seem to argue for an earlier date. Even modern scholars agree that the poems in this book must have been written in the timeframe between 586 and 516 BCE.
Themes
The entire book of Lamentations is poetic. The five chapters of this book each contain a lament. Each lament is made up of 22 verses, except for the third lament, which has 66 verses, or 3 times 22. There are 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet. The first four laments are alphabetic acrostics. The first three laments are equal in length. The fourth is shorter and the fifth is shorter still. The formal structure of these laments indicates that, however passionate they are, they were composed with studious care.
There are many laments in the Psalms, but Lamentations is the only biblical book composed solely of laments. As a series of laments on the destruction of Jerusalem, this book stands within a tradition of ancient extra-biblical laments for other cities: Ur, Sumer, and Nippur. Orthodox Jews traditionally read Lamentations aloud on the ninth day of Ab, which usually falls in July or August. This is the traditional date assumed for the destruction of Solomon’s temple in 586 BCE, as well as the traditional date for the destruction of Herod’s temple in AD 70. This Jewish holy day is marked by public mourning and fasting. As part of the rite of mourning, the reader of Lamentations and the congregation sit on the floor or low benches for the recitation of the book during the evening and morning services. Other, later poems of lament are customarily added afterwards. Many Jews also read Lamentations each week at the Western or Wailing Wall, the only remaining foundation wall of the Temple in Jerusalem. This book has become the eternal lament for all Jewish catastrophes, past, present, and future. In traditional Roman Catholic liturgy this book is read during the last three days of Holy Week.
All the poems in Lamentations ascribe to the basic biblical theology that the destruction of Jerusalem is God’s punishment for Judah’s sins. Intriguingly, the Babylonians are never mentioned by name in the book. This book shows us that the proper response in the wake of judgment is sincere, heartfelt contrition. (See Lamentations 3:40-42.) The book begins with lament (1:1-2) and ends with repentance (5:21-22). In between, the book reaches its apex as it focuses on the goodness of God amidst judgment. Our God is the Lord of hope (3:21, 24-25), of love (3:22), of faithfulness (3:23), and of salvation (3:26).
Structure
A. Jerusalem’s Misery and Desolation (1)
B. The Lord’s Anger against his People (2)
C. Judah’s Complaint—and Basis for Consolation (3)
D. The Contrast between Zion’s Past and Present (4)
E. Judah’s Appeal for God’s Forgiveness (5)
Key Concept—God’s Faithfulness
The verses from Lamentations that I wish to focus on this morning appear in almost the exact center of the book. Listen for God’s word to you from Lamentations 3, beginning with verse 19…
I remember my affliction and my wandering,
the bitterness and the gall.
20 I well remember them,
and my soul is downcast within me.
21 Yet this I call to mind
and therefore I have hope:
22 Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.
23 They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
Allow me to set these verses in context. It is as if, in the first two and a half poems that make up the book of Lamentations, we have gone down, down, down, until we hit rock bottom in chapter 3, verse 19. Then in verse 20, with the word “yet” we begin the turn back upward. “Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope.”
This is so instructive for all of us, whether we are Jewish or not. Though most of us have never experienced the complete destruction of our homeland, all of us who are old enough have experienced something that has caused us to lament. Maybe we have not expressed that lament as articulately, as beautifully, as the poet or poets who have written this book. But I think, perhaps, we have all lamented something in our lives.
And what is lament? The word in Hebrew pretty much means the same as it does in English. To lament is to mourn or to grieve. But we all know that it is possible to mourn or grieve without ever saying anything. The beautiful thing about the Bible is that we have these examples of lament taking the form of these beautiful, albeit poignant, poems. The grief, the mourning, the lament is expressed. And it is that very process of expression that helps us to get through a time of grief. We speak of getting something off our chest. Grief is a great weight. And one way we get it off our chest is by expressing that grief through words.
One of C. S. Lewis’s bestselling books is entitled A Grief Observed. The book consists of Lewis’s journal entries written after the loss of his wife. In the book he says, “Grief is like a long valley, a winding valley where any bend may reveal a totally new landscape.” Lewis wrote the book as a sort of safety-valve to keep himself from being driven mad with grief after the death of his wife from cancer. In another place Lewis refers to ink being like a drug. Writing helped him to cope.
I think that is true for many people. Writing down our thoughts, or at least expressing them in conversation with a trusted friend, helps us to cope with grief.
But I do believe that we need, in our society today, to learn how to lament once again. Most of us, I think, tend to want to move quickly past any expression of grief or sorrow. We are afraid that if we give into it, we may never come out of it. While that is a danger, there is also the opposite danger—the danger of burying our grief. When we fail to express our lament, we repress it, and that grief can rear its ugly head later in life in a much less healthy fashion, perhaps in the form of uncontrollable anger, or deep depression, or crippling anxiety. How much better it is to express our grief as the psalmists do and as the poets do who have written these poems in the book of Lamentations.
Another one of my favorite books on grief is called, A Severe Mercy by Sheldon Vanauken. Van, as he was known to friends, also lost his wife when she was young to a mysterious illness. In his book he talks about purposely facing his grief right from the beginning. Part of that grief process for him also involved keeping a journal.
I believe that the expression of grief is precisely what keeps one from remaining stuck in it forever. That is part of what we see going on in Lamentations. As I said a few moments ago, the grief that the poets feel at the destruction of Jerusalem, which no doubt involved the death of many loved ones, this grief is expressed in all its stark and painful reality in the first two and a half poems, and then there is this turn, this change.
Suddenly, amidst his or her grief, the author of this poem calls to mind a reason for hope. And what is it that gives this ancient Jew hope? It is the fact of the Lord’s great love. “Because of the Lord’s great love, we are not consumed.”
The Hebrew word for “love” that is used here by the poet is a beautiful one we have encountered before. It is the word “hesed” which is sometimes translated as “lovingkindness” or “grace” or “favor” or “goodness”. The word is actually in the plural form here. And so it might best be translated here as “mercies”.
I love the fact that Vanauken’s book is entitled A Severe Mercy. Over time he found the death of his wife to be just that. He discovered God’s mercy amidst his grief.
“Hesed” is the word for God’s covenant love. It is because of God’s covenant love that his people are not consumed. Yes, there is punishment—the destruction of Jerusalem. Yes, that punishment is severe because over and again God’s people failed to listen and obey despite the repeated warnings of God’s prophets. But God’s people are not consumed. God mixes mercy with judgment.
There is a second beautiful word here and it is the word translated as “compassion”. God’s compassions are also plural not singular, just like his mercies. His compassions never fail. In fact, his compassions are renewed every morning.
These verses form what became a morning prayer for many Jews. To this day, many Jews, and Christians for that matter, begin the day by reciting these verses from memory and thus remembering that God’s compassions, his mercies, start all over again at the beginning of each new day. In these verses is the thought that as we come before the Lord in humble confession of our sin, we can start every day with a clean slate.
But getting back to the issue of grief. Isn’t it a striking thing when one sees a person of faith, whether Jewish or Christian, suddenly amidst their grief, find and express a reason for hope?
I once witnessed a striking example of this I think I have mentioned to you before. There was a family that I got to know well during my years in seminary. They were part of a church that I served during those years, the same church where I met Becky. This family had three children. And we got to know them so well, that after Becky and I moved from Pennsylvania to North Carolina, the two older children came to visit us. They were in their early teens at the time.
Fast forward a few years. Becky and I were living in California. I was on a business trip back to the east coast. And one night I received the message that this family’s eldest son, Brent, had been killed in a car accident. I dropped everything I was doing and headed to Pennsylvania for the service.
I can only imagine what it would be like to lose one’s teenage son, especially in such a sudden fashion. Deep mourning only begins to describe my friends’ experience in the loss of their son and their brother. It is the kind of event in life that, in a way, one never gets over.
Despite Brent dying in an automobile accident, the family decided to have an open casket for viewing before the service began. And then, just as the service began, the worship team played some music, gently closed the casket, and then the congregation started to sing this little chorus…
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases,
His mercies never come to an end.
They are new every morning,
New every morning.
Great is thy faithfulness O Lord.
Great is thy faithfulness.
I was stunned. What a choice for the beginning of such a service! I could only conclude that the family had chosen to sing that little chorus purposely at the beginning of the most difficult worship service of their lives. What an amazing expression of faith! And what a transition the closing of that casket and the singing of that song represented!
In a way, such an expression of faith is all the more wonderful when it comes on the heal of lament. When it comes on the heal of such a tremendous experience of grief, one knows what it must have cost the grieving ones to express such faith.
As Christian psychologist Lewis Smedes once said,
You and I were created for joy, and if we miss it, we miss the reason for our existence. But if our joy is honest joy, it must somehow be congruous with human tragedy. This is the test of joy’s integrity. It must be compatible with pain. Only the heart that hurts has a right to joy.
And I would add to that this statement: Only joy is compatible with grief. Happiness isn’t. Happiness is dependent upon happenings. Happiness is what we experience when things are going well. Happiness is not compatible with death, with loss, with grief. But joy is. Why? Because joy is the gift of God through the Holy Spirit. We can experience joy no matter our circumstances because joy is not dependent upon circumstances. Joy is dependent rather upon God and our relationship with him.
This is why Paul is able to say, “Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope.” (1 Thessalonians 4:13) Basically, Paul says, Christians grieve, but not like everyone else.
How is the grief of a Christian different? Paul goes on to explain in 1 Thessalonians 4:14, “For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.”
The resurrection changes everything. Because Jesus is risen, we have the hope, not only of seeing him again one day, but of seeing all our loved ones who have died in him.
This hope goes way beyond the hope of the author of Lamentations. His or her grief did indeed turn to hope. But the hope of the ancient Jews was simply that the exile would not last forever. Their hope was that one day they would return to their land and to their holy city and rebuild their temple. Our hope is so much greater because we serve a risen Savior. And it is a hope he calls on us to share with the whole world.
Indeed, we can say to God, along with the author of Lamentations, “Great is your faithfulness.” But that statement means so much more to us as followers of Jesus.
The Hebrew word for faithfulness is “Emunah”. It means “firmness”, “steadfastness”, “fidelity”. And what is it that God is faithful to? For us as human beings there is no person higher than God to whom we can be faithful. And our faithfulness to him should transcend our faithfulness to human beings, however important they may be in our lives.
But to whom can it be said that God is faithful? There is no higher person, no higher law, to which God can be faithful other than himself. Perhaps that is one reason why Hebrews 10:23 says, “Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful.” God is faithful to his promises. He is faithful to his own word and his own character.
And what is central to God’s character? Deuteronomy 7:9 says, “Know therefore that the Lord your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commandments.” Faithfulness and love are central to God’s character.
Now, if such great promises as the one contained in Deuteronomy 7:9 were made to Israel in ancient times, why am I saying today that the hope of the Christian is greater? I say it because of what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 1:20, “For no matter how many promises God has made, they are ‘Yes’ in Christ. And so, through him the ‘Amen’ is spoken by us to the glory of God.”
We learn from Scripture repeatedly that God is faithful to his promises. “Great is his faithfulness” is an understatement if he is faithful to a thousand generations. But every one of God’s promises can be accessed, can be claimed, by the one who comes to God through Jesus. For in Jesus, all the promises of God are “Yes!” Not “no”. Not “maybe”. But “yes!”
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