What Do we Do with Lamentations?
This morning our Bible reading plan took us to the book that, of all the books in the Bible, I think is the hardest to read: Lamentations. The obscured poetry can make it hard to understand, while the bitter images make it hard to even look at. You can be left thinking, “I don’t know why I read that, and I really didn’t enjoy it.”
Yet there is a point to all the difficulty. To make the next few days a little more profitable, here are a few tips for getting the most out of the readings.
Dwell on the Images, Even Though They Are Horrible
Lamentations tells the same story as the last chapter of Jeremiah, of the siege and fall of Jerusalem. For centuries, God had warned, “keep turning against me and disaster will come.” It finally did.
But instead of reciting the historical account, it sings laments. It removes the technical details of Jeremiah 52 and replaces them with gripping word pictures so that we see and feel the horror. In that way, it’s sort of a mirror opposite of The Star-Spangled Banner. We might hear one of them sing, “Oh say, for that banner no longer does wave.”
With that song, poetry, and imagery come feelings. And those feelings are much of the point. More than simply knowing the history, the Spirit is leading us to feel depths of that awful judgement on Jerusalem.
So, to get the point, we have to dwell on the pictures. They do their work as we imagine the city calling out for help in vain, the buildings in flames, God’s bow bending back, and all the rest. This doesn’t feel like the takeaway we’re used to in our Bible reading, but it’s a great means for the Spirit to work.
The broader story of Jerusalem’s fall into siege, exile, and destruction teaches that God’s judgement, though slow, does come. Lamentations teaches that, when that judgement comes, it’s awful.
That means something to a people who also read, “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens” (Heb 12:26; Hag 2:6). It’s hard to believe that judgment is being stored up for the whole earth, just as it was for Jerusalem. It’s even harder to feel the depths of it.
This, I think, is the main way Lamentations can help a modern Christian, by keeping us from emotionally detaching from the coming judgement. So read the images, let them do their painful work on your heart, and let that fuel you to earnestly and urgently plead with others to receive the Good News.
There is Poetic Beauty We Can’t See in English
Lamentations is also one of the most beautifully composed books in the Bible. But its most striking feature is completely lost in English. The first four of the book’s five songs are acrostics. That means the first verse starts with the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, the second verse with the second letter, and so on through the 22 Hebrew letters.
This made the songs visually striking in a way we can’t see in English. In the picture, notice how the right side of each line starts with the same letter three times before moving on to the next one. There’s a beauty to that. If it were, “A, A, A, B, B, B, C, C, C,” an elementary student would notice it right away.
We may not get to see the beauty, but we can get the point. Acrostics convey completeness. The more famous acrostic in the Bible is Psalm 119, which marvels at how completely perfect God’s word is. These songs lament how complete Jerusalem’s pain was. She was destroyed from A to Z.
Lamentations is a tough read. But like all Scripture, it is useful to the people of God (2 Tim 3:16–17). If we can sense the severity and completeness of Jerusalem’s sorrow, even weep over it, we can find help walking in holiness, repenting of sin, and calling others to the Gospel.