Sermon - AudioLamentations 3:37-5 - Audio
Lamentations 3:37-5 - Reading
Daily Insights - Please Comment
37-39 - Israel should not be surprised by the outcome of their sin. Unrepentant sin can not go unpunished. However, even the punishment is used to lead us into repentance as the next verses will show the author calling people to.
40 - Q. Do we continually question and examine our ways (decisions, life direction, path)?
Thought - This examination is to be done within the community. Do you have people in your life to do this with you? To challenge you?
42-43 - Remember that this is how the author is feeling. It's not as if God didn't hand the people chance after chance.
55 - Like Jonah and Jeremiah, the speaker called out (ytarq) to the one who could deliver him. He confesses, “I called on your name,O LORD, from the depths of the pit.” The phrase “depths of the pit” (twytjt rwbm) is used elsewhere to designate the lowest part of pavement (Ezek 40:18–19) or of a building (1 Kgs 6:6; BDB, 1066). Renkema (450–51)
57-66 - This makes more sense as a future statement. The author knows God and remembers who God is. He knows God will remain faithful to His covenant and vindicate them once again.
Lamentations 4
Chap. 4 uses the exclamation to begin a comparison between the destruction of the temple and the dying of Jerusalem’s inhabitants.
1-2 - People who were gold/gems are now treated as worthless objects
3-4 - A nasty unclean animal is offered as a picture of something better than the state of God's people.
6 - It's worse than Sodom, because destruction brought on them was quick. This slow and agonizing punishment is much worse in the author's eyes.
12-16 - the blame is laid squarely at the feet of Judah’s leaders: its prophets and priests
17-20 - One of the groups to blame were the kings who tried to establish alliances with unholy nations for protection and prosperity. However, God wanted and has always desired that His people rely upon Him.
22 - The chapter ends with a thought of restoration.
Lamentations 5
*This will be a shorter chapter commentary, because I believe the ESVLB does an amazing job of discussing the story around what is happening in this chapter. It's a man who loves his city, his people, and his God. However, the three are in distress with one another:
"Unlike the other poems in Lamentations, the last lament is not an acrostic. Perhaps this is a sign that in his sorrow Jeremiah has lost some of his composure. Unable or unwilling to complete the formal literary composition he originally intended, he can only pour out his soul to God in prayer, interceding for restoration and renewal. The seeming disorder of the lament mirrors the distress of the poet’s own soul and the disaster that has befallen the city he loves. Here is a prayer of desperation—a cry for God’s mercy when every other source of help has failed. The writer appeals for God to remember his people and then soberly recounts all of the woes they have suffered: military occupation, bereavement, dehydration, starvation, poverty, slavery, rape, and every other imaginable humiliation(vv. 2–13). With poignant images of loss, he describes the lonely, empty, joyless city that is left behind (vv. 14–18). He again acknowledges that all of this suffering is fully deserved: “Woe to us, for we have sinned!” (v. 16). Yet Jeremiah hopes against hope that God will not forget his people forever. His lamentations end with an unresolved question that can be answered only in the full context of Scripture: Has God utterly rejected his people, or will he again show mercy?"
"He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?" -Micah 6:8-
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