Use this guide to read through Lamentations.
Read the book through once or twice before using the rest of this sheet. What are your reactions? What feelings are being expressed? Are they justified? With which of the feelings in this book can you identify ? What is the dominant tone - hope, despair, anger, faith, repentance ... ? What is the resolution of this lament? ie is there an answer to it?
The historical context: 2 Kings 25.1-21; Jer 39.1-10; 52.1-27
Theological background: Exodus 34; Deut 28; Psalms 46; 48; 76; Isaiah 40
"It is somewhat startling to discover that a book that portrays such radical disorientation should be one of the most ordered works in the Old Testament." (Barry Webb Five Festal Garments p60).
Lamentations consists of five poems. Chapters 1,2, &4, are acrostic poems of 22 verses; each verse beginning with a successive letter of the Hebrew Alphabet (like Ps 119). Chapter 3 is an acrostic poem of 22 stanzas each of three lines beginning with the same letter (so making 66 verses). Chapter 5 has 22 verses but is not an acrostic.
So the book is unified by its structure. The structure points to chapters 3 and 5 as of some significance. Perhaps the final poem - a community lament - represents a resolution of some kind. The structure gives grief a shape. It allows full expression of grief but with limits and an end.
1.1-11 An onlookers observation
1.12-22 Jerusalem's personal view
2.1-17 It is the Lord who destroys Zion
2.18-19 So cry out to the Lord
2.20-22 Zion's cry
3.1-18 All hope is lost
3.19-39 Hope reborn
With 3.39 compare 3.1. 3.39 is a transition into a community exhortation and lament. As hope diminishes up to v54 so it is revived in the latter part of the poem.
4.1-20 The observer describes the suffering, siege and fall of the city and its inhabitants.
4.21-22 A curse on gloating Edom
The disaster lies in the past. Note the parallels to Poem 1.
5.1 Call to the Lord to listen
5.2-18 The plight of the city
5.19-22 The final appeal to the Lord for help
How does the book end? What kind of suffering has it described and what are the causes of this suffering? What do you make of the way God is addressed eg 2.20? What resolution is provided to the suffering? What hope does the book hold out?
How are the themes of this book taken up in the rest of the Bible, especially in the New Testament?
So what has this got to do with us? Does it shed any light on our salvation?
Barry Webb Five Festal Garments Apollos 2000. ISBN 0-85111-518-7
2 Kings 25.1-21
Lamentations consists of five poems. Chapters 1,2, &4, are acrostic poems of 22 verses; each verse beginning with a successive letter of the Hebrew Alphabet (like Ps 119). Chapter 3 is an acrostic poem of 22 stanzas each of three lines beginning with the same letter (so making 66 verses). Chapter 5 has 22 verses but is not an acrostic.
So the book is unified by its structure. The structure points to chapters 3 and 5 as of some significance. Perhaps the final poem - a community lament - represents a resolution of some kind. The structure gives grief a shape. It allows full expression of grief but with limits and an end.
A lament includes confession. 1.5,8,14,18,20; 2.14; 3.39-42; 4.13; 5.7,16
Notice how godly people call out to the Lord in the light of his previous revelation and interpret their suffering in accordance with what he has already said.
1.4,12-13; 2.20-21; 3.13-16; 3.49-51; 4.4-6; 4.9-10; 4.15; 5.2-6; 5.10-15
[No comfort: 1.2,9,16,17,21]
1.2,10,19; 4.22
1.5,8,14,18,20; 2.14; 3.39-42; 4.13; 5.7,16
1.5,12; 2.1-3; 2.6; 3.39;
[without pity 2.2,17,21; 3.43]
2.17; Deut 28.15,49-57; Jer 15; 1 Kings 9.6-9
1.17; 2.1,2,17; 3.21ff,34-36,38,57
Notice the clear an unambiguous interpretation of the suffering.
2.18; 3.41
1.9,11,20; 2.20; 3.59; 5.1
3.64
1.5,8; 2.14; 4.13;
1.14,20; 3.42; 5.7,16
3.40; 5.21
3.19-42; 3.55-58; 4.22; 5.19-22
3.25,26,29,37,38; 5.21
The heart of Lamentations is not just suffering and the wrath of God. The elect and loved people of God, under the wrath of God, appeal to God who is their only hope at the same time he is judging them. Lamentations is a book of hope and faith expressed in lament. It is a book of godly sorrow. But the answer to the cry is left in the air - that is in the hands of God. That is where all our questions about salvation, hope, suffering, help, and the future must be left.
2 Sam 7.11-16; Ps 46; 48; 76; 1 Kings 9.6-9;
Rev 21
Mk 15.29-32; Eph 2.3-7; Rom 3.19-26; 5.6-9; 1 Thess 1.10; 2 Thess 1.5-10; 1 Pet 2.23-25
Rom 9.1-8; 11.1-24; Eph 1.11-14
Rev 21.1 - 22.5
Luke 24.45-47; 1 John 1.8-9
John 6.37,39,40; 10.28; 1 Cor 10.6-13; 11.27-32; Heb 12.14-18,22,25-29; Rev 2.4-5,14-16,20-23; 3.3,15,16,19