The document explores the themes of lamentation in the biblical Book of Lamentations, particularly focusing on God being perceived as an enemy during Israel's destruction. It reflects on the societal moral confusion around evil, emphasizing God's role in judgment and the resulting suffering of His people. The text highlights the importance of lamenting suffering and finding solace in God amidst pain.

1. “When God Feels
Like An Enemy”
~ Lamentations 2 ~

2. A Sacred Sorrow
Studies in
the book of
Lamentations
~ The Season of Lent 2017 ~
Finding Your Voice When
Life Doesn’t Make Sense

4. The events of September
11 hit America and the
West at a time when
intellectual and moral
responses to evil are
weaker, more contro-
versial, and more
confused than they have
been for centuries.

5. Put simply, we no longer
have a shared under-
standing about whether
there is any such thing
as evil. Some even
question whether it is
proper to speak of
anyone as our enemy.

7. “When God Feels
Like An Enemy”
~ Lamentations 2 ~

8. Nicknames of Israel
Zion
Judah or Jacob
The Daughter of Zion
Jerusalem
The Daughter of Jerusalem
The Daughter of Judah

9. 1
…how the Poet describes God
as the one who is responsible
2
….the downward direction of his
words describing the fall of the city
Be on the lookout for...
3 ….who is described as the enemy

10. The…first verses pound our ears with a
relentless salvo of twenty-eight verbs
portraying destruction on a blockbuster scale,
and every one has God as the subject.
~ Christopher Wright,
The Message of Lamentations
“

11. “And it came to pass after Israel had
gone into captivity, and Jerusalem
was laid waste, that Jeremiah sat
weeping and composed this lament
over Jerusalem….”
Introduction to the Septuagint
(the Greek Translation of the OT in 2BC)

12. 01 How the Lord in his anger has set
the daughter of Zion under a cloud!
He has cast down from heaven to earth
the splendour of Israel;
he has not remembered his footstool
in the day of his anger.
Lamentations 2

13. 02 The Lord has swallowed up without
mercy all the inhabitants of Jacob;
in his wrath he has broken down the
strongholds of the daughter of Judah;
he has brought down to the ground in
dishonour the kingdom and its rulers.
Lamentations 2

14. 03 He has cut down in fierce anger
all the might of Israel;
he has withdrawn from them his right
hand in the face of the enemy;
he has burned like a flaming fire in Jacob,
consuming all around.
Lamentations 2

15. 04 He has bent his bow like an enemy,
with his right hand set like a foe;
and he has killed all who were delightful
in our eyes in the tent of the daughter
of Zion;
he has poured out his fury like fire.
Lamentations 2

16. 05 The Lord has become like an enemy;
he has swallowed up Israel;
he has swallowed up all its palaces;
he has laid in ruins its strongholds,
and he has multiplied in the daughter of
Judah mourning and lamentation.
Lamentations 2

17. 06 He has laid waste his booth like a garden,
laid in ruins his meeting place;
the Lord has made Zion forget
festival and Sabbath,
and in his fierce indignation
has spurned king and priest.
Lamentations 2

18. 07 The Lord has scorned his altar,
disowned his sanctuary;
he has delivered into the hand of the
enemy the walls of her palaces;
they raised a clamour in the house of the
Lord as on the day of festival.
Lamentations 2

19. 08 The Lord determined to lay in ruins
the wall of the daughter of Zion;
he stretched out the measuring line;
he did not restrain his hand
from destroying;
he caused rampart and wall to lament;
they languished together.
Lamentations 2

20. 09 Her gates have sunk into the ground;
he has ruined and broken her bars;
her king and princes are among the
nations;
the law is no more, and her prophets find
no vision from the Lord.
Lamentations 2

21. 10 The elders of the daughter of Zion
sit on the ground in silence;
they have thrown dust on their heads
and put on sackcloth;
the young women of Jerusalem
have bowed their heads to the ground.
Lamentations 2

22. “The Lord has become like an enemy….”
~ Lamentations 2:5
The Report

24. “Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep
my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among
all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me
a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”
~ Exodus 19:5-6

25. “Then he took the Book of the Covenant and read it in the hearing of
the people. And they said, ‘All that the Lord has spoken we will do,
and we will be obedient.’ And Moses took the blood and threw it on
the people and said, ‘Behold the blood of the covenant that the Lord
has made with you in accordance with all these words.’”
~ Exodus 24:7-8

26. You shall keep my statutes
and my rules and do none
of these abominations….,
lest the land vomit you out
when you make it unclean,
as it vomited out the nation
that was before you.
~ Leviticus 18:26-28

27. “Therefore, Jeremiah, go and warn all Judah
and Jerusalem. Say to them, ‘This is what the
Lord says: I am planning disaster for you
instead of good. So turn from your evil ways,
each of you, and do what is right.’”
But the people replied, “Don’t waste your
breath. We will continue to live as we want to,
stubbornly following our own evil desires.”
~ Jeremiah 18:11-12 (NLT)

28. God’s Dilemma

29. “But how patient should God be?
The day of reckoning must
come, not because God is eager
to pull the trigger, but because
every day of patience in a world
of violence means more violence
and every postponement of
vindication means letting insult
accompany injury…. …God’s
patience is costly, not simply for
God, but for the innocent.”

30. For forty years [Jeremiah] had
painted in advance and in
detail the very scenes
described in this chapter (to
his own weeping agony in
doing so) — for the purpose of
urging Judah to take a different
path and avoid such a fate.
The point is: Lamentations 2
need not have happened.

31. Israel had declared war on God.
Her high crimes against humanity
were an act of cosmic treason
against God.

32. “…we were God’s
enemies.”
~ The Apostle Paul
in Romans 5:10

33. “The slightest sin is an
act of defiance against
cosmic authority. It is a
revolutionary act, a
rebellious act where we
are setting ourselves in
opposition to the One
to whom we owe
everything.”

34. …the city that had forsaken God
was now utterly God-forsaken.
~ Christopher Wright
The Message of Lamentations
“

35. 11 My eyes are spent with weeping;
my stomach churns;
my bile is poured out to the ground
because of the destruction of the
daughter of my people,
because infants and babies faint
in the streets of the city.
Lamentations 2

36. 12 They cry to their mothers,
“Where is bread and wine?”
as they faint like a wounded man
in the streets of the city,
as their life is poured out
on their mothers' bosom.
Lamentations 2

37. “My eyes are spent with weeping…”
~ Lamentations 2:11
The Grief

38. Jeremiah on the ruins of Jerusalem
by Horace Vernet (1844)
“My joy is gone; grief is upon me;
my heart is sick within me….
Since my people are crushed, I
am crushed; I mourn, and horror
grips me…. O that my head were
a spring of water and my eyes a
fountain of tears! I would weep
day and night for the slain of my
people… They go from one sin to
another; they do not acknow-
ledge me,’ declared the Lord.”
~ Jeremiah 8:21; 9:1, 3

39. 11 My eyes are spent with weeping;
my stomach churns;
my bile is poured out to the ground
because of the destruction of the
daughter of my people,
because infants and babies faint
in the streets of the city.
Lamentations 2

40. 13 What can I say for you, to what compare
you, O daughter of Jerusalem?
What can I liken to you,
that I may comfort you,
O virgin daughter of Zion?
For your ruin is vast as the sea;
who can heal you?
Lamentations 2

41. “Your ruin is as vast as the sea;
who can heal you…?”
~ Lamentations 2:13
The Diagnosis

42. 14 Your prophets have seen for you
false and deceptive visions;
they have not exposed your iniquity
to restore your fortunes,
but have seen for you oracles
that are false and misleading.
Lamentations 2

43. 15 All who pass along the way
clap their hands at you;
they hiss and wag their heads
at the daughter of Jerusalem:
“Is this the city that was called
the perfection of beauty,
the joy of all the earth?”
Lamentations 2

44. 16 All your enemies rail against you;
they hiss, they gnash their teeth,
they cry: “We have swallowed her!
Ah, this is the day we longed for;
now we have it; we see it!”
Lamentations 2

45. 17 The Lord has done what he purposed;
he has carried out his word,
which he commanded long ago;
he has thrown down without pity;
he has made the enemy rejoice over you
and exalted the might of your foes.
Lamentations 2

46. “…if my people who are called by my
name humble themselves, and pray and
seek my face and turn from their wicked
ways, then I will hear from heaven and
will forgive their sin and heal their land”
~ 2 Chronicles 7:14

47. 18 Their heart cried to the Lord.
O wall of the daughter of Zion,
let tears stream down like a torrent
day and night!
Give yourself no rest,
your eyes no respite!
Lamentations 2

48. 19 Arise, cry out in the night,
at the beginning of the night watches!
Pour out your heart like water
before the presence of the Lord!
Lift your hands to him
for the lives of your children,
who faint for hunger
at the head of every street.
Lamentations 2

49. 20 Look, O Lord, and see!
With whom have you dealt thus?
Should women eat the fruit of their womb,
the children of their tender care?
Should priest and prophet be killed
in the sanctuary of the Lord?
Lamentations 2

50. 21 In the dust of the streets
lie the young and the old;
my young women and my young men
have fallen by the sword;
you have killed them in the day of your
anger,
slaughtering without pity.
Lamentations 2

51. 22 You summoned as if to a festival day
my terrors on every side,
and on the day of the anger of the Lord
no one escaped or survived;
those whom I held and raised
my enemy destroyed.
Lamentations 2

52. “…my enemy has destroyed….”
~ Lamentations 2:22
The Sentiment

53. It is a standard part of the genre of lament
to cry out to God: ‘God, this suffering is
intolerable! This evil is an atrocious, violent
offence against your whole created order!
Why do you allow it? Why do you inflict it?’
“~ Christopher Wright, The Message of Lamentations

54. God has broad enough shoulders to cry on
and a big enough chest to beat against.
God even provides words in his Scriptures
to permit us, indeed to encourage us, to do so.
~ Christopher Wright, The Message of Lamentations
“

55. How do we process this?

57. “I could never myself believe in God if it were not
for the cross. In the real world of pain, how could
one worship a God who was immune to it. I turn to
that lonely, twisted figure on the cross, nails
through his hands and feet, back lacerated, limbs
wrenched, brow bleeding from thorn-pricks, mouth
dry and intolerably thirsty, plunged into God
forsaken darkness. That is the God for me. He set
aside his immunity to pain. He entered our world of
flesh and blood, tears and death.”
~ John Stott

58. “The God on whom
we rely knows what
suffering is all about,
not merely in the
way God knows
everything, but by
experience.”

60. “For I know the plans I have for you, declares
the Lord, plans for wholeness and not for evil,
to give you a future and a hope. Then you will
call upon me and come and pray to me, and I
will hear you. You will seek me and find me
when you seek me me with all your heart. I will
be found by you, declares the Lord.”
~ Jeremiah 29:11-14

62. Image Credit: Hoach Le Dinh
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Image Credit
other images used for educational purpose
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremiah
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