Table of Contents
Lamentations
The book of Lamentations is a funeral song for a city. In 586 BC the armies of Babylon broke through the walls of Jerusalem, burned the temple Solomon had built, and carried the people away captive, just as God had warned for forty years through His prophet Jeremiah. The KJV titles the book “The Lamentations of Jeremiah,” and tradition has always heard the weeping prophet’s voice in it. Its five chapters are five poems of grief, four of them written as acrostics through the Hebrew alphabet, as if the mourner were determined to say everything, from A to Z.
This series reads Lamentations chapter by chapter, as the companion to this site’s study of Jeremiah: Jeremiah gives the warnings, and Lamentations shows what it cost when they were refused. It is the saddest book in the Bible, but not a hopeless one. At its very centre stands one of Scripture’s brightest confessions of faith: “It is of the LORD’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.”
List Of Articles
How Doth The City Sit Solitary
a city become as a widow, none to comfort her, the adversaries did mock at her sabbaths, is it nothing to you all ye that pass by, and the lord is righteous for i have rebelled
Lamentations 1The Lord Was As An Enemy
the lord hath abhorred his sanctuary, the law is no more, thy prophets have seen vain and foolish things, and pour out thine heart like water before the face of the lord
Lamentations 2His Compassions Fail Not
i am the man that hath seen affliction, this i recall to my mind therefore have i hope, new every morning great is thy faithfulness, let us search and try our ways, and thou drewest near
Lamentations 3How Is The Gold Become Dim
how is the most fine gold changed, the sins of her prophets and the iniquities of her priests, a nation that could not save us, and the punishment of thine iniquity is accomplished o daughter of zion
Lamentations 4Turn Thou Us Unto Thee
remember o lord what is come upon us, woe unto us that we have sinned, thou o lord remainest for ever, and turn thou us unto thee and we shall be turned, renew our days as of old
Lamentations 5