Bible in a Year Series - Day #238 - This post is part of a year-long series where we are reading chronologically through the Bible. Click here to learn more. You are most welcome to join along at any time.
Today's text from the ESV Study Bible: Lamentations 3:37-5:22.
Imagine a conquering nation attacking the United States, throwing us into poverty, starvation, and ultimately slavery.
Take a few minutes and understand the pain that would come to you, your family, and how your life would never again be the same.
The unfathomable emotion that would befall you is what is written in the book of Lamentations as the writer witnessed the seige, fall, and exile of Jerusalem.
There was starvation, disease, people were eating their children from hunger, corpses lie everywhere in the city, there was no place to dispose of the human waste, and then all of Jerusalem is slain save 4,600 deported to Babylon.
Not a pretty site.
The other significant thing to understand is that the Jews understood that this was done at the hand of God. If America were to suffer the same fate, I suspect our post-modern thinking would simply think this evil was done at the hand of some despot.
For the Jew, and the understanding student of the Bible, this abhorrent destruction at the hand of God is....well..unthinkable and unbearable.
Unending tears that strike at the very core of your being. This is the book of Lamentations.
Today, the Jews still remember this horrific day, and the day of destruction to their second temple, in a summer remembrance called TISHA B'AV (9th day of the fifth month).
To the post-modern mind, human suffering is brought by fate. Even a large number of Christians will cry to God, "why, why did you allow this to happen".
What the Bible and the book of Lamentations teaches us is that God ordains all suffering, and is not merely an impotent bystander who shares our grief.
Only with the understanding of this fact can you begin to understand the grief contained in the book of Lamentations.
Here is a great background piece I found on the book of Lamentations. I highly recommend that you take 15 minutes to give it a read.
Tomorrow we move to the book of Ezekiel. See you then.
