Lamentations 1:12 - Meaning and Application

The complaints here are, in substance, the same as those earlier in the chapter. But here the prophet, speaking for the grieving church, says more clearly that God’s hand is behind these disasters, and that his hand is right to do so.

First, the church in distress magnifies her suffering, but not beyond what it deserves. She calls on everyone watching: “Look and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow” (Lamentations 1:12). That may well have been true of Jerusalem’s grief, but we often say the same thing too strongly when we suffer. Because we feel our own burden most sharply, we are quick to think no pain has ever been like ours.

Second, she looks beyond the human agents to the one who rules over everything, and she admits that all these troubles were directed and arranged by him: “It is the Lord who has afflicted me, because he is angry with me. This is the day of his fierce anger” (Lamentations 1:12). Suffering is far heavier when we see it as coming from God’s wrath, and the church feels that deeply here.

She is like a person in a fever, and God has sent the fire. “He has sent fire into my bones” (Lamentations 1:13), a burning heat that consumes strength and dries life away, like the pain described in (Psalm 102:3). She is also like someone caught in a net that tightens with every struggle, and that net has been spread by God. The enemies could not have succeeded unless God had allowed it.

She is like someone in a wilderness, blocked, alone, and worn out. “He has turned me back, so that I cannot go on. He has made me desolate, faint all day long” (Lamentations 1:13). She is also like a person under a yoke, not a yoke for work, but a yoke of punishment, tied tightly on her neck and heels together (Lamentations 1:14). “The yoke of my transgressions is bound by his hand.” We are never caught in a yoke except one shaped by our own sins. The sinner is held by the cords of his own sin (Proverbs 5:22). Christ’s yoke is easy (Matthew 11:30), but the yoke of our own sin is heavy.

God is said to bind this yoke when he charges us with guilt and brings the troubles our sins deserve. When conscience, acting for him, binds us over to his judgment, then the yoke is fastened by justice. Only God’s pardoning mercy can loosen it.

She is also like someone thrown into the dirt. He has knocked down all her strong men, left them unable to stand, and handed them over to be trampled by proud enemies (Lamentations 1:15). She is like someone in a winepress, crushed like grapes under God’s wrath, with her blood pressed out like wine. It is God who has done this to the virgin daughter of Judah.

She is in the hands of her enemies, but it is the Lord who has given her over (Lamentations 1:14). “He has made my strength fail,” so she cannot resist them, and not even rise up from where she has fallen. Then he has handed her over to them. He has also summoned an assembly against her to crush her young men, a force too great to oppose (Lamentations 1:15). Again, “The Lord has commanded that Jacob’s adversaries should be all around him” (Lamentations 1:17). He who often commanded rescue for Jacob (Psalm 44:4) now commands attack against Jacob, because Jacob has broken the commands of God’s law.

Third, she rightly asks for pity from those who pass by. “Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by?” (Lamentations 1:12). Can you look at me without feeling anything? Are your hearts like stone and your eyes like marble, that you cannot give me one compassionate thought, one look, one tear? Is it nothing to you that your neighbor’s house is on fire? There are people to whom Zion’s ruin means nothing. They are not grieved over Joseph’s affliction. How earnestly she pleads for compassion: “Hear, I pray you, all peoples, and see my sorrow” (Lamentations 1:18). This is like Job’s plea, “Have pity on me, have pity on me, my friends” (Job 19:21). Suffering feels lighter when friends share it with us and weep with us. Their sympathy shows that we are not being treated with contempt, and that matters almost as much as the pain itself.

Fourth, she defends the depth of her grief, even though it is very strong. “For these things I weep” (Lamentations 1:16). “My eye, my eye runs down with water” (Lamentations 1:16). She weeps at night, when no one sees (Lamentations 1:2). This world is a valley of tears for God’s people, and Zion’s children are often Zion’s mourners. She stretches out her hands (Lamentations 1:17), an act here more like surrender than request. It is as if she has given up all hope.

Why is she so broken? First, her God has withdrawn from her. Micah, who had only idols made of gold, cried out when they were stolen, “What have I left?” The church grieves deeply for the same reason: “The comforter who should refresh my soul is far from me.” God is the true Comforter. He used to comfort her, and only he can bring real comfort. It is his word that speaks comfort, and his Spirit that makes it real in us. His consolations are strong enough to restore the soul, but now he has gone away in anger and seems far off. It is no surprise that believers faint when the only One who can truly help them keeps his distance.

Second, her children are gone, and they cannot help her. She weeps for them like Rachel wept for her children, because they are no more, and so she refuses to be comforted. Her children are desolate because the enemy has won against them. None of her sons can take her by the hand (Isaiah 51:18). They cannot help themselves, so how could they help her? Her young women and young men, the ones who were once her joy and hope, have gone into captivity (Lamentations 1:18).

It is said of the Chaldeans, that they showed no pity to young men or maidens, and no mercy to beauty or youth (2 Chronicles 36:17). Her friends failed her. Some would not help, and others could not. She stretched out her hands, begging for relief, but there was no one to comfort her (Lamentations 1:17). There was no one who could help, and no one who cared enough to try. She called on her lovers, and to win their aid she called them her lovers, but they deceived her (Lamentations 1:19). They were like a brook in summer to a thirsty traveler, which Job speaks of (Job 6:15).

This is what often happens to people who set their hearts on creatures and build their hopes on them. They are commonly left disappointed. Her idols were her lovers. Egypt and Assyria had been her trusted allies, but they failed her too. Those who courted her in her success became distant and strange to her in her trouble. Happy are those who make God their friend and keep themselves in his love, for he will never deceive them.

Those whose duty it was to guide her could do nothing for her. The priests and the elders, who should have stood at the front of public life, died of hunger (Lamentations 1:19). They gave up the ghost, or were close to dying, while looking for food. The famine was severe indeed when there was no bread even for the wise, and priests and elders were starving. They should have been her comforters, but how could they comfort others when they themselves had no comfort? “They have heard that I sigh, which should have called them to help me, but there is no one to comfort me. Lover and friend you have put far from me.”

Her enemies were stronger than she was, and they mocked her after defeating her (Lamentations 1:16). Outside, the sword killed everyone in its path, and at home the besiegers cut off all food, so that there was death, meaning famine, which is as dreadful as the plague, or even worse, the sword outside and terror inside (Deuteronomy 32:25). The enemies who carried out this misery were cruel, and so were the bystanders, especially the Edomites and Ammonites, who hated Israel. They heard of her trouble and were glad that it had happened, and glad that God had done it (Lamentations 1:21). They rejoiced in her suffering itself, and they were pleased to see God and his people divided. So they treated Jerusalem like a woman in her monthly uncleanness, someone they feared to touch and kept away from (Lamentations 1:17).

With all this, it is no wonder that her sighs are many, as she grieves over what has already happened, and that her heart is faint (Lamentations 1:22), as she fears what may still come. Yet she also justifies God in all that has come upon her, admitting that her sins deserved such severe discipline. The yoke pressing so heavily on her is the yoke of her transgressions (Lamentations 1:14). The chains that hold us are made by our own hands, and we are beaten with our own rod.

When the church had spoken as if she thought the Lord was severe, she rightly corrects herself, or at least explains herself, by saying, “The Lord is righteous” (Lamentations 1:18). He does us no wrong in dealing with us this way, and no one can fairly accuse him of injustice. However unrighteous people may be, we can be sure the Lord is righteous and shows his justice, even when they go against every law of theirs. Whatever troubles God sends us, we must confess that he is righteous in them. We do not understand him or ourselves if we do not say so (2 Chronicles 12:6).

She also admits the evil of her own actions: “I have rebelled against his commandments” (Lamentations 1:18), and again, “I have grievously rebelled” (Lamentations 1:20). We cannot speak too strongly against sin, and we must always speak most severely about our own sin. We should call it rebellion, and serious rebellion. To all true repentant hearts, even greater sins seem very serious. This hurt her more than the affliction itself. “My bowels are troubled,” she says. Her inward parts are stirred like a troubled sea, her heart is restless and overturned, because “I have grievously rebelled.” Sorrow for sin must be deep sorrow, and it must move the soul.

She then appeals both to God’s mercy and to his justice in her present condition. She appeals to his mercy for her own suffering, which made her a fitting object of his pity: “Behold, O Lord, for I am in distress” (Lamentations 1:20). In other words, “Look on my case, and deal with my relief as you please.” It is a comfort to know that the troubles weighing on our spirits are fully open before God’s eye.

She also appeals to God’s justice concerning the wrongs her enemies have done to her (Lamentations 1:21, 22). “You will bring the day you have called,” the day fixed in God’s plan and announced by the prophets, when her enemies, who now pursue her, will be made like her, and when the cup of trembling now given to her will be put into their hands. This may also be read as a prayer: “Let the appointed day come.” Then it continues, “Let their wickedness come before you. Let it be remembered and answered. Take vengeance on them for all the wrongs they have done to me” (Psalm 109:14, 15). It is a request that God would hasten the time when he will deal with them for their sins as he has dealt with her for hers.

This prayer is also a clear rejection of any thought of joining with them. It agrees with God’s own word about their coming ruin. Our prayers should match God’s word. We should ask for the day God has called, and no other. And though we must forgive our enemies and pray for them in love, we may still pray in faith for what God has spoken against his enemies and the enemies of his church, since they will not repent to give him glory.