Lamentations 5:1 - Meaning and Application

God’s people pour out their hearts to him in trouble. When suffering feels too heavy to carry, they bring their complaint to God and tell him their distress. Here they are not speaking of possible trouble, but of trouble they already feel. “Remember what has come upon us,” they say, and they ask God to see how great their shame is (Lamentations 5:1; Nehemiah 9:32).

This is a comfort in itself, because God sees, considers, and remembers everything that has happened to us. In prayer, we only need to place our case before his kind and compassionate attention. The one word that gathers up all their suffering is “reproach,” or shame. Their losses were worse to them because they had once enjoyed honor, abundance, and God’s special favor. Since their disgrace also reflected on God’s name, they feel it deeply, and they ask, “What will you do for your great name?”

They also confess the shame of sin, especially the sins of their fathers and of their earlier days as a nation. “Our fathers have sinned and are no more,” they say, “and we have borne their iniquities.” This is not a bitter complaint against God, as if he were unfair. It is a humble confession that their ancestors sinned, and they themselves kept walking in those same sins, so they now suffer justly.

God’s judgments were so severe that they clearly showed he had taken their ancestors’ sins into account as well as their own. In that way, God was shown to be right both in delaying punishment and in bringing it later (Matthew 23:35-36). So they submit to God’s justice: “Lord, you are right in all that has come on us.” They also appeal to his mercy: though their fathers sinned and are gone, they are the ones left to carry the burden. If we are sorry for our sins and patient under trouble, even trouble tied to our fathers’ sins, we may expect God to pity us and return in mercy.

They then describe the shame of their present misery in several ways. The land God had given them has been taken by strangers. Canaan was their inheritance by promise, but now others live in their houses and hold their land, and that is their disgrace (Lamentations 5:2; Psalm 136:21-22). For God’s true people, this cannot happen to the heavenly Canaan, the lasting inheritance that can never be taken away.

They are also like widows and orphans, helpless and unprotected. “We have become fatherless,” they say, meaning they have no one to care for them. Their king, who should have protected them like a father, is gone, and their cities are like widows, left empty and vulnerable (Lamentations 5:3). They who once stood in honor are now treated with contempt.

Even basic necessities have become hard to get. Water, once common and easy to have, now costs them money, and wood for fire must be bought too (Lamentations 5:4). Their oppressors squeeze them so tightly that they cannot even get water or fuel without paying for it. In earlier times, they had plenty; now they are reduced to poverty and hardship, and they are being punished in the same kind of misery they once brought on others by their sin.

Bread is just as hard to find. Some of them have had to sell themselves to the Egyptians and Assyrians, making the best bargain they could so they could have food to eat (Lamentations 5:6). They were willing to take the lowest work and submit to harsh terms simply to survive. The nations around them, who once traded for Judah’s grain, now hold them down, and they are forced to seek help from those same peoples.

Others risked their lives to get food for themselves and their families (Lamentations 5:9). Because the siege had cut off supplies, they either slipped out or forced their way out of the city to bring back something to eat. In doing so, they ran the risk of falling into the hands of the enemy and being killed by the sword that ranged through the open country, the “sword of the wilderness,” or more literally, the sword of the plain.

This should move us to thank God for the plenty we enjoy. We get our bread so easily, hardly even with the sweat of our faces, and certainly not with danger to our lives. We should also thank him for peace, because we can go out and enjoy the produce and pleasures of the countryside without fear of the sword.

Their shame also lay in this, that they, once a free people and even masters over others, were now brought into slavery (Lamentations 5:5). Their necks were under a heavy and painful yoke of oppression, the iron yoke Jeremiah said would be placed on them (Jeremiah 28:14). They were treated like animals in harness, made to do all their masters demanded.

What made the slavery worse was that their labor never stopped. Like Israel in Egypt, they were given tasks every day, and even more than they could bear. They labored and found no rest, neither time nor permission to rest. An ox is unyoked at night and rests, and the law also gave rest on the Sabbath. But the poor captives in Babylon, forced to work for their living, had no night rest and no Sabbath rest. They were worn out by endless toil.

Their masters were also unbearable (Lamentations 5:8). Servants ruled over them, and nothing is more irritating than a servant who gets power (Proverbs 30:22). It was not only the great men of the Chaldeans who commanded them, but even the lowest servants abused them, mocked them, and made them obey at every turn. The curse on Canaan had now come on Judah, “A servant of servants shall he be.” They would not listen to God or to his prophets, whose rule was mild and good, so now they were rightly ruled harshly by their enemies and even by their servants.

They also saw no hope of relief from their misery. There was no one to deliver them from these hands, no one to rescue them from captivity, and no one to restrain the insolence of the servants who mistreated them. Their masters should have stopped it, since the servants were taking authority into their own hands, but it seems the masters allowed it, even encouraged it. As though they were too noble to be corrected by common hands, they were handed over to footmen to be kicked around by them. No wonder they prayed, “Lord, consider and see our shame.”

Those who had once been well fed were now starving (Lamentations 5:10). Their skin was black like an oven, dry and scorched because of the terrible famine, the storms of famine, as the Hebrew expression suggests. Famine comes slowly, but once it comes, it presses hard and sweeps everything away. It brings its own shame too, which is why Scripture speaks of the disgrace of famine they suffered among the nations (Ezekiel 36:30).

Every class of people was abused, even those who should have been safest in person and honor. The women were raped, even the women in Zion, on that holy mountain (Lamentations 5:11). Such filthy sins were very fittingly and sorrowfully complained of. The great men were not only killed, but put to shameful deaths. Princes were hanged, as if they had been slaves, by the hands of the Chaldeans (Lamentations 5:12), who seemed to take pride in doing this savage work themselves. Some think the princes’ bodies were hung up after they had been killed with the sword, as Saul’s sons had been, to disgrace them further and, as it were, to make up for the nation’s guilt.

No respect was shown to rulers and elders. The faces of the elders, both older men and men in office, were not honored. This will be remembered against the Chaldeans another day, as Isaiah says, “You laid a very heavy yoke on the aged” (Isaiah 47:6). Neither the weakness of youth nor the dignity of age was spared (Lamentations 5:13). The young men were forced to grind at the handmills, and perhaps even at the mill of a horse. Some say they carried the grain; others say they carried the millstones. They were loaded like beasts of burden, and their backs were broken while they were still young. Even little children were made to carry wood for fuel, with such heavy loads that they fell under them. These cruel taskmasters were truly inhuman.

All joy had been ended, and their gladness was gone (Lamentations 5:14). The young men, who are usually full of energy and music, had stopped playing and hung their harps on the willow trees. It is fitting for old men to stop singing, and for music to be set aside when age and weakness come. But it is a clear sign of great misery when even the young are made to stop their music.

This was true of the whole people as well (Lamentations 5:15). The joy of their heart had ceased. They had not known true joy since the enemy rushed in like a flood. One wave had piled on another until they were overwhelmed. Their dancing had turned to mourning, and where they once leaped for joy, they now bowed down in sorrow. This may especially point to the joy of their holy feasts and the dancing used in them (Judges 21:21). What had once been a sacred joy was now replaced by doubled grief, as they remembered their former happiness.

An end was also put to all their glory. Their public justice was their glory, but that was gone, because the elders had ceased from the gate (Lamentations 5:14). The flow of justice, once like a river, had been stopped. The courts that had once been held with honor were shut down, because the judges had been killed or taken away captive.

Their royal honor was gone too. The crown had fallen from their head, not only because the king himself had been brought low, but because the royal line seemed broken and the crown had no successor. The royal treasures and symbols were lost. Earthly crowns are fading things, always ready to fall. But blessed be God, there is a crown of glory that never fades and never falls, and a kingdom that cannot be shaken.

In response to this complaint, and looking back over all the complaints before it, they make a repentant confession: “Woe to us, because we have sinned!” “Alas for us! Our condition is miserable, and it is our own fault. We are ruined, and what makes it worse is that we have ruined ourselves by our own hands. God is right, because we have sinned.”

The lesson is plain: all our troubles come from our own sin and foolish choices. If the crown has fallen from our head, meaning if we have lost our honor and become low, we should blame ourselves. By our own wrongdoing, we have dishonored our crown and thrown our glory into the dust.