Lamentations 1:1 - Meaning and Application

Anyone who has any tenderness for those who suffer would almost weep while reading these verses. The sorrow here is so deep and moving. Jeremiah shows us the misery of Jerusalem, and he shows it as something very heavy and made worse by many pains.

First, he speaks about the city’s public life. A city that had been full of people is now empty, as if no one lived there. The words sound like wonder, as if someone asked, “How could this ever happen?” They also sound like grief, like the cries in Revelation 18:10, Revelation 18:16, and Revelation 18:19, “Alas, alas.” Jerusalem once held its own people and also visitors from other nations, so it was busy with trade and talk. Now her own people are taken away, and strangers do not come to honor her.

The city’s main places are no longer crowded as they once were, when wisdom cried out there (Proverbs 1:20, Proverbs 1:21). They are rightly left empty, because people did not listen when wisdom called. Those whom God greatly increases can be greatly reduced in a short time. Jerusalem has become like a widow. Her king, who should have been like a husband to her, is gone, and her God has withdrawn and given her the bill of divorce. She is left without her children, lonely and sorrowful. No family and no nation should feel safe and say, “I sit as a queen, and I will never be a widow” (Isaiah 47:8, Revelation 18:7).

A city that once ruled others is now ruled by them. Jerusalem had been great among the nations. Some loved her, and others feared her. Some brought gifts, and others paid her taxes. She was truly like a princess among the provinces, and even the princes asked for her favor. Now everything is reversed. She has lost her friends, and she has lost her freedom too. She pays tribute first to Egypt and then to Babylon. Sin brings people not only into loneliness, but into slavery.

A city that once was full of joy has become full of grief. Jerusalem had been a joyful city, where the tribes went up to rejoice before the Lord. She had been called the joy of the whole earth. Now she weeps bitterly. Her laughter has turned into mourning, and her appointed feasts are gone. She weeps in the night, like those who mourn in secret, when no one is watching. At night, when others sleep, her sorrow weighs on her most heavily. Jeremiah had warned her before, but she did not listen. Now her head is like water and her eyes like fountains of tears, so that she weeps day and night (Jeremiah 9:1). Her tears run down her cheeks again and again. Fresh sorrow keeps drawing fresh tears. There is nothing more common in this world than the tears of the oppressed, with the clouds returning after the rain (Ecclesiastes 4:1).

Those who were once set apart from the nations now live among the nations. Those who were a special people are now scattered among many peoples (Lamentations 1:3). Judah has gone into captivity, out of her own land and into the land of her enemies. There she stays, among people who are strangers to God and to his covenant promises. She finds no rest there, no peace of mind, and no settled home. She is moved about by the will of proud conquerors. Her children have also gone into captivity before the enemy (Lamentations 1:5). The young who should have carried the nation forward have been taken away, so the ruined land is likely to stay ruined for lack of heirs. Those who live among their own people, in freedom and in their own land, would thank God more if they thought about the suffering of those carried into foreign lands.

Those who once conquered in war are now themselves conquered and mocked. Her persecutors found every advantage against her (Lamentations 1:3). Her people fell into the enemy’s hand because there was no way to escape (Lamentations 1:7). They were surrounded on every side, and every road they tried brought them into trouble. When they tried their best to flee, they still were overtaken and overcome. Her enemies are in control everywhere, and they prosper wherever they turn (Lamentations 1:5). Sin puts people into such traps. If we let the chief enemy, sin, rule over us, then other enemies will justly be allowed to rule us too.

Those who once had honor and dignity are now despised (Lamentations 1:8). Everyone who honored Jerusalem before now looks down on her. Those who wanted friendship with her now care nothing for it. Those who once admired her in times of success now treat her lightly in her distress, because they have seen her nakedness, meaning her shame and weakness. Since the enemy has prevailed, people see how weak she is. Since God’s judgments have fallen on her, they also see how wicked she has been, and her sins now come out into the open. Her enemies boast over her (Lamentations 1:9), trample her, and insult her. In their eyes she has become low and contemptible, like the tail of the nations, though she had once been the head. Sin is a shame to any people.

Those who lived in a fruitful land are now close to death, and many have died from lack of food (Lamentations 1:11). All her people sigh in hopelessness. They are weak and ready to faint. They look for bread, but cannot find it. At last things came to such a state that there was no bread for the people of the land (Jeremiah 52:6), and even in captivity they struggled to get bread (Lamentations 5:6). They have given up their precious things, their jewels, pictures, and the things they once enjoyed in their homes, selling them for food for themselves and their families. They traded these things for something to keep them alive, to make the soul come back when they were near collapse. Their only wish was for food.

All that a person has, he will give for his life, and for bread, which is the support of life. Those who have plenty of pleasant things should not be proud of them or grow attached to them, because a time may come when they will be glad to give them up for what is simply necessary. And those who have enough food to keep them alive should be content with that and thankful for it, even if they do not have pleasant things.

We also see here the misery of Jerusalem in her religious life, and the ruin of what was most sacred. That loss was much more worthy of grief than the loss of her civil and outward blessings. Her religious feasts were no longer kept or attended, and the ways leading to Zion looked deserted and sad. The roads that once were busy with people going to the temple now lay empty, with grass and weeds growing in them. It had once been a pleasure to see people moving continually along the highway to God’s house, but now no one came to the solemn feasts. A full end had been put to them by the destruction of the city of their appointed gatherings (Isaiah 33:20). Since those feasts had already been neglected and defiled (Isaiah 1:11-12), it was just that they should now come to an end.

When the ways of Zion mourn like this, all the people of Zion cannot help mourning with them. It is deeply painful to godly people to see religious meetings broken up, scattered, or blocked to those who gladly would attend. The gates of Zion, where faithful worshipers used to gather, are also desolate, because no one meets there anymore. There was a time when the Lord loved the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob, but now he has left them. Since he has withdrawn in judgment, they fare as the temple did when Christ said, “Your house is left to you desolate” (Matthew 23:38).

Their religious workers were also no longer able to carry out their usual service, and they were crushed in spirit. Her priests sigh over the ruin of the temple. Their songs have turned into groans. They sigh because they have nothing to do, and because there is nothing to gain. They also sigh, like the people in (Lam. 1:11), because they have no bread, since the offerings to the Lord, which supported them, had failed. It is a sad sign when even the priests, the Lord’s ministers, are sighing. Her young women, who once helped give beauty to the feasts with music and dancing, are now afflicted and full of grief. Scripture had noticed their joyful service in Zion’s good days (Psalm 68:25), and it now notices the loss of that joy. When her young women are afflicted, Zion herself is bitter, for all her people are sorrowful over the end of the solemn assembly, and its disgrace weighs on them heavily (Zephaniah 3:18).

Their holy places were also defiled. The nations came into her sanctuary, even into the temple itself, where no Israelite was allowed to enter, except the priests. Anyone else who came near to worship there was to be put to death. Now the heathen entered roughly, not to worship, but to plunder. God had commanded that the heathen should not enter the congregation or be joined to his people (Deuteronomy 23:3), yet now they went into the sanctuary without restraint. Nothing grieves those who truly care for God’s glory more than seeing God’s law broken and sacred things treated with contempt. What the enemy did wickedly in the sanctuary is also mourned over in (Psalm 74:3-4).

Their holy objects, and all the rich things that decorated and adorned the temple and were used in worship, became prey to the enemy. The adversary stretched out his hand over all her precious things and seized them all for himself. We can see what these precious things were from (Isaiah 64:11), where the burning of the temple is linked with the cry, “All our pleasant things are laid waste.” The ark, the altar, and every other sign of God’s presence among them were their richest treasures, and these were now broken and carried off. So all the beauty of the daughter of Zion was gone (Lam. 1:6). The beauty of holiness was her true beauty. When the temple, that holy and beautiful house, was destroyed, her beauty disappeared. That was the breaking of the staff of beauty, the taking away of the pledges and seals of the covenant (Zechariah 11:10).

Their holy days were also mocked. The enemies saw her and laughed at her sabbaths. They mocked the Jews for setting apart one day in seven as a rest from ordinary work. A pagan poet, Juvenal, even ridiculed them for losing a seventh part of their time. Yet if the sabbath is kept as it should be, it brings better value than all the other days of the week together. The Jews said they observed it in obedience to their God and for his honor, but their enemies mocked, “What do you gain from it now? What profit do you get from keeping the ordinances of your God, when he has now left you in your trouble?” It is a great grief to all who love God to hear his ordinances mocked, especially his sabbaths. Zion calls them her sabbaths, because the sabbath was made for people. They are God’s appointments, but they are also her gifts and privileges. So all the sons of Zion feel the shame of the contempt thrown on the sabbaths, and they take it to heart. They will not value sabbaths, or any other divine ordinance, any less because they are mocked.

What made all these troubles even worse was that her present state was the opposite of what it had once been. In the days of her misery, when everything looked dark and broken, she remembered all her pleasant things from earlier days. Then she knew their worth better than when she enjoyed them freely. God often teaches us the value of his gifts by taking them away. Hard times are hardest for those who have fallen from great prosperity into misery. This pierced David deeply when he was kept away from God’s worship, because he could remember the days when he went with the crowd to the house of God (Psalm 42:4).

The sins of Jerusalem are then shown as the cause that brought all these troubles on her. Whatever instruments were used, God is the author of these judgments. It was the Lord who afflicted her (Lam. 1:5), and he did so as a righteous Judge, because she had sinned. Her sins were countless. If her troubles were many, her sins were many more.

It is because of the many sins of Jerusalem that the Lord has brought this suffering on her (Jeremiah 30:14). When a people’s sins pile up, we cannot say, as Job did about himself, that their wounds come without a cause (Job 9:17). Her sins were especially bad in kind, not just in number. Jerusalem sinned deeply, and the word used here means she sinned willfully and deliberately. Her worst sin was idolatry, the very thing the Lord hates, and that made her guilt all the greater because she had such clear light and privilege.

Her sin was serious, and so her fall was shocking. Great sins bring great ruin. There are some sinners for whom punishment is strange and striking, and their sin can be read plainly in their suffering (Job 31:3). Judah had gone into captivity because of oppression and hard labor. The rich had crushed the poor and forced them into harsh service, and they had even oppressed their Hebrew servants, as Jeremiah says (Jeremiah 34:11). Oppression was one of their crying sins, and it cried out for judgment (Jeremiah 6:6-7). They had also made themselves filthy, so now others despise them. Their shame is seen like dirt on their clothes, as if they rolled in the mud of sin. No one can stain our honor unless we stain it ourselves.

They had also lived carelessly, and so they were suddenly overwhelmed. Jerusalem did not remember her last end, meaning she ignored the warning to think about where her sinful path would lead. She would not consider how her choices would end, so she came down in a shocking way. God made her fall in a way that would force her to feel what she refused to fear. In this, we see that God can make punishment match the sin.

Jerusalem’s friends are also blamed for their false and weak support. They all dealt treacherously with her, so they became like enemies. Her deceivers caused as much pain as her destroyers. A support that breaks under us can hurt as much as the hand that strikes us (Ezekiel 29:6-7). Her princes, who should have defended her, lacked courage to face the enemy, even for their own safety. They are like deer that flee at the first alarm, and like starving deer that have no strength left before the hunter. Her neighbors were no true neighbors, because no one came to help her. Worse still, she had no comforter, no one to share her grief or ease her pain. They were like Job’s friends, who saw her misery but could not help, and in that state they were miserable comforters.

Jerusalem’s God is then called on to look on all of this with pity. “Lord, see my affliction,” she says, “and take notice of it.” Again she cries, “Lord, look and consider, and deal with it.” The only way to find peace under our burdens is to lay them first before God, and leave it with him to do as seems good to him.