THE BOOK OF LAMENTATIONS
Theological Bites
In the previous introduction to the book Lamentations, we looked at the standard and impersonal wrath of God. We emphasised that divine-wrath is a standard emotion and permanent attitude of God towards sin and not sinners. It is a divine status opposed to evil as status as well. We investigated all this based on the question the Laments raised about the identity of God. He has exhibited himself not as a punisher of mistakes but as a fighter of something bigger than the crime they had committed.
While this was the flip-side of the coin of divine-identity the other side of the same coin presented Yahweh otherwise. Amidst all this expression of ultimate wrath to the ultimate problem (sin), he at the same time exhibited himself as a God of steadfast love and mercy. It is this we now turn to.
A Steadfast Loving and Merciful God
Paradoxically under the question of who this God is, is another portrayal in the book of Lamentations of this God as a God of steadfast love and Mercy (3:21-39). While we have in the book, an angry and destructive God, he is at the same time presented as one who is steadfast in love and mercy. Who then is this God? The answer is obvious, God is both a wrathful and loving God. He is wrathful to sin (principal) and in him, there is no provision for sin. God is opposed to sin to the extent that even when he became vicariously sin (2Corinthians 5:21) his wrathful nature towards what he had become was invoked, directed to himself (Isaiah 52:13-53:1-12; Mathew 27:46; Psalm 22:1) and self-destruction happened (John 10:18).
The steadfastness of God’s love and mercy can be best understood through two arrangements:
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Under the Old & New Covenant
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Outside the Covenant and
I will address the issue of the covenant in the coming introductions but for now, we restrict ourselves to the issue of God’s love and mercy mentioned in the lament of divine destruction (Lamentations 3:22,32). For the Jews to mention God’s steadfast love and mercy during God’s destructive work in their lament is first, to maintain a challenge to ‘who God is’ in relation to ‘what he is doing’ and secondly, to plead with God that one of his nature (Loving and merciful) saves them from his other natural attribute (wrath).
Again, we are faced with another identity side of the same God. He is loving and merciful. In both our anthropomorphic and anthropopathy mindset, love is an emotion determined by the existence of hatred and rejection and mercy is an alternative to brutality. However, throughout the Bible we are taught that Love is not something that God does but who he is (1John 4:8). Love like truth, way and life (John 14:6) is who God is not what God does. When God says ‘I love you’, it is not because he has been influenced and neither is he expressing an emotional feeling. God doesn’t love, he is love itself. He does not exercise his love on us, it is we who exercise our desires within his love (being).
When the Jews faced these destructive predicaments they still believed that Yahweh was one who is steadfast in love and mercy. This could be a contradiction in the identity of God if what God did was contrary to who he is, however, as we observed about the wrath of God, the love of God too, is a state, not an action. God is absolutely loving while his wrath is operational. In such a destructive God sided with the uncircumcised the Jews still saw his steadfast love and mercy.
It is important to understand that lamentations teach modern Christian sufferers to never assume that their suffering, loss and pain means a change in God’s being as love. God loves you equally the same when you are successful as when you are a failure. God loves the saints the same way he loves the worst sinners. The divine-love attitude is not an emotion that is motivated by our good performance or discouraged by our evil intentions and works, but a standard that is regardless. The problem is that we are accustomed to the love-worldview that argues that there must be something worth loving in the loved one before the lover can love. While this is true and fair to the lovers who are not ‘love itself’, it is not so with he (God) who is love itself. It is therefore absurd to feel Loved by God more or less for he never loves circumstantially.
Biblical Angles of Divine Love
In the book of Lamentations, the mourners talk of the faithful love of God (3:22, 32), and the Hebrew word for this love is ‘Chesed’ (transliteration). Our translations especially English and all those to whom English versions are the source translate ‘Chesed’ as ‘Mercy’. The Hebrew term is commonly translated as ‘mercy’, ‘Loving-kindness’ in many places especially in the prophets and wisdom writings (Psalm 36:10, Micah 6:8, Hosea 4:1; 6:6, 2Samuel 10:2), however, this is a poor translation.
To translate ‘Chesed’ as mercy is not to translate the word itself but rather the contextual meaning of the term. The word, ‘Chesed’ means ‘Love’, however, in context it means ‘Covenant-Love’. Old Testament understanding of divine love is appreciated in two angles: first is who God is as we saw earlier; God is Love and the Hebrew term is ‘Ahabah’. The thing to understand about the Biblical culture is that the Hebrews did not think of love as an idea or as an abstraction but rather as an activity. In the Jewish economy, however, an activity (events inclusive) did not attract nor matter as the actors.
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