THE BOOK OF LAMENTATIONS
Theological Bites
We now turn to the second question of the Lamentations after the destruction of Judah. We have emphasized that unlike the usual mourning and lamentations whose focus is always on the loss and pain, the communal lamentations in the book lament God and his relationship with his people. The people are concerned with their God, where he is and who he is in the lens of what has happened. What the Israelites experienced motivated an unlikely conclusion that God is both the problem and the solution at the same time. The language of God is both the problem and the solution at the same time is not distinct to a lamenting situation but cuts through the prophets as well.
Isaiah in 45:7 mentioned it when he said: “I form light and create darkness, I make weal and create woe, I am the LORD, who do all these things.” It is no accident, therefore, that we read from Daniel 1:2 that: “And the Lord gave Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand, with some of the vessels of the house of God; and he brought them to the land of Shinar, to the house of his god, and placed the vessels in the treasury of his god.” How then do we reconcile this theological paradox presented to us in the Bible? The book of Lamentations asks:
WHO IS GOD?
In the book of Lamentations, whatever evil happens to the nation, is a product of God’s wrath and anger (Lamentations 2:1-9). God, therefore, is the violent destroyer, and the Babylonians (enemy states) are his mere instruments and Nebuchadnezzar (the pagan uncircumcised) is Yahweh’s servant (Jeremiah 27:6, 43:10, Isaiah 44:28, 45:1). The sufferers in the book do not attribute their loss to any other force but the anger/wrath of God.
In Lamentations 1:2, God is also described as acting without mercy. God is the actor in all their predicaments. And this time around it is not a retribution principle at work where the sinners get what they deserve and saints enjoy the blessings. The issue here is that the God of the covenant is destroying his own covenant people. Between verses 1 and 6, the anger and wrath of God are referenced six times in different terminologies like ‘God’s indignant anger’, ‘fierce’ and ‘merciless’.
The image of God, therefore, in the book is about Yahweh as the destroyer (1:6-8, 3:1-18) of his own people as well as an angry God. The answer to the question (who is God) therefore is that God is wrathful.
The Wrath of God
The book of Lamentations presents a wrathful God and wrath is not just an attribute of God but who God is. Wrath is not a prescription of God (who God is because of what God does) but a definition of God (who God is). The anger of God demonstrated in the destruction of Judah is way beyond God being angry about what the nation has done to something else. It is like a parent burning the whole house down just because one of the children disobeyed him. The angry acts of God against his own elect demonstrated not the divine emotional outburst but an exhibition of who God is.
The Old Testament is known for having an obedience-based rewarding and a punitory God. This, however, is not who God is but what he does. In the book of Lamentations, we are faced with a new development about this God. Wrath is who God is. Many of us today expect the wrathful God on the last and judgment day and our vision of such is like that described in Isaiah 13:4, 6, 9 that says, “The LORD Almighty is mustering an army for war. . . . Wail, for the day of the LORD is near; it will come like destruction from the Almighty. . . . See, the day of the LORD is coming—a cruel day, with wrath and fierce anger—to make the land desolate and destroy the sinners within it”.
The intentional attention on God in the book of Lamentations and the luxury of the absent-mindedness on the predicament is very communicative. What happened to the nation reviewed who God was and the attention shifted from their pain to who God was. The God they believed to always be with them exhibited an absence within the promised permanent presence. For Israel to lament the absence of God (Psalm 22:1) resonates with the son of God’s cry on the cross: my God! My God! Why have you forsaken me? (Matthew 27:46). The darkness at the cross (Matthew 27:45) symbolized the absence of the ever-present God and so was this very darkness present in the time of Judah’s destruction.
What has become of our God, what is that that we did this tie that God is acting the way he is? These were the questions aroused by the demonstration of the wrath of God. The Jews know how God punishes sinning but to their dismay, he is doing something far greater than just punishing sinners. What Yahweh is doing is a fresh self-introduction to those who have always assumed knowledge of who he is. The Lord revealed his wrathful side of being and at the same time not withdrawing his steadfast love and mercy nature. It is this wrath of God that the book of Lamentations grapples with.
God bless you I invoke TRUTH, WISDOM, and FAITH (2Tim 2:7)
Priest TIM WHITE (+256-775 822833 for further inquiries)
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