LAMENTATIONS---WEEPING AND WAILING

INTRODUCTION

1.    This book was written by Jeremiah after the third siege and fall of Jerusalem.

2.    The book consists of five poems indicated by the chapters.

A.   In each poem, except the last, there are references to the sad ruined condition of the city, followed by a justification of God in dealing so sternly and drastically with His people, and a reference to passers by.

B.   Each poem ends with a prayer to God with the exception of the fourth.

3.    In the Hebrew Bible, each lament is arranged in acrostic form. “The Hebrew alphabet contains twenty-two letters. Each chapter in Lamentations also contains twenty-two verses, and each verse begins with one of the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet in order, except chapter three, which has sixty-six verses, three commencing with ‘A’, three with ‘B’, and so on.” It is thought that this acrostic method was adopted as an aid to memory.

4.    Jewish patriots chanted this book every Friday night at the wailing wall in Jerusalem, and it is read in every Jewish synagogue on the fast of the ninth day of August, the day set apart to mourn over the five great calamities which have befallen the nation.

5.    “This pathetic little five-fold poem, the Lamentations, has been called ‘an elegy written in a graveyard’. It is a memorial dirge written on the destruction and humiliation of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 586 B.C. It is a cloudburst of grief, river of tears, a sea of sobs.” --Baxter

MESSAGES OF THE BOOK

1.    God suffers with those whom He chastises.

2.    The misery that sin brings

3.    Sin grieves the heart of God.

4.    Sin blinds men to their best interests.

5.    Sin destroys nations as well as individuals.

KEY VERSES: 1:12; 2:17; 3:22,33

JEREMIAH’S COMPASSION

“On the face of the Hill of Calvary, the green hill without the city wall where our dear Lord was crucified, is a dark recess known as ‘Jeremiah’s Grotto’. This is held to be the place where the prophet sat and gazed at the ruined city, and composed this wail of a broken heart. If this is so, how suggestive it is to find that the mourning patriot’s tears for the woes of the city should have been shed so near the spot where the rejected Savior should suffer for the sins of that city, and indeed of the whole world. Instead of exaltation over the fulfillment of his prophecies he mourned and wept.” --Lee

OUTLINE 

  I.    JERUSALEM’S PLIGHT (1) 

A.   The prophet bewails it (vs. 1-11) 

B.   The city bemoans it (vs. 12-22) 

 II.    JEHOVAH’S ANGER (2) 

A.   The anger described (vs. 1-12) 

B.   The city exhorted (vs. 13-22) 

III.   JEREMIAH’S GRIEF (3)

A.   Affliction, yet hope (vs. 1-39)

B.   Pleas: national and personal (vs. 40-66)

IV.   JEHOVAH’S ANGER (4)

A.   Contrasts and why (vs. 1-11)

B.   Onlookers: kings, Edom (vs. 12-22)

V.   JERUSALEM’S PRAYER (5)

A. Plea: Zion is stricken (vs. 1-18)

B. Plea: Jehovah can restore (vs. 19-22)