Lamentations

Purpose & theme

Lamentations is a book of tears — five carefully crafted poems mourning the destruction of Jerusalem by Babylon in 586 BC. Composed amid the smoking ruins of the city and temple, it gives voice to overwhelming grief: the desolation of the once-great city, the horrors of the siege, the shame and suffering of God’s people. It does not look away from the catastrophe or offer cheap comfort; it weeps honestly, and it confesses, without excuse, that the calamity is the just judgment of a holy God on the nation’s persistent sin. Lamentations thus teaches God’s people how to grieve — to bring their sorrow, and their confession, openly before the LORD.

Yet at the very center of the book, in the middle of its middle poem, hope breaks through like sunrise. Amid the deepest darkness the poet remembers: “The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness” (3:22-23). Even in ruin and under judgment, God’s covenant love has not failed, and so the sufferer can wait quietly for His salvation. Lamentations holds together the justice and the mercy of God, the reality of judgment and the certainty of hope, and it ends on its knees, pleading, “Restore us to yourself, O LORD.”