GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
LAMENTATIONS 1:13-14
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13 “From on high he sent fire into my bones
and he overpowered me.
He spread a net for my feet. He turned me back.
He has left me stunned and faint all the day long.
One of the likeliest names for the authorship of Lamentations is the prophet Jeremiah. One point is that Jeremiah wrote many “laments” for King Josiah (2 Chronicles 35:25; Jeremiah 48:36), Another is the use of “sword, famine and plague” in both books (Jeremiah 14:12; 21:7 and many others, and also Lamentations 4:19). Yet another is the repetition of certain ideas common to both books. Here we have the phrase “fire in my bones,” which Jeremiah also talks about in Jeremiah 20:9, “His word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones.” Only Jeremiah and Lamentations use this turn of phrase– although this might merely show that these words were in use at the time of the exile.
The city continues to describe the first cross of the exile and the stunned emptiness of the tragedy. But the words fit the Great Cross of Christ even more. The prayer of Christ in the Garden (“fire in my bones”), the arrest by the Roman soldiers led by the treacherous Judas (“he overpowered me; he spread a net for my feet”). Then there was the passive obedience of our Savior as he let himself be led back into the city for trial (“He turned me back”). The long duration of the illegal trial of Christ lasted all night and into the next morning, after which he was tortured, whipped, beaten up, treated with contempt, and made to carry his own cross until his apparently collapsed so that another man was forced to carry it behind him at the end of the journey out of the city (Mark 15:21).
This verse mostly shows our motive for bearing the third cross, the cross of our own troubles, brought on because we have faith in Christ. We endure what the world throws at us as we live in a world corrupted and fallen into sin. But this is our time of grace. This is the hour God has given to us to come to faith, to grow in faith, and to share our faith before he calls us home. If the attacks of the world and the devil leave us stunned and faint, they are only trying to imitate what the Lord himself has done. But he had laid crosses on us to test us, to strengthen us, and to toughen us up. The devil and world and such enemies have it wrong. They give us troubles out of spite. God gives us troubles out of love. Let us fall rather into the hands of the Lord (2 Samuel 24:14).
14 “The yoke of my transgressions is laid on my neck.
My sins are bound together by God’s hand. They are up to my neck.
He caused my strength to fail.
The Lord gave me into the hands of those whom I cannot withstand.
The beginning of this verse contains a word (nisqad, נִשְׂקַד) that is unique in the Bible, and its meaning is not perfectly clear. I have tried to keep the sense of the verse with “laid on my neck,” although the word could mean “bound” as well. Other translations assume that there has been a confusion of the letters and have “watchful” or something similar (see also Jeremiah 1:12 and the EHV footnote there).
Once again, the first cross is clear enough here, but the Second Cross, the cross of Jesus, is even more clear. It is not the yoke of my Savior’s transgressions, but of mine. My sins are those bound together by God’s hand, but bound to the hands of Jesus. What should be up to my neck was up to his neck. The Jews of Judah said, “He caused my strength to fail,” but in truth, I look at my Savior on that Friday morning and early afternoon, and I confess: I caused his strength to fail. And he himself looked around at everyone there, every Jew, every Gentile, every priest and Levite, and every soldier and passer-by, and he said: “The Lord gave me into the hands of those whom I cannot withstand.” His obedience to death, even death on the cross (Philippians 2:8), was for our sakes.
Here the words of the law, of the chastisement and punishment of the Jews of Judah for their sinfulness, are so easily transferred to Christ, that we see just how the suffering of Christ removed our sufferings. We deserved everything that was laid upon him. So there, in the streets of the city and on the hill just outside the city, we see in his blood, his silent acceptance of what was laid on him, his sweat, and in his tears for the city’s people (Matthew 23:37-39), there is the atonement for our sin. There is the punishment that brought us peace (Isaiah 53:5).
Professor Gerhard teaches: “Wherever eternal life and salvation are stated as effects of the Gospel, then it is certain that here the word “Gospel” means the preaching of grace, since righteousness and salvation do not come to us from the Law but from the Gospel, in the proper sense of the word; not from works but from faith; not as a result of merit but from the free gift of God. ‘The Gospel is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith’ (Romans 1:16)” (On the Gospel §7).
We live in increasingly pagan times. There is no love in the world for the church of God. We find ourselves in the hands of those we cannot withstand, but Christ is over all. He is our Lord. He is our Savior. And he will give us everlasting peace.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
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Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota
God’s Word for You – Lamentations 1:13-14 the punishment that brought us peace