GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
LAMENTATIONS 2:13-14
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13 What can I say about you,
what can I compare you to, O daughter of Jerusalem?
What can I hold up to you, that I may comfort you,
O virgin daughter of Zion?
For as big as the sea is your wreckage.
Who can heal you?
The prophet wants to compare the exiled people so that he can find some comforting words to say, but he struggles to find anything helpful. Nothing will be comforting.
There was a time when this chosen family from obscurity, the descendants of Abraham, the seed of Isaac, the twelve tribes of Jacob, were the darling people of God. He uses pet names for them, “daughter of Jerusalem,” and ”virgin daughter of Zion.” But after centuries of sinning and repenting, sinning and repenting, being chastised for sin and being called back to faith through the prophets, what had finally happened? Even the threat of an invader worse and more terrible than any that had come before did not bring them to their senses. There was no repentance.
What the prophet finally uses for his comparison is wreckage or a “shattering” that is as big as the sea. Imagine dropping an old heirloom piece of dinnerware that shatters so much that pieces go flying all over the house. This wreckage was even bigger.
When my dad was a boy, in the 1940s, he was at home on the farm one day and looked up to watch the freight train chugging along the eastern edge of the family fields. He heard a man in the engine (probably the engineer) shout out something like “Jump, Ralph!” but neither the engineer nor Ralph the fireman made it out in time. The engine exploded right then and there, killing both men and flinging pieces of iron hundreds of yards in every direction. For years, decades, they found rods, bolts, and other things from that explosion every time they plowed, harvested, or even just walked through those fields. Perhaps people are still finding fragments of the wreckage even today, eighty years later.
What wreckage is our prophet talking about? He isn’t really describing something to be found with archaeology. He’s talking about the dispersion of the people. How far away did people travel? From one side of the known world to the other, like a shattered dish leaving fragments all over the house. Who could possibly heal this scattered people? This is the prophet’s question. This is why the Lord commanded them: Go to Babylon, but don’t try to run away to Egypt or to other places. His plan was to bring them back from Babylon when the time was right.
But even then, they didn’t obey.
14 Your prophets have seen false and deceptive visions for you.
They have not exposed your iniquity
in order to restore your fortunes.
Instead, they have seen oracles for you
that are false and misleading.
There are many warnings about false prophets, false visions, and false prophecies in the Scriptures, especially in the prophetic books and in the Epistles. False prophets lead people away from Christ. Sometimes they do this for money “or selfish ambition” (Philippians 1:17-18), or simply to spite a true servant of God (Galatians 2:4). Sometimes they themselves cannot believe God’s true teaching and do everything that they can to rip people from the truth for the sake of their own false doctrine (1 Timothy 1:3; 6:3). Still others have been driven mad by Satan and serve the Antichrist, as John warns (1 John 4:1-3). One of the most hideous things they do is to let people keep sinning, not driving sinners to repentance. Our prophet says: “They have not exposed your iniquity in order to restore your fortunes.” Sin must be stripped bare and shown for what it is, which is wicked rebellion against God. This doctrine of theirs is described as “deceptive,” which is a word also meaning “to be tasteless,” like an egg without being cooked, or served without salt (Job 6:6, although a different word is used there). Their teachings that do no good and are worse than useless because they lead people astray.
In these verses, the first cross is clear and tragic: The people of Judah are scattered, flung everywhere like the pieces of a shattered pot. The problem that got them there was a tolerance of false prophets, prophets whose messages do not expose sin and grace, but which burden the people with foolish things God does not require and which do nothing for the good of anyone’s soul. Furthermore, our author’s grammar does not put the words of the false prophets only into the past tense. The danger remains.
From here we should be aware of the danger to ourselves, because false prophets will always be among us (Revelation 16:13; 2 Peter 2:1). We must compare what a prophet’s, preacher’s, or teacher’s message is over against the word of God– that is the true and only real comparison. Our Lutheran forefathers called the word of God the “Norma Normans,” which means the “Ruling Rule.” We can use such things as the ancient creeds and our Lutheran Confessions (such as the Catechism) as a sort of guide and shorthand, but truly we use those things only because they correctly explain the word of God. The word itself is the true, final, and ultimately the only rule to judge a message, a vision, a sermon, a commentary (such as the one you are reading or listening to now), or even a Christian song or hymn. We must be careful even with our music. Remember: A catchy tune is what the Piper of Hamelin played. The third cross is sometimes the burden we have of giving up on something that seems lovely but which leads people away from Christ.
These verses also reflect the second cross, the suffering and cross of Jesus our Lord. First, he mourned the scattering of the people that was on its way. “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem,” he said, “you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. Look, your house is left to you desolate” (Matthew 23:37-38). There in one statement, he touches both of these verses. First, the refusal of the people to be gathered to Christ which led to their city becoming desolate– it was their unwillingness and unbelief that brought the Babylonian captivity down on their heads and shackled their feet, one slave to another, as they shuffled away from the Promised Land back the way Abraham had come, to “the Chaldeans” of the Tigris and Euphrates (Genesis 11:31).
And more than this, by making the Jews remember that they themselves “killed the prophets and stoned those sent to them,” he showed them what brought on the false prophets and the false doctrine that set their feet on a path to destruction. Without a return to the Lord, they would never be on the one path to heaven. They would always think that they were correct, but they would always be lost. They would only have false hope, until they forgot what true hope really is. They would end up putting their trust in anything but Christ, and would finally worship the land, the soil, the very dust that Adam was made of, which is as terrible an idolatry as bowing down to any block of wood (Ezekiel 14:4). “I will set my face against that man,” God said, “and make him an example and a byword. I will cut him off from my people. Then you will know that I am the Lord” (Ezekiel 14:8).
It was for such sins, all sins, that Christ gave up his life. Some will reject this gift and throw it away. Do not throw it away. Thank him for it and treasure it; it is the greatest gift above life itself. For those who lead others to hell with their false teaching and unbelief are condemned so severely that “it would be better for them if they had not been born” (Matthew 26:24). Thank God for his good gifts, especially life, faith, and salvation through Jesus.
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 2:13-14 I have longed to gather