GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
LAMENTATIONS 2:17-18
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17 The LORD has done what he planned,
he has carried out his threat, which he declared long ago.
He tore down and did not spare anyone.
He made the enemy rejoice over you,
and he raised up the horn of your foes.
Just what had the Lord planned? What was the threat he carried out, that he had declared so long ago? Everything in this verse falls under each of the three crosses.
Under the first cross, the cross of Judah in exile, the threat was declared through Moses: “If you do not listen to the voice of the LORD your God and do not carefully carry out all of his commandments and statutes that I am commanding you today, then all these curses will come upon you and over take you… The LORD will cause epidemics to cling to you until he has removed you from your land that you are going to possess” (Deuteronomy 28:14,21). The Lord ripped down their cities, ripped the people from their homes and tents, and sent them far away into exile. Moses also said: “The LORD will lead you and the king, whom you will set over you, to a nation that you and your fathers have not known, and there you will serve other gods of wood and stone. You will become an object of horror” (Deuteronomy 28:36-37). The exile to Babylon was hard on the people. They lost everything. But they brought it on themselves by first giving up the Lord their God. He “raised up the horn of their foes,” and this was partly the might of the Babylonian army, but it was also done in other ways after they arrived in captivity. “The alien who resides among you will ascend higher and higher over you, and you will descend lower and lower” (Deuteronomy 28:43). All of what they went through in their years of captivity was prophesied by Moses before they ever crossed over into the Promised Land, some eight hundred years before.
Under the second cross, we see the foreshadowing here of Jesus’ suffering as it was declared by God beforehand in the Garden of Eden (Satan would strike him, Genesis 3:16), in the harp strings of David (they have pierced by hands and my feet, Psalm 22:16), and in the prophecies of Isaiah (the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed, Isaiah 53:5).
Under the third cross, the cross of our own troubles and burdens, we see that the suffering of Jesus brought pain to his mother, his disciples, and to the women who looked after him, on account of what the Father “had decided beforehand should happen” to Jesus in his trial, as he was tormented by the soldiers and the leaders of the Jews, and in his death (Acts 4:28). And while God is not nor ever has been the author of sin or any kind of evil, mankind’s troubles came as a result of sin, and God had warned Adam and Eve about this ahead of time (Genesis 2:17). He uses these troubles in our lives to turn us back to the cross of Jesus and the promises he has made of forgiveness, being saved, and being brought to heaven.
18 Their hearts cried out to the Lord:
O Wall of the daughter of Zion,
let tears stream down like a torrent day and night!
Do not let yourself grow numb.
Do not give the pupils of your eyes any rest.
Who or what is this “Wall of the daughter of Zion”? Earlier in this chapter, the wall of Zion was made to lament the destruction of the city. However, this verse begins a prayer to the Lord that lasts to the end of the chapter. Therefore, we take “the Wall of the daughter of Zion” to be a name for the Lord God, who is the Wall of his people against all harm and danger. He protects his people from storms and hard weather, from attacks of animals and other fears, from natural disasters like fires, and from enemies, thieves and robbers.
It is the Lord God who is told to weep tears for his people like a torrent. Is is the Lord God who is asked not to let himself grow numb– for the numb no longer feel, and the people of the first cross, the exile, wanted the Lord to feel sorry for them and turn his face back to them. King Hezekiah had urged the people in a letter he wrote to all of Judah:
“If you return to the Lord, then your brothers and your children will be shown compassion by their captors and will come back to this land, for the Lord your God is gracious and compassionate. He will not turn his face away from you if you return to him” (2 Chronicles 30:9).
How shall we apply this prayer to the second and third crosses? Certainly we, like Judah in her exile, ask God to have mercy upon us. We confess our sins and ask for his compassion and forgiveness. Without his grace we cannot be delivered or saved.
Jesus wept for his friends. He wept at the grave of Lazarus shortly before the final week of his ministry (John 11:35). He wept for Jerusalem as he approached the city for the last time (Luke 19:41). He said, “For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side. They will tear you down to the ground, you and your children with you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not recognize the moment of your inspection” (Luke 19:43-44). And couldn’t Job’s words be applied to our Savior’s compassion? “Have I not wept for those in trouble? Hasn’t my soul grieved for the poor?” (Job 30:25).
But this prayer can not only be addressed to Jesus, but we see it on the very lips of Jesus, addressed to the Father. Three times on the cross he cried out to his Father in heaven.
“Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” He was doing more than asking the Father not to be angry with the men carrying out their duty. His prayer was that of a priest, for under the old covenant, when a sacrifice was being offered, the priest would at the same time instruct the people about its true benefit, Therefore Jesus was forgetting about his agony on the cross and concerned himself with us, with all of humanity, and prayed that God would forgive us all for what we all were doing to him.
He prayed again: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Here he showed that he truly endured the agony of hell, which is separation from God’s love and mercy, and to be faced forever only with God’s righteous wrath and punishment for sin. And although Jesus the man was innocent of any sin at all– a judgment proclaimed three times by Pilate from his judgment seat (John 18:38; 19:4; 19:6)– the Lord laid upon him our sin and iniquity (Isaiah 53:6), so that his punishment brought us peace with God.
He prayed one last time: “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” He gave up his spirit. He was not dying out of necessity or by force, but he died willingly. Once on the Hill of Moreh, not far from where the prophet raised the Shunammite woman’s son, Jesus himself had touched the bier or platform of another dead boy. That act would have made an ordinary Jew ceremonially unclean, but Jesus did the reverse. He undid death, giving life where there seemingly could not be any more life (Luke 7:14-15). When Jesus himself died, he was not swallowed up by death, but cried out in a loud voice and overtook death. And death immediately lost all its power, not only over Christ, who rose three days later, but over all mankind, because Christ was the firstfruits of the resurrection, bringing out all of the dead from every grave, from the sea, and everyplace else that the dead might be (1 Corinthians 15:20-23).
He did not grow numb, not by being drugged with myrrh (Mark 15:23) and not by losing all compassion for us. He loved us, gave himself for us (Galatians 1:4), and he will bring us home in the resurrection into everlasting life.
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 2:17-18 The prayer begins