GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
LAMENTATIONS 2:2
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2 The Lord has pitilessly swallowed up
all the dwellings of Jacob;
in his wrath he has torn down
the strongholds of the Daughter of Judah;
he has struck the earth.
Her kingdom and its princes he has defiled.
In this fearsome verse, three or four actions of the Lord are presented. Three, if one follows translations such as the NIV, ESV, RSV; four according to the Hebrew text and as I have tried to demonstrate in the translation above (see also the King James Version). There is no difference of theology in the two translation choices. Notice that again as we saw in verse 1, the title “Lord” is not the name of our gracious God, but a word that indicates God’s authority: lord, master.
God’s first act in this verse must have been a terrible shock to the people of Judah as the first cross was laid so heavily on their backs: God himself pitilessly swallowed up and destroyed their homes. “Swallow” can mean to gulp down food or water, but here the context and form of the word shows us that God was wiping out homes without leaving anything behind, just as swallowing a bite of food leaves nothing useful behind.
A hundred years ago, in March of 1925, a terrible outbreak of tornadoes ripped through the central United States, even jumping the Mississippi River. In one small town in Illinois, the destruction came so fast that people described cringing on account of a blinding flash of lightning and the following roar of thunder, and in the twinkling of an eye, their whole village was gone. Not one building was left standing and hundreds were dead. The Babylonians became the tool of God for a similar kind of destruction upon Jerusalem.
The second act was the wrathful tearing down of strongholds. The fortresses of the cities were wrecked by the attackers. Recall the grim military update provided by Jeremiah: “Jerusalem… Lachish and Azekah were the only fortified cities left in Judah” (Jeremiah 34:7). All of the fortified cities built up in the early years of the divided kingdom were now torn down. God used the Babylonians as the means to carry out this destruction. Compare the opposite and wonderfully marvelous gospel message, when God also uses means to carry out salvation. For example, “Baptism now saves you also– not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a good conscience toward God, It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 3:21). God saves, but he chooses to save through means, such as the means of baptism.
The last two thunderclaps of this verse are the striking of the earth itself, like a carpenter who finds a flaw in the wood he is working on and slaps it in frustration before chucking it into the waste bin. But then he takes this a step further: He defiles the earth’s kingdom and the kingdom’s princes. What a terrifying word is that active verb, “he defiles”! When King Josiah wanted to end the pagan worship happening at Bethel, he burned the sanctuary there and ground it to powder, also burning the Asherah pole that was there. Then he took the bones of the heathen priests from their graves (Israelites only by blood and not by any of their belief and therefore not true sons of Abraham) and he burned their bones on the altar that was there in order to defile it, so that no one would ever be able to use it for anything (2 Kings 23:16-18). God was doing that to the kingdom of Israel and the princes of Israel. They would be of no use anymore. When Christ was born into the world, Israel was no longer a kingdom ruled by any Israelite king. Their king was Herod the Edomite. Their princes did not put their faith in Jesus. They were unfit for use in God’s true kingdom. “Take warning, O Jerusalem, or I will turn away from you and make your land desolate so that no one can live in it,” the Lord, Judah’s supreme Master, had warned (Jeremiah 6:9).
The first cross, the cross of the exile of the people of Judah to Babylon, was a curse and a punishment, but it came to an end. Seventy years after they arrived, the groups of exiles were permitted to return home again, although some of them chose to remain behind. The second cross, the cross of Jesus Christ on Calvary, was also a curse and a punishment. And even though in the sequence of time it lasted only the better part of one day, Good Friday (and some of the night before), it was not only a couple of hours’ pain that Jesus endured as he was hanging there. He suffered the agony of hell in all of its suffering and horror. He endured the cross, punishment from God and opposition from sinful men (Hebrews 12:2-3), for our sakes.
And the third cross, the cross of our endurance in this lifetime? Knowing that Christ died for us is one of our supports, but we are invited to pray for additional help, frail and weak as we are. And so we pray, “Have mercy on us, O LORD,” using his gospel name, the name he invites us to use out of love and mercy, and we use it, “Have mercy on us, for we have endured much contempt” (Psalm 123:3).
Through Christ, the sinful person is made new, from a twisted, rotten and dead stump into a beautiful thing, a glorious, growing, thriving and good tree bearing good fruit (Matthew 7:17-18). A gathering of such renewed people, brought together by the grace of God and given new birth through the living hope of Jesus Christ, are an entire church of such thriving, living, and fruit-bearing trees; a veritable forest of goodness bearing delightful fruit in every season (Ezekiel 47:12; Revelation 22:2).
Heavenly Father, Heroic Son, and Holy Spirit, forgive our sins, increase our faith, and bless our efforts to serve you. You are at the same time the glory over all things, the giver of glory, and the One we humbly try to glorify with all we say and do. You love us, Lord; graciously receive our love in return. Amen.
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 2:2 Swallowed up, torn down, struck and defiled