GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
LAMENTATIONS 3:7-9
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7 He has walled me in, so I cannot get out.
He has weighed me down with chains.
8 Even when I call out or cry for help,
he shuts out my prayer.
9 He has walled off my road with blocks of stone.
He has twisted my paths.
Job had also complained about being walled in or hedged in by God (Job 3:23). The careful reader of Job will find that ironic, since Satan complained about the hedge that God was protecting Job with in the first chapter (Job 1:10). Sometimes the barriers God places around us are not for our harm but for our good. However, we certainly see that here the first cross, the cross of the Babylonian exiles, meant very troubling hardships for the Israelites.
The chains of verse 7 are not figurative. The people were placed in chains before they were marched away to captivity (see Psalm 107:10; Jeremiah 40:1).
Verse 8 is a reminder that God does not hear all prayers. Jesus said, “We know that God does not listen to sinners. But if someone worships God and does his will, God listens to him” (John 9:31). And God said through Zechariah the prophet, “Just as he called and they would not listen, they called, and I would not listen, says the LORD of hosts” (Zechariah 7:13). But when an unrepentant sinner repents and turns back to the Lord in faith, crying for help, the Lord turns back to the sinner to hear his prayer.
Verse 9 shows that for the Jews of the exile, their road home was blocked, either by guards or distance or by having a way that was so confused that they simply did not know which way to go. It was five hundred miles at least from the city of Babylon to Jerusalem, either by the shortest road around the fertile crescent (north along the Euphrates and then southwest toward Damascus and the familiar route through Galilee) or a lesser-known and more difficult path through the Arabian desert down to Dumah (Isaiah 21:11) and then northwest through Edom, Moab and finally across the Jordan. But such paths were impossible for the elderly or for families with children; even healthy young men without water or wealth would not be able to make it in most cases without a camel train. It was a twisted path, indeed.
Under the second cross, our Lord was walled in by soldiers and enemies, and his words kept falling on deaf ears. “But they found nothing, even though many false witnesses came forward. Then two came forward and said, ‘This man said, “I am able to destroy the temple of God, and to rebuild it in three days”’” (Matthew 26:60-61). They were willing to twist anything he had ever said into something to make a charge against him. Jesus was not guilty of any crime, even if those words– which were misquoted by the witnesses– were just what he had said. When the high priest demanded to know whether he was in fact the Christ, he said, “Yes. You yourself have said it. But I tell you, after this you will see the Son of man seated at the right hand of Power, and coming on the clouds of heaven” (Matthew 26:64). With these words he answered the question about being the Messiah or Christ (“Yes”), he answered the question about raising up the temple in three days (he had meant his body, so he repeated his prophecy about coming again down from heaven), and he also proclaimed the law and gospel to them. The law? “The Son of man… coming on the clouds of heaven” was a promise of judgment day, then Caiaphas and the others will stand trial for their sins. The gospel? He answered “yes” to being the Christ, who is the one who takes away the sin of the world. All they had to do was put their faith in him and all of their fears about judgment day would vanish. Those with faith in Christ have nothing to fear of the last day. For “faith and life rest on the hope of eternal life” (Titus 1:2).
Chains, twisted paths, cries for help that seem to go nowhere– of course these seem like many crosses that Christians bear all the time. We are walled in, walled off, and weighed down. Sometimes our burdens make us blind to good solutions, deaf to good advice, oblivious to the simple and clear word of God. But we keep reaching out to him. We keep listening to him. We keep following him, prayerfully asking him to open our eyes, unplug our ears, and to clear up our understanding of his will. We want to follow Jesus. This is one of the blessings of baptism and of the forgiveness of our sins. But we keep asking for his help along the way.
How blessed to be a believing child of God. This is how we know that he hears our prays, even if sometimes his answer is no, or not yet. We know that such answers are for our good, and not as any kind of a punishment. And we always expect and trust that what God gives to us will be for our good, and especially for our eternal good.
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 3:7-9 Walled up and walled in