GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
LAMENTATIONS 4:3
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3 Even jackals offer their breasts
to nurse their young,
but the daughters of my people have become cruel
like ostriches in the desert.
In the first verses of this chapter, the prophet lamented the diminishing of the young men of Judah, as if they were something unthinkable: tarnished gold (gold, after all, does not tarnish). Now he considers the women of Judah and compares them to some unfeeling creature like the ostrich.
There are three different words that are sometimes translated “ostrich” in Hebrew. One of them is questioned as to whether it really means “ostrich,” but this is not one of those (see Jeremiah 50:39; Micah 1:8). Here the idea is that ostriches often don’t prepare a nest for their eggs and chicks at all, but just lay them in the sand with the eggs of other ostriches and turn them or move them here and there to keep them from getting too hot. The mother (known as a “Hen Major”) that actually sits on or guards the nest will see to it that her own eggs are in the center to keep them safer from snakes and other predators, and allow the eggs of other ostrich hens to be stolen or damaged. The idea of cruel mothers, or at least mothers who have had to do unspeakable things with their own children, will continue throughout the first half of this chapter.
As we consider the book of Lamentations in the light of three crosses, we begin with the first one, the cross borne by the Jews in their Babylonian captivity in the sixth century BC. Their glory was gone, and they were reduced to terrible acts that made them seem monstrous even to themselves. It is when the person is stripped of pride, of self-respect, and even of any self-worth, that they will hopefully be led to turn back to God and give up on everything except for Christ. Even though the Savior was still a very long way away for them in time, they looked to him because they themselves had no way of redeeming themselves. They seemed as cruel as ostriches in the desert, and they were a long way from home across a cruel desert indeed. What could they say? “We acknowledge our wickedness and the guilt of our fathers. We have sinned” (Jeremiah 14:20).
The second cross we remember is the cross of our Savior Jesus. Here we make a realization about the Passion account. Think of the women who are actually described by the Apostles in the Passion story. Jew or Gentile, were there any women at all who are described as being cruel to Christ or even simply unsympathetic? There are none at all. A handful of women who had been following him and supporting his ministry were there along with his mother Mary at the cross (John 19:25). And then there was the wife of Pilate, who was troubled by dreams about Jesus (Matthew 27:19). There is little doubt that the streets of the city would have been lined with as many women as men jeering and shouting insults and profanity at Jesus, but we will not venture along those line with this verse. It is rather “the daughter of my people,” that is, Jerusalem itself, that was cruel to our Lord. Jeremiah talks about the people of Judah as “the virgin daughter of my people” (Jeremiah 14:17). The city of David and its inhabitants turned on Christ, savagely beat him, and killed him like the worst criminal.
This is the Savior we follow throughout our lives, every day until our last day, and while each one of us picks up and carries his or her own cross. Your cross may change from time to time. It may be more painful one day or month or year, and less painful in another. It might be a different cross altogether from those you experienced when you were younger. You may find that you have begun to suffer from cruelty from places that once were homelike to you, from people you once considered to be like family. This is the warning and perhaps even the prophecy of this verse. Even jackals, savage scavengers quite a bit like American coyotes or foxes, take care of their young, but people you once depended upon may turn on you and break your heart. This is hard cross, a heavy cross, to carry. But things this severe may not always come, or might become lighter, because God has chosen to spare you for his own good purposes.
Our crosses come on account of the rage of Satan and the blind fury of those he dupes into following him. Our crosses come on account of the silly and stupid sins of the people around us; they do not realize how their words and insensitivities can give us agony. Even those who work in the church can be unwittingly hurtful without trying. And a pastor who reacts to feeling pain is often looked on with confusion or condemnation. “Oh, he needs to be more forgiving!” is a usual outcry against a man who has suffered pain, indignity, loss, or some other wrong by his own flock. He does not have the privilege of becoming upset, or even of reacting for a single moment like a man in pain. He is only seen as being imperfect and not Christlike. Pray for those men; pray that God would give them strength as they carry crosses that are almost always secret, full of the splinters of dark and terrible secrets that stab at them and their sensibilities during private confessions. The call into God’s ministry is an invitation to a minefield, a quagmire, a trainwreck, a burning barn, and many other dark and difficult things. But it is God’s call.
Let all of our crosses be realizations that we are so very imperfect, so very needful of Christ’s forgiveness. Pray for the strength to carry yours as far as the Lord our God asks you to carry it. Christ carried his cross with no help from us at all, all the way to the top of Calvary. He completed his work for us all alone, but he did it all. He removed the record of sin, it’s stain and shame and burden and pain, with his own priceless blood. Praise him and be glad. In Jesus, you and I have the gift of forgiveness and 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 4:3 Like cruel ostriches