GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
LAMENTATIONS 5:1-4
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Chapter five is different from the others. First, it is quite a bit shorter because the verses themselves are shorter with fewer words. There are still 22 verses, in line with the Hebrew alphabet, but the chapter is not an acrostic poem. One theory about this is that since the chapter is more a prayer than a lamentation, it is not written like the others. But this would mean that the other chapters are not prayers– but the nine times that our prophet calls out, “O LORD” in the previous chapters say otherwise. In fact, adding the three “O LORD” statements in this chapter makes a strong case that the entire book is a carefully crafted single unit, a long and involved prayer of repentance and faith intermingled with the distress of the one who prays. The Book of Lamentations is not a replacement for the Lord’s Prayer, but it is surely a confession, a cry of repentance, and a vision or at least a foreshadowing of the coming Savior and his work of redemption, atonement, and salvation.
I suspect that the fifth chapter falls away from the acrostic poem because the author composed the lines more with sincerity than beauty in mind; the words come from a full heart and not a flowing pen. Our prayers do not always have to be neat and well-crafted, but can simply be what is truly our desire in faith. The great prayers of the Old Testament such as David’s in 2 Samuel 7, Solomon’s in 2 Chronicles 6, Ezra’s in Ezra 9, and Daniel’s in Daniel 9, are no more or less great or sincere as the tax collector’s short, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner” (Luke 18:13), or the Phoenician woman’s, “Lord, help me!” (Matthew 15:25).
5:1 Remember, O LORD, what happened to us.
Look, and see our disgrace.
2 Our inheritance has been turned over to strangers,
our homes to foreigners.
3 We have become orphans and fatherless,
our mothers are widows.
4 We must pay for the water we drink;
our wood can be had only at a price.
The main theme of these verses and of this final chapter is the helplessness of the people of Judah. First, there is the disgrace of being a defeated people; a people in exile. Then, there is the loss of what was; the loss of their inheritance. By this the prophet means not only the land and the promise of the life the Lord provided through the land, but also the inheritance of the temple and by extension the means of offering right sacrifices. One blessing that is mentioned and even taken for granted in the Bible is the change to the system of local synagogues which came out of the exile to Babylon, but the people did not realize the importance of this, perhaps thinking with shame or embarrassment that this makeshift substitution for temple worship was only temporary, never imagining that it would last among the people for more than 2,500 years and become the model for Christian worship as soon as Christ came.
Another loss was the loss of their homes, and of the men. So very many men– husbands, sons, fathers– were killed by the Babylonians that it left the nation without any strong arms to defend them. Verse 4 sounds strange to modern ears. Older readers understand. Many of us grew up in a world where it was unthinkable to even imagine having to pay for drinking water, but everyone takes this for granted now. The Israelites didn’t have to pay for firewood back home because they grew or cut their own. It was one of their building materials and it formed their charcoal when all other uses were at an end. But even this had to be bought and paid for in Babylon. Such was the depth of their suffering under the first cross.
But we turn our eyes upward to the second cross, the Great and Terrible Cross of Christ’s suffering, where all of these words turn visionary and prophetic, as has the whole of Lamentations, chapter by chapter, passage after passage, verse upon verse.
Remember, O Lord, what happened to Christ! As we already heard in the Lament, “Is this nothing to you, all you who pass by? Look and see if there is any pain like his pain, laid so severely upon him” (1:12). Falsely arrested; grabbed at night in secret while he prayed, with no hope of release, no one to defend him, no hope of escape.
He was turned over to strangers– everything he had, to foreigners. As he hung there on the cross, suspended on the tree between heaven and earth, at his feet the Roman soldiers haggled over his belongings. “They divided up his clothes by casting lots” (Matthew 27:35). They divided up his clothes between the four of them, something to each. His sandals to one, his britches to another, his outer cloak to the third, and a shirt to the fourth. Then they took his undergarment, a tunic or chiton, and instead of ripping it into handkerchiefs they cast lots for that, too. They left him with nothing at all of his own. No home. No clothing. No dignity. No privacy. Just nails and a joke of thorns that still dug into his skull and gave nothing but agony. And they took his life that way.
He became like an orphan, a fatherless man. There was no elderly family member left to look after him. There is no record that even suggests that his grandfathers, Jacob (Matthew 1:16) or Heli (Luke 3:23), were still alive. There is no mention of Mary’s husband Joseph after Jesus’ twelfth year. Men that Jesus had healed– a centurion and a synagogue ruler in Capernaum, and former demon-possessed men or blind men or lepers here and there throughout Galilee were unable to do anything. Lazarus of Bethany was also wanted by the Sanhedrin for the unthinkable crime of having been raised from the dead too near to Jerusalem (John 12:10). Jesus was alone.
His mother, a widow. Mary was still living, probably in her forties, but with no authority and no way to help him. Mary stood beneath the cross of her Son and her Savior, as she had confessed him 33 years before (Luke 1:47). Imagine being able to choose who you parents would be! Which home you would be raised in. Who would comfort you as a child and teach you lessons about faith in God; who would tell you about the world and about sin. The Son of God chose Mary for this, and it was from her body that he received his humanity, nurtured in her womb, born in Bethlehem with no crib for a bed. And now he was dying, suspended just a little above her head, and she had nowhere to lay him at all.
A drink of water! “I am thirsty!” he cried out, one of the last things spoken by him in this life. He had taught about the thirst of those who suffer the fire of hell when he described the rich man suffering there, who said, “Have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire!” (Luke 16:24). And Jesus, too, asked for a drink as he suffered hell. But they did not give him water. They gave him soldiers’ wine-vinegar. It was not a drink to satisfy.
Wood was given to him, but only at the most terrible price. Here we think of the wood of the cross, the wood they made him carry, and then it became the wood that they killed him with. “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree” (Galatians 3:13). The price of the wood was not silver or gold, but blood. The price of our forgiveness was likewise “not with things that pass away, such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like a lamb without blemish or spot” (1 Peter 1:18-19).
The more we contemplate his cross, the simpler it is to bear up under our own crosses, the troubles of our lives, whether laid lovingly upon us by our heavenly Father for our good, or pounded into our lives by the wrath and fury of the enemy of the world out of spite and rage and fear of his own impending torment. We pick up these crosses and look to our Lord Jesus, the Son of God, who loved us so that we would be forgiven in his blood, and raised to life again to live with him forever, without pain, without trouble, without temptation, without guilt, without shame, without end.
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 5:1-4 Only at a price