Lamentations 4:6

Lamentations mourns the destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple by the Babylonian army of Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BC, and it is traditionally attributed to the prophet Jeremiah. The city fell after a long siege, which is told in 2 Kings 25 and Jeremiah 52. A siege worked by cutting a city off from its food until hunger broke it, so the walls that were built to keep Jerusalem safe ended by shutting the famine in.

Chapter 3 dwelt on one man’s suffering. Chapter 4, an acrostic poem, turns to the whole community, and above all to those who once had the most: the nobles, the consecrated, the well-fed, and the children whom everyone would expect to be protected. Verse after verse it puts former glory beside present ruin. The opening “How” is the cry that opens the whole book, “How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people!” (Lamentations 1:1).

The poet also knows why it happened. Jerusalem “hath grievously sinned” (Lamentations 1:8). Her people had forsaken the LORD, the fountain of living waters (Jeremiah 2:13), and through Moses God had long before set out the curses that would follow if Israel broke his covenant (Deuteronomy 28:15–68). What we read in this chapter is those warnings coming true.

“How is the gold become dim!” The word for gold, zâhâb, comes from a root meaning to shimmer, and the verb ʻâmam says that the shimmer has been overshadowed and hidden. The second line raises the value and so deepens the loss. “Most fine gold” is kethem, gold of the highest purity, and it is “changed”, altered for the worse.

Verse 2 tells us what this gold is: “the precious sons of Zion, comparable to fine gold.” The gold is Jerusalem herself and her people, with their leaders and priests, who were consecrated to God and precious to him. Its dimming is the loss of their holiness and of his favour, through their own unfaithfulness and the judgment that followed it.

The verse then turns to the ruins. The “sanctuary” is qôdesh, a word for a sacred place or thing and for holiness itself, and here it is the Temple, the centre of Israel’s worship and the place where the LORD dwelt among his people. Its stones are “poured out”, shâphak, the way liquid is spilled, and they lie at the head of every street as common rubble for anyone to walk past. Ezekiel had seen the glory of the LORD leave the Temple before it fell (Ezekiel 10:18–19). The city once sung as “the joy of the whole earth” (Psalm 48:2) has become a public heap of broken holy things.

This speaks to us because the New Testament calls believers the temple of God (1 Corinthians 3:16–17) and says that the body of a believer is the temple of the Holy Ghost (1 Corinthians 6:19). What is consecrated to God is to be kept holy, and the stones in the street show what was lost when Jerusalem ceased to keep it so.

The “sons of Zion” are the people of Jerusalem, and especially her noble and prominent citizens. Zion was the holy hill on which the city and the Temple stood, so these were the people who lived closest to the presence of God. They are called yâqâr, precious, costly and rare, and they were once weighed against paz, pure refined gold.

Now they are “esteemed as earthen pitchers”. The word cheres means earthenware, an earthen vessel or a broken piece of one. Gold was the costliest thing an Israelite could name, and a clay jar was the cheapest thing in the house, used every day, easily broken and thrown out. Their conquerors now set that price on them. Scripture speaks of all human honour in the same way: man in his honour does not abide (Psalm 49:12).

The closing phrase, “the work of the hands of the potter”, describes a common pot, and it also carries a reminder. The verb behind “potter” is yâtsar, to mould or form as a potter does, and Scripture uses that picture for God himself. Isaiah prays, “we are the clay, and thou our potter” (Isaiah 64:8), and the LORD says to Israel that they are in his hand as clay is in the potter’s hand (Jeremiah 18:6). Even in their ruin the people are still in the hands of the one who formed them.

Sodom fell in an instant, while Jerusalem died slowly, and Jerusalem had been given far more of God’s light. Those are the two reasons the poet can say what he says in verse 6.

Sodom was the pattern of God’s judgment that everyone in Israel knew (Genesis 19). Moses and the prophets hold it up as a warning (Deuteronomy 29:23, Isaiah 1:9–10), and so does the New Testament (Jude 1:7). The verse describes its end in two phrases. It was “overthrown”, hâphak, turned right over, “as in a moment”, and “no hands stayed on her”. The hand of an enemy never touched Sodom. God destroyed it directly, and its people were spared a siege, a famine and the long watching of their children’s hunger. Jerusalem had all of these at the hands of the Babylonians, month after month, and then exile. In that sense her punishment was “greater”, from the verb gâdal, to be large or to grow large.

The word for Jerusalem’s guilt is ʻâvôn, perversity or moral evil, and it carries the thought of the guilt and the punishment that follow, which is how the KJV can render it “the punishment of the iniquity”. Sodom’s is chaṭṭâʼâh, the ordinary word for sin. Jerusalem’s guilt was the heavier because of what she had been given. She had the covenant, the law, the prophets and the Temple. God says through Amos that he had known Israel alone of all the families of the earth, and that for this reason he would punish their iniquities (Amos 3:2). Jesus states the same rule: much is required of the one to whom much is given (Luke 12:48).

This judgment does sit beside God’s love. A chapter earlier the same book says, “For the Lord will not cast off for ever” (Lamentations 3:31–33), and adds that he does not afflict willingly. He disciplined a people he had chosen and loved, with the aim of bringing them back to himself.

Verses 7 and 8 belong together as one portrait in two halves. The first half remembers Jerusalem’s finest people in health, and the second shows them in the famine.

A Nazarite, nâzîyr, is one who is separated. The vow is set out in Numbers 6: a man or woman set apart to the LORD drank no wine, left the hair uncut and kept away from the dead. In this poem the word may well reach wider, to the noblest and most consecrated people of the city, those in whom its devotion and strength were best seen.

Four comparisons describe them. They were “purer than snow”, where zâkak means to be clean or clear, in body or in character, and “whiter than milk”. They were “more ruddy in body than rubies”. ʼâdam is to be red or rosy, the flush of good health, and the stones are pânîyn, which may be rubies or pearls. “Their polishing was of sapphire” uses gizrâh, a word for a figure cut to shape, so the thought is of a form as finely made as a cut gem. Sapphire is the stone Scripture names in the vision of the God of Israel at Sinai (Exodus 24:10). Snow is also the picture David uses when he prays to be cleansed: “wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow” (Psalm 51:7).

Then verse 8: “Their visage is blacker than a coal”. Tôʼar is a person’s outline or appearance, and starvation, filth and exposure have darkened it past knowing. “They are not known in the streets”. The verb nâkar means to look closely at someone and so to recognise him. These were the best-known faces in Jerusalem, and in the public street, where they had always been greeted, people look straight at them and cannot tell who they are.

“Their skin cleaveth to their bones; it is withered, it is become like a stick.” With every reserve of the body used up, the skin lies directly on the bone. Yâbêsh is to dry up, as water does, or to wither, as grass does. Jeremiah had seen this coming: “if I enter into the city, then behold them that are sick with famine!” (Jeremiah 14:18).

The sword kills quickly, and hunger kills by inches. Both groups in verse 9 are called “slain”, châlâl, a word for someone pierced or mortally wounded, so the famine’s dead are counted as casualties of war just as the soldiers are. The difference lies in how long the dying takes.

“Better” is ṭôwb, the everyday word for good. It is startling here, and it shows how far things had gone that a death in battle could be called the good one. The reason follows: “for these pine away”. Zûwb means to flow, as water does, and so to waste away, with life draining out of the starving a little each day. They are “stricken through for want of the fruits of the field”, which treats the missing harvest as the weapon that ran them through.

Sword and famine are the judgments Jeremiah had announced together (Jeremiah 14:12), and God had warned in the law that he would break the staff of bread (Leviticus 26:26).

The poet records it as something that happened in the famine of the siege, and Lamentations speaks of it again elsewhere (Lamentations 2:20). The same horror is told of an earlier siege, at Samaria in the days of Jehoram, when two women agreed to eat their sons (2 Kings 6:28–29).

The wording of verse 10 makes it as hard to read as it can be. The women are “pitiful”, which in the KJV means full of pity. The Hebrew is rachmânîy, compassionate, from racham, a root that speaks of tender mercy. These were the gentlest mothers in the city. “Sodden” is the old past form of “seethe”, and the verb bâshal means to boil, so this was a meal prepared with their own hands. The children “were their meat”, bârâh, food. The verse offers the women neither blame nor excuse. It lays the whole scene under one heading, “the destruction of the daughter of my people”, and counts what they did as part of the ruin of the nation.

God had said beforehand that it would come to this. The law warned that in a siege a disobedient people would eat the flesh of their sons and daughters (Leviticus 26:29), and Moses added that even the most tender and delicate woman would do so in secret (Deuteronomy 28:53–57). Jeremiah and Ezekiel repeated the warning for their own generation (Jeremiah 19:9, Ezekiel 5:10).

Everything lost in these verses is found again in Jesus Christ, and found in a form that can never be lost. The Temple of stone could be thrown down, but Jesus said of his own body, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19). Israel’s gold grew dim, while he is “the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person” (Hebrews 1:3), and the glory of the new covenant remains (2 Corinthians 3:7–11). In him believers are built up as “lively stones” into a spiritual house (1 Peter 2:5), and in the city to come the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple (Revelation 21:22).

He came down the road these verses describe, and he came by choice. Being in the form of God, he took the form of a servant (Philippians 2:6–7). Though he was rich, he became poor for our sakes (2 Corinthians 8:9), with nowhere to lay his head (Matthew 8:20), and he suffered outside the gate (Hebrews 13:12). Isaiah says of him that “his visage was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men” (Isaiah 52:14), which shares its English word with the blackened “visage” of verse 8. The one who is holy and separate from sinners (Hebrews 7:26), the true consecrated one, was himself marred past recognition. On the cross he said, “I thirst” (John 19:28).

He did this to bear the judgment this chapter describes. The punishment of iniquity fell on him: he was wounded for our transgressions (Isaiah 53:5), made to be sin for us (2 Corinthians 5:21) and made a curse for us (Galatians 3:13). He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29) and the good shepherd who gives his life for the sheep (John 10:11). So there is now no condemnation for those who are in him (Romans 8:1).

What he gives answers the famine point by point. Where no one broke bread for the children, he says, “I am the bread of life” (John 6:35), and he gives living water (John 4:10) and life beyond death (John 11:25). Those who were unknown in the streets are given the right to become the sons of God (John 1:12). People redeemed with something costlier than silver and gold, the precious blood of Christ (1 Peter 1:18–19), are clay jars that hold a treasure (2 Corinthians 4:7). They are new creatures (2 Corinthians 5:17), washed white as snow (Isaiah 1:18) and changed into his image from glory to glory (2 Corinthians 3:18). The love of God is poured into their hearts by the Holy Ghost (Romans 5:5), where famine had dried up even a mother’s love. And God, who makes all things new (Revelation 21:5), will wipe away all tears, and death, sorrow, crying and pain will be gone (Revelation 21:4).

God put this chapter in his word, and that tells us something about him. He lets the worst things be said in his presence, in careful and unsparing words, by a man who still calls the sufferers “my people”. Grief over ruin, and grief over the sin behind it, belongs in the life of faith, and Scripture gives us the language for it.

The chapter also shows how God weighs the sin of those who know him. Jerusalem had the Temple, the law and the prophets, and her fall was measured by those gifts. To belong to God is the greatest privilege there is, and it is a calling to holiness. The gold, the scarlet and the delicate food were good things that could bear no weight when the day of trouble came, and the only safety that holds is God himself.

The starving children of verse 4 are still with us wherever there is war and famine. The poet looked at them and wrote down what he saw, and he trusted God with it. We can break bread for the hungry in a way that besieged Jerusalem could not.

Lamentations ends in a prayer: “Turn thou us unto thee, O LORD, and we shall be turned; renew our days as of old” (Lamentations 5:21–22). The God who judged Jerusalem is the God whose mercies are new every morning, and in Christ he has answered that prayer.