Lamentations 5:19

Lamentations is a book of five poems mourning the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BC. The city and Solomon’s temple were destroyed, the reign of David’s line came to an end, and many of the people were carried into exile. The book is traditionally attributed to the prophet Jeremiah. Its first four chapters are acrostic poems, built on the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Chapter 5 has twenty-two verses, one for each of those letters, and is written as free prayer without the acrostic pattern. It is a prayer the survivors pray together, asking the LORD to remember what has come upon them, and just before these verses they cry that the crown is fallen from their head, that their heart is faint, and that Mount Zion is desolate (Lamentations 5:16–18).

Into that ruin the prayer turns to God: “Thou, O LORD, remainest for ever; thy throne from generation to generation.” The words are spoken straight to him, and “Thou” stands first, lifting the people’s eyes from all they have lost to the One whose reign is untouched by it. Their own king had been deposed and their land laid waste, and still they confess that the LORD’s throne stands. That confession is an act of great faith. It is the faith Moses and the children of Israel sang long before: “The LORD shall reign for ever and ever” (Exodus 15:18).

The name the KJV prints as “LORD” is Yᵉhôvâh, Israel’s own name for God, which Strong’s explains as the self-existent or eternal One. It is the name of the God who bound himself to Israel by covenant, so the people appeal to him as theirs even now. The verb behind “remainest”, yâshab, means first to sit down, and from there to dwell, to remain or to endure. It suits the second line, because a king sits on his throne. The throne, kiççêʼ, is a seat, stool or throne, here the seat of a king, and Strong’s connects it with a word for covering, as a canopied seat. The two lines say one truth twice in the way of Hebrew poetry. God lives for ever, and his rule runs on unbroken from one generation to the next, through every rise and fall of earthly kingdoms.

The rest of Scripture says the same. “Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God” (Psalm 90:2). Another psalm, prayed in weakness, sets the short days of the one praying beside the years of God: “thy years are throughout all generations... But thou art the same, and thy years shall have no end” (Psalm 102:24–27). And Isaiah says, “The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever” (Isaiah 40:8). Because God himself endures, his character and his promises endure with him. That is why this verse can carry the whole prayer, since the people’s hope rests on the unchanging King.

His throne also means that Judah’s suffering lay within his rule. Even in judgment he remains the just King, and his purposes, though hidden from them for now, are righteous and lasting. Set beside an eternal God, the darkest years of Jerusalem are a season. The book has already reached for that hope in its third chapter, where the prophet rests on the LORD’s mercies and compassions, which are new every morning (Lamentations 3:22–23).

Verse 20 follows straight from the confession before it: “Wherefore dost thou forget us for ever, and forsake us so long time?” “Wherefore”, lamah in Hebrew, means “why?” or “for what purpose?” The question is a cry of pain and bewilderment, spoken to the God they have just called King. The English words “for ever” come back from verse 19 on the other side of the prayer. The LORD remains for ever, and his people feel forgotten for ever. If he reigns, why does he leave them in ruins?

To forget, shâkach, is the ordinary word for forgetting. “For ever” here is netsach, a word of long duration that Strong’s gives as usually “continually”. It can also speak of eminence or glory, and the KJV elsewhere renders it “strength” and “victory”. Here it measures how endless their distress feels. The two words stand together in another prayer of the same kind: “How long wilt thou forget me, O LORD? for ever? how long wilt thou hide thy face from me?” (Psalm 13:1). To forsake, ʻâzab, means to loosen or let go, and so to leave or abandon. “So long time” is literally “for length of days”, leʼorekh yamim. The second line repeats the first and deepens it, and both “for ever” and “so long time” are the language of anguish, the way suffering speaks when it has gone on past all bearing.

The question is painful because of what God had promised. Moses told Israel, “the LORD thy God, he it is that doth go with thee; he will not fail thee, nor forsake thee” (Deuteronomy 31:6, 31:8). The people feel forsaken by the very God who gave that promise, and they take their feeling to him. Their cry still holds a hope that he will remember his covenant and act, and the next verse asks him to.

Verse 21 is the heart of the closing prayer: “Turn thou us unto thee, O LORD, and we shall be turned; renew our days as of old.” “Turn” is hashevenu, a command formed from shûwb, the common verb for turning back or returning, and the same verb stands behind “and we shall be turned”. The people ask God to begin the turning, and they are sure of the result. If he turns them, they will be turned. They are confessing that a whole-hearted return to God has to start with God, because sin and despair have left their hearts unable to move on their own. They ask first to be brought back “unto thee”, to the LORD himself, and then for their days to be made new. Calling on him again as “O LORD” appeals to his covenant faithfulness and his power to do it.

Other prayers in Scripture ask for the same thing in nearly the same words. Ephraim prays in Jeremiah, “turn thou me, and I shall be turned; for thou art the LORD my God” (Jeremiah 31:18), and a psalm prays, “Turn us again, O God, and cause thy face to shine; and we shall be saved” (Psalm 80:3). God answers with a promise in Ezekiel to give his people a new heart and a new spirit and to put his own Spirit within them (Ezekiel 36:26–27). The turning they ask for is a work God does in the heart, drawing his people to himself.

The book ends with the people’s honest grief, spoken to God: “But thou hast utterly rejected us; thou art very wroth against us.” After the plea of verse 21 comes this last line, and the book closes with no answer written in. The ending is abrupt, and it leaves the tension of suffering and judgment open before God. After the hope of the third chapter, the close of the book goes back down into the depth of what the people feel.

To reject, mâʼaç, means to spurn, despise, cast away or refuse. The Hebrew doubles the verb for emphasis, which the KJV gives as “utterly”, and the people feel wholly cast off. “Very” is mᵉʼôd, meaning very, greatly or exceedingly, and “wroth” is qâtsaph, to be angry or wroth, which Strong’s also gives as “burst out in rage”. Together they name great anger. The “utterly” and the “very” are the words of people overwhelmed by judgment, and they tell us how it felt from inside.

The people know why that anger has come, for they have already confessed their sin in this prayer. The covenant curses of Deuteronomy 28 had warned that disobedience would bring this kind of devastation, and through Moses God had said that his anger would be kindled against his people and that he would forsake them and hide his face from them (Deuteronomy 31:17). Isaiah puts it plainly: “your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you” (Isaiah 59:2). God’s wrath here is his righteous anger against sin, and it is real and severe.

Every part of this prayer finds its answer in Jesus Christ. The LORD who remains for ever is revealed in him, for “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever” (Hebrews 13:8). Having made purification for sins, he “sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high” (Hebrews 1:3). Luke records the promise that “of his kingdom there shall be no end” (Luke 1:33), Peter speaks of “the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 1:11), and Jesus himself says, “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth” (Matthew 28:18). In the end the kingdoms of this world become “the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever” (Revelation 11:15). The throne of verse 19 is the throne of the risen Christ, and he promises his people, “lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world” (Matthew 28:20).

On the cross Jesus took up the cry of the forsaken: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). The sinless Son bore the weight of human sin and God’s righteous wrath against it, as Isaiah foretold of the suffering servant (Isaiah 53), for God “hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin” (2 Corinthians 5:21). He was forsaken for sin that was ours, so that those who believe in him are never utterly cast off, and he promises, “him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out” (John 6:37). He is “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), and he is our high priest, touched with the feeling of our infirmities (Hebrews 4:15), so the cry of verse 20 is one he knows from inside.

He answers the plea to be turned and renewed as well. God exalted him “to give repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins” (Acts 5:31). We are “reconciled to God by the death of his Son” (Romans 5:10), and he is “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6), the one path to the Father. He is “the mediator of a better covenant” (Hebrews 8:6), and “if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17). The people of Lamentations asked for their days to be renewed as of old. In Christ God gives a renewal that ends in a new creation, where he will dwell with his people and wipe away all tears, and there will be no more sorrow or crying (Revelation 21:3–4). The One on the throne says, “Behold, I make all things new” (Revelation 21:5).

These four verses give God’s people words for their darkest days. They hold a confession that the LORD reigns for ever, a question that asks him why, a plea that he would turn his people back to himself, and a grief told to him whole. Every line is spoken to God, even the last, so the people who feel rejected are still praying to the One they say has rejected them. That is faith in its hardest form.

The passage shows us a God whose throne stands when every human throne has fallen, who turns hearts back to himself, and who listens to the honest grief of his people. The prayer of verse 21 belongs to every season of drift or ruin among them: “Turn thou us unto thee, O LORD, and we shall be turned.” In Christ we know how God answers it. The Son who cried “why hast thou forsaken me?” now reigns, and he turns his people to himself and makes them new.