Witnessing the Pain & Observing the Truth

Sunday, 1 June 2025 by

Bernard Gabbott - Sunday, 1 June 2025

Witnessing the Pain & Observing the Truth

Lamentations is not a book many of us have read recently, perhaps ever. And it is not an easy book to digest, to listen to, even to understand in our modern sensibilities. Connected inseparably with the prophet Jeremiah, it is a visceral response to the fall of Jerusalem in 586BC. In that moment, the identity of God’s people – that they were safe because the LORD had made a covenant with them – was shattered. It was shattered because they treated the covenant lightly, they took sin lightly, they refused to take seriously the merciful words of the LORD through the prophets calling them back. The response in Lamentations is a ‘lament’ – a passionate cry to the LORD, asking ‘who?’ and ‘why?’. It is a striking cry for its structure – an acrostic, for its context – the covenant, and its emotion – there is utter despair here as God’s mob comprehend and experience His judgement for their sins.

Scripture References: Lamentations 1:1-22, Lamentations 2:1-22, Deuteronomy 28:1-20, Psalms 109:1-20

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