“The Lord has done what He proposed; He has carried out His word,
Which He commanded long ago; He has thrown down without pity;
He has made the enemy rejoice over you and exalted the might of your foes.”
- Lamentations 2:17
The first poem in Lamentations focused literally on the lament of the people, symbolized in the cry of a woman in Jerusalem. It also followed the acrostic structure of the Hebrew alphabet. This second poem in Lamentations is not all that different, it follows the same acrostic structure (not that we can easily tell that in the English translation). However, the topic is not centered around the people in Jerusalem so much as it is the justified and justice-bringing anger of God against Jerusalem. Sure, there is a lot of imagery of people, priests, and prophets in the streets and sanctuary, but anger is the reoccurring theme.
Now anger is always a hard theme for me to write about, in part because our human selves tend to have a hard to accurately talking about God’s anger when He also reveals to us that His core is love and mercy. Yet, we look at the Old Testament prophets and poetry can be full of angry moments. Even Jesus displays anger at the death of Lazarus, so how do we hold all this together?
Purposeful Anger:
I want to start this by saying that God truly has revealed His heart and core to love and merciful. Jesus reveals in Matthew 11:29,
“Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”
At his core, God is gentle and lowly. Approachable and loving. Longing to give us mercy. He is a God who is slow to get angry, patient, and enduring in our rebellion. And Jerusalem has long drawn out His patience until His pity is no longer there, but anger remains. Throughout centuries of failed kings, sure some good ones but even they stirred further God’s anger, Jerusalem has been provoking God. You can picture them like a child poking the side of a domesticated lion. Though the lion is well controlled and great in patience, the child pokes and pulls at the lion. Until the child provokes the lion to a point of no return, and the lion swipes at the child.
Though drawn out and attempts to correct action, Jerusalem had poked and pulled at God for far too long. They allowed idolatry, even within the temple, and dealt wrongly with their neighbors and each other. Though God sent true prophets to bring conviction and correction, Jerusalem stayed its course. In so doing, fracturing the covenant God had made with them. The lion was provoked.
God isn’t angry and is not perpetually angry and wrathful, He needs to be provoked to it. Denial of His love and grace prolonged leads to His just anger.
The fall of Jerusalem truly was not a shock, for there were warnings and prophets sent to get them to change course. Jerusalem never needed to fall to Babylon, but it wanted to. So God saw their continual rebellion and saw that the most loving thing at that point was punishment, which was their fall. So He purposed it, foretold it even.
Without Pity:
But how can He be a God of all mercy and yet bring punishment without pity? Perhaps the rebellion of Jerusalem reaches a depth for such a prolonged period that God could not feel sorry for this. His anger and their destruction were thoroughly justified.
It would be like a cheating spouse, just read Hosea, this analogy is literally used by God to explain this. Would a spouse ever rejoice in their significant other for cheating? No! Would a spouse ever reward the other for cheating? No! They would be justly angry about the whole ordeal. God in this kind of anger can cast out and do so justly, and thus without pity.
While it is true that God is only angry like this for a short time, once again read Hosea. I don’t want to touch on that because Lamentations 2 doesn’t touch that. Instead, we see just anger, mourning, and restless weeping. Lamentations gets to the lowest and deepest levels of human emotion within suffering. They graphically describe their destruction and the exultation of the enemy over Jerusalem.
Just Anger to the Church:
The church is the most proportionally equal community to Jerusalem in the text. I’m curious if in the church's history if it has ever received the just anger of God. It appears this level of anger is not against just anyone, but rather on those who should be in a relationship with God, and even those outside (like Nineveh in Jonah) are given an opportunity to repent. What we see in Lamentation is a community that never repented though given numerous opportunities.
Final Blessing:
Though at the core of God we will find love and mercy, we must also know that while it's abounding, He also has a great capacity to be angry. Yet in that anger, we see God’s desire to be in a loving relationship with humanity, for rich blessings from Him to be part of what we experience. Yet, His heart of love runs into conflict with our hearts of fleeting attention and rebellious desires. Then when we continue to choose ourselves and sin over the good life He desires for us and choose not to repent, then surely we will face His just anger. So let us head the opportunities of repentance and confession and love that our ever before us.
Now may the Lord of life and redemption be with you in every step, every breath, and every heartbeat of your journey.
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