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Context No. 1229 of 4322 · Lamentations

Context · Reflection

Lamentations 2:17-22: in context

17The LORD has done that which he planned. He has fulfilled his word that he commanded in the days of old. He has thrown down, and has not pitied. He has caused the enemy to rejoice over you. He has exalted the horn of your adversaries. 18Their heart cried to the Lord. O wall of the daughter of Zion, let tears run down like a river day and night. Give yourself no relief. Don’t let your eyes rest. 19Arise, cry out in the night, at the beginning of the watches! Pour out your heart like water before the face of the Lord. Lift up your hands toward him for the life of your young children, who faint for hunger at the head of every street. 20“Look, LORD, and see to whom you have done thus! Should the women eat their offspring, the children that they held and bounced on their knees? Should the priest and the prophet be killed in the sanctuary of the Lord? 21“The youth and the old man lie on the ground in the streets. My virgins and my young men have fallen by the sword. You have killed them in the day of your anger. You have slaughtered, and not pitied. 22“You have called, as in the day of a solemn assembly, my terrors on every side. There was no one that escaped or remained in the day of the LORD’s anger. My enemy has consumed those whom I have cared for and brought up.

Lamentations mourns the destruction of Jerusalem, and this passage is unsparing. The LORD has done what he purposed, fulfilling the word he decreed long ago; he has thrown down without pity and let the enemy rejoice. The poet calls the city to weep: let tears stream down day and night, give yourself no rest; arise, cry out in the night, pour out your heart like water before the Lord, lift up your hands for the lives of your starving children. And then he turns to God with raw, almost accusing questions: look and see, LORD, to whom you have done this; should mothers eat their own children; should priest and prophet be killed in your sanctuary? The young and old lie dead in the streets; you have slain them in the day of your anger.

This is one of the raw passages in the Bible, and its rawness is instructive. The poet does not clean up his grief or soften his words toward God; he says plainly that the LORD did this, without pity, and he flings hard questions in God's direction, look what you have done, should this happen. And yet the whole thing is addressed to God; it is prayer. This is the astonishing permission Lamentations gives: to bring even our most anguished, bewildered, almost accusing grief directly to God, to pour out the heart like water before his face, holding nothing back. The poet does not turn away from God in his pain; he turns toward him with it, even the parts that sound like accusation. That is a truer faith than a polite piety that will only say acceptable things to God. Real grief, brought honestly to God, is not irreverence; it is the refusal to deal with God at arm's length, the insistence on taking even the unbearable to him. Pour out your heart like water before the face of the Lord, the passage says, and it models doing exactly that, the whole heart, the anguish and the questions, emptied out before the God who can bear it.

When my grief is raw and bewildered, even edged with accusation, can I do what Lamentations models, pour out my whole heart like water before God rather than turning away or offering only polite words?

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