Lamentations

No. 60 Lamentations 3:1-16
Lamentations is five poems written over the ruins of Jerusalem after Babylon destroyed it in 587 BC. The book is built with severe formal discipline. Chapters one, two, and four run through the Hebrew...
No. 101 Lamentations 2:1-16
This is the second of the five poems written over the ruins of Jerusalem, and like the first and fourth it runs the Hebrew alphabet, one letter per stanza. An earlier reading in this series covered chapter...
No. 225 Lamentations 3:17-32
Lamentations is a set of funeral poems over Jerusalem after the Babylonians burned it in 586 before Christ. It is raw grief with almost no relief in it, mostly a city weeping over its own ruins. This passage...
No. 395 Lamentations 3:49-66
This is a section of Lamentations spoken from the very bottom. The poet describes weeping without stopping, being hunted by enemies like a bird, thrown into a pit, with water closing over his head, until he...
No. 458 Lamentations 5:17-22
Lamentations is a book of grief over the destruction of Jerusalem, and it does not end the way we would want a book of the Bible to end. There is no triumphant resolution here, no sudden dawn. The last lines...
No. 629 Lamentations 5:1-16
Lamentations is a book of raw grief over the destruction of Jerusalem, and this final chapter is a communal prayer that refuses to look away from the losses. Remember, LORD, what has come upon us; look, and...
No. 697 Lamentations 1:1-16
Lamentations is five poems written over the rubble of Jerusalem after Babylon burned it in 587 BC, and the first one opens with a word that sets the key: How. How lonely sits the city that once was full of...
No. 1229 Lamentations 2:17-22
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...
No. 2313 Lamentations 1:17-22
Jerusalem, in the ruin of her destruction, spreads out her hands with no one to comfort her. But amid her lament comes a striking confession. The LORD is righteous, she says, for I have rebelled against his...
No. 3718 Lamentations 4:1-16
This is a lament of unbearable grief over Jerusalem's fall, and its images of famine and suffering are among the harrowing passages in Scripture; we read them soberly, not dwelling on the horrors. The poet...
No. 3843 Lamentations 4:17-22
In the ruins of Jerusalem, the poet confesses a bitter lesson learned too late: our eyes failed, looking in vain for help, watching for a nation that could not save. They had pinned their hopes on a foreign...
No. 4292 Lamentations 3:33-48
In the middle of Lamentations, amid deep grief over a devastated Jerusalem, comes a tender insight into God's heart: he does not afflict willingly or grieve the children of men from his heart. Even when God's...