Friday - Lamentations 2 - God Did It

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HERE is no sense attributing God's actions to some nebulous rule of randomness. God is a thinker. He isn't capricious or haphazard.  His very nature and position demand that nothing is ever truly incidental or accidental. As the Hebrew poet of old wrote, "Our God is in the heavens: He has done whatsoever He has pleased (Psalm 115:3). Along that same line, the Apostle Paul wrote, "Who has known the mind of the Lord? or who has been His counselor?" (Romans 11:34). Here, in Lamentations 2:17, it is recorded that Jeremiah wrote to Jerusalem saying, "The LORD has done that which He had devised; He has fulfilled His word that He had commanded in the days of old: He has thrown down, and has not pitied: and He has caused your enemy to rejoice over you, He has set up the horn of  your  adversaries." Although we can see the culpability of the citizens of Jerusalem, we can't ignore the power and authority of God. Justice is not a product of some impersonal thing like karma (which does not exist), it is a result of the character, attitude and actions of our very personal God, Jehovah.

If you read through Lamentations 2 attentively you will pick up on a recurring phrase: "The Lord has" done this or that. It's not necessary that I count the occurrences of this thought in this chapter for you. If you pay attention while reading it, you'll trip over it enough to realize that this is the dominant theme here. While it was the people who sinned, it was God who got angry. It was God who brought Israel to her knees. It was God who wielded the club of justice in Judah. It was God who loosened tyrants and bullies  against  the  Jews.  It was God who slew His own people.  I don't deny that they deserved harsh justice (as do I). They had received innumerable warnings and more than enough opportunities to relent, but they stubbornly refused. So, God became the enemy of His own people.  God is capable of violence. God possesses the ability to hate. God the Creator can become a destroyer. God can indeed give us the silent treatment.