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AMENTATIONS 4 is the last of 4
acrostic poems in this book. Chapter 5 is a 22-verse poem (like 1, 2 & 4),
but it doesn't follow the acrostic outline.
Chapter 3 had 3 verses for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet, so it had
66 verses. This methodically ordered form of mourning should catch our
attention. The affliction of Israel was
extended and intense. If a man's troubles pass quickly, he may not take the
time to order his thoughts concerning his difficulties. But, when the shame and
pain drag on for years and years, there is ample opportunity to systematize
one's grief. As we see again in this chapter, Jeremiah was meticulous in his
examination of Israel's misery.
If we are paying close attention, it is quite
shocking to come upon Lamentations 4:10, which reads like this, "The hands of the pitiful women have
sodden their own children: they were their meat..." In other words,
the mothers who once had exhibited great care and tenderness toward their
children, were driven by hunger to cook their own offspring in order to try to
assuage the pangs of their own starvation. Though perhaps the most intense
example, this is only one example of how bad things got in Jerusalem before the
final fall of that city to the Babylonians. Even the meek and the weak had been
transformed from caregivers into cannibals. This reminds me of the old phrase
which runs something like this, "Sin will take farther than you wanted to
go, keep you longer than you meant to stay and cost you more than you can
afford to pay." The sin of
Jerusalem ended the security of Jerusalem.
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