Lamentations consists of five poems/laments. Four of them, including this one, consist of 22 verses and are acrostic. That means that each verse begins with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet.
The first part is written as if the city of Jerusalem is a women, a widow. Once she was great among the nations, but now is a slave. She weeps at night. The lovers of verse 2 are the idols and other nations that she turned to, instead of turning to the Lord, for help. They all betrayed her. When in trouble the Lord is the only one we should turn to.
Her people are identified with Jerusalem, yet they had all been exiled to other nations. The religious festivals were a focal point of life in Jerusalem, yet now there is no one left to attend them. She had been defeated by her enemies. Her enemies (Babylon) were at ease while she was in great distress.
Verse 5 highlights the reason for all this. It is because of her sins, and because of the active judgement of God upon her.
All the splendour of Jerusalem had gone. This included gold and silver from the temple, and the best of her leaders. The leaders in fact proved to be weak and fled the city. The city was left utterly desolate with no one to help.
Verses 8 and 9 stress again the role that her sin played in all this and the desolation that followed.
Verse 12 and 13 make it clear that she knew that it was the Lord who sent the suffering. Any view of God that has no room for His active role in judgement of sin is utterly inadequate and unbiblical. Jerusalem was left with nothing.
The writer is struggling with the enormity and horror of what has happened, yet knows at the same time that it was completely deserved. Even so he calls on the Lord to look at his distress.
At the end he calls on the Lord to deal with his enemies with the same judgement that He dealt with Jerusalem.
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