Quoting Scripture
37 Who can speak, and have it happen if the Lord has not decreed it?
38 Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that both calamities and good things come?
39 Why should the living complain when punished for their sins?
This book is about the laments of the people of God as written by the prophet
Jeremiah. Lamentations mean the “funeral songs”. Jeremiah reflects the total
destruction that has happened to Jerusalem and the temple, the first one called
Solomons’s temple. In 586 BC the city was sieged and laid waste by the
Babylonians under King Nebuchadnezzar and the people including Jeremiah was held into exile into Egypt.. Throughout its history, the city has been destroyed 2 times, attacked 52 times, besieged 23 times and recaptured 44 times.
Here comes now Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, wrote this book as
representation of their desperate hearts who lost their city, their land and the
temple. They are now in exile in a foreign land. Jeremiah acknowledged their fate as the judgement of God to his people because of their sins.
I want you to contemplate the very words of the prophet. It is a straightforward
admission and acknowledgement of God’s sovereign hand behind all that
happened to them. On the first place, they knew it as God gave them a concrete
reminder. Deuteronomy 28 is clear to them about the blessings and curses God
will bestow. It is simply about being faithful to him that he blesses them and
being unfaithful to him that he bestows the dreaded punishments and curses.