Lesson Context: The book of Lamentations commemorates the devastating destruction of Jerusalem that occurred when Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, invaded Judah in 586 BC. A long siege left many dead from starvation, and a significant number of the remaining population was brutalized and taken captive to Babylon. The five poems of Lamentations are one person’s attempt to sort through his confusion and question as well as to find a reason for hope. Though traditionally, this person has been identified with the prophet Jeremiah, the book of Lamentations is anonymous. While the people of Judah certainly had their grief and wrestle with the difficult theological questions raised by their intense suffering, they also had to remember God’s character and His long track record of faithfulness and love.
l. Remembering Judgment (Lamentations 3:16-20): A. Memories of Humiliation (v. 16)
16a. “He hath also broken my teeth with gravel stone.” “What a figure to express disgust, pain, and the consequent incapacity of taking food for the support of life; a man, instead of bread, being obliged to eat small pebbles till his teeth are broken to pieces by endeavouring to grind them. One can scarcely read this description without feeling the toothache.” (Clarke)
With gravel. “It could be argued that it refers to the type of bread made from the sweepings of the granary floor that Jeremiah must have received toward the end of the siege.” (Ellison)
16b. “He hath covered me with ashes.” Covered me with ashes does not convey the full violence of this image. The Hebrew indicates the act of forcing someone down, perhaps pressing one’s foot down, perhaps by pressing one’s foot down on his back. A contemporary of putting it might be, “He made me eat dirt.”
B. Memories of Despair (vv. 17-18).
17. “And thou hast removed my soul far off from peace: I forgat prosperity.”
Here the poet reflects on the significant losses he and his community sustained in the wake of their tragedy. Chief among them was any sense of well-being or hope for future prosperity. The poet uses the familiar Hebrew word shalom (translated peace).
18. “And I said, My strength and my hope is perished from the Lord.” In strikingly absolute terms, the poet dismisses any possibility of a future return to strength or reason for hope.
C. Memories of Bitterness (vv. 19-20).
19. “Remembering mine affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the gall.”
Jeremiah did not prescribe positive thinking for this deep affliction. He actually felt it useful to remember it, to understand it for what it was, and to not pretend it wasn’t there. My soul still remembers and sinks within me: It was good for Jeremiah’s soul to sink, to find its bottom point so that he could build on the right foundation. “It is evident that in the preceding verses there is bitterness of complaint against the bitterness of adversity, that is not becoming to man when under the chastising hand of God; and, while indulging this feeling, all hope fled. Here we find a different feeling; he humbles himself under the mighty hand of God, and then his hope revives.” (Clarke)
20. “My soul hath them still in remembrance and is humbled in me.” The poet reflects on the over-all effect this all-consuming memory from Lamentations 3:3-19 had on the poet.
References: David Guzik’s Bible Commentary (Blue Letter), International Sunday School Commentary KJV 2023-2024