Lamentações de Jeremias 1:4

THE REASON FOR JERUSALEM'S HUMILIATION

"The ways of Zion do mourn, because none come to the solemn assembly;

All her gates are desolate, her priests do sigh;

Her virgins are afflicted, and she herself is in bitterness.

Her adversaries are become the head, her enemies prosper;

For Jehovah hath afflicted her for the multitude of her transgressions:

Her young children are gone into captivity before the adversary.

And from the daughter of Zion all her majesty is departed:

Her princes are become like harts that find no pasture,

And they are gone without strength before the pursuer.

Jerusalem remembereth in the day of her affliction and of her miseries;

all the pleasant things that were from the days of old:

When her people fell into the hand of the adversary,

and none did help her,

The adversaries saw her, they did mock at her desolations."

"The ways of Zion do mourn" (Lamentations 1:4). The `ways' were the roads leading to Jerusalem, which before the captivity were thronged with traffic as thousands made their way to the great annual festivals of Passover, Pentecost and Tabernacles. No one attended any more. The inaccurate critical canard that, "The word Zion here was not a sanctuary name till after the exile,"[11] is disproved by the 43 times that Isaiah so used the term, plus the seventeen times Jeremiah used it, as well as many, many other times the term is found in Psalms, Amos, Joel and other prophets. Those who try to date Lamentations far later than the times of Jeremiah will need to come up with something a lot better than that.

"For the multitude of her transgressions" (Lamentations 1:5). There is a reason for the overwhelming destruction that befell Jerusalem, not merely in the instance of Nebuchadnezzar's destruction of it, but also again in 70 A.D. when Vespasian and Titus reduced it to rubble. The first destruction was due to the total apostasy of the wicked nation in their total departure from the Law of Moses, and the second was due to their consciousless rejection of the true Messiah the Son of God. Nations that today reject the Christian religion are asking for the same fate that again and again overwhelmed Jerusalem. The fact that evil men do not believe it is immaterial.

"Her young children are gone into captivity ... before the adversary" (Lamentations 1:5;). "They went not as a flock of lambs that follow the shepherd, but as slaves driven like cattle before the army of the Chaldeans."[12]

"The language of this verse may be drawn from Deuteronomy 28:24, which describes the judgment that would be visited upon a disobedient Israel."[13]

"They are gone without strength before the pursuer" (Lamentations 1:6). "This refers to Zedekiah and the nobles who have turned tail and fled away."[14] Also, there appears here a possible excuse for their capture. They fled "without strength," (a reference to the famine (2 Kings 25:4). From hunger and starvation they were weakened and easily outrun and captured by the Chaldeans.

"They did mock at her desolations" (Lamentations 1:7). The derision and mockery of God's chosen people was perhaps the bitterest part of their punishment. They had forsaken the true God in order to revel in the lascivious worship of the gods of the pagans; and now the devotees of those pagan gods and goddesses were reveling in their mockery and taunting derisions of the Israel of God. It is little wonder that Israel, in this, forever rejected those pagan deities, never again stooping to honor their worship.