Lamentações de Jeremias 1:8

JERUSALEM'S PUNISHMENT RELATED TO HER SINS

"Jerusalem hath grievously sinned;

therefore she is become as an unclean thing;

All that honored her despise her,

because they have seen her nakedness:

Yea, she sigheth, and turneth backward.

Her filthiness was in her skirts;

she remembered not her latter end;

Therefore is she come down wonderfully;

she hath no comforter.

Behold, O Jerusalem, my affliction;

for the enemy hath magnified himself.

The adversary hath spread out his hand upon all her pleasant things:

For she hath seen that the nations are entered into her sanctuary,

Concerning whom thou didst command

that they should not enter thine assembly.

All her people sigh, they seek bread;

They have given their pleasant things for food to refresh the soul"

"They have seen her nakedness" (Lamentations 1:8). The wickedness of Israel was adultery, the taking of the worship which properly belonged to God alone (her husband) and the giving of it to the pagan gods and goddesses of the people, spiritual adultery, as it was called; however, it was the brazen immorality of that idol worship which constituted its principal offense; and that is what is meant by the reference in Lamentations 1:9 that, "her filthiness was in her skirts." In ancient times, the punishment of an immoral woman was a brutal public display of her naked body, in which her skirts were tied above her head and she was shamefully scourged out of society. (See our commentary under Nahum 3:5 for a further discussion of this type of humiliation.)

"She sigheth, and turneth backward" (Lamentations 1:8). "She turns her back upon her spectators in order to hide herself from their gaze."[15] We can understand why she would not face her tormenters. The gross and shameful humiliation of Jerusalem in the calamities which had befallen her were equivalent in every way to that ancient, shameless punishment of harlots. "The proud lady (Jerusalem) has become a fallen woman by participating in the demoralizing rites of the worship of Baal."[16] In consequence, she is suffering a similar shame and humiliation.

"She remembered not her latter end" (Lamentations 1:9). "She took no thought of her doom; she failed to consider the consequences of her actions until it was too late."[17]

"The nations are entered into her sanctuary" (Lamentations 1:10). "The magnitude of this defilement of the Temple is seen in that it was the symbol of God's presence and Israel's privilege."[18] No Gentile was permitted to enter it; and only one Israelite could enter it, and he could do so only once in the year, namely, when the High Priest entered upon the day of Atonement. Now, the Chaldeans had not only entered and desecrated it; they had also looted its treasures.

"They have given their precious things for food" (Lamentations 1:11). Ash pointed out the gruesome truth that, "This may very well mean that they sold their children for food. The same word used here for `precious things' means `children' in Hosea 9:16 and Ezekiel 24:16."[19]

It should be noted that up through Lamentations 1:11a, the perspective of the narrator is that of an onlooker, speaking of Jerusalem in the third person; but in Lamentations 1:11b, there is a dramatic shift to the first person; and in the balance of the chapter, the ruined city herself speaks in the first person. This is why the versions divide the chapter into two paragraphs (1) Lamentations 1:1-11a, and (2) Lamentations 1:11b-22.[20]