“How.” This is the same Hebrew word that is translated “how” in Lamentations 1:1. It is a shriek or scream that comes from deep grief (see commentary on Lam. 1:1).
The opening of Lamentations 4, indeed, the whole chapter, might catch us off guard. Lamentations 1-3 covered Judah’s and Jeremiah’s suffering in some detail, and also that the cause of the suffering was Judah’s sin. Then Lamentations 3 ends with Jeremiah having hope for the future and praying to God (Lam. 3:43-66). But now, suddenly, we are back in the depths of suffering, with no prayer to God and no clear mention of hope for the future. The writer again mentions Judah’s sin (Lam. 4:6, 13), death and destruction (Lam. 4:7-10), God’s anger and wrath (Lam. 4:11, 16), and he expresses that it looks hopeless for Judah (Lam. 4:17), and death seems near (Lam. 4:18).
But Lamentations 4 shows us that there is no timetable for grief. Grief almost always comes in waves. Many times, just when a person thinks “I am through the worst of this, my strong and sad feelings are almost gone,” feelings of grief, sadness, and even anger come back as strong (and sometimes stronger) than they were before. People who have been through tragedy and the caregivers of those people can learn from Lamentations 4 that the return of strong feelings of grief is normal and even should be expected.
It is worth noting that lots of people die in the Bible, so lots of people mourn, but there is not one statement in the Bible about how intense or how long “normal” mourning is. There is no such thing as “normal” mourning. Grief and mourning are individual and personal. All the Bible says for caregivers to do is “cry with those who are crying” (Rom. 12:15).
It is also worth noting that our Western Culture is not honest about grief. In television shows and movies, it is important that “the show must go on,” so after a person dies on TV (often by murder or unexpected accident) there is no grief expressed beyond a “that’s too bad” and one or two sad looks. Seeing that fake stuff day after day sets people up for false expectations and failure. Tragedy and death are horrific and genuine grieving is a recurring event that takes time, energy, clarity of thought, and often support from friends and caregivers, to properly deal with. Lamentations show us how painful tragedy and grief can be when it compares grief to having broken bones (Lam. 3:4).
There are a couple of patterns in Lamentations 4 that help the reader understand the text and also get in touch with the physical and emotional pain that the Babylonian attack and the famine had caused. One pattern is that there are four or five verses that speak of tragedy, then a verse that mentions Yahweh’s wrath or punishment (see commentary on Lam. 4:6). So there is an outpouring of grief, then a realization of what is happening spiritually due to sin and Yahweh’s anger. The other striking pattern is the pattern of situation reversal throughout the chapter. Things go from good to bad, or bad to worse. The gold goes from shiny to dim (Lam. 4:1); the people go from being valued like gold to being worthless as clay pots (Lam. 4:2); mothers go from being loving to being cruel (Lam. 4:3); children go from being well cared for to being uncared for (Lam. 4:4); nobles go from being healthy and wealthy to being sick and poor (Lam. 4:7-8); mothers go from caring for their children to eating their children (Lam. 4:10); the priests and prophets go from being respectable leaders to being unclean in the eyes of the people and thus driven away (Lam. 4:13-15). These are the effects of sin. Sin turns things upside down and destroys people, and if not repented of, results in the ultimate destruction—eternal death.
“the gold has become dim!” Gold does not tarnish, so various suggestions have been made as to what this sentence means, and there is likely some truth in each of them. Jerusalem was burned down by the Babylonians (2 Kings 25:9; 2 Chron. 36:19), so it is likely that the literal gold in Jerusalem, especially on the Temple, had become dimmed and discolored by soot and smoke. It is also likely that, in light of the devastation and the inability of the gold to buy off the Babylonian aggressors, the gold had become “dim” (useless) in the eyes of the people. It is also a possibility that the “gold” in the city was metaphorical for the people, the Jews, who were God’s chosen people, but in light of their sin and God’s anger against them, they had become dim instead of shining brightly. The likelihood of that interpretation is augmented by the comparison to people as “pots” in Lamentations 4:2. As stated above, there is likely truth in each of these interpretations.
“The stones of the sanctuary.” The Hebrew text can also be translated as “ The holy stones are poured out.”
“at the head of every street.” The main streets of the city led to the Temple, so when the stones of the Temple were thrown down, they poured out onto the “head,” the start, of every street. It is worth noting that Lamentations chapter 4 starts with the stones of the Temple being poured into the “streets,” because the chapter follows with a number of “street scenes,” Jeremiah “narrates a series of street scenes in the first eighteen stanzas.”a In fact, the word “street” appears in Lamentations 4:1, 5,8,14, 18 (v. 18 uses a different word, one that refers to the open squares in the city, but in the context, it is basically equivalent to “streets.” Although “streets” are mentioned in other places in Lamentations (e.g. Lam. 2:11, 12, 19), no chapter has the kind of pattern we see in Lamentations 4.
The “street scenes” of chapter 4 emphasize the hardships the Babylonian attack has caused for the people of Judah, from the commoner on the street to the priests and royalty. The sin of the leaders, followed by the sin of the people, has brought indescribable tragedy upon everyone.
a)
Leslie Allen, A Liturgy of Grief, 124.
