Lamentations 4 THE SIEGE In this poem, the prophet is like an eyewitness who describes the people, their moral condition of soul, and their state as a defeated people. The prosperity the people of Jerusalem had enjoyed, was gone during the siege of over two years. That had been allowed by God to give them ample opportunity to repent of their sins and turn to the Lord, but they did not do that. The siege had been allowed by God because of the open and willful practice of idolatry, and their continued rejection of righteousness, holiness, and obedience to God. That attitude had permeated into every spectrum of society.
In chapter two, the lamentations were that of a grieving widow who was brought down from being a beautiful young woman to a hopeless person in the streets. In chapter three, the imagery is that of a defeated soldier who has been humiliated, disgraced, disarmed, and abandoned. In chapter four the focus of the lamentation is on the children and how the siege of Jerusalem affected them. It is a horrible passage to read.
Even though they were of the nobility, they had been brought down from being like treasures of gold to nothing more than broken pottery lying on the street and being walked on. They had come from having everything to being like cruel animals feeding on dung. These were the last generation of people who had been brought into a society of people who had turned farther away from the Lord than even the generation before them. This is like the result of “evil men and seducers who wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived.” Not only are the parents a failure, but their children are, and suffer as much or more than those before them.
The punishment being meted out on the inhabitants of Jerusalem was more severe than that which came on the people of Sodom. People in Sodom sinned grievously and died quickly. People in Jerusalem and Judah were suffering something like a living death. They weren’t living life as it was intended, and they were slowly perishing while they were alive, because they had chosen to be separated from their God who loved them. The leaders, priests, and false prophets who were once distinguished and good to look upon, were the ones upon whom the blame was laid. The fate of the beautiful children was made by them when they ignored the Lord and His truth.
Sadly, that is happening again to the young ones being brought up in this present time. Parents, when they were young, listened to, and accepted as true without question, all their teachers and professors taught. They accepted what they were taught by so-called educators, rather than those who taught them the word of God. Christian parents, Sunday School teachers, preachers, and Bible teachers have sought to bring the truth of God to the young, but soon the sinful appeal of the world system takes over their minds, and we are losing the next generation to the evil of the secular society in which we live. Outward beauty is the only beauty to be seen or considered of value to the young people around us. Inward, moral beauty and outward righteous living is considered old-fashioned and out of date as those things that are of real value.
In Jerusalem during the siege, all that was once good and beautiful; became black and ugly, both physically and morally. The parents even resorted to cannibalism and boiled their children to try to satisfy themselves. The death of the young now is quite commonplace in modern society, as self-indulgent adults and parents, live only to please themselves and fulfill their own selfish interests at the cost of the lives of the innocent. The hope of a nation is in their children. People who turn to sin for their own nefarious reasons are leaving the coming generation with no moral compass or righteous guidance for conduct in the days and years to come.
Self-satisfying sin leaves the next generation that may be able to survive the sins of their parents, in a worse condition than that of their parent’s generation and the ones before them. Parents who defy God and disobey His word; some even to denying that God exists, bring a hopeless future down on the heads of their children. Often the sins of the parents will be copied and repeated by the next generation which will go even farther astray than their parents. The slippery downward slope of sin gets steeper with each succeeding generation. Deterioration of morality and righteous living accelerates until changes come so fast that there is no stopping the slide.
What started as a drifting away from God’s righteous standards that are given in the Bible, gave way to adding and taking away from stated truth. Then began the substituting of opinions and “another way of looking at things,” for the plain statements of divine Persons. Following that comes the questioning of whether the ancient truths that have been tried and proven for centuries are relevant to life “in today’s world.” Following that comes the ruling that those who represent the “will of the people,” have decided that much of the Bible is “hate literature,” and must be removed from the schools and rejected as standards of conduct in the life of modern society.
Glorying in material prosperity brings spiritual poverty. Spiritual poverty brings moral decay. Moral decay removes the foundation of righteous conduct upon which stable societies depend to prevent chaos. When anarchy and evil have their way, the nation is finished. The siege takes away everything that is needed for survival. We are in the middle of a siege in this nation presently. A rejection of biblical standards is where the siege against that which was once used by God begins. We have already passed that place.
New interpretations of old and reliable truths have become popular even in religious organizations. Those ideas of people allow sin and “religious practices” to coexist, and sometimes even join together. That is what idolatry is like. Once a new “outlook” on plainly stated words of scripture is accepted, the Bible is no longer the standard of belief, conduct, morality, and daily living. Rather, “what I think is truth,” is what is accepted and followed. “If the foundations be destroyed, what shall the righteous do?”
The consequences of sin bring tragedy upon those who introduce sin; but unfortunately, it doesn’t stop there. Those who follow their lead will suffer the same things, and in the case of children, even worse. In the besieged city of Jerusalem, the children were boiled and eaten. In our society, they are aborted and burned. People think what is right depends on the opinion of each individual, not on God’s righteous standards. But what individual has an opinion that didn’t find its source in someone else’s opinion? So, the adage, “What is right for me, may not be right for you,” finds widespread acceptance. Hardly anyone asks, “What does God say about this matter?”
Parents who have rejected the clear message of the Gospel, accept a watered-down message that uses biblical terms in a non-biblical context. The watered-down message that brings no real change in attitude or in conduct of life, has no effect on children or their friends in the next generation. Consequently, Christianity is rejected completely as unimportant and irrelevant to life in the world today. In rejecting Christ, they turn to false prophets, self-centered opinions, and untried methods for guidance in their lives and find themselves without goals, guidance, or grace. By doing this they find themselves without any moral or spiritual standards except those they make up to suit themselves. A major problem with that mindset is that their standards will conflict with those of people who have ones that are different altogether. So, one person may feel it is all right to kill another person with a gun who trespasses on your property but doesn’t feel it is right to abort a baby. Who is right?
To live without universally accepted standards brings a devastated society and ultimately a devasted world. That is why worldwide unrest and warfare have been going on for generations now. God’s standards are based on universally understood standards that He placed in the soul of every human being. This eliminates the confusion of being guided by what a person thinks is okay for this moment.
The whole principle of restraint being imposed in order to maintain an orderly and satisfying life, has been rejected by whole groups of people in society. Even though social, moral, national, and personal restraint has been practiced for centuries, and there have been many failures; at least in this country, we have been able to live in a more or less safe society until recent years. People still have choices: wear a seat belt and you have a better chance to live; don’t smoke and drink and you will have better health and live longer. Restraints have benefits and to reject them has adverse results. Sadly though, people are more and more rejecting restraints, and they die – and their children suffer and die!