Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
God's People Weep
OUR HUMAN CONDITION
We go our own way until we hurt. Then in shock and confusion we ask, What happened? With guilt we wonder, Where did we go wrong? We want to blame others. But confronted by the outcomes of our actions, we ask, Where can we turn for relief?
ASSIGNMENT
We begin by walking through the rubble of Jerusalem, reading Lamentations. Later, looking back through our tears, we will, week by week, read the warnings of the prophets. The grief, confusion, and hope we hear expressed in Lamentations we will hear also in the prophets. Now, read quickly the chapters from Deuteronomy to remember the life-and-death admonitions of Torah. Deuteronomy helps us know what went wrong. The destruction of Jerusalem and the exile into Babylon will forever shape our faith, as it has the faith of the Jews, for we will remember; we will repent; we will slowly envision a new future.
CONTEXT
Who
Jeremiah
Where
Jerusalem, Southern Kingdom of Judah
When
587/586 BC
Condition of the People
Jerusalem is desolate after being destroyed by Babylon. The Temple has been destroyed. Many of the Israelites are dead and most of their leaders have been marched into exile one thousand miles into the heart of the Babylonian Empire. They feel like the Lord has destroyed them and forgotten them.
Main Message
The prophet Jeremiah weeps over the destruction of Jerusalem. The kings and people of Israel had refused to believe that Jerusalem would ever be conquered. Yet King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon succeeded. The nation of Israel is gone.
PRAYER
Pray daily before study:
"Hear my prayer, Lord!
Prayer concerns for the week:
RETURN
Day 1 Lamentations 1–3 (laments over Zion, God's warnings fulfilled, confession, God's steadfast love)
Day 2 Lamentations 4–5 (punishment of Zion)
Day 3 Deuteronomy 5–11 (the Law at Sinai, a chosen people, warnings and consequences, God's requirements)
Day 4 Deuteronomy 12–18 (place of worship, warning against idolatry, sabbatical year, Passover, kingship)
Day 5 Deuteronomy 23; 25–28 (miscellaneous laws, first fruits, altar on Mount Ebal, blessings and curses)
Day 6 "The Word of the Lord" and "Marks of Obedient Community"
Day 7 Rest, pray, and attend class.
THE WORD OF THE LORD
We are about to plunge into the prophets and the agony of Israel. The experience will be painful, filled with anguish and struggle. The prophets, in the name of God, will proclaim dire warnings, dramatize disasters to come — always pleading with the people to repent. When the people suffer, the prophets will weep. So will we.
We may become weary, reading the endless warnings. We may question our tightly held theologies. But the Word will never let the light go out.
The Agony in the Laments
Why begin this study with the Book of Lamentations? First, because our human tendency, like that of ancient Judah, is not to take shouts of warning seriously. But after reading Lamentations, we know the warnings were altogether fulfilled. The predicted punishment took place. So, when we read the prophets, we cannot be complacent.
Second, people often define their lives by some major event, a disaster or a life-shaping tragedy. The Jews can never forget that day in 587 BC when Babylon ravaged Jerusalem. Biblical theology is shaped by the day David's dynasty came to an end and Solomon's sanctuary was destroyed. Israel experienced a watershed of history when its people were slaughtered and survivors dispersed into foreign lands. Both Jews and Christians must read the Hebrew Bible through the eyes of postexilic Judaism.
Third, when you and I suffer grief, where can we go for help? We go to those who understand pain and sorrow because they have experienced it. We may cry, Is there any sorrow like my sorrow? What a relief to find others who hurt and who shake the doors of heaven for answers. In the depths of Israel's pain, we will find that the Lord who punishes is also the Lord who cares and sustains.
Anguish in History
The Assyrians had demolished the Northern Kingdom, first with a heavy invasion in 732 BC, then in 722 BC with siege, destruction, and exile. The Babylonians ravaged the Southern Kingdom with the same one-two punch — first an invasion in 597 BC and later in 587 BC following the awful siege, the complete destruction of Jerusalem. Jerusalem had believed itself to be impregnable. Now it lay in ruins.
Walk through the smoldering remains of the city in 587 BC. Step carefully over the broken stones and burning embers. Listen to the soft wails of raped women, starving children, mourning elders. Smell the stench. Young men and women able to walk were marched off into exile. A few scholars, some artisans, a handful of priests and nobility went into slavery with them. Just as Assyria had scattered Israelites from the Northern Kingdom over a century earlier, Babylon carted off the people of Judah from the Southern Kingdom after the siege of Jerusalem. The people of God had been slaughtered or scattered.
Solomon's Temple, carefully handcrafted centuries before, now lay in rubble, cedar beams smoldering amid the stones. In better days, the priests had offered there a continual stream of prayer and praise. Now the priests were dead or exiled, the gold and silver vessels carried away. Once during religious festivals, massive throngs gathered at the Temple. But now,
"Zion's roads are in mourning;
Walk into the Judean hills, a land of grazing and mixed farming. Crops had been confiscated or burned. The pastures were empty, for the animals had long since been eaten. Ancient landmarks were strewn about, homes and barns torn down. The Babylonians axed the centuries-old olive trees, set their stumps afire. They salted the fields so nothing would grow. Gone was the land of milk and honey, Abraham's promise, Moses' dream, Joshua's possession. The land was each family's inheritance. Gone was the land of promise.
The defeat marked the end of the monarchy. The king had become the sacred link between God and nation. The monarchy symbolized the body politic, uniting all the tribes of Israel into a cohesive nation. The golden age of David was recorded indelibly in the collective mind. When the Northern Kingdom, Israel, broke away after the death of Solomon, it was a tragic weakening of the nation. But the Southern Kingdom, Judah, carried on David's tradition. For four hundred years, each succeeding king had been a direct descendant of David, a sign of the providence and plan of God. Years before, Assyria had captured the last king of Samaria, putting an Assyrian governor in charge. Now David's descendant, King Zedekiah of Judah, was a prisoner. Babylon killed his sons while he watched, gouged out his eyes, and led the pitiable figure away into exile. With the collapse of the monarchy, God seemed to have abdicated divine protectorship, condemning Israel to the chaos of history.
Something happened to the soul of Judah. The theology of being a chosen people was tossed into turmoil. What had happened to God's protection? Judaism would spend generations trying to understand. Priests and prophets, wise leaders and ordinary people would thread theologies to make sense of catastrophe. Jewish and Christian communities continue the struggle to understand punishment and pain. It wasn't just that they were the chosen people, but that Josiah had instituted the reforms that Deuteronomy required. Deuteronomy had promised blessing for those who kept the commandments. But when Josiah was killed, the people had a crisis of faith, and when they were carried into exile, that crisis worsened.
Grief Laid Bare
Lamentations uses words that touch every human sorrow. The experiences are all voiced. Shock: The elders "sit on the ground and mourn" throwing "dust on their heads" (Lamentations 2:10). Weeping: Let "your tears stream down like a flood / all day and night" (2:18). Bodily pain: "My stomach is churning. / My insides are poured out on the ground" (2:11). Loneliness: "How lonely sits the city. ... / How like a widow she has become. ... / She weeps bitterly in the night" (1:1-2, NRSV). Notice the personification: The survivors are depicted as a bereaved woman. Judah or Jerusalem is a daughter, now in tears.
If any reaction is lacking, it is the normal effort to deny what actually happened. The destruction was so complete, the suffering so severe, that disbelief was impossible.
"My soul continually thinks of it and is bowed down within me" (3:20, NRSV).
Like grieving people, Lamentations tells the details over and over. Guilt is expressed. So is shame. Self-pity is prevalent, and anger, projected toward God and others, explodes.
"Lord, look and see to whom you have done this!" (2:20).
The writer demands that others must suffer (3:64).
Repentance is required, for we cannot be healed without it. "We are doomed / because we have sinned" (5:16). And with the healing balm of God's love comes the ability to trust again.
"The Lord is my portion!
Acceptance of reality and the willingness to go on help heal wounded souls.
"Why then does any living person complain about their sins? (3:39).
The Laments
A lament is a Hebrew poem, designed to verbalize suffering and pain, to be used at funerals, and to express grief within worship. Psalms 79 and 80 are laments. The prophetic books use laments as warnings — wailing, as it were, before the fact. The prophets sing the dirges long before the funeral.
Lamentations consists of five closely structured laments, one per chapter. They were meant to be chanted in worship. All around the world, Jews still read Lamentations on the ninth of Av (July/August)to remember the destruction of Solomon's Temple (587/586 BC) and the loss of the rebuilt Temple in AD 70. But the laments, like the Psalms, are meant to be read by anyone who needs to express sorrow. The poems employ every possible literary device to drive home pain and sorrow.
Prophetic Themes
The Israelites, in desperate straits, looked at their pitiable condition and asked, Why did this happen to us, God's chosen? Did God forget the promise to protect us from our enemies? Why did God destroy those things most sacred — the Temple, David's kingdom, Jerusalem, even take away the land of promise?
The questions escalate: Why have we been punished? For the sins of our mothers and fathers? for our own sins? Why was the punishment so harsh? Are we not the children of Abraham, the covenant people of Moses? Is there any hope at all for us?
For now, we can only hint at answers, for we have not yet probed the questions deeply. But Lamentations, like the prophets, agrees on several basic principles.
• God is in charge. There is no suggestion that God was weak, overwhelmed by other, more powerful gods or by some force of evil. No, clearly the events that happened were under God's control. Did God allow the destruction? Yes, for the lament says, God has withdrawn "his strong hand" (Lamentations 2:3), that is, pulled back his protective power. But more prominent is the insistence that God actually selected foreign armies to deliver divine punishment (1:14). The underlying conviction is that God punished Israel (1:15). God did not act casually or accidentally; God acted purposefully and intentionally.
• The destruction was punishment. "The crown has fallen off our head," a reference to both the fall of the king and the fall of the chosen nation; "We are doomed" (5:16).
The laments do not detail the sins and transgressions as the prophets do; they refer simply to rebellion. We will see this theme strongly dramatized by the prophets. But who sinned, forebears or the punished? Both, comes the answer. The ancestors were guilty. But the people suffered for their own sins as well. The experience was communal.
Did God forget Israel was special? No, God remembered. It was God's remembrance of righteousness that caused the destruction. The people forgot. They forgot Mount Sinai and Torah. The people of promise were special within the covenant. If they forgot the covenant, broke the commandments, forgot the poor, God would punish. Since nothing is more precious to God than justice and mercy, God would come down hard on injustice and cruelty, even if it meant destroying the Temple, the king, and the land of promise.
• God has not abandoned Israel. The despairing survivors, sitting in the ashes, cry plaintively, "Is this nothing to all you who pass by?" (1:12). Is there any hope for comfort? No, not from human sources. But the poets and prophets know God is never without new possibilities. The laments are laced with hope built on the dependability of God's Word.
"The Lord has done what he purposed,
There is good news in that, for even God's punishment proves the Almighty is dependable.
God's Steadfast Love Will Yet Save
What can we do when hope seems gone, when even the voice of God is silent? In the heart of the laments we are told,
"This I call to mind,
So Israel learns to trust the love that never ends, for "the Lord is good to those who wait for him" (3:25, NRSV).
In the fifth lament, the cadence of the poem turns to a major key: "Restore us, LORD, to yourself. / Please let us return! / Give us new days" (5:21).
Deuteronomy
Scholars say Deuteronomy is built on Mount Sinai, the Ten Commandments, the sermons of Moses, and the spiritual insights of Exodus and wilderness faith. But it was a living word, oral, and taught for centuries. Like all civil law, it received interpretation for new situations.
The point of Deuteronomy is that Moses made clear who the covenant people were and the God to whom they belonged. Moses told where the blessings would come from (28:1-14) and warned where the pitfalls lay (28:15-68).
At least part of Deuteronomy was in written form and found in the Temple during the reform of Josiah (620 BC). Reading it caused the king to repent and tear his clothes, for it showed how far Judah had strayed.
The book probably was finalized in Jerusalem after the Exile by the scholarly priests and prophets who returned from Babylon. The theology is clearly that of the prophets. It is as if Deuteronomy warned in advance from the time of Moses and then shouted "I told you so" after the destruction and exile. The rules for behavior were not new; they were drawn from the basic commandments. The Lord of the Hebrews pours forth justice (righteousness) and compassion. Stealing, adultery, false witness offend God's nature, violate the covenant community, and betray the harmony God desires for the world. A great responsibility rests on the shoulders of Israel.
The prophets remember. They remember their beginnings. They remember the salvation event, and they know the conditions for survival. They understand Israel has a uniqueness, a special identity carefully prescribed by the Lord. So when the prophets speak, they compare what Israel is doing with what Israel is supposed to be doing. They give warning after warning, but Israel does not listen. All the counsel of Moses in Deuteronomy does not prevent the punishment.
Yet, God does not abandon the covenant people. Hints in Deuteronomy and glimmers of hope in Lamentations become full-blown visions in the prophets. God will bring the remnant home.
MARKS OF OBEDIENT COMMUNITY
The community of faith learns God's word is trustworthy. God means exactly what God says. When we remember God's law and God's love, we remember who we are and who we are meant to be. God judges, and God saves. So we can repent, realign our lives to God. We are never so lost as to be outside God's compassion. We can turn in confidence to God.
How do you understand the idea that the God who judges us, causing us pain, is also the God to whom we go for relief from that pain? What is your experience of this God?
How does your obedient community deal with suffering, especially suffering caused by sin or poor decisions?
When have you experienced "return"?
IF YOU WANT TO KNOW MORE
Pretend you just asked a grieving friend, "What happened?" and then reread Lamentations 4. Notice the attention to detail as the tragedy is recounted.
Read Deuteronomy 29–34 to hear Moses' third sermon, to understand the covenant better, to learn how Moses chose Joshua, and to hear Moses' final instruction and blessing.
Mark of Obedient Community
The community of faith relies on the trustworthiness of God's word.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Disciple Fast Track The Prophets Study Manual"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Abingdon Press.
Excerpted by permission of Abingdon Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
