Lamentations 0 (Introduction)
March 10, 2024 1:18 PM
Solitary Man
solitaryman.substack.com
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Introduction
Now that we have journeyed together over the landscape of the entirety of the book of Jeremiah, it seems only fitting that we tackle the book of Lamentations, since it serves as such a logical capstone to the sum and substance of the writings of this great prophet. Let us quickly examine the format of this short work.
The Septuagint has this preamble as an introduction to this book:
“And it came to pass after Israel had been carried captive, and Jerusalem was become desolate, that Jeremiah sat weeping, and lamented with this lamentation over Jerusalem, and said.”
Lamentations consists of five poems. Each of the first four is composed as an acrostic of the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet (although it should be noted that chapters 2, 3 and 4 are somewhat irregular since they invert the letters pe and ayin).
Chapters 1, 2, 4 and 5 have 22 verses; chapter 3, however, devotes three verses to each letter, yielding 66 verses. This familiar poetic device indicates that the author is covering his material thoroughly (“from A to Z”), in a way that was easy for his audience to understand and remember. The Jewish people read Lamentations every year on the date commemorating the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, the 9th of Ab (July/August). This same date was also marked as the date of the destruction of Herod’s temple by the Romans in 70 AD.
Although no author is named, no one of any import denies that Jeremiah is the author. The style is so much like the book of Jeremiah, and he would of made the perfect eyewitness not only to the events of the destruction of Jerusalem, but to what it must of felt like for a true servant of Yahweh to experience such an awful thing.
An interesting fact is that although Babylon is mentioned more than 150 times in the book of Jeremiah, not once is Babylon or its king Nebuchadnezzar mentioned in Lamentations. While the clear theme is the judgment of God for his people’s sin, the instrument of his judgment is not stated. The lesson here is that it is of very little import as to who is the instrument of God’s judgment, but rather the fact of the judgment itself. All judgment on sin comes from God. As of 2024, the church is still missing the boat in primarily focusing on the instruments of judgment, rather than on the idea of the judgment itself. As long as we think that we can fix this calamity, we will be wasting our time and energy and resources. Does that mean that God is not calling people to do specific things at this time? Of course not! People are being used of God to take risks in public spaces not so much to give us victory, but to wake more and more people up. What this book teaches is that in the time of total judgment, God is the one responsible, not man or any other creature. We must accept the judgment, and our central part in it. We must realize that God is actually fighting against us, not for us, even though we may be devoted individuals that are serving him with all our hearts. He sees the national sins that have piled up, and has decided to act. The righteous are caught up in the consequences along with the wicked. It is up to the righteous to respond correctly. And what is the primary response? Fighting for our rights? Filing lawsuits? Protesting more effectively? Voting harder? Doing more podcasts?
No, we are to fall on our faces and call for repentance, and repentance alone. I don’t know how to communicate this crucial truth more effectively. God sees our heart. In our prosperity, we ignored God and his commandments. Ignoring led to active disobedience. Then it led to active opposition to his ways. Now it has led to outright hostility to his commandments, and the persecution of anyone who still clings to them. As a result, God had no choice but to judge. Then judge some more. Now we are in total judgment, just like Jeremiah found himself in. We are in freefall. Every bad thing that can happen to a nation, is happening to us.
What has been our response since 2020? A gradual awakening to the evil reality. Various attempts and tactics to try and halt the decline. A general lack of success in reversing any of the rot. A darker and darker world. A more concerted effort to fight the darkness, using every method we can think of. An occasional mention of the fact that God is judging us. Yet the bulk of our words have to do with describing the evils, and possible tactics and efforts to combat them in the natural.
What we haven’t grasped, not even in the true remnant church, is the utter futility of this path that we have been on so far. All of our efforts are doomed to fail. Why? Because in total judgment, God is not on our side. In fact, he is actively opposing us. You can have the best army, the best plan, all the resources in the world, but if God has decided to become your enemy, that is the only fact that matters.
Does it not strike these freedom fighters as baffling as to why we are having virtually no success in stopping, or even slowing down the enemy, as he systematically destroys us, and everything in our world that makes life worth living? If we are believers, than why are no prayers being answered? What is truly going on here?
Why can’t we realize that we are utterly helpless? With things like direct energy weapons that can target anyone and any land at will, and not a single force on earth that seems to be opposing their use, then how in the natural can any of us fight against that?
While we may not be quite where Jeremiah was when he wrote this book, we are oh, so close. Our cities may still be standing, our government may still have the appearance of functioning, but anyone with half a brain can see that everything that makes our society work is ready to fall. We cannot save our economy. Our debt burden is way out of control. Our leaders know this, and they are money laundering just as fast as they possibly can, in order to steal as much wealth as is humanly possible before it all goes away. With the election in America in 2024, never has there been such a time where not only America, but all of the west, has such a high degree of probability of total collapse as this year.
Yet all we hear is how the cabal is orchestrating the great reset and agenda 2030 and other plans that target 2040 and 2045 as the end points of total global transformation into the ultimate dystopian slave state nightmare. We are so focused on the minutiae of the twists and turns of the global takeover that we are not sparing a thought as to what is really behind all this.
No, it is not Bill Gates. Or George Soros. Or the WEF, WHO, or the UN. It is not the Democrats or the Liberals. It is not the alphabet crowd, transgender movement, or the climate hoax. It is not covid, or disease X. It is our continual and increasing rebellion against Yehovah and his holy word. It is generation after generation of turning our backs on our creator and ignoring his manifold warnings. He has warned us in his word. He has warned us by his prophets. He has warned us with occasional judgments. He has kept warning us with increasingly severe and more repetitious judgments. Yet most of the church condemned the few preachers who pointed these things out. The doctrine of the west had erased the God of judgment out of our bibles. We kept our people in the dark as to what was really going on. We hid the truth from them, much like the cabal is hiding their plans from the earth dwellers through their bought and paid for legacy media. As the world sleepwalks through its own genocide and enslavement, so the church is sleepwalking through the stark reality of God screaming his judgments in our midst. We have stopped our ears and closed our eyes. We think it’s evil men. It is not. It is God sending evil our way. So richly deserved. So past due. So few comprehend just how much we deserve the things that are coming to pass before our very eyes.
I am hearing more and more podcasts by the alternate media freedom fighters state that they don’t just want to hear more facts about the calamities being unleashed all around us. They want to hear how we can do something to fight them! So we endure yet another round of sincere, but spiritually ignorant people tell us about another tactic we can try to get the wickedness of one form or another to stop.
All doomed to fail. Why? Because having eyes, they still do not see. Having ears, they still do not hear. Sometimes I think we need to shut off all media, including the alternate media. Get alone in your prayer closet and don’t come out until the true reality of our situation sinks deep into our souls.
That reality is this: God is sending all this evil. He is punishing us for our past and present wickedness. We are the generation of his wrath. Because we are not responding to his punishments correctly, he in turn increases the punishments by a factor of seven. And while we become more and more hostile to his ways, he exponentially increases the punishments by a factor of seven once again.
Where did I get this idea? From Leviticus chapter 26. Read this chapter carefully before going any further. I believe that this chapter most accurately describes where the world is at in 2024. There are 4 times where the punishments increase seven fold in response to our hardness of heart. It is my personal opinion that we are at the point where God has pronounced the seven fold increase in punishments twice already, with two more to go. I would need to do a verse by verse study on the entire chapter to back up my opinion, but that is beyond the scope of this lesson. I encourage you to read it for yourself and judge as to the applicability of that chapter to our present situation, and where we are in the series of judgments that God promised on his rebellious people.
As long as we refuse to accept that the punishments are of God, and fully embrace them and quit fighting them, nothing will change for the good. We are only signing our own death warrant. Look at Lev 26:41:
Lev 26:41 And that I also have walked contrary unto them, and have brought them into the land of their enemies; if then their uncircumcised hearts be humbled, and they then accept (raw-tsaw – consent, even pleased with, also to satisfy a debt) of the punishment of their iniquity (aw-vone – perversity, moral evil):
Only when the people of God accepted the punishment of their iniquity, would the multiplication of the horrors of severe judgments stop and eventually begin to reverse.
I want to use this verse as a teaching moment as to why I prefer the King James Version (KJV). I had a chance to read this entire chapter in the New Living Translation (NLT). This has become an extremely popular version, and I can understand why. For most of the chapter, it made the verses come alive in a way that seemed superior to the KJV. However, this most crucial verse 41 was translated like this:
When I have turned their hostility back on them and brought them to the land of their enemies, then at last their stubborn hearts will be humbled, and they will pay for their sins.
That last phrase changes the sense quite significantly. It takes away the idea the KJV is trying to portray. It completely obliterates the crucial doctrine that all believers must grasp in this season of judgment. Because the word raw-tsaw can mean to satisfy a debt, they chose to translate it the way they did, and its not necessarily wrong. Yet we need to let scripture interpret scripture. This word is found 56 times in the bible. The vast majority translate it as accept. The second most popular translation is pleasure. So the main sense of this word is not only accepting, but even taking pleasure in the judgments of God.
Does that mean God is praising sadism? Let us not be ridiculous. It means that God has given you the revelation of his ways, which are found in judgment, as proven in verses such as these:
Deu 32:4 He is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he.
Dan 4:37 Now I Nebuchadnezzar praise and extol and honour the King of heaven, all whose works are truth, and his ways judgment: and those that walk in pride he is able to abase.
Psa 33:5 He loveth righteousness and judgment: the earth is full of the goodness of the LORD.
Psa 119:75 I know, O LORD, that thy judgments are right, and that thou in faithfulness hast afflicted me.
Isa 5:16 But the LORD of hosts shall be exalted in judgment, and God that is holy shall be sanctified in righteousness.
Rev 16:7 And I heard another out of the altar say, Even so, Lord God Almighty, true and righteous are thy judgments.
Rev 19:1 And after these things I heard a great voice of much people in heaven, saying, Alleluia; Salvation, and glory, and honour, and power, unto the Lord our God:
Rev 19:2 For true and righteous are his judgments: for he hath judged the great whore, which did corrupt the earth with her fornication, and hath avenged the blood of his servants at her hand.
God loves judgment. Without judgment, there can be no heaven. There can be no place of righteousness. There can be no everlasting peace. Our lands are totally devoid of judgment by man. The opposite of judgment is lawlessness, the main trademark of the man of sin. The earth is being prepared for his revealing by his evil servants that have taken over all our institutions.
Wilfully embracing the punishment for our sins by a holy God is totally absent. Lev 26:34 uses the same word to speak of the land enjoying her Sabbath rests. So the sense is most accurately something like this: As the Sabbaths will enjoy her rests because of judgment, so the sinner will enjoy the blessing of chastisement, as it is intended to produce the fruit of contriteness, humility, and most importantly, unconditional repentance.
You may pay for your sins and have no idea that you are supposed to humbly accept the will of God, who is the one punishing you in the first place. I think it may of been translated this way because the revelation of the blessing of judgment has been totally lost in the church. Preachers teach that it’s the devil, or wicked men, that are causing all this evil, and yes, you’re paying for sin, but it’s alright to fight with all your might against it, since no evil ever comes from Yehovah. We totally miss the central point of this entire chapter, the one chapter that describes earth in 2024 more than any other. And the point is that we must submit totally to God. No more games. Once and for all, we must accept his will – all of it, whether pleasant or horrid. It is an acknowledgement of his supremacy in all things. If he has decided that we must suffer certain things in order to accomplish his will, then so be it. He can only use us when we are in complete agreement with him.
All of this rambling soliloquy is given so that we are in the proper frame of mind as we prepare to try and understand this most relevant book for our time. Jeremiah has just experienced total judgment. The fact that he will not mention the instrument of that judgment (Babylon) in this book shows that he has fully accepted that everything that has occurred has come from Yahweh. He embraces this truth. If we are completely honest, it is a terribly difficult truth to absorb about our God. The truth that after a certain point of rebellion, there comes a time when he will unleash a series of events that will cause us unbelievable misery and grief. While there are sub truths that may mitigate some of the worst aspects of the consequences of these events for the righteous, nonetheless the harsh reality of the possibility of total judgment unleashed upon his own people is one that most Christians simply cannot face. That is not the God that they had been taught to worship. That is an alien being, at least in their ignorant, misled minds. Nevertheless, God is who he says he is. He acts in the manner spoken of in his holy word.
One may wonder: ‘Why are you so obsessed with ensuring that we grasp this truth about God’s character? Ok, so I think I understand what you are saying. God judges sin. It is God who is behind all the evil that is unleashed upon us. While never his first choice, but always his last, ultimately a person’s and a nation’s rebellion will end up at this same awful place as what is found in Jeremiah’s day, should they decide to continue along the same wicked path that they did.’
So, why is this so important to grasp? I firmly believe it is critically important, even all-important, because embracing it will determine how we will respond to our reality. It will hold the key as to what God is expecting of us. And that expectation revolves around humility, sorrow, contriteness of heart, and absolute repentance. Not defiance. Not anger. Not human works. Not joining up with any and every person out there, regardless of belief, to restore freedom. Freedom is not the point. Even survival of our nation is not the point.
The point is that we have offended a holy God. Our Creator, our Redeemer, our all in all, demands that we change our ways. We have been judged and been found wanting. Nothing less than a total acknowledgement of our wickedness and rebellion to the divine holy one will suffice. Our doctrines are all wrong. Our attitudes are all wrong. Our motives are not right. Our desires, priorities, behaviors, beliefs, and actions are not hitting the mark. The world has become as in the days of Noah. Utterly corrupt. Unsalvageable. Placed under the ban. Destined for destruction. Yet what are we doing? We’re trying to make America great again! We’re trying to replace one politician with another. We’re trying to stop some global treaty. All band aids on a mortal wound.
The cup of iniquity has now been filled. The mystery of iniquity has been at work for a long time, and now is about to come to an end. The preservation of nations and our way of life has come and gone. Now it’s only about the souls. It’s always been about the souls. How many souls can we help to deliver from the great wrath to come? Will we finally wake up and realize that the goal is not to save America and the west, but to fully enlist in this end time army, with absolutely no reservations? To finally embrace the cross the way we were always supposed to embrace it? To once and for all count the cost, and be willing to pay, without any reservation whatsoever?
It is time to refocus our life’s priority not on simple survival. Nor to save the Republic, or the Dominion. Our focus is now to strip ourselves of all inordinate desire for the things of this world. So that when they come for our stuff, we will be like the believers in the book of Hebrews, who joyfully accepted the loss of their goods (Heb 10:34). So that when they come for us, we will not despair, but always look for every opportunity to share the gospel with those who are perishing in this life. So that when the true hardship comes (and it is coming), we will somehow be transformed from the comfort seeking westerners that we have been all our lives, into the typical Christian that knows that when they came to Christ, at that point they had truly let go all things of this earth, and gladly made the exchange.
Let us take the plunge, and dive into this book, this volume that lays bare the raw emotions of this tormented man. Jeremiah knew his God. He understood what God had just done to his own covenant people. The reality of his situation threatened to tear his soul apart. Yet God had him write. He knew that there would come a day when another people would face similar circumstances. Where there would be another remnant, experiencing their own horrors and their own terrors. They would need a guide, someone who had been there and done that. Someone who had lived through such a time, and had lived to tell us all about it.
Solitary Man
https://solitaryman.substack.com/
