In stark contradiction of God’s requirement to care for the vulnerable and carry one another’s burdens, the month of June 2025 has seen Westminster vote in favour of legalising assisted suicide and decriminalising abortion up to birth. How can we fail to mourn? Meanwhile there is small hope that those responsible for the grooming gangs scandal will be dealt with justly, while another month of Pride has perpetuated the normalisation and celebration of a variety of perverted behaviours. The church is muted and slow to point out obedience to God’s ways in response to any of these instances of moral decay, limping on in our own religiosity and underestimating how much we need to humble ourselves before God. Yet some of this sounds familiar when we look in the Book of Lamentations. In a situation of multiple devastating judgements, Jeremiah has somewhere to turn. He tells God all about it and asks God for mercy. Jeremiah’s laments are God-facing. David Dickson, exploring Lamentations in the context of the Thirty Years War and persecution of the Covenanters, finds echoes in his own time of the miseries experienced by Jeremiah’s people. In the following updated extract from Dickson’s comments on Lamentations 5, we see that, far from inducing apathy and a resigned shrug, the penitent acceptance of God’s just judgments means an energetic kind of patience, which never gives up on confessing guilt and appealing to God for relief and restoration.

A place to turn in trouble

In Chapter 5, Jeremiah closes the Book of Lamentations by laying out the miseries of the church before God in prayer. When they have grieved their fill, he lets their pitiful state lie before the Lord. This lets us see that God is the first and the last and the surest refuge of the distressed in their trouble, and there is no true relief for a sorrowful soul except in Him.

Do not lament needlessly in trouble, but fly to God. One says, “I have terrible problems in my marriage.” Another says, “I have wicked children.” Another says, “I have terrible problems at work.” Another complains of bad neighbours, another of sickness, another of physical pain, another of the sense of God’s wrath.

In all these, go to God. He is the only refuge. And let your prayer lie there, for prayer should be how you close your lamentation. Any worldly person, in sore trouble, will take a worldly courage, and cheer himself up, and take whatever comes his way. But that is not the right way to respond to trouble. Go and pour out your heart before God, and quietly and patiently wait for His time for deliverance. If some new reason for grief comes, mourn over again in His bosom, because there is no deliverance except in Him.

A detailed list

The prophet counts out the miseries which the church was experiencing. Misery is a small thing to hear of, but hard to be borne.

“Our inheritance is turned to strangers, our houses to aliens” (verse 2). Jeremiah complains that their houses and lands were taken by strangers who had paid nothing for them. The housing and property markets are in unprecedented turmoil in our times [when Dickson was writing].

“We are orphans …” (v.3). The sword, famine and pestilence have made so many children fatherless, so many wives widows, so many a doleful mother sonless. Those who are left alive are left in misery, when those who could have been a comfort to them are taken away.

“We have drunk our water for money …” (v.4). Time was when they had wine enough of their own to drink and paid nothing for it, but now they labour hard all day and only earn a penny, and they are forced to spend it on water.

When people abuse what God has given, it is righteous with God to take it from them and punish the abuse of plenty with poverty. You who can now wear nicer clothes and have nicer food than your neighbour, be sober with it and use God’s gifts appropriately. You who spend lavishly now, beware of coming poverty. Do you think these things will last for ever? That you will always have wine for carousing and money for a flutter? You spend more money at the bookies than you would give to charity in half a year. Let the poor members of Christ’s body get the benefit of your disposable income instead of indulging yourself, in case you end up forced to buy the essentials which you now get cheaply.

“We have given our hand to the Egyptian …” (v.6). This could mean ratifying subservience to foreign powers, or begging aid from them. It is justice with God to make those who refuse to serve Him or depend on Him serve their enemies and beg their bread from them. They refused to be in God’s debt for His gifts — now they are forced to be in debt to those they love least.

“Our fathers have sinned, and are not” (v.7). Many, when they see their parents getting away unpunished in this world for being drunkards, oppressors, deceivers, think they will follow in their footsteps and also escape. Well, possibly your fathers escaped, but what assurance do you have that you will get similar mercies? Maybe they sinned in ignorance, while you are sinning wilfully and contrary to light?

“We got our bread with peril of our lives …” (v.9). Soldiers waited in the wilderness to catch people trying to escape to seek bread by night. They had been well clothed and well fed at home, drinking their wine from bowls, singing to the viol and harp, lying on beds of ivory (Amos 6:4–6), and now for their abuse of these benefits, they cannot get hold of a bit of bread. Those who will not be won to God by gentle dealing may expect to have to fend for themselves in harder conditions.

“They ravished the women in Zion” (v.11). The profane soldiers took them and abused them, and when they fled to the temple, they abused them in the temple. See how many evils come with the sword, which cannot be imagined till it comes. Goods, children, heritage are taken away by sword, and lives, wives, daughters exposed to the soldiers’ villainy, when an army comes in like a flood.

“The elders have ceased from the gate” (v.14). There is no judge sitting in the seat of justice, so anybody could wrong you and nobody would intervene — there was no magistrate to complain to. It is a heavy plague to lack a magistrate, or to have a magistrate who is ineffective.

“The young men have ceased from music” (v.14). Before now, they never knew what distress meant. They gave themselves to recreation and delighting in music, in which is something lawful, although the excess is a fault. When these recreations are taken away, and sorrow is given instead, it is a token of God’s anger.

An expression of guilt

“Woe to us, for we have sinned” (v.16). They grant that sin is the cause of all their misery and disgrace. With misery lying hard on them because of sin, now they curse their sins. Every sinner will be forced to curse their sins either sooner or later, whether they repent or not.

“Woe to us that we have sinned,” they say, and not, “woe to us that we are miserable.” Sin is a greater evil than any misery, if we only realised it, for we may blame ourselves and our sins for all our misery and the feeling of misery. Misery should make us turn all our grief on our sin. You who cry, “Woe is me for my affliction,” change it to, “Woe is me for sin!” Be more sorry for sin than for the judgment it has brought on.

An appeal to God

Eventually the prophet lifts up his heart and refreshes himself a little in the midst of his grief with the consideration, “Thou, O Lord, remainest forever” (v.19). Although Zion, the temple and all is gone and the commonwealth decayed, yet the Lord remains for ever to right all wrongs and take reparations from all oppressors. He can still set in order everything that is out of order.

After such a long lamentation, Jeremiah taking this view of God’s goodness, mercy and unchangeableness (lest he should be swallowed up by too much despair and sorrow) shows us that even when the church itself provokes God to change her from prosperity to adversity, yet He remains still unchangeable and as kind and loving to those who seek to Him as He ever was. Change in the church demonstrates no change in God. He remains the same, both when He plagues sinners and when He pities them. God’s unchangeableness is a basis of hope that the church will be restored and changed from a worse condition to a better.

“Wherefore dost thou forget us forever?” (v.20). Although the captivity was only newly begun, the Lord’s wrath began 12 years before city was taken, and before that there was a great decay. God has been saying a long goodnight to them, and it makes them think He has forsaken them for ever. Also, a short time in trouble seems long. When God forsakes, a short time seems a lifetime. Supposing the trouble was never so short, we cannot help finding it long if God withdraws. Resolve then to bear it patiently.

Jeremiah pours out this matter to God and tells God that he thinks God has forsaken them. When we think God has forsaken us, we may tell Him, and pray Him to help.

“Renew our days as of old” (v.21). When God gives repentance to an afflicted church, or person, He can make their condition as good as it ever was. God can repair all the church’s ruins and wash the dirt off her face and rub away her shame.

A sad note to end on

“But thou hast utterly rejected” (v.22). Jeremiah closes up his lamentation with sorrow, as if to say, “We must take it as a given that the time appointed for our trouble must expire before God restores us. We need not think that God will look upon us for the time being.” Maybe, in his grief, Jeremiah is expressing his own fear of being rejected. Like him, David and Jonah feared, “I am cut off” (Lamentations 3:54; Psalm 32:22; Jonah 2:3–4).

Or we may take it that Jeremiah is confessing, not a rejection of the Lord’s people’s full salvation, but a rejection of their natural prosperity. God may and will reject a people or a person in a particular state about a temporal benefit, and yet will not forsake them about their salvation. God will not reject a prayer for salvation, even if He rejects a prayer for a temporal benefit.

Mourn before God as you like. His decree about the temporal judgment will continue in force. This people did not need to think that God would restore them to their previous condition of prosperity for the time being, because He had a special anger at them.

If God has resolved to let temporal trouble lie on us all our days, we should yield, stoop and submit to Him, and bear the indignation of the Lord until He is pleased to send relief. Jeremiah says, “I don’t need to say any more. God has rejected this people and He will not restore us till the appointed time. I will stop here, and we will sit still and mourn all our days.”

Having drawn down a great blow from God’s hand, stoop and bear it. Be quiet and do not fret. Drink what you have brewed, for God will not hear you asking for removal of the temporal judgment. Pray that if He is going to let the trouble lie on you, that He would still keep your soul from perishing, and not take His loving kindness from you.

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