Day 23: Hope for Humanity

Lamentations 5:6-18 :

We have given our hands to the Egyptians,
and to the Assyrians, to be satisfied with bread.
Our fathers sinned, and are no more.
We have borne their iniquities.
Servants rule over us.
There is no one to deliver us out of their hand.
We get our bread at the peril of our lives,
because of the sword in the wilderness.
Our skin is black like an oven,
because of the burning heat of famine.
They ravished the women in Zion,
the virgins in the cities of Judah.
Princes were hanged up by their hands.
The faces of elders were not honored.
The young men carry millstones.
The children stumbled under loads of wood.
The elders have ceased from the gate,
and the young men from their music.
The joy of our heart has ceased.
Our dance is turned into mourning.
The crown has fallen from our head.
Woe to us, for we have sinned!
For this our heart is faint.
For these things our eyes are dim:
for the mountain of Zion, which is desolate.
The foxes walk on it.

Once again, this lamentation continues to describe the horrible oppression that the Israelis were under during their captivity, but it also has a concerning statement to consider. Did you notice that it says: “Our fathers sinned, and are no more. We have borne their iniquities.” Later on in the passage it says: “Woe to us, for we have sinned!” This brings up a couple of issues. In English, it’s pretty easy to interpret the first quote as meaning that the children were being punished for the parent’s sin. The problem with this is that God says very clearly that He doesn’t do that. I want us to look at that promise again.

Deuteronomy 24:16 :

The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers. Every man shall be put to death for his own sin.

God doesn’t punish children for their parents or vice versa. So what is this talking about? I think that the ISV uses more understandable English in that it says: “we continue to bear the consequences of their sin.” It’s not that God is punishing the children of those who sinned. It’s just that He’s allowing them to feel the consequences of sin for a season. One of the powerful things about that is that it can help you to not want to sin in the future and that’s exactly what happened later in Israel’s history as they got back together in the land.

The fact is, these children of sinners also realized that they had their own sin to deal with. They may have been feeling the affects of their parent’s sin, but their own sin was also an issue as they expressed here as well. One of the remarkable things that we saw back when we were studying this time in Israel’s history, is that when the people were given the opportunity to go back to their own land, many of them refused. Some of them actually went back to doing the same things that their parents had done to deserve punishment. Do you remember how distressing that was to Ezra? This book of Lamentations shows us the futility of our condition as humans, but the fact that we can cry out to God for help, shows us that there is hope for us as well.

Day 22: A God of Mercy and Property

Lamentations 5:1-5 :

Remember, Yahweh, what has come on us.
Look, and see our reproach.
Our inheritance has been turned over to strangers,
our houses to aliens.
We are orphans and fatherless.
Our mothers are as widows.
We must pay for water to drink.
Our wood is sold to us.
Our pursuers are on our necks.
We are weary, and have no rest.

A curious thing about this lamentation is what it implies about God. Israel was obviously destroyed for their disobedience. Why would a holy God care about their “reproach” or that they are now “orphans and fatherless?” They sinned. Now it’s their problem, not God’s. The fact that this lamentation exists and that it is found right here in God’s book, tells us that God does care, even about sinners. Israel admitted that they sinned, yet they also remembered that God was a God of mercy. God didn’t want them to suffer, even though they sinned.

Although it isn’t the most important issue in this passage, it’s interesting what the Israelis were complaining about here. They complained that they had to pay a water bill and a fuel bill. It’s a little bit difficult to feel sorry for them here isn’t it? They also complained about losing their inheritance. I think that what this poem is telling us is that the people didn’t have their own land anymore. They couldn’t dig a well and get their own water. They couldn’t grow and harvest trees for wood. They now had to pay others just to survive. We may have “private property” today but when what you can do on that property is tightly controlled by a government, then it really isn’t very private. If your property is taxed upon death then it isn’t much of an inheritance either. These kinds of things are what oppressive foreign governments did to Israel. It’s important for Christians to pay attention to these small indicators in the Bible because it may help us vote more wisely. Greed to get everything given to us by the government may result in having everything we earn taken from us, and as we read here, that’s something people lament over.

Day 148: Oppression, Lies and God’s Judgment

Jeremiah 34:8-22

The word came to Jeremiah from Yahweh, after king Zedekiah had made a covenant with all the people who were at Jerusalem, to proclaim liberty to them, that every man should let his male servant, and every man his female servant, who is a Hebrew or a Hebrewess, go free, that no one should make bondservants of them, of a Jew his brother. All the princes and all the people obeyed who had entered into the covenant, that everyone should let his male servant and everyone his female servant go free, that no one should make bondservants of them any more. They obeyed and let them go, but afterwards they turned, and caused the servants and the handmaids whom they had let go free to return, and brought them into subjection for servants and for handmaids.

Therefore Yahweh’s word came to Jeremiah from Yahweh, saying, “Yahweh, the God of Israel, says: ‘I made a covenant with your fathers in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage, saying: At the end of seven years, every man of you shall release his brother who is a Hebrew, who has been sold to you, and has served you six years. You shall let him go free from you. But your fathers didn’t listen to me, and didn’t incline their ear. You had now turned, and had done that which is right in my eyes, in every man proclaiming liberty to his neighbor. You had made a covenant before me in the house which is called by my name; but you turned and profaned my name, and every man caused his servant and every man his handmaid, whom you had let go free at their pleasure, to return. You brought them into subjection, to be to you for servants and for handmaids.’ ”

Therefore Yahweh says: “You have not listened to me, to proclaim liberty, every man to his brother, and every man to his neighbor. Behold, I proclaim to you a liberty,” says Yahweh, “to the sword, to the pestilence, and to the famine. I will make you be tossed back and forth among all the kingdoms of the earth. I will give the men who have transgressed my covenant, who have not performed the words of the covenant which they made before me when they cut the calf in two and passed between its parts: the princes of Judah, the princes of Jerusalem, the eunuchs, the priests, and all the people of the land, who passed between the parts of the calf. I will even give them into the hand of their enemies and into the hand of those who seek their life. Their dead bodies will be food for the birds of the sky and for the animals of the earth.

“I will give Zedekiah king of Judah and his princes into the hands of their enemies, into the hands of those who seek their life and into the hands of the king of Babylon’s army, who has gone away from you. Behold, I will command,” says Yahweh, “and cause them to return to this city. They will fight against it, take it, and burn it with fire. I will make the cities of Judah a desolation, without inhabitant.”

This is a long passage today but I think it’s important to allow God to tell us what He thinks about this specific situation. God had required Israel to free all of its slaves every seven years. Obviously, they hadn’t been doing that and when they finally decided to do it, they took another oath before God to do so. Then, after freeing the slaves, they went back on their word and forced them into slavery again. Can you imagine the suffering those slaves must have felt to have had a false sense of freedom only to have it taken away?

I know that God felt the pain of those slaves, but even more than that, God had His own pain. His people not only broke the law, they made an oath before God and broke it again. To say that God was mad is to put it mildly. Notice what God says in His judgment. He tells them: “I proclaim to you a liberty” and then He describes the fact that He intends to make them sick, put them in slavery and kill them and make them bird feed. He simply gave them the freedom that they had given their own slaves and punished them for their violation of the law and their oaths.

As you can see, God hates slavery, oppression and lies. We read here that they tend to go together. We can also see that whoever does these things will not get away with them.

Day 97: God Directly Confronts the Government Officials

Jeremiah 22:1-5

Yahweh said, “Go down to the house of the king of Judah, and speak this word, there: ‘Hear Yahweh’s word, king of Judah, who sits on David’s throne, you, your servants, and your people who enter in by these gates. Yahweh says: “Execute justice and righteousness, and deliver him who is robbed out of the hand of the oppressor. Do no wrong. Do no violence to the foreigner, the fatherless, or the widow. Don’t shed innocent blood in this place. For if you do this thing indeed, then kings sitting on David’s throne will enter in by the gates of this house, riding in chariots and on horses, he, his servants, and his people. But if you will not hear these words, I swear by myself,” says Yahweh, “that this house will become a desolation.” ’ ”

When we read passages like these, we get to hear some of the specific duties that government officials have been assigned by God. With passages like these available, it’s impossible to say that we don’t know what God’s will is for a government. By giving us this historic documentation, we know what God expected of Israel and since Israel is an example for other nations, we know what God expects of our nation’s leaders as well.

God expected the leadership to “execute justice and righteousness”“deliver him who is robbed out of the hand of the oppressor”“do no wrong”“do no violence to the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow”, and “Don’t shed innocent blood.” God said that a failure to follow these rules would result in the government becoming “a desolation.”

Notice that God made this clear by sending a messenger directly to the government to speak on His behalf. Just in case the word of Jeremiah’s speaking out at Gehenna and in the temple courts didn’t make its way to the king, God sends Jeremiah directly to him. I believe that God sends messengers directly to government leaders today too. These leaders have a responsibility to listen to the will of God when they lead. They are not supposed to be mistreating Christians when they have not done anything wrong. They are not supposed to be promoting those who do evil because of their bribes or because they are afraid of them. They are not supposed to be permitting and encouraging abortion which is the shedding of innocent blood. Government leaders are supposed to be representatives of God Himself on earth. They aren’t supposed to be doing anything He wouldn’t do. To suggest that the Bible teaches that there should be a separation of God and state, is absurd. God obviously expects government leaders to be in tune with Him as they make every decision because the God of Israel is the ultimate authority over the earth. Let’s not allow the tricky comments of modern leaders to deceive us on this issue.