THE BOOK OF LAMENTATIONS – PART 33 – THE MOST HORRIBLE CONDITIONS CAUSED THROUGH STARVATION - CHAPTER 4:8-11
We continue working through Chapter 4 and right now have been looking at the terrible conditions of the starving people. Some turn away from this but we are speaking about the word of God so it is wrong to turn away. God has lessons for us in all of this.
This is not a pleasant posting for it reveals the suffering in human beings because of what sin has done. Please try to read this and think “behind” the material. Terrible times are coming on the earth that will reflect these issues but they don’t come until the Lord has removed His own believers in the Rapture.
PART [8]. HOW THE MIGHTY HAVE FALLEN VERY FAR!
{{Lamentations 4:8 “Their appearance is BLACKER THAN SOOT. They are not recognised in the streets. Their skin is SHRIVELLED on their bones. It is WITHERED, and has become LIKE WOOD.”}}
Verse 8 is joined to verse 7 and in that previous verse the rich and opulent in their excellence were described in glowing terms, BUT now comes verse 8 (Let’s revise verse 7 - {{Lamentations 4:7 “HER CONSECRATED ONES were PURER than snow. They were WHITER than milk. They were more RUDDY in body than corals. Their POLISHING was like lapis lazuli.”}}
I guess we could borrow a bible verse – {{2 Samuel 1:19 “Your beauty, O Israel, is slain on your high places. HOW HAVE THE MIGHTY FALLEN.”}}
Outstanding one day, and desolate the next. That is what happened to these eminent people, the consecrated ones. They too were devastated and their position and status in Judah meant nothing when Babylon’s army fell on the nation. Now they are reduced to not one privilege more than the others in the suffering nation. They suffer and languish together in starvation and misery.
This verse is such a contrast to the previous one and that is the way Jeremiah wanted it to read. White in brilliance became black in appearance (darker than blackness). Healthy skin became dry, and shrivelled and unpleasant to the touch. The prophet uses the simile “like wood”, meaning the skin was so deprived by hunger that it looked dry and dead (KJV = stick). I understand (and have even seen photos) that in severe starvation the skin behaves the way the prophet describes. In fact it starts to turn black.
Those of us who living at the time remember the many photos we were seeing of the horrific conditions in Biafra especially of the children. That war had a graphic effect on the world as the photos went viral. Here is a report of that - [[“The Biafra War, also known as the Nigerian Civil War, took place from 1967 to 1970, following the secession of the southeastern region of Nigeria, which declared itself the Republic of Biafra. The conflict arose from ethnic tensions, political instability, and economic disparities, resulting in significant loss of life, with estimates of civilian deaths due to starvation and violence ranging from 500,000 to over 3 million.”]]. Nigeria and The Sudan are suffering again under Islamic atrocities; Islam always being a religion of hate and war and violence; Satan’s religion.
Starvation produces an altered appearance and people are not readily recognisable, especially when it is very severe as it was in Judah. No matter what your rank in life, judgement and tragedy will result in a levelling of everyone. God is no respecter of persons and all will face the fair and honest judgement of God. This is the way the KJV translates this verse but most translation do not follow this wording. {{“Their visage is blacker than a coal; they are not known in the streets: THEIR SKIN CLEAVETH TO THEIR BONES; it is withered, it is become like a stick.”}}. Many commentators speak of the “skin on bone” effect of starvation. What Judah was suffering was horrific.
PART [9]. THE BETTER WAY TO DIE
{{Lamentations 4:9 “BETTER ARE THOSE slain with the sword than those slain with hunger, FOR THEY PINE AWAY, being stricken for lack of the fruits of the field.”}}
This verse is unpleasant for me and I suppose for many. No one in their right mind - not being under the influence of drugs, severe depression, occult influence to kill yourself – will want to end his or her life. These people in Jerusalem did not want to end their lives but Jeremiah looks over them and comes to this conclusion – it would have been better to have died rather swiftly, than for your life to linger for a much longer period in pain through starvation until you eventually die.
This word “pine away” is to flow, gush, issue, discharge, flowing out. It means here in Lamentations, your life essence is flowing out of you (melting away). I suppose it is verses like this that people avoid, and for that reason they don’t study Lamentations, but this book is part of scripture. This is the beauty of expositional preaching and teaching, consistently working through a book verse by verse, not just choosing pet subjects or inane subjects so that you avoid any possible objection from even 1% of the people, in a subject that may contain a problem.
One of the greatest failings of the ministerial system in churches is that so many don’t teach on what they perceive as controversial matters in case someone gets offended and church finances suffer. You keep the cozy atmosphere without conviction. Not too many ministers in larger churches today have the courage to speak against homosexuality or divorce and similar issues.
PART [10]. THE LOWEST MORAL POSITION
{{Lamentations 4:10 “The hands of compassionate women BOILED THEIR OWN CHILDREN. They became food for them because of the destruction of the daughter of my people.”}}
The AV translation is obscure - {{“The hands of the PITIFUL women have sodden their own children: they were their meat in the destruction of the daughter of my people.”}}. This word usage is becoming more and more a problem as the current “English” has moved away from past expression. The education system has abandoned the study of decent English literature. And then there is American English . . .
The work “pitiful’” has been changing its meaning as the word “peculiar” did in the past. (Just look at what they have done to “gay” in the last 40 years). Pitiful today means “pathetic, deplorable and similar synonyms. The correct derivation is “full of pity” and that is how the AV uses it. The NASB is as stated above “compassionate” and nearly all versions use that word.
We may ask, “How can a compassionate woman kill her own child and boil that one to eat it? Surely that must be the most horrible thing. The AV uses [[“sodden” their children]]. Sodden is the past participle of the verb “to seethe”. (NASB) {{2 Kings 4:38 When Elisha returned to Gilgal, there was a famine in the land. As the sons of the prophets were sitting before him, he said to his servant, “PUT ON THE LARGE POT AND BOIL STEW for the sons of the prophets.”}} The AV is {{“Set on the great pot, and seethe pottage”}}. Seethe is a word not understood by many today except in “seething with anger”.
{{Deuteronomy 28:53 “Then YOU WILL EAT THE OFFSPRING OF YOUR OWN BODY, THE FLESH OF YOUR SONS AND OF YOUR DAUGHTERS whom the LORD your God has given you, during the siege and the hardship by which your enemy will oppress you.”}}. Moses wrote of conditions that will be applied once Israel departs from the Lord and refuses to return. God will allow them to go their own way and do abominable things, then be overthrown. That is the condition the nation will fall to once it abandons its God. What was happening in Lamentations is a fulfilment of prophecy. Their children were killed. It is the same today. We have departed from God so we kill tens of millions of children in abortion right up to the day of birth and even past that in Australia.
Isn’t this a strange contrast between the compassionate nature of a woman towards her child, and the abolition of that when driven by extreme hunger? Under the most adverse situations, who can tell how desperation might propel a person to do something entirely out of character. When God is not in control, chaos will automatically take over.
Part [11]. THE LORD’S WRATH POURED OUT AGAINST JUDAH TO CONSUME IT
{{Lamentations 4:11 “The LORD has accomplished His wrath. HE HAS POURED OUT HIS FIERCE ANGER, and He has kindled a fire in Zion which has consumed its foundations.”}}
All the previous verses in this chapter looked at the dire conditions that were chaotic among the people and the description of them was awful. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of a God of wrath. It happened on two major occasions with Judah/Israel, and it will happen to the world after the departure of the Church in the Rapture when the Tribulation, the time of God’s wrath will occur, and later, at the great white throne.
No wonder the scripture could say this – {{Luke 3:7 “He therefore began saying to the multitudes who were going out to be baptised by him, “You brood of vipers, who warned you TO FLEE FROM THE WRATH TO COME?”}}. Wrath is coming to this world. God would be unjust if He does not punish this world for its awful ungodliness, because it would not be fair to Sodom or the people of Noah’s generation, and even to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and Judah who suffered His wrath under Babylon. The Lord removes His Church then wrath will come from Revelation chapter 6 onwards.
You know there is a somewhat similar incident here in the New Testament. I want to take you to this verse – {{John 19:29-30 A jar full of sour wine was standing there so they put a sponge full of the sour wine upon a branch of hyssop, and brought it up to His mouth. When Jesus therefore had received the sour wine, He said, “IT IS FINISHED!” and He bowed His head and gave up His spirit.}} It was at Golgotha, the place of the skull, where judgement was poured out from the Father against sin, and therefore against the Lord Jesus Christ the sacrificial Lamb, because He was made sin for us. That suffering did not end until the wrath of God had completed itself. Then the Lord in triumph could call out, “It is finished.” Wrath against sin is an inescapable fact.
Our Lamentations verse speaks of the LORD accomplishing His wrath. That is, His wrath against the sinful nation was poured out and did not cease until it was all finished. The LORD accomplished what was promised. Isaiah and Jeremiah had prophesied of the coming wrath unless the nation repented but it was to no avail. They did not repent. For more than 200 years the promise of judgement was there but it was ignored.
The Lord Jesus was also promised and His sacrifice was promised all through the Old Testament. There are hundreds of scriptures that hint at or directly say that. He was the Promised One and the judgement of His sacrifice was the Promised Sacrifice for sin. How victorious was it when the cry rang out, “IT IS FINISHED!”
The wrath of God always has a limit, an end, but its results continue. Judah had to suffer after the catastrophe. The worst continuance of the wrath of God will be at the great white throne because the ones there whose names are not in the Lamb’s Book of Life, are cast into the lake of fire described this way – {{Mark 9:43-44 “If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled, than having your two hands, to go into hell, into the unquenchable fire, [where their worm does not die, and THE FIRE IS NOT QUENCHED.”]}}
We looked at two examples of “It is finished” applying to God’s wrath in judgement, but there is a third one. Here is the verse – {{Revelation 15:1 “I saw another sign in heaven, great and marvellous, seven angels who had seven plagues which are the last, because in them THE WRATH OF GOD IS FINISHED.”}}. Those last 7 bowl judgements are the worst ones, horrific, and powerful. Revelation 16 is the account of that, and after the last one, the Tribulation wrath of God will end.
In our Lamentations 4:11 verse, it states God has lit a fire in Zion (“kindled” meaning, made the fire) and it has consumed. Fire is a biblical symbol of judgement and by saying God kindled the fire, it is saying God let the fire go unrestrained, and Zion was burnt up (at least symbolically but definitely, literally as well). The Lord who underwent the fire of God at the cross endured the unrestrained fire until the absolute full penalty against sin had been accomplished. In the Tribulation, the fire of the judgement of God is fierce and will burn up this world of sin.
All of these are symbols of the fire of judgement that will be coming. {{Revelation 1:14 “His head and His hair were white like white wool, like snow, and His eyes were LIKE A FLAME OF FIRE.” Revelation 2:18 “To the angel of the church in Thyatira write: The Son of God, WHO HAS EYES LIKE A FLAME OF FIRE, and His feet are like burnished bronze, says this:” Revelation 8:5 “The angel took the censer and HE FILLED IT WITH THE FIRE OF THE ALTAR AND THREW IT TO THE EARTH, and there followed peals of thunder and sounds and flashes of lightning and an earthquake.”}}
God is not dismissed or mocked. All His promises are true and all will be fulfilled exactly as He has said. Do not dismiss the judgement of God as symbolic, or the descriptions in Revelation as symbolic or allegorical, else you need to dismiss the cross as allegorical. It is so awful that Augustine adopted an allegorical interpretation of scripture, departing from the literalness before him, and that was adopted by the Roman Catholic church and still retained by the Reformers who did not break from it. People dismiss more and more of the sacred word. Just yesterday I heard the once great pinnacle of Christian publication, “Christianity Today” is going WOKE and the editor is a denier of the great doctrines. An Easter article in it rejects the fact that Jesus was nailed to the cross, advocating He was only tied to the cross.
