The Book Of Lamentations – Part 12 – Cruel Slaughter Because Of Sin – A Distraught Prophet – Faces Harder Than Rock - Chapter 2:21-22 Series

THE BOOK OF LAMENTATIONS – PART 12 – CRUEL SLAUGHTER BECAUSE OF SIN – A DISTRAUGHT PROPHET – FACES HARDER THAN ROCK - CHAPTER 2:21-22

In the last message Jeremiah was lamenting the sad and horrifying condition of his people, and asking the LORD why He had done that. The people’s own sin actually did this to themselves. The prophet again is laying all this heartbreak ay the LORD’S feet, but he knows why it had happened. He prophesied it over and over in his book.

[1]. THERE WAS NO DISCRIMINATION IN GOD’S JUSTICE

{{Lamentations 2:21 “Young and old lie on the ground in the streets. My virgins and my young men have fallen by the sword. YOU HAVE slain them in the day of Your anger. YOU HAVE slaughtered, not sparing.”}}

For those who have a ready pathos this is a repulsive passage for it tears at the sensibilities of decent human beings. The Babylonian army showed no mercy whatever to the inhabitants of Judah, and in a later scripture, the judgement of God was to fall on Babylon because of the cruel and hateful treatment of the Jews. The Lord termed Nebuchadnezzar as “My servant” but he grossly overstepped his mark and ruthlessly slaughtered the Jews.

Babylon went beyond what God required of it. It was excessively destructive and took too much pleasure in carrying out this divine commission to discipline Judah. They went beyond their mandate. Jeremiah 50 is a chapter that explains so much about this, but we are limited for space and will just quote these verses – {{Jeremiah 50:10-14 “And Chaldea will become plunder. All who plunder her will have enough,” declares the LORD. “Because you are glad, because you are jubilant, O YOU WHO PILLAGE MY HERITAGE; because you skip about like a threshing heifer and neigh like stallions, your mother will be greatly ashamed, she who gave you birth will be humiliated. Behold, SHE WILL BE THE LEAST OF THE NATIONS, a wilderness, a parched land, and a desert. BECAUSE OF THE INDIGNATION OF THE LORD SHE WILL NOT BE INHABITED, BUT SHE WILL BE COMPLETELY DESOLATE. Everyone who passes by Babylon will be horrified and will hiss because of all her wounds. Draw up your battle lines against Babylon on every side, all you who bend the bow. Shoot at her, do not be sparing with your arrows, FOR SHE HAS SINNED AGAINST THE LORD.”}}

Around 700 B.C., some 200 plus years before Judah’s defeat, Isaiah wrote this prophecy about Babylon – {{Isaiah 47:4-7 “Our Redeemer, the LORD of hosts is His name, the Holy One of Israel. “Sit silently, and go into darkness, O daughter of the Chaldeans for you will no more be called ‘The queen of kingdoms’. I WAS ANGRY WITH MY PEOPLE. I PROFANED MY HERITAGE AND GAVE THEM INTO YOUR HAND. YOU DID NOT SHOW MERCY TO THEM. ON THE AGED YOU MADE YOUR YOKE VERY HEAVY, yet you said, ‘I shall be a queen forever.’ These things you did not consider nor remember the outcome of them.”}}

God is not mocked and Babylon failed its commission because of its blood-lust cruelty. God will not tolerate it. A big, long list is in God’s hands with the perpetrators of cruelty against God’s people Israel/Jews. There are so many on that list and great will be their recompense at the great white throne on their day of judgement when they stand one by one before the Judge of the earth.

Jeremiah describes this scene of Babylon’s cruelty succinctly. There was no consideration for age or gender. Death was everywhere because of the indiscriminate killing. The human nature is so wicked that it exalts itself in such a situation and the killing lust of the soldiers takes over. They will be held to account though. I know this is a moral issue for some in the horrible reality of war, that killing the enemy is one thing but the wholesale slaughter of a defeated people is another altogether. Deuteronomy 28 prophetically describes a nation that will come against Israel when it departs from the LORD and serves the gods of the nation. {{Deuteronomy 28:49-50 “The LORD will bring a nation against you from afar, from the end of the earth, as the eagle swoops down, a nation whose language you shall not understand, a nation of fierce countenance who SHALL HAVE NO RESPECT FOR THE OLD, NOR SHOW FAVOUR TO THE YOUNG.”}}

The trouble with the Jews was they were a rebellious people and always made trouble for themselves. In other words, they always brought trouble down on their own heads. After Judah’s defeat the effort was made by Babylon to steady the land. This is in Jeremiah’s time. We read this – {{2 Kings 25:22 “Now as for the people whom Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon had left in the land of Judah, he appointed Gedaliah the son of Ahikam, the son of Shaphan over them.”}}