Lamentations 3:40-47

III. HIS APPEAL FOR REPENTANCE Lamentations 3:40-47

TRANSLATION

(40) Let us search and examine our ways and return to the LORD. (41) Let us lift up our hearts and hands unto God in heaven: (42) We have transgressed and rebelled; You have not forgiven. (43) You surrounded yourself with wrath and pursued us; You have slain without pity. (44) you have covered yourself with a cloud so that no prayer can pass through. (45) You have made us as dung and refuse in the midst of the peoples. (46) All our enemies rail against us. (47) Panic and the pit have come upon us, devastation and destruction.

COMMENTS

Rather than complain about their suffering the prophet urges the people to repent of the sins which have brought about the suffering. Repentance begins with self-examination and honest analysis of their situation. Every individual must search (lit., dig into) and examine (lit., test or try) his heart. The objective of this rigorous self-examination is to discover and remove any impediments which may be preventing them from returning to the Lord. The Hebrew preposition translated to has the idea of actually arriving at the goal. The poet is urging upon his hearers a complete and whole-hearted return to God.

Self-examination should be followed by sincere prayer. The hands uplifted towards heaven seems to have been one of the popular postures for prayer in Old Testament times. But Jeremiah urges his hearers to lift up their heart as well as their hands to the Lord (Lamentations 3:41). Proper posture does not always mean proper prayer! In genuine prayer inward submission always accompanies outward acts of supplication. Perhaps they had heretofore prayed in the mechanical and formal sense. The prophet now urges them to put their heart into the exercise.

In Lamentations 3:42-47 the prophet speaks the words which the people ought to use in their prayer of repentance. The prayer begins with a confession of sin: We have transgressed and rebelled! The pronoun we is emphatic. There is no effort here to cover up or minimize the enormity of the sin. From this forthright confession of sin the prayer moves to description of the consequences of sin. (1) Sin cuts off the mercies of God. God had not pardoned nor could He pardon until the nation manifested some sign of genuine repentance (Lamentations 3:42). (2) Sin stirs up divine wrath. The punishment against sin is swift, thorough, and relentless (Lamentations 3:43). (3) Sin cuts the communication lines to heaven. God wraps Himself in a cloud through which no prayer can pass (Lamentations 3:44). Only when men turn from sin can God hear their prayers (Psalms 66:18). (4) Sin ultimately brings humiliation. Judah became like dung and refuse among the nations of the world because of sin (Lamentations 3:45). Judah's enemies railed against her with impunity (Lamentations 3:46). (5) Sin results in panic and ruin. In the day of judgment one calamity after another befalls the sinner until he is finally destroyed (Lamentations 3:47).