Commentary - Lamentations 1:21

Bird's-eye view

Lamentations 1:21 is a raw nerve ending in a book full of them. Jerusalem, personified as a desolate widow, is speaking. Her grief is total, but it is not private. This verse makes it plain that her suffering is a public spectacle. Two audiences are addressed: God and her enemies. To God, she cries out that her pain is known but uncomforted. To her enemies, she levels a charge of malicious glee, a schadenfreude that delights in her downfall. But this is not simply a cry of victimhood. The second half of the verse pivots dramatically into an imprecation, a prayer for divine justice. She calls upon God to make good on His covenant promises of judgment, to bring the day of reckoning He had long proclaimed, and to make her gloating enemies just like her, desolate and ruined. This verse, then, is a potent combination of lament, accusation, and a profound, biblically-grounded appeal for retributive justice. It rests on the conviction that God is a God who judges evil and vindicates His afflicted people.

The verse encapsulates the covenantal reality of Jerusalem's destruction. Her enemies rejoice because they see a political or military victory. But Jerusalem, even in her agony, sees the hand of God. "They rejoice that You have done it." This is a profound theological statement. She acknowledges God's sovereignty in her calamity. And because God is the one who brought this disaster upon her for her sins, she has the standing to appeal to His character. He is a just God, and if He has judged her, He must also judge the wicked nations who hate Him and His people. The prayer is not for personal vengeance, but for God's name to be vindicated. It is a prayer that God would show the world that He does not play favorites when it comes to sin, and that the cup of wrath will make its rounds to all who deserve it.

Outline

Context In Lamentations

This verse comes near the end of the first of five laments that make up the book. Chapter 1 is an acrostic poem, with each of its 22 verses beginning with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet. This highly structured form contains a chaotic outpouring of grief over the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 586 B.C. The city is personified as "Zion," a weeping widow and a disgraced princess. Throughout the chapter, she details her miseries: her children are gone, her gates are desolate, her priests groan, and her enemies prosper (Lam 1:4-5). She openly confesses her sin as the cause of her suffering, acknowledging that the Lord is righteous in His judgment (Lam 1:18). Verse 21 is a culmination of this public agony. Having confessed her sin and described her desolation, she now turns her attention to the reaction of her enemies and makes her appeal to the Judge of all the earth.

Key Issues

The Justice of a Covenant-Keeping God

We moderns, particularly in the West, are often squeamish about what we find here. A prayer for God to bring calamity on others strikes our ears as uncharitable, perhaps even sub-Christian. But this is to fundamentally misunderstand the Old Testament, and indeed, the New. The prayer here is not a petty desire for revenge. It is a profound appeal to the character of God. Jerusalem's lament is grounded in covenant theology. God had made promises to Israel, promises that included blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience (Deuteronomy 28). Jerusalem is experiencing the curses, and she admits it is her own fault. But the covenant also included promises that God would judge the nations who, in their own pride and wickedness, acted as His instruments of chastisement and then gloated over it.

The enemies of Jerusalem were not righteous agents of justice. They were proud pagans whom God used as a rod to discipline His people. But they did not give God the glory; they reveled in the destruction. They kicked God's people when they were down. And so, Jerusalem's prayer is that God would be consistent. "You have judged us for our sins, as You promised. Now judge them for theirs, as You also promised." This is a prayer for cosmic justice, for God to set the scales right. It is the same sentiment we find in the mouths of the martyrs in Revelation, who cry out, "How long, O Lord, holy and true, until You judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?" (Rev 6:10). It is a prayer that God would be God.

Verse by Verse Commentary

21a They have heard that I am sighing; There is no one to comfort me;

The grief is not a secret. The "sighing" here is not a quiet, private whimper. It is the audible groaning of a city in its death throes. The whole world hears it. The news of Jerusalem's fall has gone out to all the surrounding nations. But the hearing does not lead to compassion. It is a cold, detached hearing. And the result is isolation. "There is no one to comfort me." Her former allies have abandoned her (Lam 1:19), and the God who was once her comfort has become her afflicter. This is the essence of true desolation, to be in agony and to be utterly alone in it. The pain is amplified by the fact that it is a public spectacle with no one stepping forward to offer solace.

21b All my enemies have heard of the evil done to me; They rejoice that You have done it.

Here the lament sharpens its focus. It is one thing to be ignored in your suffering; it is another to be mocked for it. The enemies have heard, and their reaction is not pity, but pleasure. They rejoice. This is the sin the Old Testament repeatedly condemns, the sin of Edom, who stood aloof and gloated on the day of Jerusalem's calamity (Obadiah 1:12). But notice the theological depth here. They rejoice not just that Jerusalem has fallen, but that "You have done it." The enemies, in their own pagan way, recognize that this is an act of Jerusalem's God. They see it as proof that their gods are stronger, or that Yahweh is a fickle deity who has abandoned His own. They misinterpret a covenantal chastisement as a final defeat, and they are glad. This adds a layer of blasphemy to their malice. They are not just mocking Jerusalem; they are mocking the God who is judging her.

21c You have brought the day which You have proclaimed, So that they will become like me.

This is the pivot. The prayer turns from describing the problem to demanding the solution. The "day which You have proclaimed" is the day of God's wrath, the Day of the Lord, which the prophets had long announced would come upon all the wicked, not just unfaithful Israel. Jerusalem is saying, "Lord, you have been true to your word in judging me. Now be true to your word in judging them." She is holding God to His own proclaimed standard of justice. The request is stark: make them "like me." Let them experience the same desolation, the same destruction, the same public humiliation. Let the cup of suffering you have made me drink be passed to them. This is not a request for them to suffer for her sake, but for them to suffer for their own wickedness. It is a prayer for the establishment of righteousness, where the proud are brought low and the malicious are given their just deserts. It is a prayer that God would show the world that He is an impartial judge.

Application

This verse forces us to grapple with some hard truths. First, it teaches us that God takes sin seriously, and He is not afraid to discipline His own people in a very public and painful way. The church should never presume upon the grace of God. When we are unfaithful, we can expect the heavy hand of our loving Father, and that discipline may well make us a spectacle to a watching and mocking world.

Second, it gives us a category for righteous anger at evil. We live in an age of sentimentality that wants to bless everyone and everything. But the Bible is clear that there is a time to rejoice and a time to mourn, and part of our sanctification is learning to love what God loves and hate what God hates. To see evil prosper, to see the wicked gloat over the suffering of the righteous, should stir up in us a holy indignation. We should long for the day when God will set all things right.

Finally, this verse points us to the cross. Who is this figure, sighing and uncomforted, a public spectacle of suffering, mocked by His enemies who saw God's hand in His affliction? It is the Lord Jesus Christ. On the cross, He was utterly desolate, crying out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" His enemies rejoiced, believing God had finally abandoned Him. But in that very act, God was bringing the ultimate "day which He had proclaimed." He was judging all the sin of His people in His Son. And because Christ drank that cup of wrath for us, we can be assured that the final cup of wrath will be poured out on all His enemies. The prayer of Lamentations 1:21 finds its ultimate answer at the final judgment, a judgment secured by the suffering and vindication of Jesus. Our response, then, is not to take up personal vengeance, but to entrust our cause to Him who judges justly, and to pray with the saints of all ages, "Come, Lord Jesus."