The Terrible Friendship of God: Text: Lamentations 2:4
Introduction: When God Becomes the Enemy
We live in a soft age. Our Christianity has become soft, our pulpits have become soft, and our God has become soft. We have domesticated the lion of Judah and turned him into a sentimental housecat, a divine therapist whose only job is to affirm our choices and soothe our anxieties. We want a God who is always on our side, a cosmic cheerleader who never, ever gets angry. We want a God who is manageable, predictable, and above all, nice.
And then we come to a text like Lamentations 2:4, and our entire sentimental framework shatters into a thousand pieces. This verse is a sledgehammer to our modern sensibilities. It presents us with a picture of God that is terrifying, violent, and utterly foreign to the flannelgraph Jesus of our Sunday Schools. Here, God is not a gentle friend; He is an enemy archer. He is not a benevolent provider; He is an adversary with His hand raised to strike. He is not a life-giver; He is a killer. He is not a comforter; He is a consuming fire.
What are we to do with this? The modern evangelical impulse is to do one of two things. The first is to simply ignore it. We skip over such passages, treating them like embarrassing relatives at a family reunion. We pretend they are not there, and we preach our sermons on the God who loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. The second impulse is to explain it away, to sand down the sharp edges, to argue that this is the "Old Testament God," a primitive and angry deity who was later replaced by the loving Jesus of the New Testament. But this is a Marcionite heresy of the first order. The God of Lamentations is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one pouring out wrath like fire is the same God who so loved the world that He gave His only Son.
So we must face this text head-on, without flinching. We must ask the hard questions. How can a loving God act like an enemy? How can the source of all life kill what is desirable? This is not an abstract theological puzzle; it is a deeply pastoral issue. This book was written in the smoking ruins of Jerusalem. This is not theory; it is testimony. And if we are to understand the true nature of God's love, God's holiness, and God's covenant faithfulness, we must be willing to look into the furnace of His wrath. For it is only when we understand the severity of God that we can truly appreciate the wonder of His grace.
The Text
He has bent His bow like an enemy; He has set His right hand like an adversary And killed all that were desirable to the eye; In the tent of the daughter of Zion He has poured out His wrath like fire.
(Lamentations 2:4 LSB)
The Divine Archer (v. 4a)
The verse opens with a shocking simile:
"He has bent His bow like an enemy; He has set His right hand like an adversary" (Lamentations 2:4a)
The prophet Jeremiah, the traditional author, does not say that God has become an enemy. He says He is acting like an enemy. This is a crucial distinction. An enemy acts out of malice and hatred, seeking ultimate destruction. God, even in His fiercest wrath, acts out of His holiness and His covenant love. This is the terrible friendship of God. This is divine discipline, not divine hatred. But from the perspective of the one receiving the judgment, the experience is indistinguishable from an enemy attack. The arrows are just as sharp, the pain is just as real.
This is covenantal language. In Deuteronomy 28, God lays out the blessings for obedience and the curses for disobedience. The curses are a catalog of horrors: pestilence, famine, defeat in battle, and exile. God promises that if Israel breaks the covenant, He Himself will become their foe. "The LORD will send upon you curses, confusion, and frustration in all that you undertake to do, until you are destroyed and perish quickly on account of the evil of your deeds, because you have forsaken me" (Deut. 28:20). What is happening in Lamentations is not God being arbitrary or losing His temper. It is God being faithful. He is doing exactly what He promised He would do.
The image is that of a warrior. God has bent His bow. This is an act of deliberate intention. The string is drawn back, the arrow is nocked, the target is acquired. The target is His own people. His right hand, the hand of power and salvation, is now set "like an adversary." The very hand that delivered them from Egypt is now raised to strike them down. This is what sin does. It turns the instruments of God's blessing into instruments of His wrath. When we rebel, we force God to treat us as His enemies, because sin is His enemy. He will not make peace with sin. He will either remove the sin from us, or He will remove us.
The Sovereign Executioner (v. 4b)
The result of God's adversarial posture is devastating.
"And killed all that were desirable to the eye;" (Lamentations 2:4b)
This is a comprehensive destruction. It is not just the wicked who are dying; it is the "desirable." This refers to the young men, the strong warriors, the beautiful women, the promising children. It is the flower of the nation, the best and the brightest. This is what is so staggering about the judgment. It is not a surgical strike; it is a holocaust. God is wiping out the very future of the nation.
Why? Because their desirability had become their idol. They trusted in their strength, their beauty, their youth. They gloried in the gifts and forgot the Giver. God had blessed them, and they took His blessings and offered them to Ba'al. So God, in a terrifying act of justice, removes the object of their idolatry. He is teaching them a brutal, but necessary, lesson: there is nothing desirable apart from Him. All human glory is like the flower of the field; it withers and fades. Only the word of our God stands forever (Isaiah 40:8).
We must not soften this. God is the one doing the killing. The Babylonians are merely the arrow in His bow. They are the axe in His hand. God is sovereign over this destruction. He is not a passive observer, wringing His hands in heaven. He is the one who "poured out His wrath like fire." This is difficult for us, but it is the consistent testimony of Scripture. God is sovereign over life and death, blessing and calamity. "See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god beside me; I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; and there is none that can deliver out of my hand" (Deut. 32:39).
The Locus of Wrath (v. 4c)
The final clauses specify where this judgment falls.
"In the tent of the daughter of Zion He has poured out His wrath like fire." (Lamentations 2:4c)
The "tent of the daughter of Zion" is a poetic term for Jerusalem, specifically for the people dwelling there. This is not happening in some pagan capital. This is happening in God's own city, the place where He had chosen to put His name. The fire of His wrath is not falling on Babylon or Egypt; it is falling on Zion. Judgment begins at the house of God (1 Peter 4:17).
This is the principle of covenantal privilege and covenantal responsibility. To whom much is given, much is required. Israel had been given the law, the covenants, the promises, and the very presence of God in the temple. No nation had been so blessed. And therefore, no nation's sin was so grievous. Their sin was not mere ignorance; it was high-handed treason. It was spiritual adultery, committed in the very house of their divine husband.
The wrath is poured out "like fire." Fire consumes, purifies, and judges. It is a symbol of God's unapproachable holiness. And this fire is not sprinkled; it is poured out. It is an overwhelming deluge of divine fury. The image is one of total, unrestrained judgment. God is not holding back. He is giving His people the full measure of the covenant curses they had chosen for themselves.
The Cross as the Ultimate Lamentation
This verse is one of the darkest in all of Scripture. It presents a vision of God that is deeply unsettling. And if this were the final word, we would be left in utter despair. If this is what God does to His chosen people, what hope is there for any of us? But this is not the final word. This horrifying picture of divine judgment is actually a signpost pointing us to an even greater horror, and an even greater grace.
Every element of this verse finds its ultimate fulfillment at the cross of Jesus Christ. On Calvary, God the Father once again bent His bow like an enemy. He once again set His right hand like an adversary. But this time, the target was not Jerusalem. The target was His own Son. Jesus became the "daughter of Zion," the representative of God's people.
On the cross, God "killed all that were desirable to the eye." Jesus was the most desirable man who ever lived. He was perfect in holiness, beauty, and love. He was the "fairest of ten thousand." And God crushed Him. He was the one who was truly desirable, and the Father killed Him in our place, for our sin.
And on that dark hill, "in the tent of the daughter of Zion," God poured out His wrath like fire. The full, undiluted, unrestrained fury of a holy God against sin was poured out, not on us, but on our substitute. Jesus drank the cup of God's wrath to the dregs, so that we would never have to taste it. He endured the ultimate lamentation. He cried out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" so that we could be brought into the tent of the Father and hear Him say, "Welcome home."
Therefore, we can look at this terrifying verse in Lamentations without despair. We look at it with awe, and with a sober understanding of the holiness of God and the deadliness of sin. We see what our sin deserved. We see the fire we earned. But then we look to the cross, and we see that the bow has been unstrung. The arrow has been spent. The fire has been quenched, in the blood of the Lamb. God treated His Son like an enemy, so that He could treat us, His true enemies, like sons.