Commentary - Lamentations 2:20

Bird's-eye view

This single verse represents the raw, bleeding heart of the lament. After nineteen verses detailing the Lord's active, violent dismantling of Jerusalem, the prophet, speaking for the desolate city, turns from description to direct, agonizing confrontation. This is not a complaint from a stranger; it is the cry of a covenant partner demanding that God look squarely at the unthinkable reality His judgment has produced. The verse poses two rhetorical questions that strike at the twin foundations of human existence as established by God: the natural bond of mother and child, and the covenantal bond of priest and sanctuary. The horror is that both have been utterly inverted, a de-creation that testifies to the terrible righteousness of God in judging sin and the profound depths of Israel's rebellion.

Jeremiah is not questioning God's right to judge, but is rather forcing the issue. He is holding up the consequences of the covenant curses and asking, in effect, "Do You see this? Is this truly the end for Your chosen people?" It is a prayer from the abyss, a model of how to argue with God from within the covenant, appealing to His character by showing Him the full, ghastly implications of His wrath.

Outline

Context In Lamentations

Lamentations 2 is a detailed account of the destruction of Jerusalem, with a relentless focus on the fact that God Himself is the primary actor. He is portrayed as an enemy warrior who has bent His bow against His own people (Lam 2:4), thrown down their strongholds (Lam 2:2), and scorned His own altar and sanctuary (Lam 2:7). The chapter systematically catalogues the ruin of every aspect of Judah's national life: military, political, and religious. Verse 20 serves as the pivot and climax of this chapter. Having laid out the evidence of the devastation, the personified city of Zion now takes the stand and cross-examines God Himself. This verse channels all the preceding pain and chaos into two pointed, unanswerable questions that lay the horror directly at God's feet.

Key Issues

The Anatomy of Judgment

We must be careful not to read a verse like this with modern, sentimental eyes. This is not the cry of someone questioning whether God exists or if He is good. This is the cry of someone who knows God exists, knows He is just, and knows that He is the one who has done this. The horror is not random, meaningless suffering. The horror is the meticulous, covenantal precision of the suffering. God had warned Israel centuries before, in the plainest possible terms, that this exact judgment would befall them if they persisted in high-handed rebellion. In Deuteronomy 28, Moses lays out the curses for covenant-breaking, and among the most terrible is the curse of cannibalism during a siege: "you will eat the fruit of your womb, the flesh of your sons and daughters" (Deut 28:53). What we are reading in Lamentations is not a tragedy; it is a sentence, duly passed and executed by the Divine Judge. The lament is not an accusation of injustice, but a plea for mercy from a people who know they are guilty and are now staring into the unshielded blaze of God's holiness.

Verse by Verse Commentary

20a See, O Yahweh, and look! With whom have You dealt thus?

The prayer begins with a desperate, almost rude, insistence. "See... look!" It is the cry of someone grabbing another by the lapels, forcing them to look at a catastrophe. The speaker is calling upon Yahweh, the covenant-keeping God of Israel. This is crucial. He is not appealing to a generic deity, but to the God who made specific promises to this specific people. The question, "With whom have You dealt thus?" is a stunning appeal to Israel's unique status as God's chosen nation. The argument is this: "We are not just another pagan nation. We are Yours. Has any other people with whom You have entered into covenant ever been so utterly abandoned and destroyed by You?" It is a sharp, painful reminder to God of His own elective love, using the uniqueness of their suffering to argue for the uniqueness of their relationship with Him.

20b Should women eat their offspring, The infants who were born healthy?

Here is the first piece of evidence presented to the Judge. The question "Should..." is not asking for information. It is an expression of moral horror. This is the absolute inversion of the created order. The maternal instinct is the most powerful natural bond God has placed within humanity. For that bond to be so completely broken that a mother would kill and eat her own child is a sign that creation itself is being unraveled. This is the de-creation that sin brings. As noted earlier, this was the specific curse threatened in the Torah (Lev 26:29). The people had reached the nadir of covenantal judgment. The detail about the infants being "born healthy" or "tenderly cared for" adds a layer of unbearable pathos. This was not the disposal of a sick or dying child; it was the consumption of a life that was loved. This is what sin does. It takes what is most beautiful and God-given and turns it into something monstrous.

20c Should priest and prophet be killed In the sanctuary of the Lord?

The second piece of evidence moves from the realm of natural order to the realm of covenantal order. If the first horror was the desecration of the family, this is the desecration of the worship of God. The sanctuary of the Lord was the one place on earth where heaven and earth met, where atonement was made, and where sinful man could find refuge in the presence of a holy God. For this place of refuge to become a slaughterhouse, and for the victims to be the very men appointed to minister there, the priests and prophets, is the ultimate sacrilege. It signifies that there is no mediation left. There is no atonement being offered. The link between God and His people has been violently severed. When God's own house becomes a place of execution for God's own servants, it means that judgment is total and complete.

Application

This verse is a hard medicine, but a necessary one. First, it teaches us the staggering gravity of our sin. We live in a therapeutic age that wants to redefine sin as a mistake or a dysfunction. This verse shows us what God thinks of sin. Sin, left to run its course, leads to the complete disintegration of everything good and beautiful. It turns mothers into monsters and sanctuaries into tombs. We must recover this biblical seriousness about sin if we are to have any serious appreciation for grace.

Second, it gives us permission to be brutally honest with God in our prayers. The faith of the Bible is not a stoic, stiff-upper-lip affair. It is a robust, arguing, pleading, and questioning faith. When our world is collapsing, we can come to God, as Jeremiah did, and lay the wreckage at His feet and ask our hard questions. This is not a sign of unbelief, but of a faith that is real enough to wrestle.

Finally, and most importantly, this verse drives us to the cross of Jesus Christ. Where were these horrors ultimately answered? The true and beloved Son was devoured by the wrath of God on our behalf. The ultimate Priest and Prophet was killed, and His body, the true Temple, was destroyed. The full, undiluted horror of God's covenant curse against sin was poured out upon Him. He endured the ultimate Lamentation so that we would not have to. Because He drank that cup of wrath to the dregs, we can now look at the terrors of a passage like this and know that for those who are in Christ, this is not our destiny. The judgment has already fallen on our substitute. Our task now is not to lament a judgment that has come, but to rejoice in a salvation that has been accomplished.