The Covenant Comes Home: Lamentations 2:20
Introduction: The God Who Keeps His Word
We live in a soft age. We prefer a soft god, who speaks soft words, and demands a soft obedience. We have constructed for ourselves a deity who is endlessly affirming and never severe, a divine therapist whose chief aim is our immediate comfort and self-esteem. When we encounter a passage like the one before us today, our modern sensibilities are shocked. The language is jarring, the imagery is grotesque, and the questions asked of God are raw, bordering on accusatory. And so we are tempted to tiptoe around it, to explain it away, or to treat it as an unfortunate relic from a less civilized time.
But we must do no such thing. To do so is to rob ourselves of the very thing this passage is meant to teach us, which is the absolute, terrifying, and ultimately glorious faithfulness of God to His own Word. The horrors described in Lamentations are not random acts of violence, nor are they evidence of a God who has lost control. Quite the opposite. They are the meticulous fulfillment of promises God made centuries before. They are the covenant curses, detailed with chilling precision in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28, coming home to roost. God told His people exactly what would happen if they persisted in their high-handed rebellion. He warned them that their sin would unravel the very fabric of their humanity, and now, Jeremiah stands as an eyewitness to the unraveling.
This passage forces us to confront a question that our generation despises: what happens when a people's sin becomes so ripe that God Himself hands them over to its consequences? What does judgment actually look like? It is not an abstract theological concept. It is mothers boiling their own children for food. It is the sacred space of the sanctuary becoming a slaughterhouse. This is not meant to make us squirm for the sake of shock value. It is meant to make us tremble before the holiness of God and the profound evil of our sin. And in that trembling, it is meant to drive us to the only one who has ever absorbed the full measure of God's covenant wrath in our place.
The Text
"See, O Yahweh, and look! With whom have You dealt thus? Should women eat their offspring, The infants who were born healthy? Should priest and prophet be killed In the sanctuary of the Lord?"
(Lamentations 2:20 LSB)
An Appeal to the Witness Stand (v. 20a)
The lament begins with a desperate, raw appeal. It is a prayer, but it is a prayer that sounds like a cross-examination.
"See, O Yahweh, and look! With whom have You dealt thus?" (Lamentations 2:20a)
Jeremiah, speaking for the shattered remnant of Jerusalem, calls God to the witness stand. "See! Look!" It is as though he is grabbing God by the lapels and forcing Him to gaze upon the wreckage He has wrought. This is not the language of polite, detached theology. This is the cry of a man whose world has been pulverized. And we must appreciate the honesty that the Scriptures permit. God is not interested in our pious platitudes when our hearts are breaking. He invites our raw, honest anguish.
The question is pointed: "With whom have You dealt thus?" On one level, this is a cry of exceptionalism. We are Your people! We are the children of Abraham, the nation You redeemed from Egypt. Has any other nation You have chosen been subjected to such utter desolation? But on a deeper level, it is a question that answers itself. God has dealt this way with the one people with whom He was in a covenant relationship. The Gentiles are judged, to be sure, but judgment begins at the house of God (1 Peter 4:17). Why? Because to whom much is given, much is required. Israel had the law, the prophets, the temple, the covenants. Their sin was therefore committed in the blazing light of God's revelation, and their judgment is correspondingly severe.
This is a principle that does not expire with the Old Testament. The church is now the covenant people of God. We have been given more light than Jerusalem ever had. We have the fullness of the revelation in Jesus Christ. We should therefore not be surprised when God's discipline of His own house is sharp and severe. When a church commits spiritual adultery, when it trifles with sin and compromises with the world, it should not expect a gentle slap on the wrist. It should expect the Lord to come and remove its lampstand (Rev. 2:5). This passage forces us to ask: are we presuming upon the grace of God? Are we coasting on the fumes of a past faithfulness? God is not a respecter of persons or institutions. He is a respecter of His covenant.
The Unraveling of Creation (v. 20b)
Next, Jeremiah points to the most horrific evidence of the city's collapse. The covenant curses have descended to the lowest possible level of human depravity.
"Should women eat their offspring, The infants who were born healthy?" (Lamentations 2:20b LSB)
This is the absolute inversion of the created order. A mother's love for her child is the most basic, fundamental instinct God has woven into the fabric of humanity. It is the icon of self-sacrificial love. For a mother to not just abandon, but to consume her own child, is for nature to come completely undone. It is the ultimate sign that the world has been given over to chaos, to the tohu wa-bohu from which God first brought order.
But this horror was not unforeseen. It was not a surprise to God. It was the precise fulfillment of the covenant sanctions He had laid out nearly a thousand years earlier. Listen to the words of Moses: "Because of the suffering your enemy will inflict on you during the siege, you will eat the fruit of the womb, the flesh of the sons and daughters the Lord your God has given you" (Deuteronomy 28:53). And again: "You will eat the flesh of your sons, and you will eat the flesh of your daughters" (Leviticus 26:29). This is not some obscure detail. This is the nadir of covenant judgment, explicitly promised.
The people had broken covenant by sacrificing their children to Molech (Jer. 32:35). They had taken the fruit of their own wombs and offered it on the altars of pagan gods. And now, in a display of breathtaking, terrible justice, God says, "You wanted to treat your children as commodities to be consumed for your own benefit? I will give you over to that logic entirely." Sin, when it is finished, brings forth death. And here, sin has come to full term. It has devoured the future. The very women who should be the source of life have become the agents of death. This is where rebellion against God ultimately leads: self-consumption.
The Desecration of the Holy (v. 20c)
The final piece of evidence Jeremiah presents is the collapse of the religious order. The judgment has struck the very heart of Israel's life.
"Should priest and prophet be killed In the sanctuary of the Lord?" (Lamentations 2:20c LSB)
The sanctuary, the Temple, was supposed to be the one place of ultimate safety. It was the meeting place of heaven and earth, the dwelling place of God's holy name. To have the consecrated servants of God, the priests and prophets, slaughtered within its sacred courts was the ultimate desecration. It was a sign that God had utterly abandoned His own house. He had removed His protection and allowed the profane to rush in.
But again, this was not without cause. Why were the priests and prophets killed there? Because that is where they had sinned. The prophets had prophesied lies from that place, telling the people "peace, peace" when there was no peace (Jer. 6:14). The priests had defiled the temple with idols and corrupt worship (Ezek. 8). They turned the house of prayer into a den of thieves, a hideout for their rebellion. And so God, in His justice, turned their safe house into their tomb. Judgment began at the sanctuary because sin began at the sanctuary.
This is a sobering word for all who are in positions of spiritual leadership. To be a pastor, an elder, a teacher, is a high calling that comes with a severe warning. To whom much is given, much is required. To handle the Word of God, to lead His people in worship, is to stand on holy ground. And to do so with a flippant heart, with unconfessed sin, or with a message tailored to please men rather than God, is to invite the severest judgment. God will not be mocked. What a man sows, that will he also reap. And what a minister sows from the pulpit, he will reap in his own soul, and his people will reap it with him.
God's Terrible Answer
The questions in this verse are not rhetorical in the way we usually mean. They are not left hanging in the air. The entire book of Lamentations, and indeed the entire Bible, provides the terrible and glorious answer. "Should these things happen?" The answer is a resounding yes. Yes, because God is holy. Yes, because God is just. Yes, because God keeps His covenant promises, both the blessings and the curses.
The horror of this verse is a measure of the horror of sin. We have domesticated sin. We think of it as a minor infraction, a slip-up, a bad habit. This verse shows us sin for what it is: cosmic treason. It is a rebellion so profound that it turns mothers into monsters and sanctuaries into sepulchers. If we do not feel the weight of this, we will never feel the weight of the cross.
For the cross is God's final answer to the questions of Lamentations 2:20. At the cross, we see another Son, an infant born healthy, consumed. But He was not consumed by a desperate mother; He was consumed by the righteous wrath of God against our sin. God the Father did not spare His own Son. He dealt with Him thus. He crushed Him under the full weight of the covenant curses that we deserved.
At the cross, we see another priest and prophet killed. Jesus, our great High Priest and the ultimate Prophet, was not killed in a sanctuary made with hands, but He was cast out of the city, cut off from the land of the living, and abandoned by His God. The full desolation of Jerusalem's judgment was focused and poured out upon His head. He became the ultimate fulfillment of every curse so that we might become the recipients of every blessing.
Therefore, we do not read this passage and despair. We read it and we tremble, and then we flee to Christ. We see the awful price of our rebellion, and we cling to the one who paid it. The faithfulness of God that brought about the destruction of Jerusalem is the same faithfulness that holds us fast in Jesus Christ. He keeps His word. He promised judgment for sin, and He executed it. He promised salvation for all who believe, and He has accomplished it. Thanks be to God.