The Appointed Terror Text: Lamentations 2:22
Introduction: The Terrible Goodness of God
We live in a soft age, an age that prefers a god made in its own image. We want a divine grandfather, a celestial therapist, a cosmic affirmation machine. We want a god who is nice, but not necessarily good. We want a god who would never, ever do what we see described in this verse. And because modern evangelicalism has largely bought into this sentimental caricature, it has no category for a book like Lamentations, let alone a verse like this one. This verse is hard gravel in the soft oatmeal of contemporary piety.
But the God of the Bible is not safe; He is good. And His goodness is a terrible, holy, all-consuming fire. His goodness is what makes Him hate sin with a perfect hatred. His goodness is what requires Him to judge rebellion. The central difficulty we have with a text like this is not that God is being monstrous, but rather that we have a completely trivial view of our own sin. We see our sin as a minor infraction, a parking ticket. God sees it as high treason, cosmic rebellion, an assault on the throne of the universe. Until we see our sin as God sees it, we will always see His judgment as an overreaction.
The book of Lamentations is a funeral dirge for a city, for a nation. Jerusalem, the city of the great king, has been reduced to rubble. The Temple, the place where God condescended to dwell with His people, has been desecrated and destroyed. And the children of the covenant are either dead or enslaved. This is not an accident. This was not a geopolitical blunder. This was the promised, sworn, covenantal curse of God Almighty, brought to bear on a people who had stiffened their necks for the last time. This verse we are considering is the raw, unvarnished confession of that reality. It is a hard word, but it is a necessary one, because without the terror of the law, the grace of the gospel is just cheap sentiment.
Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, is not questioning God's justice here. He is affirming it through his tears. He is acknowledging that God has done precisely what He said He would do. And in this brutal honesty, we find the only possible path to true restoration. You cannot be healed until you first admit the severity of the wound, and the righteousness of the one who inflicted it.
The Text
You called as in the day of an appointed time
My terrors on every side;
And there was no one who escaped or survived
In the day of Yahweh’s anger.
Those whom I gave birth to and reared,
My enemy consumed them.
(Lamentations 2:22 LSB)
The Divine Summons (v. 22a)
We begin with the terrifying recognition of God's absolute sovereignty over this disaster.
"You called as in the day of an appointed time My terrors on every side;" (Lamentations 2:22a)
Notice the pronoun. "You." Jeremiah is not shaking his fist at the Babylonians. He is not cursing his bad luck. He is looking heavenward and acknowledging the ultimate cause. "You called." God is the one who issued the summons. The Chaldean army did not simply decide to invade; they were summoned. They were an instrument, a divine axe in the hand of the Almighty. God called for this terror as a man would call for a feast on an appointed festival day. The word for "appointed time" is the same word used for the holy convocations, the feasts of Israel like Passover or Tabernacles. This is a bitter, searing irony. The days that were once set for celebration have become a day set for utter desolation.
This is the doctrine of hard sovereignty, and it is the only thing that can keep a man from despair in the midst of ruin. If God is not in control of the terrors, then the terrors are in control, and we are adrift in a meaningless, chaotic universe. But if God "called" the terrors, it means they serve His purpose. They are on a leash. This does not make the pain less real, but it infuses it with meaning. God had an appointment for Jerusalem's judgment, and He did not miss it. He is never late. He is never early. He acts at the appointed time.
The phrase "terrors on every side" is Jeremiah's signature. It is his lament throughout his prophetic ministry. He was a man surrounded by opposition, ridicule, and threats. Here, he sees his personal experience writ large over the entire nation. The covenant people, who were meant to be surrounded by God's blessing, are now, because of their sin, surrounded by God's terrors. This is the reversal of the covenant promise. Instead of being a bastion of light, they are engulfed in a darkness of their own making, a darkness summoned by God Himself.
The Inescapable Wrath (v. 22b)
The totality of the judgment is described next, emphasizing its inescapable nature.
"And there was no one who escaped or survived In the day of Yahweh’s anger." (Lamentations 2:22b)
This is the grim reality of divine judgment when it finally arrives. For centuries, God had sent prophets, warnings, and lesser judgments. He had provided escape routes through repentance. But the people refused. They thought they could outlast God's patience. They were wrong. When "the day of Yahweh's anger" comes, the exits are sealed. The swift cannot outrun it, the strong cannot fight it, and the clever cannot outwit it. All the little foxholes men dig for themselves prove to be useless.
This is a necessary lesson for us. We live in an age of casual sin, assuming that God's patience is infinite and His grace is unconditional in a way that nullifies His justice. We presume upon His kindness. But the Bible is clear: there is a day of anger. For Jerusalem, it came in 586 B.C. For the world, it will come at the final judgment. And for every individual who dies in rebellion, that day comes at their last breath. On that day, there is no escape and no survivor, apart from the refuge found in Christ.
This is why the gospel is such urgent news. The apostles did not present the gospel as a helpful tip for self-improvement. They preached it as the only ark in a world-drowning flood. They warned men to flee the wrath to come. This verse in Lamentations shows us what that wrath looks like when it is not fled from, but rather met head-on in stubborn rebellion.
The Intimate Grief (v. 22c)
The verse concludes with the most heart-rending line, moving from the national and theological to the deeply personal.
"Those whom I gave birth to and reared, My enemy consumed them." (Lamentations 2:22c)
Here, the city, personified as a mother, weeps for her children. This is the fruit of covenant unfaithfulness. The greatest blessing of the covenant was to be fruitful and multiply, to raise up a godly seed for the Lord. The greatest curse was the loss of that seed. "Those whom I gave birth to and reared." This speaks of the love, the care, the investment, the hope that every parent pours into their children. It speaks of scraped knees, bedtime stories, and years of nurture.
And the result? "My enemy consumed them." The Babylonians are the immediate enemy, but who is the ultimate enemy here? Who is the one who has the right to consume? In their sin, Israel had made God their enemy. This is the terrifying language of Deuteronomy 32, where God warns that if Israel breaks covenant, "I will heap disasters upon them; I will spend my arrows on them... the sword shall bereave from without, and terror from within, for the young man and the virgin, the nursing child with the man of gray hairs" (Deut. 32:23, 25). God is the one who has handed over His own children to be consumed by the enemy He summoned.
This is the wages of sin. Sin is not a game. It is not a trifle. It eats your children. A nation that rebels against God, that teaches its children to call evil good and good evil, is setting them on an altar. The idolatry of the parents leads to the destruction of the children. We see it in our own day. The sexual revolution, the rejection of God's design for man and woman, the embrace of abortion, these are all forms of corporate rebellion that are consuming our children. We are handing them over to the enemy. This verse is not just ancient history; it is a headline for tomorrow's news.
The Appointed Substitute
If we stop here, we are left in utter despair. If the day of Yahweh's anger is this total and this terrible, what hope is there for any of us? For we have all sinned. We have all broken covenant. We have all earned this wrath. If this was the fate of the "green tree" of ethnic Israel, what can the "dry tree" of the Gentiles expect?
The hope is found in another "appointed time." The Bible speaks of the "fullness of time," when God sent forth His Son. On a hill outside the very city that was once destroyed, another "day of Yahweh's anger" occurred. It was a day when all the terrors of God's wrath against sin were gathered and summoned to one place.
On that day, there was one who did not escape, one who did not survive. God the Son, the beloved child of the Father, was handed over to the enemy. He was consumed. All the fury that Jerusalem experienced, all the wrath that our sin deserves, was poured out onto Him. God called the terrors of hell to descend upon His own Son, at the appointed time.
And why? So that we, the guilty children of rebellion, might be spared. He was consumed by the enemy so that we might be adopted as sons. He faced the inescapable wrath so that we might escape into the safety of His grace. He experienced the terror on every side so that we might be surrounded by songs of deliverance.
This is the gospel. The terror of Lamentations is real. The wrath of God is not a metaphor. But the cross of Jesus Christ is even more real. God's justice is perfect, which is why sin must be punished with such severity. But His mercy is infinite, which is why He provided the perfect substitute. The only way to survive the coming day of Yahweh's anger is to take refuge in the one who already endured it on your behalf. There is no other escape.