The Breath in Our Nostrils Text: Lamentations 4:17-20
Introduction: The Emptiness of Man's Salvation
We live in an age that is frantic for salvation. But it is a salvation of a particular kind. It is a salvation that must come from anywhere but God. Men look to politics, to technology, to education, to military alliances, to the next election cycle. They are constantly craning their necks, looking to the horizon for a deliverer. They place their hope in chariots, in princes, in international treaties, and in the supposed wisdom of experts. And every single time, their hope fails them. Every single time, the cisterns they have hewn for themselves turn out to be broken cisterns that can hold no water.
The book of Lamentations is a funeral dirge for a nation that tried to live by every word that proceeds from the mouth of man and discovered, far too late, that this is the path to ruin. Jerusalem lies in ashes, her children are starving, and her king has been hauled off in chains. This is not some unfortunate geopolitical accident. This is the predictable, logical, and just outworking of covenant rebellion. This is what happens when a people forsakes the fountain of living waters. They die of thirst.
The prophet Jeremiah, weeping over the ruins of his beloved city, is giving us a divine autopsy report. He is showing us, with excruciating detail, the consequences of national apostasy. And in our passage today, he puts his finger on two of the central idols of his day, which are precisely the central idols of our own: the vanity of political saviors and the folly of trusting in a messiah of our own choosing. When a nation rejects God, it does not become godless. It simply starts worshipping lesser gods, gods that cannot save. And the end of that road is always destruction.
This is not just a history lesson about ancient Judah. This is a mirror. We are to look into the smoking ruins of Jerusalem and see the inevitable destination of any people who believe they can secure their own future, who trust in their own strength, and who look for salvation from a "nation that could not save."
The Text
Yet our eyes were spent, Looking for help was vanity; In our watching we have watched For a nation that could not save. They hunted our steps So that we could not walk in our open squares; Our end drew near, Our days were finished, For our end had come. Our pursuers were swifter Than the eagles of the sky; They hotly pursued us on the mountains; They waited in ambush for us in the wilderness. The breath of our nostrils, the anointed of Yahweh, Was captured in their pits, Of whom we had said, “Under his shadow We shall live among the nations.”
(Lamentations 4:17-20 LSB)
The Failure of Foreign Saviors (v. 17)
Jeremiah begins by diagnosing the false hope that exhausted the people.
"Yet our eyes were spent, Looking for help was vanity; In our watching we have watched For a nation that could not save." (Lamentations 4:17)
Their eyes "were spent." This is a picture of utter exhaustion. Imagine sentries on a city wall, day after day, week after week, straining to see the dust cloud of an approaching army, an army they believe will deliver them. Their eyes are raw from the wind and the sun, their necks are stiff, but more than that, their hope is draining away. They had a foreign policy, you see. They had a plan. Facing the Babylonian threat, the kings of Judah consistently looked south, to Egypt. They made treaties. They sent ambassadors. They promised tribute. They put their trust in the geopolitical calculations of men.
And God calls this "vanity." It is empty. It is worthless. It is like trying to quench your thirst with a picture of water. They watched and watched for a nation, Egypt, that "could not save." Why could they not save? Was it a failure of intelligence? A breakdown in logistics? A superior Babylonian military strategy? No, those are all secondary causes. The ultimate reason Egypt could not save was that God had decreed the judgment. To look to Egypt was to look away from Yahweh. It was an act of profound spiritual adultery. God had warned them repeatedly not to trust in the horses and chariots of Egypt (Isaiah 31:1). To do so was to say, "God, your promises are not enough. Your arm is not strong enough. We need a real army, with real spears."
This is the constant temptation for the people of God in every age. When the pressure is on, we are tempted to look for an earthly savior. We look to a political party, a charismatic leader, a Supreme Court decision, or a foreign ally. We spend our eyes, our energy, our money, and our hope watching for a salvation that can only come from men. But all such hope is vanity. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchmen stay awake in vain (Psalm 127:1). And unless the Lord is our salvation, all other saviors are frauds.
The Inescapable Consequence (v. 18-19)
Because they looked for salvation in the wrong place, the judgment was not only certain, but it was also total and inescapable.
"They hunted our steps So that we could not walk in our open squares; Our end drew near, Our days were finished, For our end had come. Our pursuers were swifter Than the eagles of the sky; They hotly pursued us on the mountains; They waited in ambush for us in the wilderness." (Lamentations 4:18-19 LSB)
The consequences of their misplaced faith were felt in the most ordinary aspects of life. The "open squares" were the places of commerce, of community, of public life. Now they had become kill zones. The Babylonian siege was so tight, their snipers so effective, that to even step out into the open was to risk death. The basic functions of society had completely broken down. When a nation is under the judgment of God, there is no safe place. The very structures of civilization begin to disintegrate.
"Our end drew near, Our days were finished, For our end had come." There is a terrible finality in these phrases. This is not a temporary setback. This is not a strategic retreat. This is the end. The game is over. The clock has run out. This is what happens when a people persistently ignores the warnings of God. His patience is astonishingly long, but it is not infinite. There comes a point where the accounts are called due. For Judah, that moment had arrived.
The pursuit was relentless. The Babylonians were "swifter than the eagles of the sky." This is a direct echo of God’s own covenant curses in Deuteronomy 28, where He warned that if Israel was unfaithful, He would bring a nation against them from afar, "as swift as the eagle flies" (Deut. 28:49). This is not an accident. Jeremiah is showing them that their calamity is not random misfortune. It is the covenant God keeping His covenant promises, the curses as well as the blessings. The pursuers were God's ordained instrument of judgment. There was no escape. They fled to the mountains, but they were pursued. They tried to hide in the wilderness, but there were ambushes waiting. When God is your hunter, no terrain can hide you.
The Captured King (v. 20)
Finally, Jeremiah focuses on the ultimate symbol of their collapsed hope: the capture of their king.
"The breath of our nostrils, the anointed of Yahweh, Was captured in their pits, Of whom we had said, “Under his shadow We shall live among the nations.”" (Lamentations 4:20 LSB)
This is one of the most poignant verses in the entire book. "The breath of our nostrils." This is how they viewed their king, Zedekiah. He was their life, their very essence. He was the "anointed of Yahweh," the messiah, the one set apart to rule and protect them. The entire Davidic monarchy was a promise from God, a promise of a king who would rule in righteousness and under whose reign the people would be safe.
And what had they said of him? "Under his shadow we shall live among the nations." This was their creed. They believed that as long as they had a descendant of David on the throne, they would be safe. They could find a way to maneuver, to survive, to carve out a little existence for themselves among the great pagan empires. Their hope was not in Yahweh Himself, but in the institution of the monarchy. They had turned the means of grace into the object of their faith. They trusted in the king, not the King of kings.
And now this "breath of their nostrils" has been "captured in their pits." The image is of a wild animal being trapped. King Zedekiah, their great hope, tried to flee the city by night but was caught on the plains of Jericho. His sons were slaughtered before his eyes, and then his own eyes were put out before he was hauled off to Babylon in chains (2 Kings 25:4-7). The shadow they trusted in had vanished. The man they thought was their life was shown to be a helpless, broken creature. Their political messiah had failed utterly.
Our True King and Only Hope
The lament of Jeremiah is a lament over a failed king and a failed hope. But it points us, as all of Scripture does, to the one true King and the one true hope. Judah’s sin was that they trusted in a man, an imperfect "anointed one," to give them life and security. They wanted a political savior who would allow them to "live among the nations" on the world's terms.
But God had a different plan. He would send His true Son, the ultimate Anointed One, Jesus the Christ. He too would be "captured in their pits." He would be hunted down, pursued, and trapped by His enemies. He would be handed over to a pagan empire. And unlike Zedekiah, He was truly innocent, the only righteous king. Yet He was captured so that we might go free.
The Jews of Jeremiah's day said of their king, "Under his shadow we shall live." But this was a false hope that ended in darkness. The Christian says of King Jesus, "He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty" (Psalm 91:1). His shadow is the only true place of safety. Our hope is not that we might simply "live among the nations," but that we might be part of a kingdom that will ultimately possess all nations (Psalm 2:8).
The lesson of Lamentations is the lesson of all history. Every human hope, every political savior, every earthly king will ultimately be captured in a pit. Every nation that seems like a mighty deliverer will prove unable to save. Our eyes will be spent in vanity if we look to them. We must learn to look away from the failing shadows of men and fix our eyes on the one true King, Jesus. He is the breath of our spiritual nostrils, the author of eternal life. He was captured in the pit of death, but that pit could not hold Him. And because He lives, we shall live also. Not just scraping by among the nations, but reigning with Him forever.