The Grammar of Covenant Curses Text: Lamentations 5:1-18
Introduction: The Bill Comes Due
We live in a sentimental age, an age that has forgotten that God is a consuming fire. Our therapeutic culture wants a God who is a celestial grandfather, a divine affirmer, a cosmic teddy bear. We want the blessings of the covenant without the obligations. We want the inheritance without the obedience. We want to sow rebellion, idolatry, and sexual confusion, and then act surprised when the harvest comes in. But the universe is a moral construct, and God is not mocked. What a man, or a nation, sows, that will he also reap. The book of Lamentations is a stark, brutal education in the consequences of sin. It is the bill coming due.
Jerusalem has fallen. The city of God, the place where His name dwelt, is a smoking ruin. The unthinkable has happened. And in this final chapter of this heartbreaking book, the people of God finally begin to pray rightly. This is not a lament of despair, but a lament of confession. It is a detailed catalog of the covenant curses they had been warned about for centuries. Moses had laid it all out in Deuteronomy 28: blessings for obedience, curses for disobedience. And now, they are checking off the list. They are living in the wreckage of their own rebellion, and they are finally connecting the dots.
This is a hard word for us, because we like to think we are exempt. We think that because we live in the age of grace, the principles of sowing and reaping have been suspended. They have not. Grace is not a permission slip for sin; it is the power to overcome it. And when a people who have been blood-bought and Spirit-filled decide to chase after the idols of the age, when they trade their birthright for a pot of cultural pottage, they should not be surprised when their inheritance is turned over to strangers and their houses to foreigners. This prayer in Lamentations 5 is a model for us. It is a call to look at the rubble around us, not with self-pity, but with sober self-examination, and to cry out to God, not as innocent victims, but as guilty participants who are casting ourselves entirely on His mercy.
The Text
Remember, O Yahweh, what has happened to us; Look, and see our reproach! Our inheritance has been turned over to strangers, Our houses to foreigners. We have become orphans without a father; Our mothers are like widows. We drink our water by means of silver; Our wood comes to us at a price. Our pursuers are at our necks; We are worn out; there is no rest for us. We have given over our hands to Egypt and Assyria to get enough bread. Our fathers sinned; they are no more; It is we who have borne their iniquities. Slaves rule over us; There is no one to tear us away from their hand. We get our bread at the risk of our lives Because of the sword in the wilderness. Our skin has become as hot as an oven Because of the burning heat of famine. They violated the women in Zion, The virgins in the cities of Judah. Princes were hung by their hands; Elders were not respected. Young men lifted up the stone at the grinding mill, And youths stumbled down under loads of wood. Elders have ceased from being at the gate, Young men from their music. The joy of our hearts has ceased; Our dancing has been turned into mourning. The crown has fallen from our head; Woe to us, for we have sinned! Because of this our heart is faint; Because of these things our eyes are dim; Because of Mount Zion which lies desolate, Foxes walk about in it.
(Lamentations 5:1-18 LSB)
Remember Our Reproach (vv. 1-3)
The prayer begins with a desperate plea for God to simply look, to take notice of their condition.
"Remember, O Yahweh, what has happened to us; Look, and see our reproach! Our inheritance has been turned over to strangers, Our houses to foreigners. We have become orphans without a father; Our mothers are like widows." (Lamentations 5:1-3)
When the Bible speaks of God "remembering," it is not as though He has forgotten. God is omniscient; nothing slips His mind. To ask God to remember is to ask Him to act on the basis of His covenant promises. It is an appeal to His faithfulness, even in the face of their unfaithfulness. They are asking God to act like God. And the first thing they want Him to see is their "reproach." This is their public shame, their disgrace. God's people, who were supposed to be a city on a hill, a light to the nations, have become a byword, a hissing, a cautionary tale.
And what is the nature of this reproach? First, the loss of their inheritance. The land was central to God's promise to Abraham. It was their tangible sign of God's favor, their place in the world. Now, it belongs to strangers, to pagans. This was a direct fulfillment of the curse in Deuteronomy 28:30, "You shall build a house, but you shall not live in it... a foreigner shall enjoy it." When a people forgets the God who gave them their inheritance, they will soon lose that inheritance.
Second, the breakdown of the family. "We have become orphans without a father; our mothers are like widows." This is both literal and spiritual. The men had been killed in the war, leaving a generation of fatherless children. But more profoundly, they had become spiritually fatherless. They had rejected God their Father, and the result was a society adrift. When you remove fathers from the home, you get chaos. When you remove God the Father from the culture, you get civilizational collapse. This is a picture of a society that has lost its headship, its protection, and its identity.
The Humiliation of Daily Life (vv. 4-6)
The consequences of their sin are not abstract theological concepts; they are felt in the gut, in the exhaustion of their bodies.
"We drink our water by means of silver; Our wood comes to us at a price. Our pursuers are at our necks; We are worn out; there is no rest for us. We have given over our hands to Egypt and Assyria to get enough bread." (Lamentations 5:4-6 LSB)
In their own land, a land flowing with milk and honey, they now have to pay for the basic necessities of life. Water and wood, things that should have been freely available, are now commodities controlled by their conquerors. This is economic slavery. It is the curse of poverty that comes when a nation abandons the Protestant work ethic, which is just the biblical work ethic, and embraces folly.
There is no rest. The Sabbath principle, a core tenet of their covenant life, is gone. They are driven, exhausted, and pursued. This is the anxiety of a people who have lost their trust in God's providence. When you are not resting in God, you will not rest at all. You will be chased by your fears, your enemies, and your own guilty conscience.
And notice their foreign policy. "We have given over our hands to Egypt and Assyria to get enough bread." For generations, the prophets had warned them not to make alliances with pagan nations. Trust in Yahweh, not in chariots and horses. But they played the geopolitical game, trying to play one superpower off another, and now they are enslaved to them all, begging for scraps. When the church seeks its security and provision from the world, from government grants, from cultural approval, it always ends in servitude. You become a slave to whomever you look to for your bread.
Corporate and Generational Sin (vv. 7-8)
Here we come to a crucial theological point, one our individualistic age struggles to grasp.
"Our fathers sinned; they are no more; It is we who have borne their iniquities. Slaves rule over us; There is no one to tear us away from their hand." (Lamentations 5:7-8 LSB)
This is not an attempt to shift the blame. They are not saying, "It's our parents' fault, not ours." They have already confessed their own sin. Rather, this is a recognition of covenantal solidarity. Sins have consequences that ripple through generations. When one generation plants thorns, the next generation will have to deal with the thorns. When fathers embrace idolatry and sexual perversion, their children inherit a corrupted culture, a weakened church, and a society under judgment. We are not guilty of our fathers' sins, but we do inherit the consequences of them. Ezekiel 18 makes it clear that each man is responsible for his own soul, but that does not negate the reality of corporate sin. We are in this together.
And what is one of those consequences? "Slaves rule over us." This is the ultimate humiliation. The people of God, the royal priesthood, are now being governed by the lowest class of people, by pagan functionaries, by bureaucratic nobodies. This is what happens when a nation's leadership class abandons God. Nature abhors a vacuum. If the righteous will not lead, the wicked will. And there is no one to deliver them. They have no king, no judges, no elders with any authority. They are utterly helpless, which is exactly where God needs them to be before He will act.
The Brutality of Collapse (vv. 9-18)
The final section is a rapid-fire catalog of horrors, a portrait of a society completely unraveling.
"We get our bread at the risk of our lives... Our skin has become as hot as an oven Because of the burning heat of famine. They violated the women in Zion... Princes were hung by their hands; Elders were not respected... Elders have ceased from being at the gate, Young men from their music. The joy of our hearts has ceased; Our dancing has been turned into mourning. The crown has fallen from our head; Woe to us, for we have sinned! Because of this our heart is faint;... Because of Mount Zion which lies desolate, Foxes walk about in it." (Lamentations 5:9-18 LSB)
Life has become cheap. They risk death just to find food. Famine ravages their bodies. The women, the glory of Zion, are systematically raped, a common tactic of war meant to humiliate a conquered people. The social order is inverted and destroyed. Princes are executed shamefully, and elders, who should be honored, are treated with contempt. The places of civic life are empty. The elders are no longer at the gate, the place of judgment and wisdom. The young men have no music, no culture, no joy. All the laughter has died.
This leads to the climax of the confession: "The crown has fallen from our head; Woe to us, for we have sinned!" They finally get it. Their royal status as God's chosen people, their crown, is in the dust. And there is only one reason. Not bad luck. Not Babylonian military superiority. Not a failure of foreign policy. "We have sinned." This is the beginning of wisdom. Until a people can say this, there is no hope for them. Until the American church can look at the moral sewer we live in and say, "Woe to us, for we have sinned," there can be no revival.
The result of this recognition is physical and spiritual exhaustion. Faint hearts, dim eyes. The light has gone out. And the final, poignant image is of Mount Zion, the very place of God's throne on earth, the site of the Temple, now so desolate that wild animals, foxes, roam where the priests once ministered. It is a picture of utter abandonment.
The Unspoken Hope
Now, this is a bleak and brutal passage. It ends on a note of desolation. But the very act of this prayer is an act of profound hope. Why cry out to God if you believe He is deaf? Why confess your sin if you believe there is no forgiveness? Why catalog the covenant curses if you do not, deep down, believe in the covenant God who also promised restoration?
They are in the land of consequences, but they are speaking the language of the covenant. And that covenant is a two-sided coin. On one side, curses for disobedience. But on the other, unimaginable blessings for repentance. As Moses also said, "When all these things come upon you... and you return to the LORD your God... then the LORD your God will restore you from captivity, and have compassion on you" (Deuteronomy 30:1-3).
This entire chapter is a people beginning to return. They are at rock bottom, and they are finally looking up. And this points us to the ultimate fulfillment of this hope. The crown has fallen from their head, but God had promised a king, a son of David, whose crown would never be taken from Him. Mount Zion lay desolate, but a greater Zion was coming. They were fatherless, but God would send His own Son so that they might be adopted as sons.
They bore the iniquities of their fathers, but One was coming who would bear the iniquities of us all. Jesus Christ went into the desolation for us. On the cross, He became a reproach. He was abandoned. He cried out that God had forsaken Him. He bore the full weight of all the covenant curses that we deserved, from every generation. He took our faint hearts and dim eyes and gave us His Spirit. He is the reason we can look at the rubble of our own sinful lives, and the rubble of our culture, and pray this same prayer, not in despair, but in hope. Because He has already borne the woe. He has already paid the price. And because He has, we can confess our sin, knowing that He is faithful and just to forgive us our sin and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And He will rebuild the ruins.