23. Lamentations - the fruit of war

Looking for a short book to end the year on, I chose Lamentations. It's a poem from Jeremiah's perspective about the destruction of Jerusalem at the hands of the Babylonians

1. Jerusalem is in ruins; it's pride is gone; God's hand did this because the people did not listen

2. God's hand was withdrawn because of the people's sin, and their false prophets led them to utter ruin

3. I am one who suffered under God's wrath, and continues to suffer, and yet I choose to trust in God

4. Those who died by the sword suffered less than those who survived; the survivors are doomed to slowly starve - homeless and unloved - while they watch their former glory decay

5. Lord God, we are broken, we have nothing; our only hope is that you will restore us again, that you have not abandoned us forever in your anger

I  found the Common English Bible translation a bit off putting because the frequent use of American vernacular words (like garbage) really jarred with my reading of the text. Because of this I found it difficult to capture the poetry of Lamentations in my interpretation. Perhaps it would have been helpful to look at a different translation here, one which made more effort to capture the poetic nature of the text

The thing that struck me most about Lamentations was that the situation being lamented by the Hebrews was the exact situation they created for the previous inhabitants of the land they took, and that all of this military might and land grabbing feels so far removed from my own understanding of what it means to follow God. Overall, I didn't really connect much with this one