Lamentations

About the Book of Lamentations

We call this book Lamentations because it is a sad book. It has five parts. All five parts are about the city of Jerusalem.
God wanted his people to take care of Jerusalem and the Temple there. God wanted people to worship only him in that house. But the people who lived in Jerusalem did not obey God. In the end, he was angry with those people. He let armies come from another country. Those armies came to destroy Jerusalem and to take the people away. The writer lived in Jerusalem. We think that he was a man called Jeremiah, who wrote another book in the Bible, which is called Jeremiah. Jeremiah was a man who loved God and his own people. He was very sad when enemies destroyed his city, Jerusalem. Jeremiah wrote this book about 586 BC.
In the first two parts of the book, Jeremiah writes sometimes as if he himself is speaking. Other times he writes as if the city of Jerusalem and its people are speaking. The city speaks as if it is a woman who is speaking. In the next two parts, only Jeremiah speaks. In the last part, he writes as if the city's people are praying to God.
The first part is about the lonely city. The second part says that God was like an angry enemy. In the next part, Jeremiah remembers how good God is. If people really love God, they can hope for better things always. After that, Jeremiah talks about the cruel enemies. He remembers what those enemies did to the people in the city. In the last part, the city's people know that they have done many wrong things. So they ask God to forget those bad things.
Lamentations shows us that God gets angry about sin. He is happy when we change. This book also shows us what God wants. He wants us to love him. He wants us to obey him. If we do that, he helps us. He will help us to be good and to do good things.