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The Message of Lamentations: Honest to God is unavailable, but you can change that!

The destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 587 BC is the likely setting for the book of Lamentations. This was the most traumatic event in all of Old Testament history, with its extreme human suffering, devastation of the ancient city, national humiliation, and the undermining of all that was thought to be theologically guaranteed like the Davidic monarchy, the city of Zion, and the...

choice: ‘I will think about this.’ That is the flavour of the remarkable verse 21—which though it is the last line of a stanza of negative remembering (19–20), becomes the first line of a glorious positive affirmation and the turning point of the whole chapter. ‘Nothing is heavier than one’s head when one is struggling; raising one’s eyes requires great effort. Yet such effort is exactly what is called for here. The man takes himself in hand. He makes a decision, voluntarily affirming his faith,
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