A Devotional Thought From Lamentations

How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people! How is she become as a widow! she that was great among the nations, and princess among the provinces, how is she become tributary!

Lamentations 1:1

Jeremiah views the ruins of Jerusalem with a heart that is dumbfounded by what he sees. Look at this! Look at what has happened to God’s City. She was a great city! She was a crowded city. One can imagine the constant buzz of talking in the market place, the cry of the merchants hawking their wares, the laughter of children, the singing of the sanctuary wafting over it all. But now she is a widow, as it were. All the men and boys are gone. The woman and girls are mostly dead or slaves on their way to Babylon. She was a princess among the provinces of the land. She was the “Big Pomegranate.” Young people with ambition looked at her as the golden city, the place where dreams came true. She was A #1, Queen of the Hill, at the top of her game (Does that sound like any city or nation you can think of?). And now look! She is a tributary slave, conquered by invaders, broken down, by cruel warriors, decimated by the sword, famine, and sickness. This is what she had become.

When Jeremiah prophesied it no one could believe it: Great cities do not just disappear, great cultures are not just destroyed, people do not die in mass numbers, just because of sin. But they do, sometimes. In this case it was because of a people’s sin, their disobedience to God’s commandments, their unbelief in His revealed statements. Cities and states, and societies, today need to take note, the same commandments that would have delivered God’s people in the ancient days are available to cities, and states, and peoples today, and followed they will have a saving effect on the group that obeys them.