What is the meaning of Lamentations 2:20? Look, O LORD, and consider • Jeremiah pleads for the Lord to turn His gaze toward Jerusalem’s agony, echoing earlier cries such as “Look, O LORD, on my affliction” (Lamentations 1:9). • The appeal rests on covenant confidence: God sees and cares (Exodus 3:7; Psalm 25:18) even when discipline is deserved. • By inviting the Lord to “consider,” the prophet affirms that what is happening cannot be explained apart from God’s purposeful action—both judgment and the hope of eventual mercy (Isaiah 64:9; Habakkuk 3:2). Whom have You ever treated like this? • The rhetorical question underlines the unparalleled severity of the siege. Israel’s unique relationship with God meant that her rebellion brought equally unique consequences (Amos 3:2). • Other nations fell to conquest, yet Jerusalem’s fall stands out because it involves the very God who once shielded her (2 Chronicles 7:16, 20). • The language anticipates future reflection: if God so firmly judged His own people, no one should presume upon His holiness (Romans 11:21). Should women eat their offspring, the infants they have nurtured? • The line is shockingly literal. Famine during the Babylonian siege drove some mothers to cannibalism, fulfilling warnings in Leviticus 26:29, Deuteronomy 28:53–57, and Jeremiah 19:9. • What makes the image unbearable is the reversal of a mother’s God-given instinct to protect (Isaiah 49:15). Sin’s wages are seen not only in ruined walls but in twisted affections (Romans 1:26–27). • Lamentations 4:10 records the grim reality: “With their own hands compassionate women have cooked their own children.” • The verse invites sober reflection on how rebellion ultimately destroys the most tender human bonds (James 1:15). Should priests and prophets be killed in the sanctuary of the Lord? • Spiritual leaders, once shields for the people, are struck down where they thought themselves secure. Ezekiel 9:6 predicted judgment that “begins at My sanctuary,” and Lamentations 4:13 explains why: “Because of the sins of her prophets and the iniquities of her priests.” • The sanctuary had been desecrated by idolatry (Jeremiah 7:30), so God withdraws protection, making the holy place a battlefield (Psalm 74:7). • The deaths of priests and prophets expose the bankruptcy of false assurances they had given (Jeremiah 6:14; 23:11). No office exempts anyone from God’s righteous standards (Hebrews 10:30). • Their fate warns today’s leaders that privilege heightens accountability (Luke 12:48; 1 Peter 4:17). summary Lamentations 2:20 sets before us a prayerful protest that recognizes God’s sovereignty even in catastrophe. The prophet invites the Lord to behold horrors that only covenant-breaking could unleash: incomparable discipline, mothers driven to cannibalism, and clergy slain in the very court of worship. Each image confirms both the certainty of God’s word of judgment and the urgency of repentance. Yet the very act of calling on the Lord holds a glimmer of hope—if He looks and considers, He may also heal and restore, just as He promised throughout Scripture to all who return to Him. |
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