Lamentations 4:10-12
The Voice
10 Just imagine the injustice: loving mothers
are forced to cook their babies’ flesh.
Children have become their food!
All because of the destruction of the daughter of my people.
Is this poetic hyperbole, or could such a horror really have happened? Even today, famine and disease cause devastation in developing nations reminiscent of what this poet describes happening in Jerusalem. Suffering will always exist because sin—rebellion against God—affects every aspect of a culture at every level of society. When Nebuchadnezzar laid siege to Jerusalem in the early sixth century b.c., he did not allow any food or provision to enter the city; he literally waited for God’s people in Jerusalem to starve to death. As the executioner of God’s judgment, Nebuchadnezzar punished everyone equally, regardless of the severity of his or her sins, because all sin is worthy of death. The people in Jerusalem really experienced God’s dark cloud and His frowning countenance.
11 Kindling a fire, the Eternal attacked Zion
until nothing was left—not even the foundations.
His anger was poured out
as that angry fire consuming all.
12 Little did they know, thinking Jerusalem could not be breached—
not by kings, not by ordinary people, and not by anyone on the earth—
Absolutely no one imagined
Jerusalem’s enemies would get in.
The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved.
