Response to Heidi's post

I really liked Heidi’s post on Lamentations, especially the ‘parent-child relationship’ between Jews and God, and would like to elaborate on it.

God chastising Jerusalem for their wrongful ways is really similar to children being punished by their parents for a very wrong deed. While enduring the punishment, the child might feel that the severity of his parents’ actions were largely undeserved, but after it’s all said and done, when he reflects back on his actions he would understand his mistakes and learn from it, and seek forgiveness from his parents.

I think ‘The Book of Lamentations’ shows the extent to which Religion was essential to the lives of Jewish people. Their actions could be compared to a child neglecting and rebelling against his parents. Prophet Jeremiah acknowledges that God chastises Jerusalem because of Judah’s continued idolatry, which is the perhaps the reason why Solomon’s Temple was burned down to the ground when the Babylonians besieged and destroyed Jerusalem. Jerusalem’s downfall was also attributed to the collective sin of the people as a whole. “The Lord has become like an enemy” (Lamentations 2: 05), where the key word is ‘like’ because Prophet Jeremiah admits that He was right in chastising the people of Jerusalem for their rebellion (Lamentations 1: 18), which is similar to the child’s realization of his mistake. God’s punishment of Jerusalem is seen as an outpour of His anger that has been caused by their sins. Although Prophet Jeremiah portrays God as being responsible for the destruction and grief brought to Jerusalem, He offers hope (Lamentations 3: 24) and is depicted as merciful and compassionate (Lamentations 3: 32). God’s punishment of Jerusalem is seen to be for the good of the people, in the hope that a better day in the future. Of course, no matter how strictly a child is reprimanded, it is supposedly always for his own benefit in the future. Prophet Jeremiah points to the sins of the people as the root of the destruction and pleads for the restoration of Jerusalem to God because they had learned from their mistakes.

Source: The Book of Lamentations