A note about Lamentations

I just finished reading the Book of Lamentations. It is nice and short with only 5 chapters. In essence it is basically a review of the Laments of Jeremiah’s time as a profit.

In the original Hebrew, the first four chapters in Lamentations are acrostic poems. Each verse in every chapter begins with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Chapter 3 has 66 verses rather than 22 because it is a triple acrostic: the first three verses begin with the equivalent of A, the next three with B, and so on. This was a typical form of Hebrew poetry. Other examples of acrostics are Psalms 37, 119, and 145, and Proverbs 31:10-31.

We all have our own Lamentations in our lives, some have it more difficult than others, but it’s important to remember that our trials here on this earth only bring us closer to God. Why should any living mortal, or any man, offer complaint in view of his sins? Lamentations 3:39. I like to look at it this way, most of the trials (not all) that we have in life, only come because we didn’t do what God wanted us to do in the first place. If we would listen to God the first time, our lives might not necessarily have less trials, but it would certainly be easier to overcome them.