We have been moving through the book of Lamentations looking at how the author of this book is teaching the people to grieve their suffering. Jerusalem has been destroyed. God had given the people over to the Babylonians because of their sinning against him. Even Jeremiah himself is having difficulties processing what he is seeing because the devastation is so vast (cf. Lamentations 2). We now come to the apex of this book of grief and lament. You will notice that Lamentations 3 is three times longer than the other poems in Lamentations. The other lamentations are 22 verses long, corresponding with the letters of the Hebrew alphabets. Lamentations 3 is 66 verses long, using the each letter of the alphabet three times. What we will see in this lamentation is the author moving the people from their struggle of grief to hope in the darkness of grief. In Lamentations 3 we will see the author use the word “hope” four times. Of the five lamentations, this is the only place where he speaks about hope. Therefore speaking about hope four times is quite notable since he does not use this word anywhere else in these poems…
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