Who wrote it? Traditions say Jeremiah. I’ll go with that since it is the most logical choice. Second most logical is “unknown.”
Who was this written to? His contemporaries. Since it is canonized and inspired, it’s the Word of God for us as well.
What is it about? It’s poetry, so it’s not a literal report of what happened. But Jeremiah is talking about the desolation of Jerusalem, 587 B.C. (link) A more literal, historical description is found in 2 Kings 24. I think what is so powerful about this is the emotion of it. I get the idea Jeremiah was either given a vision of what Jerusalem was like after the fall or that he was one of the later ones taken into captivity. The language here is painful. The literary technique is that each verse starts with a different letter in the Hebrew alphabet. To me, this implies that Jeremiah and the Holy Spirit worked on this for a long time. Unlike modern day poetry, this likely started as an oral thing before being recorded in written form.
What was it saying to the original readers? I would think that this would have been nostalgic to the original readers/listeners. His audience would have been first hand witnesses to the fall of Jerusalem. They would have had questions like, “Why is this happening to us?” “I thought we were God’s chosen people?” “Did you see what happened to the Temple?” “Why would God allow this?” We can look back and say that is was all part of God’s plan and all that. But to see a their capital city fall, the centerpiece of their faith, it was emotionally devastating.
What does it me to me? Have I seen a city fall? Has my spiritual home been abandoned and sacked? Um, no. Never. But I do think there is an interesting parallel between the fall of Jerusalem and the fall of the church from the social conscience of our generation. If the church is the bride of Christ and Jerusalem was a symbol of Jesus this phrase is so poignant,
“How like a widow is she, who once was great among the nations! She who was queen among the provinces has now become a slave.”
In many ways Christianity, at least as I know it, is absent from the consciousness of our nation, our people, and our culture. It’s there… we think of times in the past and what we’d like to see in the future… but even in the consciousness of believers there is doubt that the bride of Christ could ever be predominant among the nations. I don’t think that way. I think that in my time, led by an emerging generation of believers motivated, not by fame or selfishness, but by making the name of Christ great, will bring the church to the forefront. Not the consumption-driven church so popular today, but a simpler and more significant church. One driven by authenticity and imperfections that point to a perfect God.
Of course, when I think “deserted city” my mental image is Detroit. I don’t think of Detroit as a spiritual center of anything but I wonder if she’ll ever come back or be left to rot.
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