Lamentations Introduction

Lamentations for Skeptics

"Out of the mouth of the Most High proceedeth not good and evil?" -- Lamentations 3:38

Well, I can find nothing good in Lamentations but there's plenty of evil.

For example:

Jerusalem is compared to a naked woman who sighs and turns backward. "Her filthiness is in her skirts." 1:8-9
The adversary puts his hand upon "all her pleasant things." 1:10
"The LORD hath trodden the virgin ... as in a winepress." 1:15
"Jerusalem is as a menstrous woman." (To God this is an insult.) 1:17
""He hath bent his bow like an enemy ... and slew all that were pleasant to the eye ... he poured out his fury like fire." 2:4
God mercilessly kills everyone, young and old. He even causes women to eat their children. 2:20-22
He is like a bear or a lion who secretly pursues you and then tears you apart. 3:10-11
He shoots people with his bow and breaks their teeth with stones. 3:13-16
"Out of the mouth of the most High proceedeth not evil and good?"
(Mostly evil, I'd say -- at least if you believe the Bible.) 3:38
"Thou hast slain, thou hast not pitied." 3:43
"Thou hast covered thyself with a cloud, that our prayer should not pass through." 3:44
He "accomplishes his fury" on the Israelites by starving children to death and forcing their mothers to eat them. 4:4-11
Rejoice and be glad, O daughter of Edom ... Thou shalt be drunken, and shalt make thyself naked." (When God gets angry at you he calls you a drunken whore.) 4:21