When we go through times of suffering and disillusionment, it can feel as if God has abandoned us. Worse still, it can seem as if God has become our enemy.
The Lord has become like an enemy; he has destroyed Israel; He has destroyed all its palaces, laid in ruins its strongholds, and multiplied in daughter Judah mourning and lamentation.
When we go through times of suffering and disillusionment, it can feel as if God has abandoned us. Worse still, it can seem as if God has become our enemy. That’s how it felt to the writer of Lamentations. His example gives us the freedom, to be honest about what we think and feel in times of doubt and desperation. We do not have to hold back, especially with God. Why? Because we know that even if God seems like our enemy, God is in fact, and always our Maker, Defender, Redeemer, and Friend.
Lamentations 2:5, like the chapter in which it is found, attributes the destruction of Jerusalem to God’s activity. Yes, God did this through human enemies of Israel, namely Babylon (Lamentations 2:7). But behind the agency of Babylon was the strong arm of God. Thus, Lamentations says, “The Lord has become like an enemy; he has destroyed Israel; He has destroyed all its palaces, laid in ruins its strongholds, and multiplied in daughter Judah mourning and lamentation” (2:5).
This sounds bad, very bad. It’s hard to imagine something worse than having God as your enemy. But it’s important for us to notice a crucial word in Lamentations 2:5, one that we might easily miss. The writer does not say “The Lord has become an enemy,” but rather, “The Lord has become like an enemy.” (For those of you who know Hebrew, “like” translates to the particle ke.)
Why is this little word “like” so significant? Because it allows the writer of Lamentations to say that God feels like an enemy of Israel, while at the same time recognizing that God is not in fact Israel’s enemy. The Lord seems to act as an enemy. But, in fact, the Lord is not the enemy of the people of God.
Lamentations 2:5 models, on the one hand, the kind of stunning bluntness that we have already seen in this biblical book. Someone with deep faith in the Lord is able to say, nevertheless, that the Lord seems just like an enemy. That’s pretty blunt and bold, don’t you think? Yet, on the other hand, this verse gives evidence of faith; struggling faith, to be sure, but faith that God is really not our enemy, no matter how it feels.
Jesus says that his disciples are not just students, but also friends (John 15:14-15). Most Christians go through seasons of life, however, when God feels like anything but a friend. As a pastor, I have walked with people through times of tremendous loss and suffering. I have joined them in prayers that felt as if they bounced back from the ceiling, never getting the slightest attention from God. I have wondered time and again why God lets terrible things happen to people who love and seek to honor God. Sometimes God’s ways make no sense to me. Or, to be even more honest, God makes no sense to me. It can feel as if God has turned away from us, or even against us.
The example of the book of Lamentations urges us not to hide our true thoughts and feelings in times of suffering and perplexity. It’s not wrong for us to cry out, “God, why do you feel like my enemy?” Such honesty with the Lord opens up a vital channel of divine communication. Not only does it allow us to share our hearts with God, but also it allows us to begin to hear what God is saying to us.
Of course, if we were to believe that God was truly our enemy, then this would change things dramatically. For one thing, we wouldn’t feel free to tell God what we really think and feel for fear that God might simply wipe us out. After all, you don’t speak candidly and vulnerably to your enemy.
But we know from other passages of Scripture, including one coming up in Lamentations, that God is not our enemy. In fact, God ultimately defends us and protects us against our enemies. As it says in Psalm 23:5-6, “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD my whole life long.” Thus, though it might feel as if God is our enemy, in fact, the God revealed to us through Christ is our “Maker, Defender, Redeemer, and Friend.”*
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