What the Bible says about Funeral Dirge
(From Forerunner Commentary)
The book of Lamentations details the prophet's grief because of its desolation. Jeremiah is known as "the Weeping Prophet" because all five chapters of Lamentations are a funeral dirge, mourning the bitter death of a once great city. In Lamentations 3:17-18, Jeremiah cries to God, "You have moved my soul far from peace; I have forgotten prosperity. My strength and my hope have perished from the LORD." The disaster that was Jerusalem overwhelmed him and nearly broke his heart. He felt that his reason for living and anticipation for the future had died.
Then Jeremiah remembered the God whom he knew and loved: "Through the LORD's mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness. 'The LORD is my portion,' says my soul, 'Therefore I hope in Him!'" (Lamentations 3:22-24). The word portion implies "award" or "inheritance." Hope is "a confident, enduring expectation," and in this instance, it is a verb, a positive action.
Jeremiah realized that things could have gone a lot worse, but God had been merciful. He had spared him and others, and it was their duty to wait patiently in hope for God to work out their salvation. The faithful God Himself was what would sustain him and give him hope for good.
Paul writes in Romans 8:24-25: "For we were saved in this hope [the resurrection], but hope that is seen is not hope; for why does one hope for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance." Faith is belief that what God has said will come to pass, but sometimes we have to wait for a long time and exercise a lot of perseverance or endurance. The motivation to do this is hope.
Our Christian hope, our expectation of future good, is the redemption of our bodies in the resurrection and beyond that, a glorious, eternal reign with Him as kings and priests! This hope is a motivator, an impetus to strengthen and encourage us to endure and persevere.
Godly hope is an absolute assurance that what God has said will happen because He is alive. He will ensure the positive outcome of His Word. Yet, hope is not just an expectation of a wonderful outcome. A friend once said, "Godly hope is not just believing what God says and waiting for it to happen; it is also what you are doing while you are waiting for it to happen."
Through our trials, God is building spiritual muscle in us. He is watching out for us as He manages our spiritual exercise regimen. Romans 8:28 asserts that all things will work out for good for those the called, those who love Him. He will make sure that we receive the proper training to put us in spiritual shape for the position He has in store for us.
Paul says in Romans 5:3-4, "And not only that, we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope." We persevere, we endure, because of hope, an expectation of future good, and this endurance aids in bringing about the realization of what we have hoped for. Our endurance is vital, as Jesus warns in Matthew 24:13, because only those who endure to the end will be saved.
We can hope because we have a loving and patient God, One who does not punish us according to our many sins. If we put our hope in this world, the result will always be disappointing or even disastrous. This is true because nothing physical lasts forever, but God, as our portion, endures forever.
We can take great solace and assurance in God's counsel to His people in Jeremiah 29:11: "I know the thoughts that I think towards you, says the LORD, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope." If we put our hope in the living God, our hope will always be there for us!
John Reiss
'The LORD Is My Portion'
The chapter begins as a funeral dirge, a lament, for Israel that is in reality a prophecy of what would soon happen to her. It is sung as though it had already happened even though its fulfillment'Israel's fall and captivity to Assyria'was still about forty years off. Clearly, Israel's conduct falls far short of God's requirements.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Amos 5 and the Feast of TabernaclesRelated Topics: Assyrian Captivity | Funeral Dirge | Israel's Faithlessness | Lament for Israel | Lamentation | Prophecies of Israel's Demise
Commentators often suppose that Jesus refers to the sorrow that comes from realizing all the suffering, destruction, and death in the world. This sorrow is a step beyond considering it the result of a personal, emotional wound upon the death of a loved one. This new perspective contemplates all the evils that cause suffering and death on earth. Those who grieve for the terrible wrongs occurring all over the globe have a soft heart for people, even people they do not know. They are often called humanitarians: They see trials and suffering, and they want to give aid if they can. While they care for others, they are heavily weighed down by the sheer amount of woe humanity experiences worldwide.
Lamentations 5:1-15 contains a prayer that describes all that has occurred to Judah and Jerusalem due to its overthrow by Babylon. The author of Lamentations is actually reminding God about what had happened, setting the scene for what he writes toward the end of the chapter. It takes the form of a dirge, a sad song telling us how much death and destruction had befallen God's people. Everything is bad! In the aftermath, life is hard, and there is no hope in sight. Their lives are terrible. All they see ahead of them is drudgery and famine and disease and death. They cannot envision any rescue in their future.
Similarly, Ezekiel 9:3-5 illustrates a more intense and spiritual mourning for the abominations, perversions, cruelties, and sins that cause suffering, destruction, and death in society. We can commiserate with what is written in the passage, seeing the perversity happening in the world, all the things God hates and condemns, calling them abominations. In Ezekiel 9, God says He will spare those who grieve over the depth of sin in the world and the havoc it causes.
These grieving people show empathy for those who suffer from it, but their expectation is that only God can cure society's ills. They express sadness, mourning for the rotten state to which the world has fallen. Yet, they know that the only answer to the problem is for people to repent. They also know human nature and that people cannot repent unless God grants it to them (Romans 2:4). These realizations mean that these evils will go on to affect more people, part of a terrible cycle of horrible things that will continue replaying in this world until God intervenes.
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Those Who MournRelated Topics: Death | Destruction | Disease | Enduring Suffering | Famine | Funeral Dirge | Grieving | Human Suffering | Mourning | Mourning Motivates Contemplating Mortality | Sighing and Crying for Abominations | Those who Mourn.