Lamentations 2

Of all the things you want to say about God, that “He is like an enemy” is not one of them! But neither do I wish to ignore or “gloss over” issues in the Old Testament that may be troubling to some Christians. And when you’re writing a blog about what the Bible has to say about who God is, it seems only fair to tackle the descriptions that seem “bad” right along with the “good” ones.

This chapter didn’t seem to mince words regarding its picture of God: “The Lord is like an enemy; he has swallowed up Israel. He has swallowed up all her palaces and destroyed her strongholds. He has multiplied mourning and lamentation for Daughter Judah.” (vs 5)

Does it get any more plain than that? God is like an enemy. But what does that mean? Especially when Jesus—who was God in the flesh!—once said, “I have called you friends.” (Jn 15:15) Which is it? Is God our enemy or our friend?

Well, it doesn’t take much thought to realize that God obviously didn’t want to be Israel’s enemy. He rescued them from slavery in Egypt. He miraculously brought them out of bondage and promised to give them a beautiful land flowing with milk and honey… just because. He bent over backwards to make overtures of goodwill to them.

He was their God, and they were supposed to be His people.

Supposed to be.

But God would no more force them into the slavery of being His people than He would have left them in slavery in Egypt. God is about freedom, not bondage—and, yes, that even includes the freedom to reject Him and His way of doing things. But we often don’t consider the consequences of rejecting Him and His way of doing things.

Let’s remind ourselves of what happened when the Israelites first reached the border of the Promised Land and sent spies in to check it out. When the spies came back, they said, “‘We can’t attack those people; they’re way stronger than we are.’ They spread scary rumors among the People of Israel. They said, ‘We scouted out the land from one end to the other—it’s a land that swallows people whole. Everybody we saw was huge. Why, we even saw the Nephilim giants. Alongside them we felt like grasshoppers. And they looked down on us as if we were grasshoppers.’” (Num 13:31-33)

When the Israelites reached the Promised Land, the very first thing they realized was that they were no match for the people who already lived in the land. Compared to them, they were weaker, smaller, and fewer in number. Left on their own against these giants, they were toast!

But their success in the Promised Land was never supposed to be dependent on their own strength. They were to rest and rely on God, who was their strength. He was going to “fight” their battles for them. He was going to remove any obstacles they encountered and solve any problems they ran into. All they had to do was trust Him.

It seems that was the one thing they were unwilling to do.

Thus, the chapter goes on to say, “The Lord has rejected his altar and abandoned his sanctuary. He has given the walls of her palaces into the hands of the enemy.” (vs 7) You recognize this language, don’t you? It’s the language of God’s wrath. His fierce and fiery anger is expressed in His abandoning those who have already abandoned Him. And that’s why the Israelites ended up in captivity to the Babylonians—because they had abandoned the only One who was able to rescue them from that fate.

Does that make God an enemy? Well, perhaps we might bemoan the fact that He would eventually abandon us to an awful fate, even if we’ve chosen it for ourselves. However, what is the alternative? That He would ultimately override our freedom and force us to love and serve Him? Would that make Him a friend?