Today, in the UK at least, it seems that followers of Jesus have largely forgotten what it means to lament. We’re British, so unless we’re ‘snowflakes’ then we don’t generally like to show our emotions or wear our hearts on our sleeves. At any rate, even if Christians are more in touch with our emotions these days (especially when the worship band changes key), we’re certainly not emotional to the level of the Israelites of old: ‘Oh that my head were waters, and my eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!’ (Jeremiah 9:1). ‘[Let] tears stream down like a torrent day and night! Give yourself no rest, eyes no respite!’ (Lamentations 2:18). For many of us, that probably sounds exhausting, emasculating even.

But there is much to lament, in our own hearts and lives, in our churches and in our land. Life is hard; so many people are suffering because of the curse on us due to sin. Biblical lamentation is a form of mourning, particularly related to sin, and the guilt, shame and punishment that are inseparable from it. 40 percent of the Psalms are laments. Whilst there is sin in our lives, there should be mourning and lamentation as well.

‘A time to weep’

In Judges 2, Israel is directly confronted by the Angel of the LORD with their failure to keep covenant with God. Instead of driving out the nations before them and ‘[breaking] down their altars’ (Judges 2:2), they had effectively made a covenant with them and ‘abandoned the LORD and served the Baals and the Ashtaroth’ (Judges 2:13).

How had they broken faith so soon? Judges 2 gives us the answer:

the people served the LORD all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua, who had seen all the great work that the Lord had done for Israel. […]
And there arose another generation after them who did not know the LORD or the work that he had done for Israel.

Judges 2:7, 10

Dale Ralph Davis, in his eminently readable commentary on Judges, points out that it’s not that they didn’t know about the Lord, but that they didn’t know the Lord Himself. Their apostasy came about because they lacked ‘experiential religion’. So we read that:

the people lifted up their voices and wept. And they called the name of that place Bochim.

Judges 2:5 (emphasis added)

Bochim literally means ‘weepers’. Jews to this day are an expressive, passionate people. We’ve all seen pictures of the ‘Wailing Wall’, an old section of the temple wall in Jerusalem where Jews go to weep. A Jewish chap I know likes to tell the story of a British guy who witnessed what looked like a heated conversation between two Israelis, wildly gesticulating with raised voices. Just as he thought it was about to descend into blows, the discussion ended perfectly peaceably. It turns out that’s just how most Israelis talk! A lesson in cross-cultural communication for the befuddled Brit, and perhaps a flavour of the Jewish psyche for the rest of us. One well-known rabbi summed it up well when he said that ‘Jews are just like everyone else, only more so’.

In times past, Christians would speak of their own Bochims. I recently read a book about the Welsh Calvinistic Methodists (who are also an expressive, passionate people), where the word cropped up repeatedly any time there was some ugly disagreement or a problem bigger than they could deal with. They would come together and weep together and pour out their hearts to the Lord about it and it was a Bochim to them. Weeping not only brings release of pent-up emotion but fulfils the command in Romans 12:15 to ‘weep with those who weep.’ This is lament in the biblical sense. To lament means to turn towards God with our trouble in hand, just like Hezekiah (‘Hezekiah went up to the house of the Lord and spread it before the Lord’, 2 Kings 19:14). There is ’a time to weep’ (Ecclesiastes 3:4).

‘Joy comes in the morning’

In Nehemiah 8, all the Israelites weep as they hear God’s word read to them from ‘early morning until midday’ (Nehemiah 8:3, 9). Their guilty consciences are awoken; they feel broken by their sin, worn out by their tears and sorrow. So much so that Nehemiah and Ezra tell them:

This day is holy to the Lord your God; do not mourn or weep […] Eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions to anyone who has nothing ready, for this day is holy to our LORD. And do not be grieved, for the joy of the LORD is your strength.

Nehemiah 8:9-10

Our problem is we can apply the remedy too soon. We don’t feel our need of grace until we feel that conviction of sin. And that takes time. Most of us can attest to our initial conviction of sin lasting not days but weeks, months or even years. This goes for conversion, but also for the Christian life. ‘Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning (Psalm 30:5 NKJV). But it doesn’t always happen overnight, sometimes those nights can last a painfully long time! We often have to get to that point of brokenness in our lamenting before Jesus shows Himself to us. The darkest part of the night is just before dawn. Lament and confession precedes repentance and comfort. Christ is the end-goal in conversion and in our life as Christians, but unless we really feel our need of Christ, we won’t seek Him (like in the bride’s pursuit of her beloved in Song of Songs 5:6-16).

Bochims don’t always make us feel better about ourselves or solve the problem; that’s not the goal. A lot of the Psalms aren’t so much requests as laments, holding the problem before God, not just asking Him, ‘Can you fix it? Amen.’ Instead, the Psalmists use the problem as a spur to prayer. We really pray when we really feel our need of Him. We don’t just want our prayers answered, but we want the ‘Lord to make his face to shine upon’ us (Numbers 6:25). We should take our time in prayer, still our hearts before God. And when we feel the warmth of His presence comforting us, not be quick to leave; but bask in it, like lizards in the noonday sun.

‘Pray and seek my face’

Sometimes lament starts best with silence. When Job’s friends hear of his tribulations, initially they respond really well. They weep, tear their robes, put dust on their heads, and then sit on the ground with him and don’t say a word for a week (Job 2:11-13). Wow, what great friends, you think. Of course once they open their mouths the solidarity is broken and they only add to Job’s troubles. But silence can be important. Sometimes silence speaks where words cannot (Romans 8:26).

It’s often said that the big question in Job is why does God allow bad things to happen to good people? Christians recognise the sovereignty of God in all things. This means ultimately that everything—including all trials and afflictions, bereavement and loss—comes from God. This can be a hard truth to take at times. To lament means to direct our doubts and questions to God in faith. Not ‘has God forgotten me?’ but ‘have you, O God, forgotten me?’

Complaining is not the same as confessing. The Puritan Thomas Manton (1620-1677) writes:

Let us not complain of [or about] God, but to God. Complaints of God give a vent to [sinful] murmuring, but complaints to God faith, hope and patience.

Jesus prayed the Psalms. He lamented with us and on behalf of us (e.g. John 11:33-35; Luke 19:41). He representatively confessed the sins of the nation through the language of the Psalms. And it’s through Him and His meritorious triumph on the cross that God responds to all our lamentations:

Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.
 Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
    and cry to her
that her warfare is ended,
    that her iniquity is pardoned

Isaiah 40:1-2

We like to moan and groan about the state of things today (it’s a national pastime). But we don’t have Bochims of our own. If you’ve read Judges, you’ll know after Chapter 2, the Israelites continue to descend into idol-worship and anarchy; one Bochim was not enough on its own. The book of Judges cries out for a perfect hero who will redeem his people. It’s only the Lord Jesus Christ who is that champion. The preacher Martyn Lloyd-Jones, speaking of the passion of his kinsfolk, said ‘it is very easy to make a Welshman cry, but it needs an earthquake to make him change his mind!’ It’s the Lord Jesus and His Spirit we need to change our hearts. It’s only turning to Him in faith that can turn back the tide. Do we turn heavenwards in prayer to Almighty God? He has promised that:

if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.

2 Chronicles 7:14

British middle-class respectability be blown! Brothers and sisters, let’s pray for revival and repentance, which starts with weeping before our God for ‘the slain of the daughter of my people’ (Jeremiah 9:1).

Special thanks to Garry Williams of London Seminary for his study day on lament, from which the content of this blog post is inspired.