Chapter 5 has 22 verses, equal to the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet, but the acrostic form seen in the preceding chapters was not used in this one. It is a pitiful appeal to God, addressed as Jehovah (“the LORD” in the ordinary translation) without a word of complaint. “Our fathers have sinned, and they are not; and we bear their iniquities” (JND) is a true confession, in verse 7; yet more is confessed in verse 16: “Woe unto us, for we have sinned!”
But there is hope in Jehovah, the unchanging One. “Wherefore dost Thou forget us forever? Turn Thou us unto Thee...and we shall be turned” (verses 19-21). In Him alone is the power to bring the wayward nation back. Verse 22 is rightly rendered, “Or is it that Thou hast utterly rejected us? Wouldest Thou be exceeding wroth against us?”
The Spirit of God it is that produces these exercises in the saints. In Jeremiah’s prophecy, and yet more in the Lamentations, through which we have been privileged to journey together, we see, as another wrote many years ago, “the Spirit of God enters into all these details, not only of the ways of God, but of that also which passes through a heart in which the judgement of God is felt by grace; until all is set right in the presence of God Himself. Inspiration gives us, not only the perfect thoughts of God, and Christ the perfection of man before God, but also all the exercises produced in our poor hearts when the perfect Spirit acts in them, so far as these thoughts, all mingled as they are, refer in the main to God, or are produced by Him. So truly cares He for us! He hearkens to our sighs, although much of imperfection and of that which belongs to our own heart is mixed with them.”
“Can we not discern what a gap for the Bible if we had not Lamentations?”, another has said, “and we bless God for giving us this book which, though written to record past sorrows, and having in view the unparalleled sufferings that await the remnant of the future day, has in it pointed our own hearts anew to the God of all grace, the Father of mercies, Who comforteth us in all our tribulation...” (2 Corinthians 1:3, 43Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort; 4Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God. (2 Corinthians 1:3‑4)).