NOTES for Lam 3:34-66
The most difficult and tragic question for the author of the Book of Lamentations remains the question of injustice toward those who are right before God and before people. When it concerns the people as a whole, everything that befell Jerusalem and its inhabitants appears not only natural, but also just. In fact, why should God endlessly endure the sins of His people without taking any action? A specific person is another matter. As is known, wars and mass repressions make exceptions for no one; in such situations the righteous usually share the fate of sinners, and often they have it even worse than sinners. After all, someone who is ready to sin adapts more easily in situations where sin triumphs, and triumphs openly. But what, then, about individual people? Of course, when the fate and spiritual state of the people are at stake, one might disregard an individual person: after all, each person is part of his people and must share their fate, bearing the collective responsibility for the sin committed collectively. But then it would turn out that the rightness of an individual person before God is worth nothing (vv. 34-36).
Yet the people consists of individual persons, each with his own deeply personal choice, which they make in a concrete situation, choosing either the path of sin or the path of righteousness. And if everyone is punished for the sins of the majority, will such punishment not become a justification for those who choose the path of sin by appealing to the majority and following the well-known principle that "one man cannot win alone"? One could, of course, agree that not everything in the world happens according to God's will, but the author of the book rejects this thought (vv. 37-38). Then all that remains for him is to review his own life again and again in order to try to see his sins and repent of them (vv. 39-40).
Of course, in a situation where sin becomes the norm of life, practically everyone, with rare exceptions, will find something in his life for which he will have to ask God's forgiveness (vv. 41-42). But such an answer is, in essence, only half an answer: it still presupposes the wrongness of the sinful person before God, if not in one thing then in another, thereby justifying mass disasters that turn into collective punishments. It does not answer the question of the suffering of the one who is unquestionably right before God and people, at least in a concrete case. All that remains for the author of the book is to state the fact that in situations where he was right before God and people, God remained with him even during the sufferings he had to endure (vv. 49-58). Yet such support must still be considered incomplete and relative, and the author of the book understands that only complete triumph over defeated enemies can satisfy him finally (vv. 59-66).