Thou hast made us the offscouring and refuse in the midst of the peoples.
The speaker talks to God, not about Him, and traces his nation's disgrace among the peoples back to God's own hand. The words come straight after the complaint that prayer cannot get through, so they raise a hard question: what should a believer do when God's discipline seems sealed shut? (Older translations read "offscouring and refuse" where the ESV has "scum and garbage.")
after
The prophet names God as the cause. One writer explains why a sufferer should sometimes not ask God to lift the chastening:
Next the prophet sets out the ways of God's displeasure with His people, with no disguise and no softening. This was true. It was right both to feel it and to own it. But owning it to such a God makes it far more painful… Sometimes it does not suit a saint to ask God to remove a chastening. If someone prayed that way in ignorance, it would be a mercy for God not to hear it. And so it was for Jerusalem then. God's sentence had to take its course. Even in such sorrowful circumstances, He would still prove His care for the godly.
Why would prayer not get through? One writer points to the state of the person praying:
There is an important lesson here. It is useless to pray while you keep on in sin. The man who does not seek to walk with God has no right to expect anything from Him… Obedience gives confidence. You cannot ask in faith while you cling to something that grieves the Holy Spirit and dishonours the Lord Jesus Christ. If prayer goes unanswered, if the heavens seem like brass, that is a solemn sign of a wrong state of soul. It should lead to self-judgment and to forsaking every evil way.
One writer names the instinct that stops discipline doing its work:
With most of us, I fear, the first aim is to escape the place of discipline any way we can. We avoid the breaking down before God that leads us to search and test our ways. It was here that Judah so badly failed. God sent the king of Babylon against them because of their sins. They turned to the king of Egypt for help, in plain defiance of the word of the Lord. But they had to learn in a practical way how bitter it is to depart from God.
One writer sees more than history here. He expects the same words from a future faithful group in Israel:
Beginning with verse 40, we see a real return. There is self-examination… Then comes confession: "We have transgressed and have rebelled; You have not pardoned." This is a prophecy of the repentance of a Jewish remnant. It comes when this present age ends and the Lord is about to appear in visible glory… Such will also be the complaint of the suffering remnant.
The older word "offscouring" turns up again in the New Testament. One writer sets the boastful Corinthians beside Paul:
They were laying hold of these benefits and saying they are ours. It puffed them up. It produced all kinds of strife and envy and bad blood where peace and love should have held sway. They were reigning as kings, these people who could boast that Christ was theirs. Meanwhile Paul and his fellow-apostles fully owned that they were Christ's, and they were the offscouring of all things… Paul could not reign where Christ was crucified. He had to be as his Lord.
One writer contrasts how the prophet ends the book with what Christ saw ahead:
The prophet finds God's presence in the last chapter. Even so, he closes the book with no apparent ray of hope… But here again Christ is different from the prophet, for He fully entered into all of it. He looked first to the moment of resurrection for Himself; then to the national resurrection and restoration of Israel… He knew that the sufferings came before the glory.
- Owned. The verse names God as the one who brought the shame. Saying so is the right response, not rebellion.
- Shut. A heaven like brass calls you to examine your heart, not to pray harder for relief.
- Searched. The usual instinct is to escape discipline. The turning point comes when you stop escaping and let it work.
- Shared. The same word of contempt returns in the New Testament. There it marks those who would not reign in a world that crucified Christ.
- Sure. Christ entered fully into this place. He knew the sufferings came before the glory, so the lament is not the last word.
All our enemies have opened their mouth against us.
Lamentations 3 reaches its lowest point here. The people have just admitted their rebellion and owned that God Himself had brought the ruin. Now every enemy around them has something to say. Does all that mockery mean God has left His people? Or is He listening to those open mouths?
This verse is the first of three lines that belong together. One writer reads all three at once and shows the trap the people were in:
Then in verses 46-48 he expresses how deeply he feels the insults their enemies heap on them. Caught between fear inside and ruin outside, their misery had no equal. "All our enemies open their mouths against us. Panic and pitfall have come upon us, devastation and destruction. My eyes flow with rivers of tears because of the destruction of the daughter of my people." Only people God had favoured as He had favoured them could know such grief. Only someone who knew Him as Jeremiah did could feel it and speak it out as he does.
The same complaint appears one chapter earlier, where older translations also read "opened their mouth against you." The prophet records what those mouths said, then refuses to let them take the credit:
Then he pictures the cruel delight their jealous neighbours took in their suffering and ruin: "All your enemies rail against you; they hiss, they gnash their teeth, they cry: 'We have swallowed her!'" But the prophet insists that it was the LORD who had done the work of destruction, and He did it because of His people's iniquity. The nations might boast as they liked of their power over Jerusalem. "The LORD has done what He purposed; He has carried out His word, which He commanded long ago; He has thrown down without pity; He has made the enemy rejoice over you and exalted the might of your foes." It is sorrowful, most sorrowful, that His hand had done it all. Yet it is a comfort to faith, for it is the hand that can and will build up again for His name's sake.
Jeremiah was not describing a sorrow he had only watched. His own life had run along the same lines as his nation's, and that is why his words carry hope:
Little could Jeremiah have guessed what use God would make of his trials... His own people had mocked him. They could say, "All our enemies open their mouths against us." There was one difference, however, between him and his people. God had brought him out of his affliction; they were still in theirs. He suffered with them as one of them, but the personal sufferings he speaks of, as God's faithful servant in Israel, were over. Here was a man who had been in affliction like theirs, and God had delivered him. That gives hope, and that is how this book supports them.
Later in the same chapter the sufferer hands the taunts over to God. They have already reached Him:
The next verses repeat this, in connection with what the LORD had heard. "You have heard their taunts, O LORD, and all their plots against me — the lips and thoughts of my assailants are against me all the day long. Behold their sitting and their rising; I am the object of their taunts." All through their daily life, his sorrow was what they wanted to see and what pleased them most.
One writer weighs what that mockery looks like to God:
It is no light thing in God's eye that His enemies should find only a matter for mirth in the sufferings and sorrows of those who were under His mighty hand.
One writer traces this lament back to the people's confession and forward to the end of the age:
- Confessed — The mouths open only after the people admit their rebellion. The scorn falls on a nation already judged for its own sin.
- Caught — Panic inside, ruin outside. There was no safe side to turn to and no corner free of an enemy's voice.
- Credited — The boasting nations did not bring Jerusalem down. God's own hand did, and that same hand can build it up again.
- Carried — Jeremiah had walked this road, and God brought him out. His rescue is the hope held out to those still in the ruin.
- Counted — God hears every taunt, and He does not treat mockery of His suffering people as a small thing.
Fear and the pit are come upon us, devastation and ruin.
The verse names a double blow: terror inside, ruin outside. The speaker is caught in it himself, and he has just turned the nation's suffering into a confession made straight to God. (Older translations read the two pairs as "fear and a snare" and "desolation and destruction.")
One pressure was felt in the heart. The other was there to see on the ground. Together they made the misery of that moment stand alone.
Then in verses 46-48 he speaks out his sense of the insults piled on them by their enemies. Between fear inside and desolation outside, the misery was beyond anything else... Only those who had been favoured by God as they had been could know it. Only someone who knew Him as Jeremiah did could feel it and tell it out as he does. We should expect some to feel his laments are too much, just as others feel that way about the shining hopes the prophets held out. Faith would receive and value both, and criticize neither.
The "us" is the faithful few left in Jerusalem while God's judgment fell on the city. Their deepest pain was not the enemy.
In Lamentations 3 we find the language of faith — sorrowing faith, the Spirit of Christ in the remnant — at the time of the judgment of Jerusalem, the city God had lived in... In chapter 3 he places himself in the middle of the evil to express the feelings of the Spirit of Christ. The heart of the faithful suffered with no hope of a remedy, and suffered far more over a people who would not listen to the voice of the Lord than over the enemies raised up in judgment.
Judah would not stop and search its own ways. The panic and the pitfall followed.
Because this was missing, Judah sank very low. They were made "scum and garbage among the peoples, so that their enemies rejoiced over them. Fear and a snare had come upon them. Desolation and destruction were their share" (v.45-47).
God's own hand sent the trouble. He did not watch it coldly, and He thought their sorrow worth recording.
He, the God of Israel, did not watch coldly from a distance while the people He had chosen suffered pain, humiliation and anguish. His holiness required Him to discipline them for their sins, and He used the king of Babylon to do it. Yet His heart still grieved for them, the way a loving father aches while correcting a wayward son. So He valued what His grief-stricken prophet went through in his soul, and He chose to put his laments on record for our instruction and comfort.
The instinct under pressure is to escape it. Commentators press the opposite: let the trouble do its work first.
With most of us, I am afraid, the first aim is to get out of the place of discipline any way we can. We skip the breaking down before God that leads us to search and test our ways. This is exactly where Judah failed so badly. When God sent the king of Babylon against them for their sins, they turned to the king of Egypt for help — in plain defiance of the word of the Lord. So they had to learn from experience how bitter it is to leave God.
Feeling the blow deeply is not the danger. Only one thing turns it into harm.
It is good that an affliction like this should be felt. The only harm comes when we let it weaken our confidence in the Lord.
Some writers read these words as more than history. They expect the same cry from a faithful group in Israel in a day still ahead.
Verses 45-47 record Jeremiah's lament once more over the state of Jerusalem and of the nation: "You have made us scum and garbage among the peoples. All our enemies open their mouths against us; panic and pitfall have come upon us, devastation and destruction." The suffering remnant will make the same complaint.
- Cause — The panic and the pitfall were not random. Judah refused to search and test its ways, and it sank very low.
- Crush — The blow came from two sides at once: fear inside, desolation outside. Between the two, the misery was unmatched.
- Company — God was no cold spectator. His holiness required the discipline; His heart still grieved, like a father aching as he corrects his son.
- Confession — This is faith in sorrow, not despair. The faithful few name the trouble out loud to the God who sent it.
- Continuation — Writers see the same cry rising again from a suffering remnant in a day still ahead. The verse is a pattern, not just a memory.