Human Experience

Lamentations: Day 5 We continue to see the sad condition of Judah and its people. They are worse than slaves. The people have been ravished and abused. They are joyless. They even have to buy their own firewood (4)! Worse…

Lamentations: Day 4 Jeremiah in this chapter describes the suffering of the people of Judah in agonizing detail. The gold in the temple has been defiled by the Babylonians (see also Jeremiah 52:17-19). The “sons of Zion” are now considered…

Lamentations: Day 3 While Chapters 1 and 2 lament the state of Jerusalem and Judah, Chapter 3 gets personal. Jeremiah pours out his emotions before God, describing his afflictions and grieving about his condition. Nothing is working, it seems. In…

Lamentations: Day 2 A prophet of doom cannot be a happy man. Jeremiah’s life-long mission was to deliver bad news to the nation of Judah. Hence, Jeremiah was wrapped up in the knowledge of God’s destruction of his homeland. As…

Lamentations: Day 1 According to the Septuagint (an early Greek translation of the Old Testament) and many Biblical scholars, Jeremiah the prophet wrote Lamentations, right after the destruction of Jerusalem. As we saw in Jeremiah, the people of Judah disobeyed…

The Song of Songs: Chapter 8 As Solomon brought his love song to a close, he once again gave the predominant voice to the woman. Her long sequence in the dialogue actually begins in Song 7:9. We will pick it…

The Song of Songs: Chapter 7 In the last verse of Chapter six, we read for the first time that the man calls the woman “the Shulammite.” This seems to be a nickname for her; it is based on the…

The Song of Songs: Chapter 6 Most counselors would undoubtedly agree that the five most common reasons for conflict in a marriage are communication breakdown, financial issues and problems, sexual difficulties, problems with in-laws, and disagreements about raising children. In…

The Song of Songs: Chapter 5 In the second verse of chapter 5, we don’t know how much time has passed. Solomon opens this next passage after the wedding and honeymoon night. We can gather that what takes place here…

The Song of Songs: Chapter 4 Up until chapter four, the woman has done most of the talking in Solomon’s literary discourse. Noticeably, the speaker now switches to him; this is his longest passage of dialogue. This chapter immediately follows…