5:1ff At a time of grief, the true believer should turn to God in prayer. Here Jeremiah prayed for mercy for his people. At the end of his prayer, he wondered if God had “utterly rejected” his people because of his great anger toward them. But God would not stay angry with them forever—as it says in Micah 7:18, “he retaineth not his anger for ever, because he delighteth in mercy.”
5:14 During peace and prosperity, the leaders and elders of the city would sit at the city gate and talk over politics, theology, and philosophy, and conduct business. As Jeremiah prayed, he saw fewer and fewer evidences of either the healthy interaction or the lighthearted dancing of their former lives under God’s blessing. They had lost even the everyday events they had assumed would always be there. A lack of continual gratefulness to God often indicates that we are taking the goodness of life for granted.
5:22 A high calling flouted by low living results in deep suffering. Lamentations gives us a portrait of the bitter suffering the people of Jerusalem experienced when sin caught up with them and God turned his back on them. Every material goal they had lived for collapsed. But although God turned away from them because of their sin, he did not abandon them—that was their great hope. Despite their sinful past, God would restore them if they returned to him. Hope is found only in the Lord. Thus, our grief should turn us toward him, not away from him.