What is a lament? Why are laments an important part of the Psalms? Why did King David insist that the nation learn to lament?

A lament is a way of expressing sorrow, anger, pain, regret, and other similar emotions before God. Laments allow us to process the brokenness we experience both in our own lives and in the world around us. The laments in the Psalms give us the language to come before God when words like, “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?” (Psalm 27:1) are far from our lips.

(10 mins. reading time)

“The lament psalms express intense emotions, real human struggles, and the anguish of the heart experienced by the people of Israel as they lived out their faith individually and corporately.” ¹ The Bible Project described laments as poems that, “expressed pain, confusion, and anger about how horrible the world is and how horrible things are happening to the poet and so these poems draw attention to what’s wrong in the world and they ask God to do something about it.” ²

Laments

In a previous post, “Psalms for Nerds,” I noted that the word “psalm” means “praises” in Hebrew, and “to sing” in Greek. This would give someone the impression that the book of Psalms is like a Spotify list of praise music. However, when we look at the book of Psalms, we see that the largest category of psalms are the laments, which occupy over one-third of the entire book. The praise and thanksgiving psalms are not nearly as plentiful as the laments. We could easily reverse these proportions if we were to walk into a Christian bookstore or a Sunday morning worship service.

In 2 Samuel 1:18, David wanted the people to learn how to lament so that they would have an outlet for their grief and sadness. However, we should not confuse lamenting with grumbling or whining. Complaining or grumbling often dwells on what we feel we deserve. We lament over things which we believe can and should be changed.

The psalmists never wavered in the goodness of God even when things looked bleak at a particular moment.

“They lamented that God’s will wasn’t being done on earth as it was in heaven; the resulting poetry helped realign their eternal beliefs with their daily experience.” ³

Even when things looked bad at the moment, the poets continued to make God the centre of their life. Lament was the language that linked their negative experiences with God’s positive character.

Stepping into the Ring

David and the other poets pulled no punches when they expressed themselves to God. They expressed their emotions vividly and loudly, directing their feelings primarily at God. They did not rationalize away their anger. Their raw, unfiltered emotions ranged from doubt, paranoia, meanness, hatred, and vindictiveness to giddiness, delight, joy and praise. They are all there. They did not dress up their prayers to hide their negativity, but they brought everything to God. Nothing was off-limits. Whatever they felt about God, they brought before Him. In fact, it was in bringing those weaknesses to God that the poets eventually found healing. In the end, through the very act of wrestling with God, they proved their faith.

Chasing Laments

One interesting observation about the frequency of laments in the Psalms is that, in the first three books of Psalms, laments significantly outnumber praises. The praises remind us of the good things in our world and inspire us to give thanks to God. However, when we consider books four and five of Psalms, the order reverses and the praise poems outnumber the laments. If we look at the entire book of Psalms as a single prayer book, we see a shift from lament in the first half to praise in the second half (refer to Psalms for Nerds post for more information on the five books of the Psalms).

This tells us something about the nature of prayer. It encourages us not to ignore our current pain while at the same time looking forward to the promise of hope and deliverance. If I were to reduce the tension filled pairs scattered throughout the Psalms it would read something like, “Life is sometimes unfair; and God is always good!”

A Common Biblical Theme

The book of Psalms does not hold a monopoly on biblical laments. Lamenting is a theme found throughout the Bible. The entire book of Lamentations is filled with lament. We find more lamenting by Job and Jeremiah in the books named after them. Jesus lamented when he was on earth. When Lazarus died, his sisters Mary and Martha grieved and lamented over their loss. Jesus’ heart was moved to the point that he wept with them (John 11:35). Jesus mourned over Jerusalem, the city that killed the prophets and stoned God’s messengers, and how often he wanted to gather their children together as a hen protects her chicks beneath her wings (Matthew 23:37). Jesus poured out his heart in the garden of Gethsemane on the night before his crucifixion when he pleaded with his father, “Abba, Father, everything is possible for you. Please take this cup of suffering away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine.” (Mark 14:36)

It turns out that the intense emotions expressed in laments are not limited to people. The Bible shows that God also lamented over:

God’s laments give us a glimpse into his own broken heart.

The Blues

What are the alternatives to lament? We can bottle things up, put on a brave face and pretend that we are okay. We can numb our pain in any number of ways. Or we can face God and express our emotions in voice, in writing, and in music.

Consider the Africans who were brought to the United States in the transatlantic slave trade. In their experience of bondage and slavery, the African Americans responded by drawing from their cultural heritage to conceive the music style known as spirituals.

The spirituals were often rooted in biblical stories that were memorized and translated into song.

The spirituals also described the extreme hardships endured by African Americans enslaved from the 17th century until the 1860s. Prior to the end of the U.S. Civil War and emancipation, spirituals were an oral tradition passed from one generation to the next.

The spirituals, which included the “sing songs,” work songs, and plantation songs during the centuries of the slave trade, evolved into the blues and gospel songs in the church and in the African American culture in general. ⁵

African Americans used spirituals, or religious music, to respond to their centuries of bondage. The poets and songwriters of the Psalms cried out to God over the injustices they experienced and in doing so gave us the lament psalms. The African American slaves cried out to God over the injustices they experienced and birthed an entire music genre used hundreds of years later to express grief and sadness.

Contemporary Lament

How do we lament today either individually or corporately? As a church, a Good Friday service can be an opportunity to lament. As a child, I experienced very somber Good Friday church services. The music felt sad, and people wore black to signify mourning. As an adult I experienced this lamenting in a different way. This type of Good Friday service consisted of an outdoor walk called the Stations of the Cross that recounted the final twenty-four hours of Jesus life by stopping at different stations, singing a song and listening to the scripture reading that accompanied the particular station. I questioned, why do we mourn his death when we know that he resurrected three days later?

Then I try to put myself in the shoes of one of Jesus’ close followers. On Palm Sunday the crowds are shouting, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the King of Israel! Less than a week later he is crucified between two criminals. Jesus’ followers are in the “in between”. They are hiding. They have moved from great glory to unimaginable misery. Who would console them now? Jesus, who had been their comfort, was gone.

When we lament on Good Friday, we put ourselves in the place of Jesus’ followers over 2,000 years ago, and we try to imagine what it might have felt like. While Jesus had prophesied his death would happen, they never comprehended it until after his resurrection. We join in the agony of the “in between.”

In the previous post, In Between, I shared a song from Jon Foreman’s album, Departures. I’d like to share another song called, Jesus, I Have My Doubts, that sounds very much like a personal lament.

Here is an excerpt,

When everything that’s right feels wrong
And all of my belief feels gone
And the darkness in my heart is so strong
Can You reach me here in the silence?
Singing these broken songs
Looking for the light for so long
But the pain goes on and on and on
Can You reach me here in the silence?

Jesus, what a week we’ve had?
Jesus, has the world gone mad?
Jesus, feels like the world’s in pieces
I’m sure You’ve got Your reasons
But I’ve got my doubts
Jesus, I’ve got my doubts
Jesus, I’ve got my doubts ⁶

Jon Foreman told the story behind the song:

“I don’t believe in a God who’s afraid of my questions. I don’t believe in a God who’s afraid of me. Because a God that cannot be questioned doesn’t sound like God at all. Part of believing is to doubt. To Ask. To seek. To knock, and ultimately to find. Maybe we are far too reserved with our gods. Are our gods that delicate, or are we? This is a song that steps into the ring with God. Asking the big questions at the end of a long, difficult season. This song is my honest attempt to sing into my doubts.” ⁷

In lament we face God instead of turning away from him when we encounter injustice and tragedy. The lament helps us in our struggle between the promise we are looking forward to and the reality we are experiencing. It is the connecting link between pain and promise.

Can we incorporate lament into our daily prayers? The inclusion of the lament poems in the Psalms shows us that lament is an appropriate response to the evil we see in the world. We can bring our frustrations, disappointments, and injustices to God in the same way a child cries out to a parent, “It’s not fair that … (you can fill in the blank).” God is in the ring waiting for us. Are we willing to step into the ring with God?

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Up Next

What might you hear if you were a fly on the wall as Queen Elizabeth gave royal advice to Prince Charles? Psalm 1 is a wisdom psalm where David imparts life giving advice to the next king.

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Your Turn

I’ve included a link below for the song, Jesus I have my Doubts, from Jon Foreman’s YouTube channel.

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Notes:

1. https://www.gotquestions.org/psalms-of-lament.html
2. Bible Project Transcript, Book of Psalms Overview
3. Philip Yancey, The Bible Jesus Read (Grand Rapids, Zondervan, 1999), 128.
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirituals
5. Wikipedia, Spirituals
6. Songwriter: Jonathan Mark Foreman, Jesus, I Have My Doubts © Rubadub Rublishing Publishing, 2021.
7. https://freeccm.com/2021/02/16/behind-the-song-jon-foreman-shares-the-heart-behind-his-song-jesus-i-have-my-doubts/