lamentations 2: lament for Jerusalem

 In Lamentations 2, the Lord makes the destruction of Jerusalem:


God Walked Away from His Holy Temple

7 God abandoned his altar, walked away from his holy Temple
    and turned the fortifications over to the enemy.
    As they cheered in God’s Temple, you’d have thought it was a feast day!

8 God drew up plans to tear down the walls of Daughter Zion.
    He assembled his crew, set to work and went at it.
    Total demolition! The stones wept!


We know that the Babylonian army caused the destruction, but they are not cited in this poem. The Lord is the One who makes everything.



    
9 Her city gates, iron bars and all, disappeared in the rubble:
    her kings and princes off to exile — no one left to instruct or lead;
    her prophets useless — they neither saw nor heard anything from God.

10 The elders of Daughter Zion sit silent on the ground.
    They throw dust on their heads, dress in rough penitential burlap—
    the young virgins of Jerusalem, their faces creased with the dirt.

11 My eyes are blind with tears, my stomach in a knot.
    My insides have turned to jelly over my people’s fate.
    Babies and children are fainting all over the place,

12 Calling to their mothers, “I’m hungry! I’m thirsty!”
    then fainting like dying soldiers in the streets,
    breathing their last in their mothers’ laps.

    
20 “Look at us, God. Think it over. Have you ever treated anyone like this?
    Should women eat their own babies, the very children they raised?
    Should priests and prophets be murdered in the Master’s own Sanctuary?

21 “Boys and old men lie in the gutters of the streets,
    my young men and women killed in their prime.
    Angry, you killed them in cold blood, cut them down without mercy.

So far, everything is happening through the Lord, but in the next verse, the Lord invites "friends" to a party:

    
22 “You invited, like friends to a party, men to swoop down in attack
    so that on the big day of God’s wrath no one would get away.
    The children I loved and reared—gone, gone, gone.”

We see that Jeremiah (very likely) is very upset with the Lord, although he understands that the Lord has been warning about this destruction for decades and decades. Jeremiah loves Jerusalem and suffers with her suffering. Jeremiah took care of some people (his children), but they are gone.