We also need the book of lamentations to understand the rest of the Bible.

So we don't characterize the Christian life is all victory in Jesus, sweetness and light.

Dr. Reed Lessing, author of The Issues that Set are a Book of the Month for January,

the new Concordia Commentary on Lamentations.

The book of Lamentations is a hard stop against such a perversion of the Christian life.

Learn more about the Concordia Commentary on Lamentations at IssuesetC.org. How do we rightly understand the wrath of God, especially as it is connected to that concept in the Old Testament of the Day of the Lord that is depicted in the Old Testament

as a day of God's wrath, a day when his wrath will be spent. Is there anything in the prophet

Jeremiah's lamentations that help us understand both the wrath of God and the day of the Lord?

Welcome back to Issues, etc. It's time for part three of our series

on the Old Testament Book of Lamentations. Dr. Reed Lessing joins us. He is Edwin F. and Esther Lash

chair of Old Testament Studies at Concordia University St. Paul, Minnesota, author of the Issues,

etc. Book of the Month for January, the new Concordia Commentary on Lamentations. Dr. Lessing, welcome back.

Good to be here, Todd. Give us an overview of the second chapter of lamentations. Yeah, I might

just step back and do a quick overview of the book and then we'll kind of know where lamentations

fits into all of that.

Many people look at the book of Lamentations and see it's messy.

There's all this emotional venting.

There's a lot of anger on the part of the people who have experienced the Day of the Lord in August of 587 BC.

There's a lot of crying and weeping.

A lot of people would say, this is the messiest book in the Bible.

It's called Lamentations.

Lamentes are never neat and orderly and kind of black and white, right? And yet, and yet, the Book of Lamentations

...