Yeah, so the text today is Chapter 4 of Lamentations. Let's think about how we got where we're at in Chapter 4. It'll sure help. And as you find your place in Chapter 4, you should compare the last verse of chapter three to the first verse of chapter four, and you're gonna see an immediate difference. Do you see the difference? It's just visually, as you look at the last, I say the last verse, the last stanza of chapter three, which is under, you may have an editor note on your Bible that says something like T-A-W, Tav, That last stanza, compare it to the first stanza in chapter four. You see there's a difference? And this is where, you know, sometimes the verse markings and stuff throw us off, but you know what I mean, a stanza, like you write a poem, and we don't call them paragraphs, we call them stanzas, and you may have a few, three or four or five lines of a poem and then a space before you start the next stanza, just like with music. And if you look in that last last stanza of chapter three, it has three verses. And unless you've got a King James, it has six lines. Now, the King James usually and I haven't I don't think I found one that does it differently. But but usually the verses just kind of run together. even in poetry, but some of your newer translations will set off the lines so it at least visibly looks like poetry. In most modern translations, you'll see a stanza. Like mine has actually broken the last three verses of Chapter 3, 64 to 66. They look like their own paragraph with a space between the prior paragraph and this one. And that stanza is three verses. And then when you get to Chapter 4, they're all two verses. And when you get to Chapter 5, just flip over for a second to Chapter 5, verse 1, now the stanzas are one verse. Like these things, you know, they may not seem like anything, but God doesn't do anything just by coincidence or accident and without purpose. It's one of the things, and maybe one day we'll study John's gospel. I'm amazed how he'll make little, just little tiny observations, and I think we just read over them. Jesus is gonna feed people, feed the 5,000, and John says, and there was a lot of green grass there. And you're like, OK, and? But there is a reason for it. And if we study John, we'll talk about why that's the case. But I'm just saying, none of this stuff is happenstance. Jeremiah has organized this book. And I've said a number of times, it's a chiasm. Chapters 1 and 5 kind of hang together. They correlate. They're not exact. But they correlate. Chapters 2 and 4 correlate. I'm going to show you that today. And then chapter 3 is sort of the centerpiece, and it's where you get that classic verse that, you know, we're going to quietly or patiently wait for the Lord's salvation. His mercies are new every morning. The Lord is our portion. That sort of centerpiece of the whole book. It's where every Jewish reader knew it would be. It couldn't be anywhere else because that's how they're writing. They're writing in this chiasm where you know you're moving to something and then you're going to kind of move away from it, but it's, we're sort of, you know, I usually think of it as walking up to something, but really it's more like you're walking down in some ways because they're going through all this pain, and now they're kind of walking out of it with Chapter 4. But these things tie together. The language is less intense. The stanzas are shorter because they're coming out of this. You can't put a time marker on grieving, but you can't live there forever. So somewhere between the two is the place where the grieving has to bring you to a process and into a conclusion in some way. It's not that the pain is gone, that's not really the point. But to be able to function healthy again, and what you can't do, is live in the event. We don't grieve the event that happened, we grieve the losses it caused. Chapters 1 and 2 focus on the events. Chapter 4 gets down to the actual loss, and that's the part you take away. We're going to leave the event behind. We can't keep reliving the destruction of Jerusalem, but we're going to take the pain part You can't just mark that out. It doesn't just go away. And you'll see that in chapter 4. Focus more on the pain, not on the events. Less passionate language. The shorter stanzas. The Jewish reader expects this. They expect a sort of ascent out of chapter 3. But chapter 3 gave us hope. And that's going to carry through 4 and 5. Chapter 1 and 2, You don't see any hope in there. It's just not there. They just feel like people feel in that moment, like it's the end of the world. But chapters four and five are gonna carry the hope through. So look at chapter four. A simple way to organize the book is that the first 11 verses tend to focus on the pain itself, okay? But 12 through 20, get to the cause, the hallmark of which, and we're going to really park there, is the false prophet. So we're going to come back to those guys. But the key verse is verse 13. I call it the focal verse, my note three on the handout, the focal verse is 13. Every chapter had a focal verse. In chapter 4, that focal verse seems to be 13, because at the root of everything were some false prophets and some bad priests that told them everything's good, right? Until it wasn't. So we'll see how that plays out. And the last two verses are kind of a conclusion, but when you think about the words that are there, If you didn't have hope, you couldn't say the words that are there. They'll say that essentially the punishment, the wrath of God has passed. Doesn't mean the consequences are gone, but the wrath has passed over. And so there's this hope that things can now change and turn around. So 4.1 and 2, it's interesting this 4.1 and 2, again the focus in these first 11 verses is going to be the pain itself because you can't just keep reliving the event. 4.1 and 2 use three different Hebrew words for gold. You know, in the English, we just see gold, gold, gold, because we don't have three words for gold, I don't think. Right? And so that's why, you know, whenever someone tells you that their translation's word for word, that's just glorying in ignorance. There's no such thing. I can't even translate things that people say up north into Texan very well. It ain't word for word. They don't say y'all. They don't. And often they don't say ma'am either. It gets them upset. So imagine going from an ancient language like Hebrew. To English, it's not word for word. We have good translations, and we have a lot of them, but none of them are word for word, and that's the reason you can compare some good translations, and you won't see exactly the same thing. Hopefully they're pretty close. Three words for gold. What's happened here, if we read these first two verses, God's people were like pure gold, the very best. they've become beyond the point of tarnishing. They're like just clay jars. Now, every time an archaeologist digs up an ancient city in that part of the world, it's called a tel, a T-E-L. It's just a big mound of dirt and stuff. You know what they find everywhere? I mean, just everywhere you turn, you can't help but find it. Yeah, broken pottery basically, right? Just everywhere. That's the people of God from the lofty position they had before. So he says how the gold has become tarnished. That's the first word for gold. The fine gold, second word for gold, become dull. Talking about people, it's a metaphor. We should expect metaphors. It's poetry. When we don't recognize the metaphors, we get bad interpretations. So it's real important to recognize metaphors. They can be anywhere in our Bible, but the poetry is full of them. The stones of the temple lie scattered at the head of every street. Verse 2, Zion's precious children, that's everybody, not just the youth. the children, everybody that lives there, once worth their weight in pure gold, how they're regarded as clay jars, the work of the potter's hands. So that's what's happened. It's very metaphorical. And in 3 through 11, he's going to get a little more physical, a little more tangible in that way with what he describes. They become of no value and so you discard them. Some were taken, but when you look from the vantage point of being an observer in Jerusalem, and he's going to describe this later, even the people that have the most wealth. are complete poppers at this point, those that have survived. Again, it's a metaphor and you don't push it too far, but I mean, they were like gold. I mean, these, you know, they were wealthy, they had stuff, they had security for a long time. And now they're reduced. It's just a, you know, it's a picturesque sort of thing. But notice in verse 1 about the temple, how it's been destroyed. The stones of the temple lie scattered. If you look back at chapter 2, remember I said chapters 2 and 4 correspond. correlate in some way. It doesn't mean they say exactly the same thing because that's actually not the point, but they touch on these same things. So, he's talking about the temple being destroyed. In chapter 2 verse 6, beginning of verse 6, He has wrecked His temple as if it were merely a shack and a field. And then verse 11, was it verse 11? Let me see. No, verse 1 also same thing. Chapter 2 verse 1, He's thrown down Israel's glory from heaven to earth. He did not acknowledge his footstool on the day of his anger. I had argued there that that very probably is a reference to the temple. But you can't miss verse six because it says he's wrecked his temple. Now we're in chapter four, he's talking about the temple being wrecked up again. I'm just saying, I'll point out a few of these. You can go through several of these verses and if you read chapter two and then read chapter four, you're gonna see that the tie-ins But the way he deals with them are different. Because now, not so much the focus on all the terrible events of the day, but at the end of the day, what did we lose, is more the focus here. So, chapter 4 again, in verse 3, through five, you see a focus on a more just physical. Now, he uses a metaphor again. Not really so much a metaphor, an analogy. Verse three, even the jackals offer their breasts to nurse their young. In other words, the animals nurse their young. Something's changed that comes with this kind of destruction. My dear people become cruel. Does that make sense how that would happen? how people would become cruel under the worst circumstances. You know, the one thing that should prevent that would be if you're a Christian, it ought to. I mean, if we're to be defined by loving others, we shouldn't be the people that in the worst situations lose that love. There was a church that in the book of Revelation, it refers to it as their love growing cold and that kind of thing. Yeah, survival comes in. People get into survival mode, and frankly, they'll do anything. And that's, I know I've used these illustrations before, but they're so on point. When you read the history books about what happened in the barracks at the concentration camps that were set up for the Jewish people, a bunch of Christians, the elderly and the infirm, in those barracks, more often than not, they fought among themselves tooth and nail. They stole food from one another. You go into survival mode. in the barracks where they had a Bible and there was some Christian movement going on, you didn't see that. That's just reality. You can read, there's an excellent short book that's I want to say read, I usually listen to these things, so I'm thinking of it in terms of hours. It's called Night. I'm losing the last name. It's Eli, but I want to look it up real quick. So you should read this stuff. The history is good for you, and when you read it, if you read it through the lens of scripture, you see a lot. I want to say Weisel, but I'm going to Weisel, W-E-I-S-E-L, Knight. There's sequels to it. I mean, this guy became, he's been dead for a while, but Eli Weisel, a lot of. If you talk to Jewish children that went to Jewish school, they'll have read it in school. I mean, just saying. We might read The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom. I should say ten Boom. You'd see the same thing in her recording in the barracks and how there were women's barracks, but they got vicious. I'm just saying, that's reality. And to think that we'd be any different, no. You just look at what was happening at the HEB there in Brenham when they thought there would be no toilet paper for a while because our elected officials told us it was the end of the world and all that kind of stuff and you needed to wear toilet paper on your face to, you know. block microscopic viruses from entering your body and things like that. People change real quick. And as you can imagine, in a city with no food, where people's children are starving, you can imagine what they're going to do. Yeah, because the ancient world thought of ostriches, I mean, I haven't gone to check out if this is actually true, but it's what they thought. They would bury their eggs and abandon them. and just leave it to, you're right, because a lot of birds protect the eggs, right? But not the ostrich. At least that was the ancient world view that the ostrich was the proverbial, you know, mother who lays the eggs and abandons the children. And that's why it makes that, again, where they would recognize it. So it goes on in verse four, and you see the picture of the children. The nursing baby's tongue clings to the roof of his mouth from thirst. Infants beg for food, but no one gives them any. I don't know how much there was to give, but the people become cruel. The compassion was gone. Those who used to eat delicacies, and now we're talking about the rich folks, are destitute in the streets. And those who were reared in purple garments, purple was always associated with people with wealth, and it may be because the fabric, the dye, was more expensive. Yeah, I don't know how they did it, but like we know Solomon's palace had, we think, purple tapestries, things like that. You see a reference to it in Song of Solomon. So those that were reared in purple garments, so they had super expensive clothing as children, huddle in the trash heaps. And so verse six is kind of a summary of those five verses. The punishment of my dear people is greater than that of Solomon. Why? I mean, all the people in Sodom died except a few, right? There was, like, who lived, right? Do you remember? It was just Lot and his immediate family. Yeah. Lot, his two daughters. His wife was going to live, but she changed her mind, decided she'd rather stay, which you would think one wouldn't do after you're already outside of the city. But she changed her mind. But it was quick, right? Yeah, it was quick. Big rocks falling down from the sky. But this wasn't quick. This was day after day after week after month and so forth. Right, long-term, right? Long-term hurt. I think most of us would like the idea that when it's time for God to take us, it would be like that, and not like this. So that's the picture, is that their punishment in that way is worse than Sodom, because it was overthrown in an instant. he says. Now seven through ten will kind of focus on the princes or the rulers. My translation says the dignitaries. It's kind of an odd word because I'm not sure what comes to my mind when I think of dignitaries. People that don't have to pay their parking tickets or something because they got those special license plates maybe. But I think he has in mind that the rulers, you know, and maybe just people of great influence, even if it's unofficial. We have people like that in our country that, due to wealth, they have great influence. Those people who were brighter than snow, whiter than milk, just metaphors, it's this idea of, it would seem, a position of, you know, having everything. It could be that they weren't out in the sun a lot because he's going to say in a minute that their physical visage has changed. is kind of what he, in fact, you see it in verse eight, they appear darker than soot. Now that can be from being unbathed just on your face or their homes got destroyed. And when you live outside, your skin changes the way it looks. It just does. And that seems to be the, exactly the picture. They're not even recognized in the streets. You see people that, You know, we know this. You can see someone for a good reason or a bad reason. They may not be recognizable anymore. And that's what these people are. The skin is shriveled on their bones. This is a picture of long-term starvation where your muscles are going away. Verse 9, those slain by the sword are better off than those slain by hunger. you know, from a suffering perspective, who waste away, pierced with pain because the field's like produce. The hands of the compassionate women have cooked their own children. Ow. This is pretty bad. This, yeah, cannibalism totally happens. And of course, I mean, it's been a part of different cultures. I can remember my one of my pastors telling the story that when he first went to New Guinea He was meeting with he met people who now they're Very old but but when they were young they were still practicing cannibalism like this. It's it's a thing, right? but when you when you see events happen where people think there's no other food anywhere and but some other people, will they do this? You betcha. I don't know if the children had died or not. It's this thing about them becoming cruel. The humanity being zapped out of them. You can't fathom worse than this. And it paints a bleak picture. So step back from it. Do you think they had any idea when they did what they did that caused these problems to begin with, that this would happen? Right? I know it was Ezekiel, Jeremiah, others. They're preaching for years. You know the idolatry and a number of other practices including oppressing poor people general corruption in the in the courts and in the government things that are familiar to us things that you know, we Were cool with in our country as long as the corruption swings our way, right? I mean, that's my my my analysis of what I've witnessed in the last year When we do those things We don't know the consequences They didn't Do you think they would have done differently had they had a little bit of a crystal ball that, you know, what seems so small, the little bit of idolatry, whatever they've done, if they could have seen this, would it have made a difference? I don't know if that's a good question. It's one of those deals where I think that we would hope and think it would make a difference, but in reality, we have all this now. We know the consequence. We're still, you know, We have them. I think our problem is that we not only don't see this happening, we can't fathom it being like that. We've kidded ourselves about the seriousness of sin. They believe the false prophets. They believe the false prophets and I'm suggesting we do the same thing all around the country. Some of the false prophets made an appearance at the Olympic ceremony. Am I right? Okay? So, yeah, yeah, but do they see the consequences? They have no idea. But Christians have a tendency to also, to think, you know, to think, to not see the consequences. Let me just say, do not see the full scope. I think if we saw it, I don't know if it would change us. But I'm confident we don't normally see it. And the reason is because we don't take sin seriously enough. We have this small view of it. The consequences won't be that severe. It's a victimless crime, all that stuff. When you sin, There's always at least one victim, and it's God. He's the one that's going to deal with it, because it's an affront to His holiness. Lamentations in many ways, and it's a book primarily about grieving, but it's also a book we might call the end of the story. Sin makes all kinds of promises that it never delivers on. actually delivers, this goes all the way back to Genesis 3. If she could have seen when she took the fruit, and we debate whether or not Adam was there alongside helping her reach it. But they both eagerly did, and Satan told them a lie. He was a false prophet. He said, you know, you're not going to die. You're going to live like you've never lived before. That's the promise of sin then and today. And Well, I, yeah, but I would say that what Satan always does is he tells you the 100% opposite of the truth and, and, and, and, well, and what's happening today because he promised. If you'd be like God, well, God doesn't die. God can be in Eden, and they couldn't. You fast forward, like that hasn't changed. And you see that it's around today, it was around in their time, so that's serious. But you know what else is true? Eve and Adam, they had two conversations, one with God, one with Satan, and they made their choice who to believe. And we do too. Now, we can choose to be the proverbial ostrich and put our head in the sand, but that's a choice in itself to take Satan at his word instead of looking in the book. So, it's a powerful thing here. This is where sin leads, and it's the reason that it's such a... It's often what seems like a very small step between safety and the edge of the precipice when it comes to sin. We can't see the long-term consequences. And they're there. And we kid ourselves when we convince ourselves they won't be there. So we're seeing the end of the story, as it were. Well, in this next section from 12 to 20, You see the focus on the cause. So I want to think about this. And as I said, the focal verse is 13, but 12 and 13 really go together. 12 says, the kings of the earth and all the world's inhabitants did not believe that an enemy or adversary could enter Jerusalem's gates. Now, that's a stupid belief. Can you think of, imagine you're there, it's, you know, 600 BC. The mindset is nobody can take the city, or go back a little further, 625 BC. No one could ever take the city. They believed that, but had anybody ever taken the city before? And there's a lot of history they won't go into, but the answer ends up being, yeah, they had. I mean, at some point, the king of the north, they never had a good one. He came into the city. You know, during or shortly after Solomon's time, an enemy came into the city. You know, that had happened. It seems like some of that's the backdrop for the Little Book of Obadiah. In 605, Nebuchadnezzar comes in the city, and while he didn't destroy it then, they couldn't keep him out. So, according to Josephus, Alexander would come into the city. He wouldn't destroy it because the He was told and he believed he was fulfilling prophecy, and so he didn't destroy it. But I mean, you know, but that's the mindset. That's the mindset of the United States. I mean, we could have rough times, but we can't fall. We underestimate the consequences of sin. We just, you know, we add the numbers up, and the way we add them up, the way God adds them up ain't the same. So the kings think no one can take Jerusalem. That made it easy for the false prophets to tell the people, no one can take Jerusalem. And Jeremiah's over there, he's sort of odd man out, he's in there and he's saying, yeah, they can and they will take it. And of course Ezekiel, he's out in Babylon preaching to a different group of Jewish people, but he's saying, yeah, they're going to take it. So, yet it happened, verse 13. The very thing they were told could never happen, happened. Why? Because of the sins of the prophets. Now it takes two to dance here, because someone has to listen to them and believe it. But they put the blame on the false prophets and the bad priest, the iniquity of her priest, who shed the blood of the righteous within her. the blood's on their hands for those who died. This doesn't completely alleviate those who died from any blame. I mean, they had Jeremiah and others, and they didn't listen. But he puts the blame on the false prophets. Look back at Jeremiah for a second. Let's just pick off a couple of these verses. If you've never studied Jeremiah, at least it's really not a hard book, but just read the whole thing. It's the longest book in the Bible, I think. It's really, really long. But it's got lots of interesting things happen in it, and it's not a particularly hard one to understand. We look in 613 about these prophets, these false prophets. This is Jeremiah speaking, but God's talking through him. 613 says, for from the least to the greatest of them, everyone is making a profit dishonestly. From prophet to priest, everyone deals falsely. Now, that's a description of their religious leadership. That's not very good, right? He'll get into more details. What about in the first century when Jesus, the Son of God, showed up to his house in the Gospels? How did that work out? What did he do? He dealt with the money changers. Why? They were. And people look at that and say, see, you can't have a church yard sale. No, don't be silly. What they were doing was what happened here in Jeremiah 6. They were making a profit dishonestly. Exactly. Cheating people on the sacrifices because if you had made a journey from, you know, 500 miles away and you brought your lamb without a blemish for the sacrifice, when you get there, they're going to tell you, the priest is going to say, your lamb's not good enough. Okay. So you're going to have to buy that and you're going to have to buy it with Jerusalem money, not the money where you came from. So you go to the money changer. And your Ephesus dollar should be worth a Jerusalem dollar, but instead they give you a Jerusalem half dollar. Like the airport, right? So yeah, they cheat you, right? And that's what they were doing, right? In Jesus's day. Right. The means of worship. They were trying to make money in preventing people from worship. And so he turns over the money changers and he does those things. Just telling you, and by then, you know, the high priest was not, you know, it's a position that the Romans put you in. they would kill one another to get that position. So it was very corrupt. And when you read 613 in Jeremiah, or another one in Jeremiah, and I've noted all these in the note number four, but just jump over to chapter eight. Just get a flavor for what this prophet dealt with. So chapter eight, verses eight to 12 is another one, just to get a picture of it. This is Jeremiah, and you can understand why his message was not always well received. How can you claim we are wise, the law of the Lord is with us? It's a question. How can you, the prophets, claim we are wise, the law of the Lord is with us? In fact, the lying pen of scribes has produced falsehood. The wise will be put to shame. They will be dismayed and snared. They've rejected the word of the Lord. That's always the issue. I mean, it's really that simple. And so, we have false prophets today. And I'm not talking, when I say prophet, I'm not talking about seeing the future. We tend to misunderstand that. Some of the prophecies in the Old Testament foresee the future, some of which hasn't happened yet. It's going to happen. But most of what they were doing is what a preacher ought to do today, except God was directly revealing stuff to them. to tell the people. They were supposed to take God's Word to the people. Preachers today, pastors, elders, we've got God's Word here in writing. Our job's to take it to the people. The moment you start coming up with reasons why parts of this Word, or perhaps the whole thing, aren't worthy of being taken to the people, you then, as the preacher, the elder, become the person God's talking to through Jeremiah. And they got the worst of this in lamentations. Verse 10, he says he's gonna give their wives to other men. I mean, he's talking about when the invasion happens, all these things are gonna happen. From prophet to priest, everyone deals falsely. Verse 12, were they ashamed when they acted so detestably? They weren't at all ashamed. They don't care. One thing is they either don't believe or don't see what's gonna happen to them. They can no longer feel humiliation, therefore they will fall among the fallen. When I punish them, they will collapse, says the Lord. Pretty tough stuff. Maybe one more. Do you understand when Jeremiah, when you just saw him in the distance, Jeremiah's walking up to the temple, don't you know like a bell went off or something? Because he's gonna come, and it's that same problem they had with Jesus, Every time that guy comes to town, he wants to turn over the money changers. He thinks it's his house, right? And you see this, and when they saw Jeremiah come in, they just got all bent out of shape. Chapter 23, they end up beating up Jeremiah, tying him up, taking him to Egypt. I mean, they do all kinds of things to him, but 23 verse 11. just to get, again, just a little flavor for it. God says, and I'm kind of starting in the middle, but if you actually look in verse nine, it says, concerning the prophets, God says in verse nine, my heart is broken within me and all my bones tremble. I become like a drunkard, like a man overcome by wine because the Lord, because of his holy words, um, this is the false prophets and, and, uh, verse 11, because both prophet and priest are ungodly. Even in my house, I have found their evil. Um, that's pretty bad. Uh, therefore their way will seem like slippery paths in the gloom. They'll be driven away and they'll fall down." He's going to bring punishment on them. But verse 13, among the prophets of Samaria, I saw something disgusting. They prophesied by Baal. Now Baal was one of the, you know, the made up gods, but they would make statues and different things, and they led my people astray. So you just get the flavor of this. These guys were being called out by Jeremiah all the time. It's not the case that the people of God who go under this terrible destruction and suffering, didn't have a choice. It's not the case that God's Word had been removed. There's something in the scripture about God always having a witness. Something about how if no one else had essentially stood up and spoke and recognized Christ, the stones themselves would come to life. and recognize him for who he is, right? So understand, during that time, even though their culture was saturated with these false prophets who, when you go through Jeremiah, they were basically saying, peace and safety, it's all good, economic prosperity, everything's gonna turn out good, and then you had Jeremiah saying just the opposite. So understand, though, they had Jeremiah, though, for a long time, and so they were hearing both. And they made their choice. And it's the same way today. I mean, we got more Bibles in this country than, I mean, just astronomical number of Bibles. We've got churches. The truth is here, even though we have so much, you know, deception, right, in the mainstream and through all kinds of, just all kinds of bad information coming at people all the time, But there's also truth there, and people have to make their choice, think about what they're hearing. Well, look at how the Lamentation 4 ends. It may seem unusual to us, but in the last two verses, I just call these the conclusion. 21, so rejoice and be glad. You don't see that in chapter one or two. This is because chapter three brought him to a place of hope because God's mercies are new every morning. And he says to rejoice and be glad, but he speaks it to Edom sort of sarcastically, if I could say it. That's probably the way to think of it, right? Who's Edom? They kind of came out of left field here. Who is Edom? Yeah, descendants of Esau, exactly. So not all the children of Abraham are actually Jewish. Abraham had a childish male, he's not Jewish. Isaac is the child of promise, he's Jewish. The promises to Abraham in Genesis 12 go to Isaac. But Isaac has Jacob and Esau, I say him, his wife has these babies. Esau's born first, but he's not the one that's gonna receive the line of promise. He's not the Jewish one. His people group though, it doesn't mean he wasn't blessed, he was blessed in a lot of ways. His people group become the Edomites, the last, really the last Edomite on the pages of history that we're aware of. a guy named Herod the Great that tried to kill baby Jesus in Jerusalem. But if you have Bible maps, you can always look there and what you'll see is that the area of Edom, if you're looking at Israel, basically go south and you'll find it. You'll find it pretty quickly. Not a big area. The little book of Obadiah is all about Edom because it's they were involved in some way with one of the attacks on Jerusalem, maybe the one in 586-87, but we think probably one earlier. And anyway, they've been the enemies of God's people. From Genesis forward, they're the enemies of God's people all the way up to the Gospels. And so they kind of stand in for all the enemies of God's people. When he says, you rejoice and be glad, there's some sarcasm here. to Edom because he says the cup's gonna pass to you. The cup of wrath is gonna pass from Judah to Edom because God's going, you know, God's holy and he's not gonna show favoritism. He's gonna deal with Edom's sin just like he's dealt with Israel's. And so he says the cup's gonna pass to you. But then to daughter Zion, verse 22, your punishment's complete. That is good news. See, it's not the consequences are gone. But God's not going to turn the screws anymore. There's no more army to come through. He's lifted that. And in a short while, the people will come back to the land. They'll start rebuilding. That's the book of Zechariah. He says, He will not lengthen your exile, but He will punish your iniquity. Daughter, eat them and expose your sins. So they feel like the cup is passed from them to their enemies. At least, from their perspective, ends with hope. thoughts They would want what Yeah, that's that's why you know you chose we would think people would learn right and when I when I took It's one of the classes I got a C in in college. I usually did good in, but I took Western Civilization. And there must have been 300 people in that class. But I remember the professor on the first day saying, you know, we study history to learn from it. The fact is, we don't ever learn from it. And we rarely study it. Maybe that's why. I mean, you know, because as soon as you start studying history, you're like, wait a second. That's, we're seeing the same thing here. And you don't have to go back that far to see stuff. And people, just our memories are short. Our memories go back during a portion of our lifetime and we tend to know virtually nothing before then. But think about this. How many history books are in the Bible? We got 66 books, but how many history books? And maybe there's some history, in a way there's some history in every one of them, I think, if we really think of it that way. But think about books like 1st and 2nd Chronicles. They're really just one book, but it's just so big we chop it in half. 1st and 2nd Samuel, 1st and 2nd Kings, they're history books. The book of Acts is a history book. What does God think about history? I mean, we tell people, I've heard it, that stuff's not important. You just need things that help you get a job. Bible's full of history. Why? Because Christians uniquely should learn from it. We should have a view of history where we see God's hand moving, like from the book of Lamentations, and we should learn from it. And the book of Zechariah opens that way. He reminds them to think about their recent history, how God's prophets told them what would happen, and how their word came true, and to learn from it, right? So yeah, you would think we'd learn from it. Not only do we not learn from it, it's worse. We do something else. Dismiss it. Dismiss it or change it. Right? It's a 1619 project. Let's just rewrite the facts, make them more palatable for my agenda, right? Y'all know what that is, right? Oh, yeah. OK. I'm not making a political statement. I'm making a historical statement. You just make up things. But history does get largely revised, and the moment you study it, you'll see that. So we as Christians, anyway, we should learn from history, and Paul says that in the New Testament. He says those things back then happened as examples to us, right? He also said all scripture, he was looking at the book of Lamentations and Leviticus included, is profitable. for training in righteousness, right? So just think about that. It's a good thought, is yeah, we should learn from it, and we don't always, but as Christians, we really should take an interest in history and how God works through it, and we should learn from it.