As far as Rembrandt paintings go, Jeremiah Lamenting the Destruction of Jerusalem isn’t that remarkable. It’s incredible, don’t get me wrong, but it doesn’t rise to the masterwork level of The Storm on the Sea of Galilee or The Return of the Prodigal Son.
Nevertheless, Rembrandt’s portrait of the grieving prophet is one I have been paying attention to for decades. It’s in my personal collection. Every time I see it, it reminds me of the Lord’s call on my life into pastoral ministry.
The Destruction of Jerusalem
As the title suggests, this painting captures Jeremiah’s grief as the holy city burns, Solomon’s temple with it. The prophet had been calling the people of Judah to repent for more than forty years.
No one listened.
Jeremiah had been beaten and imprisoned and had his books destroyed. Five different kings came and went — the last of which was King Zedekiah, Judah’s final king, who stood atop Rembrandt’s temple steps, fists buried into his eye sockets, in agony after being blinded by King Nebuchadnezzar (2 Kings 25:7). The doom Jeremiah foretold was happening.
Rembrandt presented him sitting in a cave with some of the relics from the temple at his feet, treasured items of precious metal now without their place of usefulness beside him, glowing in the light of the burning city.
His left arm leans on a book. The spine bears the word Bibel, a detail probably added later. The book is likely intended to be a combination of the prophetic book bearing Jeremiah’s name and the book of Lamentations, his insistent, poetic, yet unheeded call to repent — a book in which the Lord tells his people,
I have loved you with an everlasting love;
I have drawn you with unfailing kindness.
I will build you up again,
and you, Virgin Israel, will be rebuilt.
— Jeremiah 31:3–4 (NIV)
The Invitation of Art
Art leads us into our most tender thoughts. It invites us to hold with an open hand the things we’re learning about our pain and trials. It tells us to look in a certain direction while so much happens outside of the frame. It invites us to consider our own limits and mortality. It has a way of freezing moments in time, holding them in a still frame as we seek to understand them.
Art makes a statement we can return to when we struggle to find the words. Even in our places of deepest lament, hope is there, and art plays a role in stirring that longing.
The book on which Rembrandt’s Jeremiah leans resounds with hope:
Remember my affliction and my wanderings,
the wormwood and the gall!
My soul continually remembers it
and is bowed down within me.
But this I call to mind,
and therefore I have hope:
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,
“therefore I will hope in him.”
— Lamentations 3:19–24 (ESV)
The Poetry of Lamentations
Hope abounds. But Jeremiah’s lament is not filled with hope alone. It’s also filled with art, with poetry. The book of Lamentations is one of the most lyrically complex masterworks, not only in the Old Testament, but in all ancient texts. The book is comprised of five intricately connected poems that lead the reader from a place of loss and shame to hope and renewal, both for individuals and for the entire community of God’s people.
Describing the complexity of Lamentations’ poetic construction and meter, the ESV Study Bible notes that much of the “rhythm is based on lines of two unequal parts. The first part normally consists of three words and the second part usually includes two words. This pattern creates three accents, then two, thereby creating a falling, rising, and falling cadence. In this way, the poems seem to ‘limp,’ as if the reader is walking haltingly along behind a funeral procession.”
The book is also filled with acrostic poetry that not only is contained within each chapter but arcs over the entirety of the book. Hebrew acrostic poetry uses the Hebrew alphabet to organize poetic thought. Lamentations features four different types:
- Chapter 1 consists of twenty-two lines, each beginning with the next letter in the Hebrew alphabet, starting with aleph, then beth, and so on.
- Chapters 2 and 4 imitate chapter 1 by opening each stanza with the next consecutive letter in the Hebrew alphabet.
- Chapter 3 is a sixty-six-line acrostic with “stanzas of three lines each that begin with the same letter of the alphabet. Thus, chapter 3 has sixty-six lines, like chapters 1 and 2. But each line in 3:1–3 begins with aleph; 3:4–6 has each line begin with beth; and so forth.”
Look up the Hebrew text of Lamentations 3 to see this poetry for yourself. Even if you don’t read Hebrew, you will see how each group of three lines starts with the same letter, which reads from right to left. The complexity of this kind of poetry reveals a mastery of both thought and language, and also a sort of divine playfulness even when the world would insist that all was lost.
Lamentation Is an Art
Why does this matter? In Judah’s worst moments, the words the Lord gave to call them to repentance and restoration were filled with beauty and artistry. They glimmer as the city burns.
The prophet didn’t just say, “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” He said it in a pair of acrostic triads. The form of the words themselves lifts our heads from the dust and leads us to wonder about the creative power behind their meaning.
They aren’t just words. They are chosen words, crafted words, ordered words, risen words.
The Lord has no ordinary words for us. They are all gilded in beauty and glory. Why? Because even in our darkest moments, he created us to lean into who he is: beautiful and glorious.
So Rembrandt’s Jeremiah, struck with the grief of Jerusalem’s destruction, leans his weight on a book filled with poems about the mercies of the Lord, how they are new every morning, and how hope threads through until the end.
Adapted from Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart: What Art Teaches Us About the Wonder and Struggle of Being Alive by Russ Ramsey.
Beyond a mere introduction to great art, Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart is about loving to learn what art has to teach us about the wonder and struggle of being alive.
Russ Ramsey digs into the stories of artists like Vincent Van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Artimisia Gentileschi, and Norman Rockwell for readers who may be new to art, as well as for lifelong students of art history, to mine the transcendent beauty and hard lessons we can take from their masterpieces and their lives.
Each story from some of the history’s most celebrated artists applies the beauty of the gospel in a way that speaks to the suffering and hope we all face.
Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart is published by Zondervan, the parent company of Bible Gateway.
Russ Ramsey is a pastor in Nashville, Tennessee, where he lives with his wife and children. He holds an MDiv and ThM from Covenant Theological Seminary and is the author of six books, includingRembrandt Is in the Wind.
