Subversion Lamentations 3:36

Jeremiah was in the middle of a trilogy of thoughts concerning people who are mistreated in this world and how “the Lord approves not” of this behavior. In verse thirty-six of the third chapter of Lamentations we consider the third of these mistreatments where we read:

To subvert a man in his cause, the Lord approves not.

The verse begins, “To subvert a man in his cause,...” The idea behind the word “subvert” is “to be bent, be crooked, bend, make crooked, or pervert”, and Jeremiah's thought is like a person who intervenes in a “controversy, strife or dispute” by twisting facts and turning others against the just person. He conveys the idea of intermingling in the midst of a quarrel and making the righteous person be as though he or she is wrong.

The verse goes on to say, “...the Lord approves not.” We have discussed how this short phrase applies to all three of the maladies shared within this and the last two verses. “To crush under his feet all the prisoners of the earth, to turn aside the right of a man before the face of the most High,” and “to subvert a man in his cause” are three behaviors which the Lord “watches, inspects, looks at, perceives, considers, regards and observes”. There is no one ill treated whom the Lord does not see, and for Jeremiah to take the time in the midst of his lamentation to write about it lets us know the importance of these things to God.

As we ponder this verse, let's allow our mind to go back over the three things in which God does not approve in these verses. How do we behave toward others in these areas, and are there one or two of them in which we have found ourselves the victims at times? Perhaps we wondered if God was watching or maybe we assumed that He did not care. When these things happen to us we would profit from remembering what Hebrews chapter four and verse thirteen says:

Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do.

In other words, God sees. God knows, and God is paying attention to all the mistreatment that is in the world and nothing ill fashioned is done in secret but is open to His eyes.

Next time we see how the Lord says and does, so read ahead, and we shall join together then.

 

Until tomorrow...there is more...

 

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