Terrifying Imagery

I take back my thoughts from last perek- last perek was fine. Sure, it was pretty depressing or whatever, but it was generally okay. It didn't have anything too bad in it. The analogy of Sally and her friend worked perfectly; it was easy to relate to, and it had a few nice little lessons tied in there. Overall, I think that perek ended on a pretty good note.

Hopefully with that introduction you can begin to understand the utter horror I felt when going over the second perek. Nothing from the first perek prepared me for what would be written in the second perek. There were 9 long, consecutive pessukim that described in vivid detail just how angry and destructive God was. I mean, god wasn't just angry- God was abusive. God wasn't just mad at them- God was their enemy. God wanted to get back at them with fire and brimstone. There's punishing people for what they did wrong in a manner that makes sense... and then there's this, which goes beyond punishment into the realm of the evil and remorseless. At some point a line was crossed and after God crossed that line, nothing was off limits. I was going to pick a passuk to copy and paste but it's literally any passuk from 1-9 in perek 2. Like look- this is passuk 5: "The Lord is become as an enemy, He hath swallowed up Israel; He hath swallowed up all her palaces, He hath destroyed his strongholds; and He hath multiplied in the daughter of Judah mourning and moaning. " Wasn't God supposed to be on their team? How did God turn into the enemy and then just leave them there mourning and moaning? To me, God in this perek is a mix between Godzilla and a destructively abusive husband. This scares me. It makes me uncomfortable; it makes me queasy. It makes me uncomfortable with the notion of forgiving God for making the people feel like this. I can't seem to think that they could have done something that terrible to make themselves feel this kind of terror. I guess the reason why I think of 'abusive husband' is because this is juxtaposed right before all this imagery with women and children. So first you have phrases like "he hath slain all that were pleasant in the eye" (2:4), and then you have young, fainting, innocent children asking their mothers where the corn is. Maybe I'm just super sensitive about these things, but my first reaction to all this is a husband who is angry at his wife and chooses, not just to leave her, but to destroy her, both physically and mentally, taking everything she has, before he storms out and never comes back again. What do you guys think? Am I exaggerating by thinking this? What do you think about the angry God portrayed in this perek? Do you think the Yerushalayim got what she deserved? 

It's really hard for me to imagine that anyone deserves to go through something like that. I don't care how much she's exaggerating, if even an ounce of it is true, it sounds terrible. And the narrator must agree, because he tries to comfort her at the beginning. He understands. I don't understand, though, to be honest. 

Another Eicha blog, another Charlie Brown comic. This picture doesn't anything to do with the above post, really, but it has to do with what we've learned as a whole. Where has Yerushalayim gone wrong?