Hunter, The Bible and the quest for Developmental Justicestrates the severity of the siege of Jerusalem by referring to children and
infants: Lam. 2:11 cries out: “My heart is poured out on the ground
because my people are destroyed, because children and infants faint in
the streets of the city.” (See also 2:19, 4:4 and 4:10). In the final chapter,
seen as a prayer, the desolate state of the people and their despair are
expressed as follows: “We have become orphans and fatherless, our
mothers like widows” (Lam. 5:3), a text that makes evident the thorough
understanding of the plight of the “orphans and fatherless”. The Book of
Lamentations could just as well be a report on a modern war scene, as
described in a number of books mentioned above, especially that of
Machel who has the following dedication in her book echoing the hope
Renkema describes in Lamentations (especially based on Chapter 3):
“This book is dedicated to the indomitable spirit of the children who inspired
its preparation. Their hopes and aspirations live throughout this text.”
White (1979:114ff.) indicates that ethical behaviour in the Christian
understanding of ethics is deeply rooted in “love”. I Corinthians 13 does
not have a different understanding: love is the greatest. Yes, one can
have enough faith to believe that everything is possible; enough hope to
land there where your beliefs are supposed to take you, but love, that is
what makes the Christian live correctly (is it righteously?). Jones
(1987:20) elects four words which, according to him, dominated pro-
phetic messages: holiness, righteousness, justice, and love. These are the
words constant with the “character of the Lord”. To describe Jesus’ mes-
sage, he says (1987:29): “The one all-embracing reality is the ever-present
merciful love of God.” He also states: “A previous generation of theolo-
gians used to say that Jesus’ message could be summed up as ‘the fa-
therhood of God’ and the ‘infinite value of the human soul’.” According
to him, law now has a different emphasis: our own morality, our inner
spirit is at stake in the development of the Old and New Testaments.
Children are therefore seen as very important in the whole of the Bible.
This is true in both Old and New Testaments. It is, moreover, evident
from both, what we can call, “positive” and “negative” texts of the Bible.
For example, the texts of Lamentations can be seen as negative descrip-
tions of what happens to children. So too, the last plague of the libera-
tion of Israel from Egypt, which attacks children and shows how impor-
tant the children were. After the plague that killed the first-born, the
pharaoh realizes that he has to let the Israelites go.