THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEREMIAH
INTRODUCTION
It is no uncommon thought now, as of old, to assume that
the book on which we are now entering consists of the Lamentations written by
the prophet on the occasion of Josiah's death. (2 Chron. 35: 25.) If a divine
testimony affirmed this, it would be our place to believe it: to that no one
pretends, still there is the secret assumption that what Jeremiah composed in
sorrow for Josiah must be in the Bible, and hence must be this book. But there
is no sufficient reason to conclude that all the writings of prophets were
inspired for the permanent use of God's people: rather is there good ground to
conclude that they were not. Hence we are free to examine the character of the
work before us, not to question its divine authority but to ascertain as far as
may be its aim and the subjects of which it treats. But, if so, the contents
themselves are adverse to the idea; for the distressing prostration of
Jerusalem, not the death of the pious king cut down so young, is clearly in
view. The description of the state of the city, sanctuary, and people does not
accord with Josiah's death; and even the king, whose humiliation is named (Lam.
2: 9), could not possibly be Josiah, who was slain in battle, instead of being
among the Gentiles and therefore in captivity. It was no doubt Jehoiachin whose
varied lot we can easily trace by comparing the prophecy and 2 Kings 24, 25.
All the circumstances of that time tally with the bewailings here.
That the Spirit of prophecy dictated the book cannot be justly doubted, though
it may not have direct predictions like the former work from which in the
Hebrew Bible it has long been severed as to place, though not so in the days of
Josephus. Nevertheless the distinctness of object, tone, and manner is
sufficiently marked to justify our viewing it as a separate work of the same
writer, Jeremiah. It was morally good that we should have not only predictions
of the deep trouble coming on the house of David and Jerusalem, but also the
outpouring of a godly heart broken by anguish for the people of God, and the
more because they deserved all that fell upon them through their enemies at
God's hand. We little think what such an one as Jeremiah must have felt to see
the temple destroyed, the holy service suspended, the king and priests and bulk
of Judah carried off by their idolatrous conqueror, compelled to own also that
their desolation was most righteous because of their sins. Even when he had
survived the events which proved the value of his own slighted prophecies, he
was inspired to pour forth these elegies which were no vain complaints as we
shall see, but a spreading out of the woes of the city and people before a God
whose compassion and faithfulness are alike infinite. He vindicates God in what
He had done to unhappy Jerusalem. He places before God the utter ruin of the
people, civilly and religiously, charging the false prophets with luring them
into the pit by their falsehood and flattery, but exhorting the people to
repentance. He shows his own sense of sorrow deeper than that of any other, as
indeed he both suffered peculiarly from the Jews themselves before the crash
came, and the Spirit of Christ that was in him gave him to realize all, where
others nerved themselves to brave it with the mailed armour of insensibility
and indomitable pride; yet does he cherish hope in what God is, who loves to
lift up the fallen and abase the proud. He contrasts their present misery,
because of the sins of their priests and prophets, with their former
prosperity, but declares that an end will be to Zion's punishment, but none to
Edom's. Lastly, he prayerfully spreads out all their own calamities before
Jehovah; his only confidence too is in Him who can turn us to Himself, whatever
may be His just wrath.
The form is very notable; save in the last
chapter, all are acrostic or at least alphabetic. De Wette, with the usual
arrogance of a rationalist, pronounces this of itself as an offspring of the
later vitiated taste. But this he must do in defiance of the plain fact that
those admirable and even early Psalms 25, 34, 37 are similarly constructed, not
to speak of the wonderful Psalm 119 and several others in the same fifth book
of the Psalter (111, 112, 145.). Those who pronounce these psalms cold, feeble,
and flat, as well as unconnected, simply betray their own lack of all just
appreciation, not to speak of reverence which we may not expect from men who
deny them in any true sense to be of God. The first, second, and fourth
chapters are so written that each verse begins with one of the twenty-two
letters of the Hebrew alphabet in due succession, save that in the second and
fourth [ follows instead of preceding p ; and the same transposition occurs in
Lam. 3, where we have three verses instead of single ones, which so commence;
and hence there are in it 66 verses. Another peculiarity is to be noticed, that
each verse (except Lam. 1: 7, Lam. 2: 19) is a sort of triplet in chapters 1,
2, 3. Lam. 4 is characterized by couplets (save ver. 15); and a singular
structure is traceable in Lam. 5, save that it does not begin with the letters
of the alphabet, though it consists of twenty-two verses. "Difference of
authorship" is the ready but monotonous cry of dark scepticism: others as
despairing of intelligence impute it to forgetfulness, a third to accident! The
propriety of the change in what throughout is a prayer and confession to
Jehovah must be apparent to the spiritual mind. The alphabetic form may have
had a mnemonic object in view. For pathos the book as a whole is unequalled.
LAMENTATIONS 1
The prophet
presents a graphic view of Jerusalem once abounding with people now sitting
alone, and as a widow; she that was mighty among nations, a princess among the
provinces, now become tributary. She is seen weeping sore, and this in the
night when darkness and sleep bring respite to others, to her only a renewal of
that grief, less restrained, which covers her cheeks with tears. Now is proved
the folly as well as the sin that forsook Jehovah for others; but there is for
her no comforter out of her lovers. All her friends, the allies she counted on,
deal treacherously by her, and are but enemies.
The last hope of the
nation was gone. Israel had been long a prey to the Assyrian. But now in the
captivity of Judah mourning overspreads Zion where once were crowded feasts.
And there is no exception to the rule of affliction: her priests sigh, her
virgins are afflicted, herself as a whole in bitterness. On the other hand her
adversaries are in power and command over her. How bitter was all this to a
Jew! and in a sense most bitter where the Jew was godly. For besides the grief
of nature he might share with his countrymen, there was the added and poignant
sorrow that the normal witnesses of Jehovah on earth had proved false, and he
could not see how glory would be brought to God in spite of and through
Israel's unfaithfulness.
It is necessary to bear in mind the peculiar
place of Israel and Jerusalem: otherwise we can never appreciate such a book as
this, and many of the Psalms, as well as much of the Prophets. The patriotism
of a Jew was bound up as that of no other people or country was with the honour
of Jehovah. Providence governs everywhere: no raid of Red Indians, no manoeuvre
of the greatest military power in the West, no movement or struggle in Asia,
without His eye and hand. But He had set up a direct government in His own land
and people, modified from Samuel's days by kingly power, which had blessing
guaranteed on obedience. But who could guarantee the obedience? Israel pledged
it indeed, but in vain. The people disobeyed, the priests disobeyed, the kings
disobeyed. We see too that in Jeremiah's days false prophets imitated the true,
and supplanted them in the heed of a court and nation which desired a delusive
sanction from God on their own wilfulness, prophesying what pleased the people
in flattery and deceit. Hence the corruption only lent an immense impetus to
those who were already hastening down the steep of ruin. But this did not
lesson the agony of such as Jeremiah. They realized the inevitable ruin; and
he, not in moral sense only but by divine inspiration, gives expression to his
feelings here. The blessed Lord Jesus Himself is the perfect pattern of similar
grief over Jerusalem, in Him absolutely unselfish and in every way pure, but so
much the more deeply felt. Unless the relation of that city to God be
understood, one cannot enter into this; and there is danger of either
explaining it away into care for their souls, or of perverting it into a ground
for similar feelings, each for his own country. But it is clear that a man's
soul is the same in Pekin or London, in Jerusalem or Baltimore. The Lord does
show us the immeasurable value of a soul elsewhere; but this is not the key to
His tears over Jerusalem. The impending judgment of God in this world, the
dismal consequences yet in the womb of the future, because of the rejection of
the Messiah as well as all other evil against God, made the Saviour weep. We
cannot wonder therefore that the Spirit of Christ which was in Jeremiah, and
guided him in this Book of Lamentations, gave the prophet communion with his
Master before He Himself proved its worst against His own person.
God
might raise up a fresh testimony, as we know He has done; but, while bowing to
His sovereign will, the utter ruin of the old witness justly filled the heart
of every pious God-fearing Israelite with sorrow unceasing; and surely not the
less "because Jehovah hath afflicted her for the multitude of her
transgressions." Grief is not less over God's people because they have
dishonoured God and are righteously chastised. "Her children are gone into
captivity before the enemy. And from the daughter of Zion all her beauty is
departed: her princes are as harts which find no pasture and go powerless
before the pursuer."
There was the bitter aggravation, ever present,
of what the city of the great King had lost, which He, when He came and was
refused, told out in His broken words of weeping over it. "Jerusalem remembered
in the days of her affliction and of her miseries all her pleasant things that
she had in the days of old, when her people fell into the hand of the enemy,
and none did help her: the adversaries saw her, and did mock at her sabbaths.
Jerusalem hath grievously sinned; therefore she is removed: all that honoured
her despise her, because they have seen her nakedness: yea, she sigheth, and
turneth backward. Her filthiness is in her skirts; she remembereth not her last
end; therefore she came down wonderfully: she had no comforter. O Jehovah,
behold my affliction: for the enemy hath magnified himself, The adversary hath
spread out his hand upon all her pleasant things: for she hath seen that the
heathen entered into her sanctuary, whom thou didst command that they should
not enter into thy congregation. All her people sigh, they seek bread; they
have given their pleasant things for meat to relieve the soul: see, O Jehovah,
and consider: for I am become vile." (Ver. 7-11.) Faith however sees in the
prostration of the guilty city under the relentless adversary a plea for
Jehovah's compassion and interposition on its behalf.
Then the prophet
personifies the downtrodden Zion turning to the passing strangers for their
pity. "Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? behold, and see if there be
any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is done unto me, wherewith Jehovah hath
afflicted me in the day of his fierce anger. From above hath he sent fire into
my bones, and it prevaileth against them: he hath spread a net for my feet, he
hath turned me back: he hath made me desolate and faint all the day. The yoke
of my transgressions is bound by his hand: they are wreathed, and come up upon
my neck: he hath made my strength to fall, the Lord hath delivered me into
their hands, from whom I am not able to rise up. The Lord hath trodden under
foot all my mighty men in the midst of me: he hath called an assembly against
me to crush my young men: the Lord hath trodden the virgin, the daughter of
Judah, as in a winepress. For these things I weep; mine eye, mine eye runneth
down with water, because the comforter that should relieve my soul is far from
me: my children are desolate, because the enemy prevailed." (Ver. 12-16.) Still
all is traced to Jehovah's dealing because of Jerusalem's rebellious sins; and
hence He is morally vindicated. "Zion spreadeth forth her hands, and there is
none to comfort her: Jehovah hath commanded concerning Jacob, that his
adversaries should be round about him: Jerusalem is as a menstruous woman among
them. Jehovah is righteous; for I have rebelled against his commandment: hear,
I pray you, all people, and behold my sorrow: my virgins and my young men are
gone into captivity. I called for my lovers, but they deceived me: my priests
and mine elders gave up the ghost in the city, while they sought their meat to
relieve their souls." (Ver. 17-19.)
Finally, Jehovah is called to
behold, because Jerusalem was thus troubled, and this too inwardly, because of
its own grievous rebellion; and He is besought to requite the enemy who took
pleasure in their abject shame and deep suffering. "Behold, O Jehovah; for I am
in distress: my bowels are troubled; mine heart is turned within me; for I have
grievously rebelled: abroad the sword bereaveth, at home there is as death.
They have heard that I sigh: there is none to comfort me: all mine enemies have
heard of my trouble, they are glad that thou hast done it; thou wilt bring the
day that thou hast called, and they shall be like unto me. Let all their
wickedness come before thee; and do unto them as thou hast done unto me for all
my transgressions: for my sighs are many, and my heart is faint." (Ver. 20-22.)
LAMENTATIONS 2
It has been
noticed that the solitude of Jerusalem is the prominent feeling expressed in
the opening of these elegies. Here we shall find its overthrow spread out in
the strongest terms and with great detail. Image is crowded on image to express
the completeness of the destruction to which Jehovah had devoted His own chosen
people, city, and temple; the more terrible, as He must be in His own nature
and purpose unchangeable. None felt the truth of His love to Israel more than
the prophet; for this very reason, none could so deeply feel the inevitable
blows of His hand, obliged as He was to be an enemy to those He most loved.
"How hath the Lord covered the daughter of Zion with the cloud in his anger,
and cast down from heaven unto the earth the beauty of Israel, and remembered
not his footstool in the day of his anger. The Lord hath swallowed up all the
habitations of Jacob, and hath not pitied: he hath thrown down in his wrath the
strongholds of the daughter of Judah; he hath brought them down to the ground:
he hath polluted the kingdom and the princes thereof. He hath cut off in his
fierce anger all the horn of Israel: he hath drawn back his right hand from
before the enemy, and he burned against Jacob like a flaming fire, which
devoureth round about. He hath bent his bow like an enemy: he stood with his
right hand as an adversary, and slew all that were pleasant to the eye in the
tabernacle of the daughter of Zion: he poured out his fury like fire. The Lord
was as an enemy: he hath swallowed up Israel, he hath swallowed up all her
palaces: he hath destroyed his strongholds, and hath increased in the daughter
of Judah mourning and lamentation." (Ver. 1-5.)
But even this was not
the worst. Their civil degradation and ruin were dreadful; for their outward
place and blessings came from God in a sense peculiar to Israel. But what was
this to His degrading His own earthly dwelling in their midst! "And he hath
violently taken away his tabernacle, as if it were of a garden: he hath
destroyed his places of the assembly. Jehovah hath caused the solemn feasts and
sabbaths to be forgotten in Zion, and hath despised in the indignation of his
anger the king and the priest. The Lord hath cast off his altar, he hath
abhorred his sanctuary, he hath given up into the hand of the enemy the walls
of her palaces; they have made a noise in the house of Jehovah, as in the day
of a solemn feast." (Ver. 6, 7.) It was of no use to think of the Chaldeans.
God it was who brought Zion and the temple, and their feasts and fasts and
sacrifices, with king and priest, to nought.
Hence in verse 8 it is
said with yet greater emphasis, "Jehovah hath purposed to destroy the wall of
the daughter of Zion: he hath stretched out a line, he hath not withdrawn his
hand from destroying: therefore he made the rampart and the wall to lament;
they languished together. Her gates are sunk into the ground; he hath destroyed
and broken her bars: her king and her princes are among the Gentiles: the law
is no more; her prophets also find no vision from Jehovah. The elders of the
daughter of Zion sit upon the ground and keep silence: they have cast up dust
upon their heads; they have girded themselves with sackcloth: the virgins of
Jerusalem hang down their heads to the ground." (Ver. 8-10.) The prophet then
introduces his own grief. "Mine eyes do fill with tears, my bowels are
troubled, my liver is poured upon the earth, for the destruction of the
daughter of my people; because the children and the sucklings swoon in the
streets of the city. They say to their mothers, Where is corn and wine? when
they swooned as the wounded in the streets of the city, when their soul was
poured out into their mothers' bosom. What thing shall I take to witness for
thee? what thing shall I liken to thee, O daughter of Jerusalem? what shall I
equal to thee, that I may comfort thee, O virgin daughter of Zion? for thy
breach is great like the sea: who can heal thee?" He justly feels that no
object can adequately match the series of miseries of Zion. The sea alone could
furnish by its greatness a notion of the magnitude of their calamities.
Another element now enters to aggravate the description the
part which false prophets played before the final crisis came. "Thy prophets
have seen vain and foolish things for thee: and they have not discovered thine
iniquity, to turn away thy captivity; but have seen for thee false burdens and
causes of banishment." (Ver. 14.)
Then He depicts the cruel
satisfaction of their envious neighbours over their sufferings and ruin. "All
that pass by clap their hands at thee; they hiss and wag their head at the
daughter of Jerusalem, saying Is this the city that men call the perfection of
beauty, the joy of the whole earth? All thine enemies have opened their mouth
against thee: they hiss and gnash the teeth: they say, We have swallowed her
up. certainly this is the day that we looked for; we have found, we have seen
it." (Ver. 15, 16,) But the prophet insists that it was Jehovah who had done
the work of destruction because of His people's iniquity, let the Gentiles
boast as they might of their power over Jerusalem. "Jehovah hath done that
which he had devised; he hath fulfilled his word that he had commanded in the
days of old: he hath thrown down and hath not pitied: and he hath caused thine
enemy to rejoice over thee, he hath set up the horn of thine adversaries."
(Ver. 17.) Sorrowful, most sorrowful, that His hand had done it all; yet a
comfort to faith, for it is the hand that can and will build up again for His
name's sake. Nor was it a hasty chastening; from earliest days Jehovah had
threatened and predicted by Moses what Jeremiah details in his Lamentations.
Compare Lev. 26, Deut. 28, 31, 32. To Him therefore the prophet would have the
heart to cry really, as it had in vain through mere vexation. "Their heart
cried unto the Lord, O wall of the daughter of Zion, let tears run down like a
river day and night: give thyself no rest; let not the apple of thine eye
cease. Arise, cry out in the night: in the beginning of the watches pour out
thine heart like water before the face of the Lord: lift up thy hands toward
him for the life of thy young children, that faint for hunger in the top of
every street. Behold, O Jehovah, and consider to whom thou hast done this.
Shall the women eat their fruit, and children of a span long? shall the priest
and the prophet be slain in the sanctuary of the Lord? The young and the old
lie on the ground in the streets: my virgins and my young men are fallen by the
sword; thou hast slain them in the day of thine anger; thou hast killed, and
not pitied. Thou hast called as in a solemn day my terrors round about, so that
in the day of Jehovah's anger none escaped nor remained: those that I have
swaddled and brought up hath mine enemy consumed." (Ver. 18-22.) He arrays the
most frightful excesses the Jews had suffered before God that He may deal with
the enemies who had been thus guilty.
As to the apparent alphabetic
dislocation in verses 16, 17, I do not doubt that it is intentional. In Lam. 1
all is regular as to this. In Lam. 3, Lam. 4 a transposition occurs similar to
what we find here. It cannot therefore be either accidental on the one hand, or
due to a different order in the alphabet on the other, as has been thought.
Some of the Hebrew MSS. place the verses as they should stand in the regular
order, and the Septuagint pursues a middle course by inverting the alphabetic
marks but retaining the verses to which they should belong in their Masoretic
place. But there is no sufficient reason to doubt that the Hebrew gives the
passage as the Spirit inspired it, spite of the strangeness of the order, which
must therefore have been meant to heighten the picture of sorrow. In sense they
must stand as they are. a change according to the ordinary place of the
initials p and [ would out the thread of just connection.
LAMENTATIONS 3: 1-21
This strain differs, as in
the triple alliteration of its structure, so also in its more distinctly
personal plaintiveness. The prophet expresses his own sense of sorrow, no
longer representing Zion but speaking for himself, while at the same time his
grief is bound up with the people, and none the less because he was an object
of derision and hatred to them for his love to them in faithfulness to Jehovah.
Other prophets may have been exempted for special ends of God, but none tasted
the bitterness of Israel's portion more keenly than Jeremiah. His desire is
that others should bear the grief of the people's state as here expressed for
the heart in order to final comfort and blessing from God. In the opening
verses he tells out his experiences in trouble. "I am the man that hath seen
affliction by the rod of his wrath." He hath led me and brought me into
darkness, but not into light. Surely against me is he turned; he turneth his
hand against me all the day." (Ver.1-3.) He owns it to be from Jehovah's hand
and rod. Indignation was gone forth from God against Israel, and a true-hearted
prophet was the last one to screen himself or wish it. There was affliction;
this in darkness, not light; and again with oft-recurring visitation of His
hand.
Next (ver. 4-6) Jeremiah recounts his wearing away; the
preparations of Jehovah against him; and his evidently doomed estate. "My flesh
and my skin hath he made old; he hath broken my bones. He hath builded against
me, and compassed me with gall and travel. He hath set me in dark places, as
they that be dead of old," (Ver. 4-6.)
In verses 7-9, the prophet
shows that his portion was not only in imprisonment with heavy chain, but with
the awful aggravation that entreaty and prayer could not avail to effect
deliverance, the way being fenced, not to protect but to exclude and baffle.
Then Jeremiah draws imagery from the animal kingdom to tell how God
spared him in nothing. "He was unto me as a bear lying in wait, and as a lion
in secret places. He hath turned aside my ways, and pulled me in pieces: he
hath made me desolate. He hath bent his bow, and set me as a mark for the
arrow." (Ver. 10-12.)
Nor does he content himself with telling us how
he had been the object of divine attack, as game to the hunter, but lets us see
that the mockery of his brethren was not the least part of his trial and
bitterness. "He hath caused the arrows of his quiver to enter into my reins. I
was a derision to all my people; and their song all the day. He hath filled me
with bitterness, he hath made me drunken with wormwood." (Ver. 13-15.)
Inwardly and outwardly there was every sign of disappointment and humiliation;
and expectation of improved circumstances cut off even from Him who is the
believer's one resource. "He hath also broken my teeth with gravel stones, he
hath covered me with ashes. And thou hast removed my soul far off from peace: I
forgat prosperity. And I said, My strength peace and my hope is perished from
Jehovah. (Ver. 16-18.)
Yet there is the very point of change. From
verse 19 he spreads out all before Jehovah, whom he asks to remember it; and
from the utter prostration of his soul he begins to conceive confidence.
"Remembering mine affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the gall. My soul
hath them still in remembrance, and is humbled in me. This I recall to my mind,
therefore have I hope." (Ver. 19-21.) It is not Christ, but assuredly the
Spirit of Christ leading on an afflicted and broken heart. Weeping may endure
for a night; but joy cometh in the morning.
In what sense then are we
to account for language so strong uttered by a holy man, and this not about the
persecutions of strangers or the enmity of the Jews, but mostly indeed about
Jehovah's ways with him? Certainly not what Calvin and the mass of commentators
before and since make of it, as if it were the pressure of the hand of God on
the sufferers as Christians when their minds were in a state of confusion, and
their lips uttered much that is intemperate. Such an interpretation does little
honour to God, not to speak of Jeremiah, and makes the Spirit to be a reporter,
not merely of a few words or deeds which betray the earthen vessel in its
weakness, but of outpourings considerable and minute, which, according to such
a view, would consist of scarce anything but complaints spoken according to the
judgment of the flesh under feelings so little moderated as to let fill too
often things worthy of blame. Can such a view with such results satisfy a
thoughtful child of God, who understands the gospel?
I believe, on the
contrary, that the language is not hyberbolical, but the genuine. utterance of
a sensitive heart in the midst of the crushing calamities of Israel, or rather
now also of Judah and Jerusalem; that they are the sorrows of one who loved the
people according to God, who suffered with them all the more because they did
not feel and he did that it was Jehovah Himself who was behind and above their
miseries and shame, inflicting all because of their sins, with the added and
yet keener fact of his own personal and poignant grief because of what his
prophetic office exposed him to, not so much from the Chaldeans as from the
people of God, his brethren after the flesh. It was in no way the expression of
his own relation to God is a saint or consequently of God's feelings towards
himself individually; it was the result of being called of God to take part in
Israel for Him at a time so corrupt and so calamitous. I am far from meaning
that personally Jeremiah did not know what failure was in that awful crisis. It
is plain from his own prophecy that his timidity did induce him to sanction or
allow on one occasion the deceit of another, adopting if not inventing it. But
he seems to have been, take him all in all, a rare man, even among the holy
line of the prophets; and, though morbidly acute in his feelings by nature,
singularly sustained of God with as little sympathy from others as ever fell to
the lot of a servant of God among His people. Even Elijah's experience fell far
short of his, both on the side of the people's wickedness among whom lay his
ministry, and on the score of suffering inwardly and outwardly as a prophet who
shared all the chastening which the righteous indignation heaped on his guilty
people, with his own affliction to boot as a rejected prophet. He appears
indeed in this to have the most nearly approached our blessed Lord, though
certainly there was a climax in His case peculiar to Himself, hardly more in
the intensely evil and degraded state of Jerusalem then than in the perfection
with which He fathomed and felt all before God as one who had deigned to be of
them and their chief, their Messiah, who must therefore have so much the deeper
interest and the truer sense of what they deserved as a people from God through
the instrumentality of their enemies. As a fact this came on them soon after
under the last and most terrible siege by Titus; but Jesus went beforehand
through all before the cross as well as on it, this apart from making
atonement, with which nothing but the densest ignorance could confound it, and
mere malice attack others for avoiding its own palpable error.
LAMENTATIONS 3: 22-42
There is no
doubt, I think, that the ground of hope which the prophet lays to heart, as he
said in verse 21, is stated in the following verses: "It is of Jehovah's
mercies that we are not consumed, because his mercies fail not. They are new
every morning: great is thy faithfulness. Jehovah is my portion; therefore will
I hope in him." The last clause confirms the thought that verse 21 is
anticipative, and that here the spring is touched.
For the turn given
by the Targum, and the older versions, save the Vulgate, namely, "The mercies
of Jehovah are not consumed, for his compassions fail not," I see no sufficient
reason, though Calvin considers this sense more suitable. The Latin and our own
version seem to me preferable, not only as being clearer but as giving greater
prominence to the persons of His people, and yet maintaining in the last clause
what the others spread over both clauses. His mercies then have no end; "they
are renewed every morning: great is thy faithfulness. Jehovah is my portion,
saith my soul; therefore will I hope in him." It is a goodly portion without
doubt, though unbelief thinks it nothing and pines after some one to show any
good after a tangible sort, the corn and wine and oil of this creation. But to
have Him who has all things and who is Himself infinitely more than all He has
is beyond comparison a better portion, as he must own who by grace believes it.
"Jehovah is good to them that wait for him, to the soul that seeketh
him. It is good that one should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of
Jehovah. It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth." Confident
expectation is thus cherished, while an illusive profession of waiting for Him
is detected and judged. For though a careless spirit might pretend to wait for
Him, could it be thought of such a one that he is a soul which seeks Him!
Activity is implied in this. The next clause asserts the value of patient
looking to Him. But it is not tolerable to infer that we err in looking for the
continual light of God's favour. For to this redemption entitles us; and Christ
is risen the spring and pattern of life in resurrection, on which the Father
ever looks with complacency. The last good here contemplated is that one bear
the yoke in his youth. Subjection to God's will and to the trials He sends is
ever blessed, and this from tender years.
"He sitteth alone and
keepeth silence, because he hath borne it upon him. He putteth his mouth in the
dust, if so be there may be hope. He giveth his cheek to him that smiteth him:
he is filled full with reproach." Thus God's ways are accepted in silence; and
humiliation is complete unto death in conscience, yet not without hope; and
man's contemptuous persecution and reproach are submitted to.
"For
Jehovah will not cast off for ever: but though he cause grief, yet will he have
compassion according to the multitude of his mercies. For he doth not afflict
willingly nor grieve the children of men." Hope is thus confirmed, without
which indeed there is no power of endurance any more than of comfort. His
judicial chastenings of Israel are measured and will have an end, as is equally
true of His righteous government of ourselves now.
The next triplet is
peculiar in its structure, each verse beginning with the infinitive, as is
fairly presented in the common Authorized Version. "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, to subvert a man in his cause Jehovah, approveth not." They are
acts of oppression, cruelty, and wrong: should the Lord not see this? Certainly
they have no sanction from Him.
The utter ignorance of the future on
man's part is next set before us. "Who is he that saith, and it cometh to pass,
when Jehovah commandeth it not? Out of the mouth of the most High proceedeth
not evil and good? Wherefore doth a living man complain, a man for the
punishment of his sins?" All is plainly declared by God. But complainers are
never satisfied nor otherwise right. It were better to complain of ourselves,
yea every man because of his sins.
Then in verses 40-42 self-judgment
is the word of exhortation. "Let us search and try our ways, and turn again to
Jehovah. Let us lift up our heart with our hands unto God in the heavens. We
have transgressed and have rebelled: thou hast not pardoned." It was just but
tremendous thus to find no sign of pardon in His ways.
LAMENTATIONS 3: 43-66
Next the prophet sets
forth without disguise or attenuation the ways of God's displeasure with His
people. This was true; and it was right both to feel and to own it, though the
owning it to such a God makes it far more painful. "Thou hast covered with
anger, and persecuted us; thou hast slain, thou hast not pitied. Thou hast
covered thyself with a cloud, that our prayer should not pass through. Thou
hast made us as the off-scouring and refuse in the midst of the people." (Ver.
43-45.) There are times when it does not become the saint to seek a deprecation
of a chastening - where, if prayer were ignorantly so made, it were a mercy
that it should not be heard, And so it was for Jerusalem then. The divine
sentence must take its course, however truly God would prove His care of the
godly under such sorrowful circumstances.
Then in verses 46-48 he
expresses his sense of the reproach heaped on them by their enemies; so that
between inward fear and outward desolation the wretchedness was unparalleled.
"All our enemies have opened their mouths against us. Fear and a snare is come
upon us, desolation and destruction. Mine eye runneth down with rivers of water
for the destruction of the daughter of my people." Only those could know it who
had been favoured of God as they had been; only one who knew Him as Jeremiah
could feel and tell it out as he does, It is but to be expected that some
should feel his lamentations to be excessive, as others do the glowing
anticipations of the prophets; faith would receive and appreciate both, without
criticizing either.
In the next stanza he repeats the words of the
last in order to bring Jehovah in. Faith does not hinder but increases grief
because of the deplorable state of that which is near to God, when its state is
so evil as to be the object of His judgments; yet it is assured that such grief
is not unavailing but that He will surely intervene. "Mine eye trickleth down,
and ceaseth not, without any intermission, till Jehovah look down, and behold
from heaven. Mine eye affecteth mine heart because of all the daughters of my
city." (Ver. 49-51.)
In verses 52-54 the prophet sets forth by various
figures the calamities which fall on the Jews from their enemies. "Mine enemies
chased me sore, like a bird, without cause. They have cut off my life in the
dungeon, and cast a stone upon me. Waters flowed over mine head; then I said, I
am cut off." They were no more than as a bird before skilful fowlers, as one
shut up in dungeons secured by a stone overhead, as one actually overwhelmed in
waters rolling over him.
But prayer may be and has been proved
effectual even in their distresses; and so the following verses show as with
Jeremiah. "I called upon Thy name, O Jehovah, out of the low dungeon. Thou hast
heard my voice: hide not thine ear at my breathing, at my cry. Thou drewest
near in the day that I called upon thee; thou saidst, Fear not." (Ver. 55-57.)
And here it may be as well to point out the danger of those who cite
Psalm 22: 1, as an ordinary saint's experience, despising or at least failing
to use the lesson scripture gives us, that those words suited Jesus on the
cross, and certainly no Christian since. He was thus forsaken then that we
might never be. It is not then true that the believer under any circumstance is
forsaken of God. Jesus only could say in the fulness of the truth, both "My
God" and "Why hast thou forsaken me?" And even He never did nor could, I
believe, have said these words save as atoning for sin. To suppose that,
because David wrote the words, he must have said them as his own experience, is
to make the Psalms of private interpretation, instead of recognizing the power
of the Spirit who inspired them. Psalm 16 might as well or better be David's
experience; yet it needs little discrimination to see that both in their full
import belong to Christ exclusively, but in wholly different circumstances.
"O Jehovah, thou hast pleaded the causes of my soul; thou hast
redeemed my life. O Jehovah, thou hast seen my wrong; judge thou my cause. Thou
hast seen all their vengeance and all their imaginations against me." (Ver. 58
60.) The prophet is confident that He will appear for vindication and
deliverance. The deep and deserved humiliation put on His people does not
weaken his assurance or stifle his cry. On the one hand, if He has seen the
wrong of the righteous, He would judge his cause; on the other, He had seen all
the foe's vengeance and imaginations against him.
This is repeated in
the next verses, in connection with what Jehovah had heard. "Thou hast heard
their reproach, O Jehovah, and all their imaginations against me: the lips of
those that rose up against me, and their device against me all the day. Behold
their sitting down, and their rising up; I am their music." (Ver. 61-63.) At
all times throughout their daily life his sorrow was their desired object and
liveliest pleasure.
In the closing strain the prophet prays according
to the righteous government of God for the earth. "Render unto them a
recompense, O Jehovah! according to the work of their hands. Give them sorrow
of heart, thy curse unto them. Persecute and destroy them in anger from under
the heavens of Jehovah." (Ver. 64-66.) It is no light thing in God's eye that
His enemies should find only a matter for mirth in the sufferings and sorrows
of those who were under His mighty hand. If the righteous are thus saved with
difficulty, what will it be when judgment falls on the ungodly? Even under the
gospel we may love and should rejoice in the prospect of the Lord's appearing,
though we know what fiery indignation must consume the adversaries. Here of
course the prayer is according to a Jewish measure, though none the less just.
We are called to higher and heavenly things.
LAMENTATIONS 4: 1-11
It is impossible to view
this sorrowful plaint of the prophet as merely historical. Nothing which had
ever occurred in the way of disaster or humiliation at all approached the
picture of desolation here described. The Spirit of prophecy is therefore
forecasting the horrible abyss that awaited the beloved but guilty people.
"How the gold is become dim! the most fine gold is changed! The sacred
stones are thrown down at the top of every street! The precious sons of Zion,
comparable to fine gold, how they are esteemed as earthen pitchers, the work of
the hands of the potter." Who could say that God screened or spared the
iniquity of Israel? The most exalted in rank, dignity, and office were those
who made their affliction most conspicuous. Could the most obdurate conscience
in Jerusalem doubt whose hand had inflicted such reverses, whatever the
instrument employed?
Hence the prophet, as he is growingly solemn in
his glances at the uttermost distress, so is he calm but the more complete in
setting it forth. It is as it were the evil all out, the leper white from head
to feet, whose very extremity assures of God's opportunity to interfere both
for the Jew and against the adversaries more especially such as ought to pity
Jerusalem in the day of her calamity.
That the Chaldean foe should be
bitter in reproach and cruel in punishment was not wonderful; but alas! the
chosen nation's cup was not full of the indignity they must drink till they
were the bitterest, out of sheer want and woe, against their own kin. "Even the
dragons [or jackals] draw out the breast, they suckle their young: the daughter
of my people [is] cruel like the ostriches in the wilderness." It is of the
last bird we read in Job 39: 14-17, "which leaveth her eggs in the earth, and
warmeth them in the dust, and forgetteth that the foot may crush them, or that
the wild beast way break them. She is hardened against her young ones, as
though they were not hers: her labour is in vain without fear; because God hath
deprived her of wisdom, neither hath he imparted to her understanding."
The sense seems to me certain, though one may not say indisputable,
seeing that so sensible a commentator as Calvin contrives to extract a
different meaning. He understands the clause to mean that the daughter of the
people had come to a savage or cruel one; and hence that whelps of serpents
were more kindly dealt with than the Jews. The people had to do with nothing
but cruelty, there being no one to succour them in their miseries. Thus the
force would be, not that the people are accused of cruelty in not nourishing
their children, but that they were given up to the most relentless of enemies.
But I see no force in his reasoning which appears to be founded on
unacquaintance with the Hebrew idiom, the masculine gender being used for
emphasis where formally we might have expected the feminine, as not
infrequently happens. Hence there is no real ground for going on with the
allusion to the ostrich, as if the prophet meant that the Jews were so
destitute of every help that they were banished into solitary places beyond the
sight of men.
The true meaning is far more expressive and sets forth
the awful state of the Jews, when not enemies only but those who should have
been their own tenderest protectors were destitute of feelings found in the
fiercest brutes, and only comparable for heartlessness to creatures of the most
exceptional hardness and folly. Such were the mothers of Salem in the
outpouring of Jeremiah's grief.
Accordingly in verse 1 he pursues the
case. "The tongue of the suckling cleaveth to its palate for thirst; infants
ask bread - none breaketh [it] for them." Such was the pitiable state of
children from the tenderest days upward. Was it any better with their elders?
"They that fed daintily perish in the streets; they who were brought up on
scarlet embrace dung hills." (Ver. 5.) Parents and other adults were famishing
and dying of hunger, and this gladly as it were on the dunghill instead of the
splendid couches on which they used to recline when weary of pleasure itself.
Next the prophet draws out the proof that the vengeance under which
the people were worse than that of Sodom, especially in this, that the
notorious city of the plain was overwhelmed in a sudden blow of destruction,
whereas that of Jerusalem was prolonged and most varied agony. "For the
punishment of the iniquity of the daughter of my people is greater than the
punishment of the sin of Sodom, that was overthrown as in a moment, and no
hands stayed on her." (Verse 6.) The "hands" of man added to the soreness of
the Jewish chastening: Sodom was dealt with by God without any human
intervention. Compare the feeling of David when he brought to the verge of ruin
the people whom God had entrusted him to feed. (2 Sam. 24: 13, 14.)
Nor does any consecration to God avail to shelter: so complete the ruin, so
unsparing the vengeance let loose on every class and every soul. "Her Nazarites
were brighter than snow, they were whiter than milk; they were more ruddy in
body than rubies (or coral), their cutting (shape) of sapphire. Their aspect is
darker than dusk, they are not known in the streets; their skin cleaveth to
their bones, it is dried up like a stick." Nothing availed in presence of these
searching desolating judgments. The blessing which was once so marked on those
separated was now utterly and manifestly fled, yea, wretchedness as under His
ban had taken its place. And so truly was it so, that he proceeds to show how
but a choice of ills awaited the Jew, a violent death or a life yet more
horrible. "Happier the slain with the sword than the slain with hunger; because
these pine away pierced through for the fruits of the field,"* i.e., for the
want of them. For it is very forced to take it as Calvin does, pierced through
by the fruits of the earth, as if the productions of the earth became swords.
So obliterated were all traces of compassion or even natural feeling
that, as we are next told, "the hands of pitiful women boiled their children;
they became their food in the destruction of the daughter of my people." (Ver.
10.) Nothing could account for such barbarity but that which he adds
immediately after (ver. 11): "Jehovah hath spent his fury; be hath poured out
his fierce anger, and hath kindled a fire in Zion which hath devoured her
foundations." What can be more thorough than to devour foundations? So it was
declared of God against Jerusalem for their heinous sins. Impossible to escape
His hand stretched out against His own: how deep their sin and vain to deny it!
LAMENTATIONS 4: 12-22
Verse
12 introduces a new topic, which gives remarkable vividness to the prophet's
picture of Jerusalem's desolation. It was not the king of Judah who was
surprised at the taking of his capital, but the kings of the earth who treated
it as incredible that they could force it; it was not the Jews merely who
fondly dreamt that their city was impregnable, but all the inhabitants of the
world gave up the hope as vain. "The kings of the earth, and all the
inhabitants of the world, would not have believed that the adversary and the
enemy should have entered into the gates of Jerusalem." (Ver. 12.)
This prepares the way for a fresh exposure of the real causes of Jerusalem's
ruin. Their sins were so glaring, where they where most odious and offensive,
that God must have denied Himself if He had not brought His people down to the
dust and scattered them to the ends of the earth. "Because of the sins of her
prophets, the iniquities of her priests that have shed the blood of the just in
the midst of her, they wandered blind in the streets, they were defiled with
blood, so that men could not touch their garments." (Ver. 13, 11.) The greater
the privilege in having such servants of Jehovah, the more distressing that
they should pollute His name and people.
There is no reason that I
know for Calvin's version of the last clause of verse 14: "They were defiled
with blood, because they could not but touch their garments." It seems indeed
an ungrounded departure from the common and correct translation, both in giving
the reason where it should be rather a statement of consequence, and in
needlessly supposing a particle which brings in a very different idea. Nor do I
see any just meaning in what results; for where would be the force of saying
that they were defiled with blood because they could not but touch their
garments? One could understand pollution from such contact, but hardly with
blood from it. As the clause stands in the common version, the import appears
to be that wandering blindly in the streets they defiled themselves in the
worst way possible, with blood, so that their very garments must pollute any
who might touch them. So universal was the defilement of the holy city that the
clothes of the inhabitants could not be touched without contamination to
others. There was as it were a fretting leprosy in the whole body politic.
"Depart, unclean, they called out to them; depart, depart, touch not. So they
flee away and also wander. They say among the nations, they shall dwell no more
[there]." Thus most graphically does the prophet show that the exile of the Jew
from the land was inevitable and of another character from an ordinary
deportation of a people through the cruelty of a conqueror or the jealousy of
an ambitious rival nation. It was in vain for the Jews to flatter themselves
that it was God employing them for a season as a missionary people: God will
send them forth; a few preparatorily to the kingdom, and when it is set up yet
more largely as a nation. But here it is a people once holy, now profane, not
honoured in a gracious service and a grave trust, but punished for their
dishonour of His law and sanctuary, and hence outcasts so ignominious that they
flee themselves like lepers, proclaiming their own defilement and misery. So
complete is the ruin that among the nations it is said, They shall no more
sojourn in their land and city.
But this is an error. Impossible that
God should be defeated by Satan, good by evil, in the long run. Appearances in
this world ever give such expectations; and unbelieving man is as ready to
credit them as to doubt God. But in the midst of judgment God remembers mercy;
and therefore the more unsparing He might be, the more assuredly He would turn
again with deliverance for His own name's sake. "The face [i.e. anger] of
Jehovah hath divided them, he will no more regard them: they respected not the
faces of the priests, they spared not the elders." (Ver. 16.) Undoubtedly their
overthrow was complete, and the contempt of the enemy so much the better
because their success was beyond their own hopes; for there had ever been a
lurking fear that God would avenge their wrongs and once more espouse the cause
of His people. But now that He gave them up to the will of His adversaries,
their pleasure, was to wound them to the quick in the persons of the most
honoured sons of Zion.
And what could the prophet say in extenuation?
He could only add here another heavy fault: "As yet for us [i.e., while we yet
remained], our eyes failed for our vain help; on our watchtowers we watched for
a nation that could not save us." (Ver. 17.) They turned with longing desires
after Egypt against the Chaldeans, instead of turning to God in repentance of
heart, spite of reiterated warning from His prophets not to trust in an arm of
flesh, least of all in that broken reed.
But no: sentence was passed
by God, incensed with the unwearied evils of His people; and the fiercest of
the heathen were let loose as executors of His wrath upon them. "They hunted
our steps, so that we could not walk in our streets; our end was near, our days
were fulfilled, for our end had come. Our persecutors are swifter than the
eagles of the heaven: they pursued us upon the mountains, they laid wait for us
in the wilderness." (Ver. 18, 19.) No mountain was steep, no desert lonely,
enough to protect the guilty fugitives. It was God who was punishing them by
means most just, yet to them most painful, for their revolt from Himself.
Alas! the remnant returned from Babylon have only added another and
incomparably worse sin in the rejection of the Messiah and the refusal of the
gospel, so that wrath is come upon them to the uttermost.
But even
then how lamentable the desolation! "The breath of our nostrils, the anointed
of Jehovah, was taken in their pits, of whom was said, Under his shadow we
shall live among the heathen." (Ver. 20.) It is of course Zedekiah who is
alluded to. They had hoped in his office, whatever his demerits personally,
forgetting that all the honour God bestowed on it was in view of Christ, who
alone shall bear the glory. But their hearts were in the present, not really
for Messiah; and they had only to lie down disappointed in sorrow.
Did
Edom then taunt their fallen brother in the day of his distress? Indeed they
did it with murderous treacherous hatred too. Hence the apostrophe of the
prophet. "Rejoice and be glad, O daughter of Edom, that dwellest in the land of
Uz; the cup also shall pass through unto thee: thou shalt be drunken, and shalt
make thyself naked. The punishment of thine iniquity is accomplished, O
daughter of Zion; he will no more carry thee away into captivity: he will visit
thine iniquity, O daughter of Edom; he will discover thy sins." (Ver. 21, 22.)
Did they say in the day of Jerusalem, Down with it, down with it to the very
foundation? They too must be brought to shame. If the Chaldean swept the holy
land, the daughter of Edom must await no less when her day came to be carried
away captive for her sins.
LAMENTATIONS 5
The last chapter differs from all before in that the alphabetic
series drops, though there are evidently twenty-two verses as in other cases,
with the modification we have seen in chapter 3 and its triplets. Internally
also the elegy approaches more to the character of a prayer as well as a
compressed summing up of the sorrows detailed before.
Hence, says the
prophet, "Remember, O Jehovah, what hath happened to us; behold, and look on
our reproach. Our inheritance is turned over to strangers, our houses to
aliens." (Ver. 1, 2.) It was not merely a human or natural feeling of their
loss and degradation. We must bear in mind that Israel had the land of their
possession from Jehovah. No doubt they expelled or subjugated the Canaanites.
According to men they held by right of conquest. But a deeper fact lay
underneath the successes of Joshua. Strength was given from God to put down the
most corrupt race then on the face of the earth who had intruded into a land
which He had from the first destined and given by promise to the fathers. For
when the most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when He separated
the sons of man, He set the bounds of the tribes according to the number of the
sons of Israel. Alas! they took the blessing not as promises by faith on the
ground of God's grace, but under the condition of their own fidelity to the law
- a condition necessarily fatal to the sinner. Hence the disasters, and finally
ruin, which Jeremiah here groans out to God. But the title, in which Moses
(Deut. 32: 8) had thus declared His purpose as to His people, is to be noted;
for it is His millennial name more specially than any other, and hence that by
which Melchizedek is characterized, who typifies the day of blessing after the
victory is won over the assailing and previously triumphant kings of the
Gentiles. Thus there is assured hope in the end for the scattered and peeled
people of God. Meanwhile how bitter the sight of their inheritance transferred
to the foreigners, their houses to strangers!
"We are orphans and
without a father, our mothers [are] as widows." (Ver. 3.) Even this did not
convey a vivid enough picture of their desolation. The common possession of
all, the freest uses of their land, belonged to hard masters. "Our water have
we drunk for money; our wood cometh for a price. On our necks [i.e. with a yoke
on them] are we persecuted; we toil and have no rest." (Ver. 4, 5.) What slaves
so abject? And this Jeremiah who did not go to Babylon stayed long enough to
see, and feel, and spread in sorrow before God. "To Egypt we gave the hand and
to Asshur to be satisfied with bread." (Ver. 6.) But neither could effectually
help, still less could either resist the king of Babylon; and this because of
Israel's sins which had so long called for an avenger. "Our fathers sinned [and
are] not; and we bear their iniquities." (Ver. 7.) This, we know, was become a
proverbial complaint about this time. (Ezek. 18.) But God tried them on their
own ground, with precisely the same result of ruin because of their evil. For
if fathers and children are alike sinful, the punishment is due whether for
those or for these: come it must if God judges. How much better then to repent
than to repine and murmur, only aggravating the evil and ensuring vengeance on
such accumulating rebellion against God!
"Slaves rule over us: no one
delivereth us out of their hand. With our lives* we bring in our bread because
of the sword of the wilderness. Our skins* glow like an oven because of the hot
blasts of famine. Women have they ravished in Zion, virgins in the cities of
Judah. Princes were hung up by their hand; the faces of elders they honoured
not. Young men they took to the mill, and boys fell under the wood. Aged men
have ceased from the gate, young men from their song. The joy of our heart hath
ceased; our dance is turned into mourning. The crown of our head is fallen: woe
now unto us, for we have sinned! Because of this our heart is faint; for these
our eyes are dim; because of the mount of Zion which is desolate, foxes walk
about on it." (Ver. 8-18.) Such is the dismal state so pathetically described
by a heart crushed under grief which could not exaggerate the prostration of
God's ancient people. Sex, age, condition, place - nothing spared, and nothing
sacred. Every word carries weight, not a particular which is not an intolerable
burden. How overwhelming for the heart which justly feels everything!
Thus mournfully had Jeremiah's warnings been executed. As Shiloh had been
profaned, so now the place of Jehovah's choice, the mount Zion that he loved.
The outward indefectibility of His dwelling on earth is but the fond dream of
the men whose unrighteousness, holding the truth in unrighteousness, will
surely bring on its judgment from the enemy under the righteous dealing of God.
What then is the resource of the faithful? Never the perpetuity of
what is visible, never the first man, but the Second. "Thou, O Jehovah,
remainest for ever; thy throne from generation to generation." (Ver. 19.) Hence
the righteous cry with the assurance that His ears are open, even though He
tarry and justly rebuke sin especially in those that bear His name, in whom He
will be sanctified by His judgments till they by grace sanctify Him in their
hearts.
God however will have His blows felt; and faith does feel and
gather blessing even in the grief, while it looks onward to the day. The
foolish pass on and are punished, harden themselves and perish in unbelief.
"Wherefore dost thou forget us for ever? - forsake us for a length of days?"
(Ver. 20.) But there is no despair, though the way was then dark before the
true light shone; for the heart pleads, "Turn thou us unto thee, O Jehovah, and
we shall be turned; renew our days as of old. For certainly thou hast utterly
rejected us, thou hast been exceedingly wroth with us." (Ver. 21, 22.) To own
our own sins and God's judgment is the constant effect of the Spirit's work in
the heart, the sure pledge of coming and better blessing in store for us from
the God of all grace.