Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Lamentations 3:1
I [am] the man [that] hath seen affliction by the rod of his wrath.
1. by the rod of his wrath ] For the figure cp. Job 9:34; Job 21:9; Psa 89:32; Isa 10:5. We should notice the absence of God’s name Lam 3:1-21, except in Lam 3:18, in contrast with its frequency afterwards, when a ground of hope is found in the Divine pity and purpose ( Lam 3:22-40), and in the prayer of Lam 3:55-66.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
That hath seen affliction – i. e. hath experienced, suffered it.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
CHAPTER III
The prophet, by enumerating his own severe trials, 1-20,
and showing his trust in God, 21,
encourages his people to the like resignation and trust in the
Divine and never-failing mercy, 22-27.
He vindicates the goodness of God in all his dispensations, and
the unreasonableness of murmuring under them, 28-39.
He recommends self-examination and repentance; and then, from
their experience of former deliverances from God, encourages
them to look for pardon for their sins, and retribution to
their enemies, 40-66.
NOTES ON CHAP. III
Verse 1. I am the man that hath seen affliction] Either the prophet speaks here of himself, or he is personating his miserable countrymen. This and other passages in this poem have been applied to Jesus Christ’s passion; but, in my opinion, without any foundation.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Some understand this of the prophet, some of the people, who were before set out under the notion of a woman, a daughter, here of a man.
Affliction must here be taken emphatically for eminent degrees of affliction, caused not merely from the power and malice of the enemy, but from the wrath of God, though brought upon them by the Chaldeans, who were to the two tribes the rod of Gods wrath, as the Assyrians are called with reference to the ten tribes, Isa 10:5.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
1-3. seen afflictionhis ownin the dungeon of Malchiah (Jer38:6); that of his countrymen also in the siege. Both were typesof that of Christ.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
I [am] the man [that] hath seen affliction,…. Had a much experience of it, especially ever since he had been a prophet; being reproached and ill used by his own people, and suffering with them in their calamities; particularly, as Jarchi observes, his affliction was greater than the other prophets, who indeed prophesied of the destruction of the city and temple, but did not see it; whereas he lived to see it: he was not indeed the only man that endured affliction, but he was remarkable for his afflictions; he had a large share of them, and was herein a type of Christ, who was a man of sorrows, and acquainted with griefs:
by the rod of his wrath; that is, by the rod of the wrath of God, for he is understood; it is a relative without an antecedent, as in So 1:1; unless the words are to be considered in connection La 2:22. The Targum is,
“by the rod of him that chastiseth in his anger;”
so Jarchi; but God’s chastisements of his own people are in love, though thought sometimes by them to be in wrath and hot displeasure; so the prophet imagined, but it was not so; perhaps some regard may be had to the instrument of Jerusalem’s destruction, the king of Babylon, called the rod of the Lord’s anger, Isa 10:5; all this was true of Christ, as the surety of his people, and as sustaining their persons, and standing in their room.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
Lamentation over grievous sufferings. The author of these sufferings is not, indeed, expressly named in the whole section, but it is unmistakeably signified that God is meant; moreover, at the end of Lam 3:18 the name is mentioned. The view thus given of the sufferings shows, not merely that he who utters the complaint perceives in these sufferings a chastisement by God, but also that this chastisement has become for him a soul-struggle, in which he may not take the name of God into his mouth; and only after he has given vent in lamentations to the deep sorrow of his soul, does his spirit get peace to mention the name of the Lord, and make complaint to Him of his need. Nothing certain can be inferred from the lamentations themselves regarding the person who makes complaint. It does not follow from Lam 3:1-3 that he was burdened with sorrows more than every one else; nor from Lam 3:14 that he was a personage well known to all the people, so that one could recognise the prophet in him. As little are they sufferings which Jeremiah has endured alone, and for his own sake, but sufferings such as many godly people of his time have undergone and struggled through. Against the Jeremianic authorship of the poem, therefore, no argument can be drawn from the fact that the personality of him who utters the complaint is concealed.
Lam 3:1 In the complaint, “I am the man that saw (i.e., lived to see) misery,” the misery is not specified; and we cannot, with Rosenmller, refer (without the article) to the misery announced by the prophet long before. “The rod of His wrath,” as in Pro 22:8, is the rod of God’s anger; cf. Job 21:9; Job 9:34; Isa 10:5, etc. The suffix in is not to be referred, with Aben Ezra, to the enemy.
Lam 3:2 “Me hath He (God) led and brought through darkness ( , local accus.), and not light,” is a combination like that in Job 12:25 and Amo 5:18. The path of Jeremiah’s life certainly lay through darkness, but was not wholly devoid of light, because God had promised him His protection for the discharge of his official functions. The complaint applies to all the godly, to whom, at the fall of Jerusalem, no light appeared to cheer the darkness of life’s pathway.
Lam 3:3-5 “Only upon (against) me does He repeatedly turn His hand.” is subordinated to the idea of in an adverbial sense; cf. Gesenius, 142, 3, b. “His hand” is the smiting hand of God. , “ only upon me,” expresses the feeling which makes him on whom grievous sufferings have fallen to regard himself as one smitten in a special manner by God. “The whole day,” i.e., continually; cf. Lam 1:13. – From Lam 3:4 onwards this divine chastisement is more minutely set forth under various figures, and first of all as a wasting away of the vital force. means to wear out by rubbing, cause to fall away, from , to be worn out, which is applied to clothes, and then transferred to bodies, Job 13:28; Psa 49:15. “Flesh and skin” are the exterior and soft constituents of the body, while the bones are the firmer parts. Skin, flesh, and bones together, make up the substance of the human body. Pro 5:11 forms the foundation of the first clause. “He hath broken my bones” is a reminiscence from the lamentation of Hezekiah in Isa 38:13; cf. Psa 51:10; Job 30:17. The meaning is thus excellently given by Pareau: indicantur animi, fortius irae divinae malorumque sensu conquassati, angores . – The figure in Lam 3:5, “He builds round about and encircles me,” is derived from the enclosing of a city by besieging it. is to be repeated after wayaqeep. The besieging forces, which encompass him so that he cannot go out and in, are . That the former of these two words cannot mean (lxx), is abundantly evident. or is a plant with a very bitter taste, hence a poisonous plant; see on Jer 8:14. As in that passage , so here the simple is an emblem of bitter suffering. The combination with , “toil,” is remarkable, as a case in which a figurative is joined with a literal expression; this, however, does not justify the change of into (Castell, Schleussner, etc.). The combination is to be explained on the ground that had become so common a symbol of bitter suffering, that the figure was quite lost sight of behind the thing signified.
Lam 3:6 Lam 3:6 is a verbatim reminiscence from Psa 143:3. is the darkness of the grave and of Sheol; cf. Psa 88:7. does not mean “the dead of antiquity” (Rosenmller, Maurer, Ewald, Thenius, etc.), but, as in Psa 143:3, those eternally dead, who lie in the long night of death, from which there is no return into this life. In opposition to the explanation dudum mortui , Gerlach fittingly remarks, that “it makes no difference whether they have been dead long ago or only recently, inasmuch as those dead and buried a short time ago lie in darkness equally with those who have long been dead;” while it avails nothing to point to Psa 88:5-7, as Ngelsbach does, since the special subject there treated of is not those who have long been dead.
Lam 3:7 God has hedged him round like a prisoner, cut off all communication from without, so that he cannot escape, and He has loaded him with heavy chains. This figure is based on Job 19:8 and Hos 2:8. , “He hath made an hedge round me,” does not suggest prison walls, but merely seclusion within a confined space, where he is deprived of free exit. “I cannot go out,” as in Psa 88:9. The seclusion is increased by fetters which are placed on the prisoner. , “brass,” for fetters, as in German and English, “irons,” for iron chains.
Lam 3:8 This distress presses upon him all the more heavily, because, in addition to this, the Lord does not listen to his prayer and cries, but has rather closed His ear; cf. Jer 7:16; Psa 18:42, etc. for (only written here with ), to stop the prayer; i.e., not to prevent the prayer from issuing out of the breast, to restrain supplication, but to prevent the prayer from reaching His ear; cf. Lam 3:44 and Pro 1:28.
Lam 3:9 In Lam 3:9, the idea of prevention from freedom of action is further carried out on a new side. “He hath walled in my paths with hewn stones.” = , 1 Kings 5:31, are hewn stones of considerable size, employed for making a very strong wall. The meaning is: He has raised up insurmountable obstacles in the pathway of my life. “My paths hath He turned,” i.e., rendered such that I cannot walk in them. is to turn, in the sense of destroying, as in Isa 24:1, not contortas fecit (Michaelis, Rosenmller, Kalkschmidt), nor per viam tortuosam ire cogor (Raschi); for the prophet does not mean to say (as Ngelsbach imagines), “that he has been compelled to walk in wrong and tortuous ways,” but he means that God has rendered it impossible for him to proceed further in his path; cf. Job 30:13. But we are not in this to think of the levelling of a raised road, as Thenius does; for does not mean a road formed by the deposition of rubbish, like a mound, but a footpath, formed by constant treading (Gerlach).
Lam 3:10-11 Not merely, however, has God cut off every way of escape for him who here utters the complaint, but He pursues him in every possible way, that He may utterly destroy him. On the figure of a bear lying in wait, cf. Hos 13:8; Amo 5:19. It is more usual to find enemies compared to lions in ambush; cf. Ps. 10:19; Psa 17:12. The last-named passage seems to have been present to the writer’s mind. The prophets frequently compare enemies to lions, e.g., Jer 5:6; Jer 4:7; Jer 49:19; Jer 50:44. – In Lam 3:11 the figure of the lion is discontinued; for cowreer cannot be said of a beast. The verb here is not to be derived from , to be refractory, but is the Pilel of , to go aside, deviate, make to draw back. To “make ways turn aside” may signify to make a person lose the right road, but not to drag back from the road (Thenius); it rather means to mislead, or even facere ut deficiant viae , to take away the road, so that one cannot escape. is . . in Hebrew; in Aramean it means to cut or tear in pieces: cf. [the Targum on] 1Sa 15:33, “Samuel Agag,” hewed him in pieces; and on Psa 7:3, where the word is used for the Heb. , to tear in pieces (of a lion); here it signifies to tear away (limbs from the body, boughs from trees). This meaning is required by the context; for the following expression, , does not lead us to think of tearing in pieces, lacerating, but discerpere , plucking or pulling to pieces. For , see on Lam 1:13, Lam 1:16.
Lam 3:12-13 “He hath bent His bow,” as in Lam 2:4. The second member, “He hath made me the mark for His arrows,” is taken almost verbatim from Job 16:12. The arrows are the ills and sorrows appointed by God; cf. Deu 32:23; Psa 38:3; Job 6:4.
Lam 3:14 “Abused in this way, he is the object of scoffing and mockery” (Gerlach). In the first clause, the complaint of Jeremiah in Jer 20:7 is reproduced. Rosenmller, Ewald, and Thenius are inclined to take as an abbreviated form of the plur. , presuming that the subject of the complaint is the people of Israel. But in none of the three passages in which Ewald ( Gram. 177, a), following the Masoretes, is ready to recognise such a plural-ending, does there seem any need or real foundation for the assumption. Besides this passage, the others are 2Sa 22:44 and Psa 144:2. In these last two cases gives a suitable enough meaning as a singular (see the expositions of these passages); and in this verse, as Gerlach has already remarked, against Rosenmller, neither the conjoined nor the plural suffix of requires us to take as a plural, the former objection being removed on a comparison of Gen 41:10, and the latter when we consider the possibility of a constructio ad sensum in the case of the collective . But the assumption that here the people are speaking, or that the poet (prophet) is complaining of the sufferings of the people in their name, is opposed by the fact that stands at the beginning of this lamentation, Lam 3:1. If, however, the prophet complained in the name of each individual among God’s people, he could not set up in opposition to them, because by that very expression the scoffing is limited to the great body of the people. The Chaldee, accordingly, is substantially correct in its paraphrase, omnibus protervis populi mei (following Dan 11:14). But that the mass of the people were not subdued by suffering, and that there was a great number of those who would not recognise the chastening hand of God in the fall of the kingdom, and who scoffed at the warnings of the prophets, is evinced, not merely by the history of the period immediately after the destruction of Jerusalem (Jer. 41ff.), and by the conduct of Ishmael and his followers (Jer 41:2.), and of the insolent men who marched to Egypt in spite of Jeremiah’s warning (Jer 43:2), but also by the spirit that prevailed among the exiles, and against which Ezekiel had to contend; cf. e.g., Eze 12:22. is a reminiscence from Job 30:9; cf. Psa 69:13.
Lam 3:15-16 “He fills me with bitternesses” is a reminiscence from Job 9:18, only being exchanged for . Of these two forms, the first occurs only in Job, l.c.; the latter denotes, in Exo 12:8 and Num 9:11, “bitter herbs,” but here “bitternesses.” The reality (viz., bitter sorrow) is what Jeremiah threatens the people with in Jer 9:14; Jer 23:15. The figure employed in Lam 3:16 is still stronger. “He made my teeth be ground down on gravel.” means a gravel stone, gravel, Pro 20:17. (which occurs only in Psa 119:20 as well as here, and is allied to , from which comes , something crushed, Lev 2:14, Lev 2:16) signifies to be ground down, and in Hiphil to grind down, not to cause to grind; hence cannot be taken as a second object, “He made my teeth grind gravel” (Ewald); but the words simply mean, “He ground my teeth on the gravel,” i.e., He made them grind away on the gravel. As regards the application of the words, we cannot follow the older expositors in thinking of bread mixed with stones, but must view the giving of stones for bread as referring to cruel treatment. The lxx have rendered by , the Vulgate by cibavit me cinere . This translation has not been lexically established, but is a mere conjecture from Psa 102:10. The . is allied with , subigere , and means in Rabbinic, deprimere ; cf. Buxtorf, Lex. Rabb. s.v. Similarly, the Chaldee had previously explained the words to mean humiliavit ( ) me in cinere ; and Raschi, inclinavit s. subegit me . Luther follows these in his rendering, “He rolls me in the ashes,” which is a figure signifying the deepest disgrace and humiliation, or a hyperbolical expression for sprinkling with ashes (Eze 27:30), as a token of descent into the depths of sorrow.
Lam 3:17-18 In Lam 3:17 and Lam 3:18 the speaker, in his lamentation, gives expression to that disposition of his heart which has been produced by the misery that has befallen him to so fearful an extent. He has quite given up hopes of attaining safety and prosperity, and his hope in the Lord is gone. In Lam 3:17 it is a question whether is second or third pers. of the imperf. Following the lxx, who give the rendering , Rosenmller, Gesenius, De Wette, and Ngelsbach consider transitive, as in Deu 2:7, and take as of the second pers.: “Thou didst reject my soul (me) from peace.” But to this view of the words there is the decided objection, that neither before nor after is there any direct address to Jahveh, and that the verbs which immediately follow stand in the first person, and succeed the first clause appropriately enough, provided we take as the subject to (third pers.). has both a transitive and an intransitive meaning in Kal; cf. Hos 8:3 (trans.) and Hos 8:5 (intrans.). Ngelsbach has no ground for casting doubt on the intrans. meaning in Hos 8:5. Moreover, the objection that the passage now before us is a quotation from Psa 88:15 (Ngelsbach) does not prove that is to be taken in the same sense here as in that passage: “O Jahveh, Thou despisest my soul.” By adding , Jeremiah has made an independent reproduction of that passage in the Psalms, if he had it before his mind. This addition does not permit of our attaching a transitive sense to , for the verb means to despise, not to reject; hence we cannot render the words, “Thou didst reject my soul from peace.” The meaning of the clause is not “my soul loathes prosperity,” as it is rendered by Thenius, who further gives the sense as follows: “I had such a thorough disgust for life, that I had no longer the least desire for prosperity.” As Gerlach has already remarked, this explanation neither harmonizes with the meaning of , not with the expression of doubt in the following verse, which implies a very lively “sense of the prosperous;” moreover, it has no good lexical basis. The fundamental meaning of is to stink, be rancid, from which comes the metaphorical one of instilling disgust, – not, feeling disgust (Hos 8:5), – and further, that of despising. The meaning “to instil disgust” does not suit this passage, but only that of being despised. “My soul is despised of prosperity,” i.e., so that it shares not in prosperity; with this accords the intransitive use of the Hiphil with , 2Ch 11:14. The Vulgate, which does not catch the idea of so exactly, renders the passage by expulsa est a pace anima mea . To this there are appropriately joined the words, “I have forgotten good” (good fortune), because I constantly experience nothing but misfortune; and not less appropriate is the expression of doubt, “I say (i.e., I think) my strength and my hope from Jahveh is gone (vanished),” i.e., my strength is worn out through suffering, and I have nothing more to hope for from Jahveh. Starting from the fundamental idea of stability, permanence, , according to the traditional explanation, means vigor, strength; then, by a metaphor, vis vitalis , Isa 63:3, Isa 63:6, – not trust (Rosenmller, Thenius, Ngelsbach, etc.), in support of which we are pointed to 1Sa 15:29, but without sufficient reason; see Delitzsch on Isaiah, l.c. The complaint here attains its deepest and worst. The complainant in his thoughts has gone far from God, and is on the very verge of despair. But here also begins the turning-point. When for the first time he utters the name of God in the expression “my hope from Jahveh,” he shows that Jahveh is to him also still the ground of hope and trust. Hence also he not merely complains, “my strength is gone,” etc., but introduces this thought with the words , “I said,” sc. in my heart, i.e., I thought, “my strength is gone, and my hope from Jahveh lost,” i.e., vanished. The mention of the name Jahveh, i.e., the Covenant-God, keeps him from sinking into despair, and urges him not to let go his trust on the Lord, so that he can now (in what follows) complain to the Lord of his state of distress, and beseech His help.
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
| The Prophet’s Personal Affliction. | B. C. 588. |
1 I am the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of his wrath. 2 He hath led me, and brought me into darkness, but not into light. 3 Surely against me is he turned; he turneth his hand against me all the day. 4 My flesh and my skin hath he made old; he hath broken my bones. 5 He hath builded against me, and compassed me with gall and travail. 6 He hath set me in dark places, as they that be dead of old. 7 He hath hedged me about, that I cannot get out: he hath made my chain heavy. 8 Also when I cry and shout, he shutteth out my prayer. 9 He hath inclosed my ways with hewn stone, he hath made my paths crooked. 10 He was unto me as a bear lying in wait, and as a lion in secret places. 11 He hath turned aside my ways, and pulled me in pieces: he hath made me desolate. 12 He hath bent his bow, and set me as a mark for the arrow. 13 He hath caused the arrows of his quiver to enter into my reins. 14 I was a derision to all my people; and their song all the day. 15 He hath filled me with bitterness, he hath made me drunken with wormwood. 16 He hath also broken my teeth with gravel stones, he hath covered me with ashes. 17 And thou hast removed my soul far off from peace: I forgat prosperity. 18 And I said, My strength and my hope is perished from the LORD: 19 Remembering mine affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the gall. 20 My soul hath them still in remembrance, and is humbled in me.
The title of the 102nd Psalm might very fitly be prefixed to this chapter–The prayer of the afflicted, when he is overwhelmed, and pours out his complaint before the Lord; for it is very feelingly and fluently that the complaint is here poured out. Let us observe the particulars of it. The prophet complains, 1. That God is angry. This gives both birth and bitterness to the affliction (v. 1): I am the man, the remarkable man, that has seen affliction, and has felt it sensibly, by the rod of his wrath. Note, God is sometimes angry with his own people; yet it is to be complained of, not as a sword to cut off, by only as a rod to correct; it is to them the rod of his wrath, a chastening which, though grievous for the present, will in the issue be advantageous. By this rod we must expect to see affliction, and, if we be made to see more than ordinary affliction by that rod, we must not quarrel, for we are sure that the anger is just and affliction mild and mixed with mercy. 2. That he is at a loss and altogether in the dark. Darkness is put for great trouble and perplexity, the want both of comfort and of direction; this was the case of the complainant (v. 2): “He has led me by his providence, and an unaccountable chain of events, into darkness and not into light, the darkness I feared and not into the light I hoped for.” And (v. 6), He has set me in dark places, dark as the grave, like those that are dead of old, that are quite forgotten, nobody knows who or what they were. Note, The Israel of God, though children of light, sometimes walk in darkness. 3. That God appears against him as an enemy, as a professed enemy. God had been for him, but no “Surely against me is he turned (v. 3), as far as I can discern; for his hand is turned against me all the day. I am chastened every morning,” Ps. lxxiii. 14. And, when God’s hand is continually turned against us, we are tempted to think that his heart is turned against us too. God had said once (Hos. v. 14), I will be as a lion to the house of Judah, and now he has made his word good (v. 10): “He was unto me as a bear lying in wait, surprising me with his judgments, and as a lion in secret places; so that which way soever I went I was in continual fear of being set upon and could never think myself safe.” Do men shoot at those thy are enemies to? He has bent his bow, the bow that was ordained against the church’s prosecutors, that is bent against her sons, v. 12. He has set me as a mark for his arrow, which he aims at, and will be sure to hit, and then the arrows of his quiver enter into my reins, give me a mortal wound, an inward wound, v. 13. Note, God has many arrows in his quiver, and they fly swiftly and pierce deeply. 4. That he is as one sorely afflicted both in body and mind. The Jewish state may now be fitly compared to a man wrinkled with age, for which there is no remedy (v. 4): “My flesh and my skin has he made old; they are wasted and withered, and I look like one that is ready to drop into the grave; nay, he has broken my bones, and so disabled me to help myself, v. 15. He has filled me with bitterness, a bitter sense of his calamities.” God has access to the spirit, and can so embitter that as thereby to embitter all the enjoyments; as, when the stomach is foul, whatever is eaten sours in it: “He has made me drunk with wormwood, so intoxicated me with the sense of my afflictions that I know not what to say or do. He has mingled gravel with my bread, so that my teeth are broken with it (v. 16) and what I eat is neither pleasant nor nourishing. He has covered me with ashes, as mourners used to be, or (as some read it) he has fed me with ashes. I have eaten ashes like bread,” Ps. cii. 9. 5. That he is not able to discern any way of escape or deliverance (v. 5): “He has built against me, as forts and batteries are built against a besieged city. Where there was a way open it is now quite made up: He has compassed me on ever side with gall and travel; I vex, and fret, and tire myself, to find a way of escape, but can find none, v. 7. He has hedged me about, that I cannot get out.” When Jerusalem was besieged it was said to be compassed in on every side, Luke xix. 43. “I am chained; and as some notorious malefactors are double-fettered, and loaded with irons, so he has made my chain heavy. He has also (v. 9) enclosed my ways with hewn stone, not only hedged up my way with thorns (Hos. ii. 6), but stopped it up with a stone wall, which cannot be broken through, so that my paths are made crooked; I traverse to and fro, to the right hand, to the left, to try to get forward, but am still turned back.” It is just with God to make those who walk in the crooked paths of sin, crossing God’s laws, walk in the crooked paths of affliction, crossing their designs and breaking their measures. So (v. 11), “He has turned aside my ways; he has blasted all my counsels, ruined my projects, so that I am necessitated to yield to my own ruin. He has pulled me in pieces; he has torn and is gone away (Hos. v. 14), and has made me desolate, has deprived me of all society and all comfort in my own soul.” 6. That God turns a deaf ear to his prayers (v. 8): “When I cry and shout, as one in earnest, as one that would make him hear, yet he shuts out my prayer and will not suffer it to have access to him.” God’s ear is wont to be open to the prayers of his people, and his door of mercy to those that knock at it; but now both are shut, even to one that cries and shouts. Thus sometimes God seems to be angry even against the prayers of his people (Ps. lxxx. 4), and their case is deplorable indeed when they are denied not only the benefit of an answer, but the comfort of acceptance. 7. That his neighbours make a laughing matter of his troubles (v. 14): I was a derision to all my people, to all the wicked among them, who made themselves an one another merry with the public judgments, and particularly the prophet Jeremiah’s griefs. I am their song, their neginath, or hand-instrument of music, their tabret (Job xvii. 6), that they play upon, as Nero on his harp when Rome was on fire. 8. That he was ready to despair of relief and deliverance: “Thou hast not only taken peace from me, but hast removed my soul far off from peace (v. 17), so that it is not only not within reach, but no within view. I forget prosperity; it is so long since I had it, and so unlikely that I should ever recover it, that I have lost the idea of it. I have been so inured to sorrow and servitude that I know not what joy and liberty mean. I have even given up all for gone, concluding, My strength and my hope have perished from the Lord (v. 18); I can no longer stay myself upon God as my support, for I do not find that he gives me encouragement to do so; nor can I look for his appearing in my behalf, so as to put an end to my troubles, for the case seems remediless, and even my God inexorable.” Without doubt it was his infirmity to say this (Ps. lxxvii. 10), for with God there is everlasting strength, and he is his people’s never-failing hope, whatever they may think. 9. That grief returned upon every remembrance of his troubles, and his reflections were as melancholy as his prospects, Lam 3:19; Lam 3:20. Did he endeavour as Job did (Job ix. 27), to forget his complaint? Alas! it was to no purpose; he remembers, upon all occasions, the affliction and the misery, the wormwood and the gall. Thus emphatically does he speak of his affliction, for thus did he think of it, thus heavily did it lie when he reviewed it! It was an affliction that was misery itself. My affliction and my transgression (so some read it), my trouble and my sin that brought it upon me; this was the wormwood and the gall in the affliction and the misery. It is sin that makes the cup of affliction a bitter cup. My soul has them still in remembrance. The captives in Babylon had all the miseries of the siege in their mind continually and the flames and ruins of Jerusalem still before their eyes, and wept when they remembered Zion; nay, they could never forget Jerusalem,Psa 137:1; Psa 137:5. My soul, having them in remembrance, is humbled in me, not only oppressed with a sense of the trouble, but in bitterness for sin. Note, It becomes us to have humble hearts under humbling providences, and to renew our penitent humiliations for sin upon every remembrance of our afflictions and miseries. Thus we may get good by former corrections and prevent further.
Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary
LAMENTATIONS – CHAPTER 3
THE GRIEF OF A TENDER-HEARTED PROPHET
Not only does this chapter reveal the personal grief of Jeremiah; he personifies the whole nation in its suffering and grief. Yet, in another sense, he may symbolize the “Suffering Servant” who ultimately comes to assume the weight, guilt, and penalty of the nation’s (and all human) sin – cleansing, redeeming and restoring them to a life of blessedness under His tender care.
Vs. 1-20: A CRY OF AFFLICTION
1. There seems no room for doubt that Jeremiah here identifies himself with the sin and suffering of his beloved people, against whom the Lord has repeatedly turned His hand in judgment, (vs. 1-3; Psa 38:1-2; Isa 5:25) – afflicting them with the rod of His wrath, (Psa 88:7; Psa 88:15-16; comp. Jer 15:17-18); so withdrawing the light of His course that they walk it darkness, (comp. Isaiah 59-9; Jer 4:23-26).
2. The sufferer sees himself surrounded by bitterness and distress (comp. Job 19:8: Psa 69:21; Jer 23:15; Deu 29:18); his body is aged beyond its years (comp. Psa 31:9-10; Psa 38:2-8; Psa 102:3-5), and his bones are crushed, (Psa 51:8; Isa 38:13); he is likened unto the sepulchres of the dead, (vs. 4-6; comp. Psa 88:4-6; Psa 143:3; Eze 37:11-14).
3. Imprisoned (comp. Job 3:23; Job 19:8), and bound with a heavy chain there seems no escape; when he cries for help, his prayer is shut out (comp. Job 30:20; Psa 22:1-2), and wherever he turns he finds himself walking a circular path – shut in by walls of hewn stone, (vs. 79; comp. Hos 2:6-7).
4. In verses 10-13 the prophet employs two daring figures to describe the judgment of God upon him.
a. First, God is likened unto crafty wild beasts (comp. Hos 13:7-8; Amo 5:18-19); for fear of them he has been driven away from the path of safety, torn to pieces (Hos 5:14; Hos 6:1; Job 16:9-10), and made utterly desolate, (vs. 10-11; Jer 15:3).
b. Then He Is likened unto a Hunter who bends His bow (Lam 2:4; Psa 7:12-13; Job 6:4; Job 7:20) and, with precision, speeds His arrows (“the children of His quiver”) into the very “reins” (“kidneys”, see Pro 23:16; Job 19:27; Psa 73:21) of His own servant, -(vs. 12-13; comp Job 16:12-17).
5. Made a laughingstock of His people, and the theme of their derisive song (comp. Psa 22:6-7; Psa 123:3-4; Jer 20:7-8; Job 12:4), Jeremiah complains that he has been given bitter wormwood to drink, (vs. 19; Jer 9:15; comp. Rth 1:20); though he has not practiced deceit (Pro 20:17), his teeth are so broken from gravel that he pictures himself cringing in the ashes of mourning and deep sorrow, (vs. 14-16; comp. Psa 3:7; Psa 58:6; Pro 20:17; Jer 6:26).
6. A stranger to joy, peace and prosperity, (vs. 17; comp. Isa
59:11; Jer 12:12); his strength utterly vanished; that which he expected from the Lord has proved to be but an illusive dream! (vs. 18; comp. Job 17:15-16; Eze 37:11).
7. Nevertheless, he calls upon the Lord to REMEMBER the affliction, bitterness and anguish that have befallen His servant, (vs. 5, 15; Jer 9:15; Heb 10:32-33); so oppressive is the burden that he himself cannot cast it off, (Job 21:6); thus is his soul “bowed down” within him, (vs.19-20; Psa 42:5-6; Psa 42:11; Psa 44:25).
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
The word, עברה obere, properly means assault, passing over limits; but what is peculiar to man is often in Scripture ascribed to God. Here also he changes the person, for he spoke before of the people under the person of a woman, as it is often done; but now the Prophet himself comes before us. At the same time there is no doubt but that by his own example he exhorted all others to lamentation, which was to be connected with true repentance. And this chapter, as we shall see, is full of rich instruction, for it contains remarkable sentiments which we shall consider in their proper places.
Some think that this Lamentation was written by Jeremiah when he was cast into prison; but this opinion seems not probable to me; and the contents of the chapter sufficiently shew that this ode was composed to set forth the common calamity of the whole people. Jeremiah, then, does not here plead his own private cause, but shews to his own nation what remedy there was for them in such a state of despair, even to have an immediate recourse to God, and on the one hand to consider their sins, and on the other to look to the mercy of God, so that they might entertain hope, and exercise themselves in prayer. All these things we shall see in their due order.
The Prophet then says that he was an afflicted man, or a man who saw affliction. This mode of speaking, we know, is common in Scripture — to see affliction — to see good and evil — to see life and death. He then says that he had experienced many afflictions, and not only so, but that he had been given up as it were to miseries, — how? by the rod of his fury. He does not mention the name of God, but Jeremiah speaks of him as of one well known, using only a pronoun. Now, then, at the very beginning, he acknowledges that whatever he suffered had been inflicted by God’s hand. And as all the godly ought to be convinced of this, that God is never angry without just reasons, there is included in the word wrath a brief confession, especially when it is added, by the rod, or staff. In short, the Prophet says that he was very miserable, and he also expresses the cause, for he had been severely chastised by an angry God.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
THE PROPHETS LAMENTATIONS
Lamentations 1-5
WE are quitting the Book of Jeremiah, but not the Prophet, and we are leaving the greater volume of Jeremiah, not because we have exhausted it nor because we have touched even its high points in passing. But having promised our readers forty volumes on the whole Bible, we are beginning to realize the extremely limited discussion we can give to the Books that remain, and yet stay within the number of volumes agreed upon with the publisher.
Jeremiah should have at least another volume similar in size to this, and LAMENTATIONS alone should claim five chapters instead of one.
However, we hope in this discussion to get before you the essential suggestions of this volume. It is correctly supposed to have come from the pen of the great Prophet. Modern criticism, to the contrary, will but poorly impress those students of Biblical history who know that in the septuagint version this volume was introduced in the following words:
And it came to pass that after Israel had been carried away captive Jeremiah sat weeping and lamented this lament of Jerusalem.
Three hundred years, then, before Christ, the scholars had no doubt whatever that these five chapters, constituting the volume of LAMENTATIONS, were from Jeremiah, and voiced his exceeding sorrow at the sight of his people conquered and carried away into captivity. The Prophet had lived to see his direst predictions fulfilled, and to deeply grieve the fact that his warnings to Judah and Israel had been disregarded and the day of judgment had come.
In order to present something like a birds eye view of the Book, we have elected to discuss it under four heads:
The Complete Subjugation, The Conquering Sin, The Consequent Sorrow, and, The Comforting Assurance.
THE COMPLETE SUBJUGATION
The Prophet views this subjugation as a true loyalist might be expected to see it. He looks upon it as it is related to Jerusalem, as it has affected the land of Judah, and as it has depressed the spirits of the people.
As it related to Jerusalem!
How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people! how is she become as a widow! she that was great among the nations, and princess among the provinces, how is she become tributary!
She weepeth sore in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks: among all her lovers she hath none to comfort her: all her friends have dealt treacherously with her, they are become her enemies (Lam 1:1-2).
The first thing that affects and profoundly moves Jeremiahs feelings is the city itself. He loved Jerusalem. Either a man is very unpatriotic or else the metropolis, in which he has elected to live, is very unattractive if he does not come to love it.
When one goes to London and listens to the roar of that great city and looks on its narrow crowded streets, endures its ever-repeated rains and its almost endless fogs, he may wonder that any one loves London; but speak a word against it to a Londoner and you will speedily learn that London holds a large place in his heart.
Think of New York or Chicago, over-grown, bestial, dirty; and yet practically all New Yorkers and most Chicagoans have an abiding affection for their city.
Jerusalem even in Christs day was far from a Minneapolis in beauty; but Christ loved it and wept over it.
A citizen who has no affection for the place of his residence is a poor patriot, and the citizen who is not grieved when his city is subjugated to the vicious, has no right to a residence in it, and even less to its protection of either his person or property.
As it affected the land!
Judah is gone into captivity because of affliction, and because of great servitude: she dwelleth among the heathen, she findeth no rest: all her persecutors overtook her between the straits (Lam 1:3).
This also is the voice of the patriot. His interest exceeds municipal limitations. They reach to the limits of the state. It is not enough to be a good Minneapolitan; it is absolutely essential to be a good Minnesotan, and a loyal American. We sing sometimes:
My country! tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty,
Of thee I sing:
Land where my fathers died!
Land of the Pilgrims pride!
From every mountain side
Let freedom ring!
If we are true patriots, we will find even more pleasure in the second verse:
My native country, thee,
Land of the noble free,
Thy name I love;
I love thy rocks and rills,
Thy woods and templed hills;
My heart with rapture thrills.
Like that above.
Jeremiah was equally concerned for the spirit of his people, and he wrote:
The ways of Zion do mourn, because none come to the solemn feasts: all her gates are desolate: Her priests sigh, her virgins are afflicted, and she is in bitterness. * *
Her beauty is departed: her princes are become like harts that find no pasture (Lam 1:4-6).
It is a pathetic picture. To this good hour, America has never learned the meaning of this Scripture. Our people have never been subjugated; in our wars we have never been defeated, much less carried away captive to slave in other lands; and these lamentations are but superficially understood of us.
When the Russian-Japanese war of some years since was on, the great Russian general Stoessel, seeing that their defeat was imminent, since the Japanese had already occupied Keekwan Mountain and Q. fort and heights south of the forts, wired to the Czar: I now bid you all good-by forever. Port Arthur is my grave! For days following he fought on against impossible odds. Says the correspondent of the Associated Press: The hospitals are now in the rake of the Japanese fire. The wounded who can leave, are doing so. They can be seen in the streets on heaps of debris, exposed to the bitterly cold weather, and some staggering back to the front defying the Japanese and desiring death. They know that the stock of ammunition is about out, and that they are in the relentless grasp of the enemy.
When General Stoessel ordered them to fight they answered, We cant fight: we have nothing left with which to fight. Our men cannot move. They sleep, standing. They can see nothing but bayonets at their breasts. Their morale is gone! They were doomed and they knew it.
When a day like that breaks over a people, hopelessness takes possession.
Thats what Jeremiah saw, and thats the ground of his grief, and this Book is the expression of it. But Jeremiah saw another thing, namely,
THE CONQUERING SIN
He knew why these disasters had come. For months and years he had predicted them. But like the warning of Lot to his children in Sodom, he had seemed to them as one that mocked, and as it was sin that necessitated that Sodomic flame, so sin had fruited again and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.
Judahs transgressions were a multitude.
For the Lord hath afflicted her for the multitude of Her transgressions (Lam 1:5).
Sin is like a pestiferous seed. It has great ability to multiply itself. Give Johnson grass a single start and it is with the greatest possible battle that you can keep it from taking the entire field. Let one seed from the Scotch thistle fall into good soil, and in a few years you will be fighting this enemy of fields on a thousand acres.
There is in Australia, a weed called the Australian weed, the seed of which, if sown in the water, multiplies with such rapidity that it soon chokes the flow of the stream itself.
Such a seed is sin! People of America are wondering about the increase of crime and are attempting to account for it in various and sundry ways, but there is nothing mysterious involved. Sin produces sin, and concerning its children, there is no practice of birth control, and its kind rapidly increases; so the life giving streams of decency are being choked by its fungus growth. The current of law is being turned out of its course and the fountain of righteousness itself is being clogged.
The character of sin also increases. Mild sins are somehow able to give birth to malignant ones. Jerusalem hath grievously sinned (Lam 1:8), was the lament of the Prophet. Thats always the result. A little sin to begin with; a grievous sin to end with.
A while ago a very popular modernist minister of New York told his shallow and admiring audience a very palatable thing, namely, Sin and hell have now been put in the museum! If so, then the museum itself is safe no longer.
It is quite interesting to go to the Smithsonian Institute and look on those magnificent specimens that Mr. Roosevelt and his sons and other Nimrods have brought to earth, and finally by the aid of the taxidermist placed in apparent life, but perfect death, before the public gaze.
If, however, the day should come when suddenly those great and ferocious beasts became as intensely alive and voraciously alive, as are sin and hell, I should want to be a long remove from the museum.
Down in Brazil there is a vine called the Matador or murderer. Its slender stem, very harmless looking at first, creeps along the ground until it strikes a tree, when it at once begins to climb the side of the same and throws out tendrils and takes deep hold, embracing the tree at a thousand points. Up and up it goes until the topmost limb, though it be a hundred feet away, is within its embrace and then a writer says, As if in triumph over its victim, this parasitic vine brakes into a huge beautiful blossom, as if joyfully conscious of victory, for that tree is doomed, and from its height above the same the vine scatters its seeds far and near to undertake, at another point, until whole forests are helpless victims within its deadly grasp. Such is the conquest of sin!
It leaves its victim destitute of sympathy. Listen to Jeremiah,
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? (Lam 1:12).
This is Judahs lament when once she realizes that she is doomed, and the neighbor nations do not care. It is hard for any man or woman to be treated with contempt, but it is hardest for that man who has held the high position, and for that woman who has known the greatest beauty and charms. Such had been Judahs experience. She had been princess among the nations, and now none so poor as to do her reverence.
We may imagine that Germany was embarrassed when the war ended in her defeat, but that embarrassment was as nothing to the embarrassment of this time, when the creditor nations look upon her with contempt because she does not, and perhaps cannot, meet her pledged obligations. Anything is easier to bear than public contempt.
As we saw in our last sermon, self respect is difficult when popular respect has departed. The stricken demands sympathy and to withhold it from them is to crush them!
Do you remember that, in the Marble Faun, Hawthorne presents poor Miriam conscious of her guilt, and yet craving the sympathetic and loving touch of a friend? In her loneliness and remorse, that was her mightiest need. In Hilda she hoped, but alas, Hilda, in her purity and Phariseeism, turned from Miriam as from some contaminating thing, and as she went, walked on Miriams heart, and, with a high and doubtless haughty look in her eyes, crushed the same.
If there is one lesson that we poor mortals need to learn above another, it is the God-like compassion for another, compassion for the poor, tenderness for the sick, and even sympathy for the sinful. The cruelest men in the world are the priests and levites that pass by on the other side; to whom the sight of suffering is naught, and in whom sense of brotherhood is not.
But I am dwelling too long on this first chapter, and consequently must only touch those that remain. We can do this by studying next the
CONSEQUENT SORROW
It was felt most deeply by the Prophet himself.
The third chapter is the expression of it. It is too lengthy for reading. I will leave it to you for your quiet hour.
It opens in such a way as to indicate the deeps of Jeremiahs soul.
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.
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 travail.
He hath set me in dark places, as they that be dead of old.
He hath hedged me about, that I cannot get out: he hath made my chain heavy.
Also when I cry and shout, he shutteth out my prayer.
He hath inclosed my ways with hewn stone, he hath made my paths crooked.
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 (Lam 3:1-11).
It is almost uniform for a sinful people to imagine that the Prophet among them is the one man exempt from sorrow. They think that because he warns, he has a conscious superiority, and that he never desires or deserves any sympathy. On the contrary, the Prophet suffers more than the people to whom God hath sent him. When Jesus Christ, the Prophet of Prophets, looked on Jerusalem He saw them happy when His heart was heavy; He saw them giddy with mirth when His heart was broken; He saw them given to frivolity while He was in the mountain in prayer, bedewing the sides of the same with His tears.
Their sin was not only His sorrow, it was also His suffering. Campbell Morgan, speaking of Jeremiah, says, It would have been easy for him to miss the persecution, and the prison. A modification of his message by accommodation to the desire of the princes, a softening of its terrible roughness, even a general denunciation of sin, a mild discourse upon their falsity of their hopes from Egypt, and the certainty of the victory of the Chaldeans; any of these changes would have saved him. Yet he never faltered, but steadily, in spite of the anger of men, spoke what God had given him to say. This brought upon him the suffering described.
This has been repeated in all ages. In the days of the Old Scotch Covenanters a wee laddie, one Jamie Douglas, for refusing to play traitor to the truth was one day held over a steep and rough precipice by a brutal soldier, and given the option of disloyalty or death. Looking up into the face of the man, with eyes bright with the light of true heroism, he said, Drop me down, then, if ye must; tis neer so deep as hell!
In this sorrow his people share.
It is of the Lords mercies that we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not (Lam 3:22).
He changes from the personal I to the plural we.
It is of the Lords mercy that we are not consumed.
Let us search and try our ways (Lam 3:40).
Let us lift up our heart with our hands unto God (Lam 3:41).
We have transgressed and have rebelled (Lam 3:42).
Thou hast made us as the off scouring and refuse in the midst of the people (Lam 3:45).
Here he identifies himself with the people, and the people with himself. No man liveth unto himself. We cant even suffer alone. Had it been so, Moses would have suffered even unto death for Israels redemption; had it been so, Jeremiah would gladly have gone to the cross for Judah. Only Christ is. the adequate substitute. He alone can stand in the sinners stead. On Him only can God lay the iniquity of us all.
This leads also to an additional thought.
This judgment was divinely visited.
The Lord hath accomplished His fury; He hath poured out His fierce anger, and hath kindled a fire in Zion, and it hath devoured the foundations thereof (Lam 4:11).
People wonder sometimes why God judges sin; why God executes wrath against iniquity; why God punishes the sinner. If it were not so, what a world! We are fast coming to the time when judgment against sin is no longer popular. The superficial thinking, the unbiblical thinking, the shallow reasonings of men are fast ruining and wrecking the world. We have almost as many parole boards as we have police courts, and most of them sit quite as constantly. Some of our Governors in recent years have granted more reprieves than all the judges of the state rendered convictions and what is the productthe land is filled with violence! Lawlessness is triumphant; banditry is the biggest of American businesses; murder is almost as common as birth. If the nations continue they will have to turn and learn again from God, re-establish law, and visit sin with judgment.
But from this unpalatable train of thought we turn to the prophetic conclusion:
THE COMFORTING ASSURANCE
God is always a compassionate God. Jeremiah didnt forget that fact, but in his sorrow he reverts to it and says,
It is of the Lords mercies that we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not.
The Lord is good unto them that wait for Him, to the soul that seeketh Him (Lam 3:22; Lam 3:25).
How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord,Is laid for your faith in His excellent Word;What more can He say than to you He hath saidTo you who for refuge to Jesus have fled.
Fear not, I am with thee; O be not dismayed!I am thy God, and will still give thee aid;Ill strengthen thee, help thee, and cause thee to stand, Upheld by My righteous, omnipotent hand.
When through the deep waters I call thee to go,The waters of sorrow shall not overflow;For I will be with thee, thy troubles to bless,And sanctify to thee thy deepest distress.
The soul that on Jesus hath leaned for repose I will not, I will not desert to his foes;That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake,Ill never, no never, no never forsake.
Gods ears are ever open to penitent cries. Jeremiah says,
I called upon Thy Name, O Lord, 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 (Lam 3:55-57).
How like God! This Old Testament truth is beautifully illustrated in the New Testament story of the publican who would not lift up so much as his eyes to Heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner, and he went down to his house justified.
With broken heart and contrite sigh,A trembling sinner, Lord, I cry;Thy pardoning grace is rich and free:O God be merciful to me.
I smite upon my troubled breast,With deep and conscious guilt oppressed;Christ and His Cross my only plea;O God, be merciful to me!
Far off I stand with tearful eyes,Nor dare uplift them to the skies;But Thou dost all my anguish see:O God, be merciful to me!
And when redeemed from sin and hell,With all the ransomed throng I dwell;My raptured song shall ever be,God hath been merciful to me.
Gods power is adequate for salvation.
Turn Thou us unto Thee, O Lord, and we shall be turned; renew our days as of old (Lam 5:21).
He alone is our hope.
Down in Illinois some years ago there was a cave-in in a coal mine. Sixty men were imprisoned hundreds of feet deep; but there was a small opening left between where they stood and the mouth of the cave. Fred Evans, a little boy, who was his mothers lone support, stood at the mouth of the cave when the foreman said, Fred, you are probably small enough to make it through this hole and carry down a pipe-line to the men and if you can do it you can save the lives of those men, for through it we can pump them fresh air and send them milk and water with which to sustain them. Will you try?
Without a moments hesitation, the little lad said, I will do my best, Sir!
Taking the line, he started on the long six hundred foot crawl. Again and again the line ceased to move, and the people without were filled with fear lest he had struck an impassable place or more probably still, coal or stone had fallen on him. But after a minute it would pick up again and by and by there came back through the tube the glad announcement that Fred had arrived.
For a whole week milk and water and air went through that tube to the men and Fred, and the whole sixty of them were eventually reached by the men and saved.
Gov. John R. Tanner, then Governor of Illinois, hearing of the deed of heroism sent for the lad. Youngster, said the Governor, the state of Illinois wants to recognize your pluck. What can we do for you? To which the lad finally answered after a bit of embarrassment, I would like to learn how to read.
The result was that he received a fine education free from the state of Illinois, and today he is a successful man.
Hear me! When we were caught, not in the accidental cave in a coal mine, but in the consequence of our own conduct; when the sentence of death against sin had been justly passed, Gods Son carried to us the life line. It cost Him, not the long anxious moments of Freds crawl, but rather the cruelties of the Cross, the shedding of the last drop of His precious Blood; but He failed not, and by that Blood we are redeemed.
Fuente: The Bible of the Expositor and the Evangelist by Riley
EXEGETICAL NOTES.
() Lam. 3:1. The author writes as if his own person was the object on which all the troubles had been inflicted. I am the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of his wrath. The repression of the name of the wielder of the rod is remarkable in view of its reiteration in Chapter 2. That here it was of set purpose seems proved by the persistent omission till Lam. 3:18, and is probably to be accounted for by the poets wish to indicate a sort of climax to a soul-struggle in which he could not take the name of Jehovah till all appeared lost. The rod signifies the means by which the affliction was produced, and is illustrated by the phrase, The Assyrian is the rod of mine anger (Isa. 10:5).
Lam. 3:2. The unnamed had accumulated affliction. He has led and caused me to walk in darkness and not in light, in perplexity as well as misery.
Lam. 3:3. And it was continuously carried on. Surely against me he turns his hand again and again all the day.
HOMILETICS
THE MAN OF AFFLICTION
(Lam. 3:1-3)
It is given to some men to catch and idealise the poetic instinct of a nation, to gather to a focus the ideas that have been dimly floating in the national mind, and, in words of burning passion, to express what all have been vaguely feeling, but none have been able hitherto to clothe in fitting speech. Another class of men represent the chivalric and military characteristics of a nation; another the judicial and ruling types. Jeremiah, distinguished as poet, prophet, and patriot, acquired immortal distinction in the annals of the Hebrew nation as the Man of Sorrow. In him the unparalleled sufferings of Judea seemed concentrated and individualised. His mournful dirge, sung in the minor key, gave voice, with lavish variety of imagery and felicity of phrase, to the overwhelming anguish of a distracted and ruined people. In this sublime elegy the poet-prophet touches the deepest woe of the sufferer in all ages, and provides it with adequate expression. Ewald justly remarks: Very probably the prophet draws much of what he says from his own experience, but the whole that he sets forth is more than his own personality; it is the type and pattern of every individual. And here, therefore, is the summit and turning-point of the whole Book of Lamentations. When the soul finds words in which to breathe out its sorrow, the oppression is already relieved. The hope of deliverance begins to dawn. Observe in this paragraph
I. That the man of affliction regards his sufferings as the result of the Divine anger. I am the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of His wrath (Lam. 3:1). It is the rod of His anger to chastise and correct, not the sword to utterly destroy. Even in the manifestation of His wrath God seeks to restore the sinner. The last stroke of His anger must be painful, alarming, crushing; the more so that it is felt to be so just. Behind the dark frown of the Almighty the light of mercy shines. He doth not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of men. The most hopeful feature of affliction is the moment when the sufferer recognises the hand of God in it; when he acknowledges it as the fruit of personal sin. Then it is that wrath gives place to mercy: punishment is disarmed by pardon. Sin is antagonism to God, and merits nothing but wrath. A genuine repentance is the open door of escape.
II. That the man of affliction is plunged into bewildering gloom. He hath led me and brought me into darkness, but not into light (Lam. 3:2). The darkness of suffering had a realistic meaning for Jeremiah, as he remembered the miseries of his incarceration in the dungeon (Jer. 37:15-16; Jer. 38:6; Jer. 38:10-13). But the language is a metaphorical description of afflictions in general, and is frequently employed in Scripture. In the most graphic and explicit terms the prophet foretold the experience he here describes (Jer. 13:15-16). Suffering is a dark enigma that baffles the wisest to solve. It is an aggravation of suffering when it has to be endured in darkness. We have heard of a strong man who had braved all kinds of dangers by land and sea, who was absolutely afraid of being alone in the dark: he had no fear of anything he could see, but was in mortal dread of the unseen. Darkness overawes the most volatile. A party of courtiers of Louis XV. were once gathered round Cassini to witness an eclipse from the terrace of the Paris observatory, and were laughing at the populace, whose cries were heard as the light began to fade, when, as the unnatural gloom came quickly on, silence fell on them too, the panic-terror striking through their laughter. There is nothing so distressing, so oppressive, so bewildering, so hopeless to contend with, as darkness.
III. That the man of affliction is smitten with repeated strokes of the Divine Hand. Surely against me is He turned; He turneth His hand against me all the day (Lam. 3:3). It is not one stroke of affliction, but many, and these frequently repeated. Trouble never comes alone; it is often attended with a crowd of ills. Before we can recover from one calamity we are stricken with another. It may be difficult to find the kind heart behind the strong hand; but it is there. Not one blow more than is necessary will be permitted to fall. The most prolonged and reiterated suffering will cease as soon as its purpose is answered. While it continues there should be prayerful searchings of heart.
LESSONS.
1. The fact of suffering testifies to the fact of sin.
2. Much of our suffering occasioned by witnessing the sufferings of others.
3. Suffering is a blessing when it brings us nearer to God.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
Lam. 3:1. Ecce homo. I. Consider the generality of affliction in the nature thereof. We met all generally in the first treason against ourselves in Adams rebellion; and we met all, too, in the second treasonthe treason against Jesus Christ. All our sins were upon His shoulders. All the evils and mischiefs of life come for the most part from thisthat we think to enjoy those things which God hath given us only to use. III. Consider affliction as bearing on man. I am the man that hath seen affliction. It was that man that is denoted and signified in that name that hath lain under affliction, and therefore no kind of man was likely to escape. Man carries the spawn and seed and eggs of affliction in his own flesh, and his own thoughts make haste to hatch them and bring them up. We make all our worms snakes, all our snakes vipers, all our vipers dragons by our murmuring. III. Consider affliction in its special application to one man. That man the prophet Jeremiah, one of the best of men. As he was submitted to these extraordinary afflictions, we see that no man is so necessary to God as that God cannot come to His ends without that man. God can lack and leave out any man in His service. The best of our wages is adversity, because that gives us a true fast, and a right value of our prosperity. Jeremy had it; the best of his rank must. No man is excused of subsequent afflictions by precedent, nor of falling into more by having borne some already. Our afflictions are as beggars; they tell others, and send more after them. When the hand of God was upon Jeremiah he declared Gods handwriting; not only to his own conscience by acknowledging that all these afflictions were for his own sins, but by acknowledging to the world that God had laid such and such afflictions upon him. St. Ambrose, in a journey from Milan to Rome, passed some time one evening with his host, who bragged he had never had any cross in his life. Ambrose at once removed to another house, protesting that either the man was very unthankful to God that would not take knowledge of His corrections, or that Gods measure was by this time full, and would surely, soundly, and suddenly pour down all together. IV. Consider the weight and vehemence of afflictions.
1. They are aggravated in that they are the Lords. They are inevitable; they cannot be avoided; they are just, and cannot be pleaded against; nor can we ease ourselves with any imagination of our innocency, as though they were undeserved.
2. They are in His rod. Our murmuring makes a rod a staff, and a staff a sword, and that which God presented for physic, poison.
3. They are inflicted by the rod of His wrath. Though there be properly no anger in God, yet God is said to do a thing in anger when He does it so as an angry man would do it. It is the highest extent of affliction that we take God to be angrier than He is. V. Consider the comforts we have in afflictions. I am the man that hath seen affliction.
1. That we see our afflictions, we understand, consider them. We see that affliction comes from God, and that it is sent that we may see and taste the goodness of God.
2. That, though afflicted, we still retain our manhood. God may mend thee in marring thee; He may build thee up in dejecting thee; He may infuse another manhood into thee, so that thou canst say, I am that Christian man; I am the man that cannot despair since Christ is the remedy.
3. That the rod of Gods wrath is also the rod of His comfort and strength (Mic. 7:14; Psa. 45:6; Psa. 23:4).Donne.
God and human suffering:
1. Often brought into strange relationship.
2. Suffering is a significant revelation of how God views human sin.
3. Suffering may draw man nearer to, or drive him farther from, God.
Lam. 3:2-3. The mystery of suffering. I. Impossible to solve by human speculations. Into darkness, but not into light. II. Increased by the difficulty of accounting for the part God takes in it. He hath led me and brought me into darkness, but not into light (Lam. 3:2). III. Intensified by the apparent persistency of the Divine severity. Surely against me is He turned; He turneth His hand against me all the day (Lam. 3:3).
ILLUSTRATIONS.Gods anger mans heaviest affliction. Gods anger exerts itself by embittering afflictions Every affliction is of itself a grievance, and a breach made upon our happiness; but there is sometimes a secret energy that so edges and quickens its afflictive operation that a blow levelled at the body shall enter into the very soul. What is the reason that David is sometimes so courageous that though he walks through the valley of the shadow of death, he fears no evil; and, at another time, God no sooner hides His face, but he is troubled? What is the cause that a man sometimes breaks through a greater calamity, and at another time the same person fails and desponds under a loss of the same nature? Whence can this be, but that God infuses some more grains of His wrath into the one than into the other?South.
The Divine anger. Anger is the whetstone of strength; in an equality of other terms, it will make a man prevail. Nothing is able to stand before a fire which is once enraged; so is it when the fire of the Lords revenge breaks forth upon the enemies of His Son. Add hereunto our disposition and preparedness for the wrath of God. Far easier is it to make a print in wax than in an adamant; to kindle a fire in dry stubble than in green wood. Wicked men have fitted themselves for wrath, and are procurers and artificers of their own destruction.Bishop Reynolds.
Darkness and danger. Sailing once along a coast where a friend had suffered shipwreck, the scene which recalled his danger filled us with no fear; because, while his ship, on the night she ran ashore, was cutting her way through the densest fog, we were ploughing the waters of a silver sea, where noble headlands, pillared cliffs, scattered islands, and surf-beaten reefs stood bathed in the brightest moonshine. There was no danger just because there was no darkness.Guthrie.
Darkness precedes light. The Lord ofttimes makes everything as dark as it can become, just that presently the light may shine more brilliantly. Ishmael faints before Hagar finds the well. Joseph is left in prison and oblivion before being raised to dignity. The Assyrian host surrounds Jerusalem ere they are smitten by the angel. Jeremiah sinks into the pit before he is placed on a rock. Violent persecution of the Christians preceded the triumph of the Gospel. Medival darkness preceded the dawn of the Reformation.Oosterzee.
Affliction ripens character. There is a certain mellowness which affliction sheds upon the character, a softening that it effects of all the rougher and more repulsive asperities of our nature, a delicacy of temperament into which it often melts and refines the most ungainly spirit. It is not the pride of aspiring talent that we carry to heaven with us; it is not the lustre of a superiority which dazzles and commands that we bear with us there. It is not the eminence of any public distinction or the fame of lofty and successful enterprise; and should these give undue confidence to man or throw an aspect of conscious and complacent energy over him, he wears not yet the complexion of Paradise; and should God select him as His own, He will send some special affliction that may chasten him out of all which is uncongenial with the place of blessedness, and at length reduce him to its unmingled love and its adoring humility. The character is purified by the simple process of passing through the fire. And when He has tried me, I shall come forth as gold.Chalmers.
Suffering a mystery. As the Egyptian who carried something wound up in his napkin answered him who demanded what it was, that he covered it to the end that no man should see it; so likewise must we learn that if there be anything hidden and laid up in the works and dealings of God, it is of purpose kept from us, to the end that we should not be too curious to inquire after it; that it is far better to be utterly ignorant herein than to have all the knowledge thereof that may be.Cawdray.
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
A SUFFERING PROPHET
Lam. 3:1-66
Again in chapter three the poet has adopted the acrostic style but in a slightly different form from that of the previous chapters. In chapters 1 and 2 only the first line of each stanza of three lines began with consecutive letters of the Hebrew alphabet. In chapter 3 all three lines of each stanza begin with the same Hebrew letter. Chapter 3 is actually the same length as chapters 1 and 2 though the verse numeration makes it appear longer. In the first two chapters three lines of Hebrew verse comprise one verse of English text; in chapter 3 each line of Hebrew text has been counted as one verse of English text. Thus the verses of chapter 3 are only one third as long as those of chapters 1 and 2 and there are three times as many of them.
The major exegetical problem arising in chapter 3 is whether this is an individual lament or whether the individual here is a personification of the nation. In favor of the individual interpretation of the chapter is the fact that the speaker is called a man (Lam. 3:1; Lam. 3:27; Lam. 3:35; Lam. 3:39). Furthermore, some of the verses of this chapter have an intensely personal tone (e.g., Lam. 3:14; Lam. 3:53). On the other hand the shift from I to we in Lam. 3:22; Lam. 3:40-47 would suggest that the first person singular is but a stylistic device which the poet has used to speak of the suffering of the entire nation. According to this view Jeremiah is here speaking as an individual member of the nation who has become identified with his people in the midst of their affliction. Their trouble, suffering and grief are his as well. In truth the chapter seems to contain both the individual I and the collective I and it is not always easy to ascertain which use of the first person is intended. In the comments which follow the shifts in the usage of the first person will be noted where possible.
In relationship to the suffering prophet one can see in this chapter (1) his cry of desperation (Lam. 3:1-18); (2) his confession of faith (Lam. 3:19-39); (3) his appeal for repentance (Lam. 3:40-47; (4) his personal suffering (Lam. 3:48-54); and (5) his prayer for deliverance (Lam. 3:61-66).
I. HIS CRY OF DESPERATION Lam. 3:1-18
TRANSLATION
(1) I am the man who has seen affliction by the rod of His wrath. (2) He has led and brought me into darkness and not light. (3) Surely against me He keeps on turning His hand all day long. (4) He has made my flesh and skin to waste away; He has broken my bones. (5) He has hemmed me in, surrounding me with bitterness and anguish. (6) He has made me dwell in dark places like those who are forever dead. (7) He has built a wall about me and I cannot get out. He has put heavy chains upon me. (8) Even when I keep on crying and calling for help He shuts out my prayer. (9) He has walled up my ways with hewn stone and my paths He has made crooked. (10) He is to me like a bear lying in wait, a lion in hiding. (11) He turned aside my ways, tore me in pieces and made me desolate. (12) He bent His bow and set me up as a target for His arrow. (13) He sent into my inward parts the shafts of His quiver. (14) I am an object of derision to all my people, their song all the day. (15) He has filled me to the brim with bitterness, caused me to drink wormwood. (16) He has ground my teeth with gravel and covered me over with ashes. (17) You have deprived my soul of peace; I have forgotten what prosperity is. (18) And I said, My strength has perished and my expectation from the LORD.
COMMENTS
The opening verse sets the theme for chapter 3. The poet identifies himself as an individual who has experienced in his own life what the nation has experienced. I am the man who has seen affliction is a general statement of his misery. By the rod of His wrath can refer only to God although God is not specifically mentioned until Lam. 3:18. Having identified himself and set forth the basic thesis of the chapter the prophet begins to develop his theme in a series of brilliant similes and metaphors.
1. He compares his experience to a terrifying walk in Stygian darkness (Lam. 3:2). Darkness is probably symbolic here of the inability to comprehend the judgment which God has brought upon the nation.
2. He compares his affliction to being smitten by the hand of God (Lam. 3:3). The Old Testament refers frequently to the hand of God (e.g., Isa. 5:25; Isa. 53:4). No matter what the poet tried to do it seemed that Gods hand was against him. Surely the prophet here is speaking as a representative of his people.
3. He compares his trouble to old age with its wrinkled skin and fragile bones (Lam. 3:4). Broken bones are one of the curses of old age for they do not heal easily.
4. He compares his trials to the siege of a city (Lam. 3:5). He has been surrounded and bombarded by bitterness and anguish. There is no escape. It is a struggle to merely survive.
5. He compares his situation to that of a lost dead man (Lam. 3:6). Such a one is described as dwelling in dark places (cf. the outer darkness of Mat. 25:30). Those that have been long dead (ASV) and the dead of old (KJV) is better rendered those who are forever or eternally dead. Following physical death the wicked experience the second death and hence can be spoken of as eternally dead. This verse is a duplicate of Psa. 143:3.
6. The figure changes in Lam. 3:7-8 to that of a prison. The poet feels hedged in by an insurmountable wall and weighted down by heavy and unbreakable chains of brass. Although he cries out in his anguish, there is no answer to his cry for God shuts out his prayers.
7. In a similar figure, the poet contends that a block has been thrown up across the path of his life (Lam. 3:9). God has placed a wall of carefully prepared and closely fitting hewn stone to blockade his way. Since the straight and easy road to his lifes goals was blocked he had to look for alternative routes. Walking the uncharted by-paths, the poet found himself in a maze of crooked paths most of which turned out to be blind alleys. He felt he was walking aimlessly without knowing his ultimate destiny.
8. In still another figure the poet depicts God as a lion or bear lying in wait for prey. Suddenly, unexpectedly the Lord has seized him and torn him to pieces. Amos (Lam. 5:19) and Hosea (Hos. 13:8) use this same figure.
9. The poet feels that he has become the target for the divine archer (Lam. 3:12-13). The arrow of tribulation and persecution has found its mark in the vital parts (lit., the kidneys) and thus the poet is doomed to suffer a slow and painful death. The arrow metaphor is not un common in the Old Testament (Psa. 38:1-2; Job. 6:4; Job. 16:12-14).
In Lam. 3:14 the prophet briefly drops the metaphors to complain as the representative of the believing individual that he is mocked and ridiculed by his people. All day long they made him the object of their taunt songs. Pleasure-mad throngs cannot stand those who rebuke and warn of judgment.
10. He compares his sorrow and anguish to food and drink in Lam. 3:15-16. His food was bitterness which he was forced to eat until he was filled to the brim (lit., sated, nauseated); his drink was wormwood, a bitter substance usually associated with gall. As a sign of his disgrace and mourning the poet has heaped ashes upon himself and in so doing has gotten grit into his mouth.
The prophet was overwhelmed by the catastrophic destruction of Jerusalem, In his great suffering he has lost all inner peace. He cannot even remember what it means to enjoy the blessings of life (Lam. 3:17). He is in the depths of despair. His strength, physical and spiritual, has perished. The confidence which he had previously placed in the Lord has been shaken and, in fact, has disappeared (Lam. 3:18). Yet all is not lost. The moment he announces that he has lost his confidence in the Lord he has done something very significant. He has pronounced the precious name of God. The mention of the name of the Lord in this moment of deepest misery and despair helps the poet to find solid footing for his faith. To this Lord he turns in confident prayer (Lam. 3:19-39).
Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series
(1) I am the man.The lamentation is one of more intense personality. For that very reason it has been the true inheritance of all mourners, however widely different in time, country, circumstance, whose sorrows have approximated to that intensity.
The rod of his wrath.The wrath is obviously that of Jehovah (comp. Pro. 22:8; Isa. 10:5), but there is something significant in the fact that He is not named.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
PERSONAL LAMENTATION FOR GRIEVOUS SUFFERINGS, Lam 3:1-18.
1. I am the man Jeremiah speaks out of his personal experience, and thus individualizes the common misery. What he writes was literally and exactly true of himself; but it was also a type and a specimen of what was true in the case of many others. But he writes not so much as the representative of the people in general as of those devout and faithful ones who continued to be held together by the bond of a common faith as well as by the pressure of a common misery.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
In His Initial Despair The Prophet Bewails His Own Sad Condition ( Lam 3:1-18 ).
In this section God is simply spoken of as ‘He’, the only mention of His Name being in Lam 3:18 where the prophet declares that his expectation from YHWH has perished. It describes what the prophet has had to endure in the most trying of circumstances, and the condition of soul that it has brought him to. He is almost in blank despair. But it is soul preparation which will then lead on to a recognition of God’s faithfulness. God does not leave him in the dark. He prays through it. It is a reminder that life is not necessarily easy for the people of God. Sometimes we have to walk in a difficult pathway, so that God can seem far away, and even hostile, because we do not understand His ways. But always beyond the darkness there will be light.
Lam 3:1-3
(Aleph) I am the man who has seen affliction (misery),
By the rod of his wrath.
(Aleph) He has led me and caused me to walk in darkness,
And not in light.
(Aleph) Surely against me he turns his hand again and again,
All the day.
The prophet is very much aware that his afflictions, which are many, and the misery that he is enduring, are due to the wrath of God, not necessarily directly directed against him, but against his people, although he is a participant in it. He is aware that he is not blameless.
In terms later taken up by Jesus, Who spoke of walking in darkness (Joh 8:12), and Who brought light into the darkness, the prophet recognises that God has led him in a dark path. Although he is conscious that God is leading him, He feels that he is walking in darkness and not in light. But unlike the Psalmist in Psalms 23 he does not have the confidence that YHWH is with him in a positive way in the valley of deep darkness. Rather all is black. He sees no glimmer of hope for the future. (But he still sees himself as led by God. In that no doubt was his comfort).
Indeed he feels that God is turning His hand against him ‘again and again’, from morning til night. He feels totally battered by God. Many who have truly known God have had similar experiences. Sometimes God can seem very far away. But elsewhere we learn that this can be due, not to God’s lack of love, but to God’s loving chastening (Pro 3:11-12).
For the phrase ‘the rod of His wrath’ compare Pro 22:8. It is the rod of God’s anger. See Job 9:34; Job 21:9; Isa 10:5.
Lam 3:4-6
(Beth) My flesh and my skin has he caused to waste,
He has broken my bones.
(Beth) He has built against me,
And encompassed me with gall and travail.
(Beth) He has made me dwell in dark places,
As those who are dead for ever.
‘Wasted.’ The verb indicates a wasting away. It means to wear out by rubbing, to cause to fall away, from the verb, to be worn out, which is applied to clothes (Job 13:28), and then transferred to bodies (Psa 49:14). For the breaking of the bones see Isa 38:13, where Hezekiah sees his bones as being broken by lions in a similar situation of despair. Compare Psa 51:8. The prophet feels that God has worn away his flesh and broken his bones, not literally but metaphorically. He feels absolutely ‘wasted’ both outwardly and inwardly. The whole of his being is affected.
‘He has built against me.’ Indeed he feels under siege, under attack and surrounded by bitterness (gall) and stress (travail). He feels almost as though he in the grave with the dead, with no hope for the future (with those who are dead for ever), so dark is his experience. The thought is taken from Psa 143:3. This could well have in mind Jeremiah’s experience in the pit, which must have seemed like a burial (Jer 38:6).
Lam 3:7-9
(Gimel) He has walled me about so that I cannot go forth,
He has made my chain heavy.
(Gimel) Yes, when I cry, and call for help,
He shuts out my prayer.
(Gimel) He has walled up my ways with hewn stone,
He has made my paths crooked.
He feels himself like a prisoner, walled in so that he cannot go out, and bowed down by a heavy chain, constricted in his movements. Life has hemmed him in. The thought here is metaphorical, but it would again fit in with Jeremiah’s literal experience.
Indeed things are so bad that he feels that God is shutting out his prayer. Compare Psa 18:41; Jer 7:16. The heavens appear deaf and unresponsive. Everywhere he turns he finds his way blocked as though by hewn stone (therefore huge blocks of stone), so that he has to make his way through as best he can along devious paths.
Lam 3:10-12
(Daleth) He is to me as a bear lying in wait,
As a lion in secret places.
(Daleth) He has turned aside my ways, and pulled me in pieces,
He has made me desolate.
(Daleth) He has bent his bow,
And set me as a mark for the arrow.
With regard to the figure of a bear lying in wait see Hos 13:8: Amo 5:19. For the lion in ambush see Psa 10:9; Psa 17:12. Psa 17:12 appears to have been directly in writer’s mind. Jeremiah often compared enemies to lions, e.g. Jer 4:7; Jer 5:6; Jer 49:19; Jer 50:44. The prophet feels as though YHWH is actually out to get him.
He feels that YHWH has prevented him from taking the way that he wanted, and has rather pulled him to pieces. This may well continue the thought of the lion and bear. He feels as though he has been savagely attacked, making him desolate. Indeed YHWH appears to him to have turned him into a target for His arrows, which are thudding into him one by one. Instead of the Hunter slaying the lion and the bear, He is slaying the prophet. The arrows represent the ills and sorrows appointed by God, compare Deu 32:23; Psa 38:2; Job 6:4.
Lam 3:13-15
(He) He has caused the shafts (literally ‘children’) of his quiver,
To enter into my reins.
(He) I am become a derision to all my people,
And their song all the day.
(He) He has filled me with bitternesses,
He has sated me with wormwood.
The thought of the arrows of YHWH continues. YHWH has caused them to enter into his ‘reins’ (kidneys, mind, a man’s inmost parts – see Jer 11:20), the means by which his life is guided and controlled. He has also made him into a laughingstock and object of derision, as men derisively sing about him all day. Jeremiah was a good illustration of this. And He has filled him full with bitternesses and wormwood (something poisonous and accursed).
Lam 3:16-18
(Waw) He has also broken my teeth with gravel,
He has covered me with ashes.
(Waw) And my soul has despised peace;
I forgot prosperity.
(Waw) And I said, ‘My strength is perished,
And my expectation from YHWH.’
Pro 20:17 makes clear that the idea here is that the grain of which the bread he is given is made is so coarse that it breaks his teeth. This could well describe prison bread. The main idea, however, is that he has been given something hard to accept and unpalatable. To be covered with ashes indicated a state of real unpleasantness. It is a figure signifying either the deepest disgrace and humiliation, or indicating mourning and deep sorrow (Eze 27:30).
Indeed things have become so bad for him that he has lost all peace, something that he lays at God’s door, whilst well-being, both spiritual and material, has become a thing of the past. He has thus lost all hope. His strength has gone and so has any expectation that he had from YHWH. He has reached the bottom of the barrel.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Lam 3:14 I was a derision to all my people; and their song all the day.
Lam 3:14
Lam 3:16 He hath also broken my teeth with gravel stones, he hath covered me with ashes.
Lam 3:16
Lam 3:20 My soul hath them still in remembrance, and is humbled in me.
Lam 3:20
Ecc 3:10, “I have seen the travail, which God hath given to the sons of men to be exercised in it.”
Lam 3:21 This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope.
Lam 3:21
Lam 3:22 It is of the LORD’S mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not.
Lam 3:22
Lam 3:22 Word Study on “consumed” Gesenius says the Hebrew word ( ) (H8552) means, “to be complete, to finish,” and “to be finished, ended,” and “to be consumed, spent.” Strong says it is a primitive root that means, “to be complete.”
Lam 3:22 Comments – There are two popular ways to translate Lam 3:22. The challenge in interpreting this verse is to reconcile the subject of the sentence ( ), which is a plural construct that normally requires a third person plural, with its verb ( ), which is the first person plural. The fact that credible scholarship exists with both views testifies to the fact that this is not an easy issue to resolve.
(1) The Argument for the Usage of Jeremiae Language – Some English versions translate the Hebrew verb ( ) as “we are not consumed” ( ASV, NIV), and place the noun into a prepositional phrase, “Because of the LORD’s great love” ( NIV).
ASV, “It is of Jehovah’s lovingkindnesses that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not.”
NIV, “Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail.”
KD and Naegelsbach prefer this translation. This argument says that the verb “consumed” ( ) is a third person plural, as in Jer 44:18, with the third person plural being ( ), as in Jer 44:12; Jer 44:27.
Jer 44:18, “But since we left off to burn incense to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto her, we have wanted all things, and have been consumed by the sword and by the famine.”
Jer 44:12, “And I will take the remnant of Judah, that have set their faces to go into the land of Egypt to sojourn there, and they shall all be consumed, and fall in the land of Egypt; they shall even be consumed by the sword and by the famine: they shall die, from the least even unto the greatest, by the sword and by the famine: and they shall be an execration, and an astonishment, and a curse, and a reproach.”
Jer 44:27, “Behold, I will watch over them for evil, and not for good: and all the men of Judah that are in the land of Egypt shall be consumed by the sword and by the famine, until there be an end of them.”
(2) The Argument for the Precedence of Ancient Versions Other English versions translate the phrase “the mercy of the Lord never ceases” ( ESV, NCV, NET, RSV), allowing the noun “hesed” ( ) to become the subject of the verb ( ).
ESV, “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end;”
NCV, “The Lord’s love never ends; his mercies never stop.”
NET, “The Lord’s loyal kindness never ceases; his compassions never end.”
RSV, “ The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases, his mercies never come to an end.”
Paul House offers the translation, “the Lord’s (acts of) covenant mercyindeedhave not ceased.” He argues that this translation agrees with the ancient Syriac and Aramaic versions. [12] John Gill says it agrees with the Talmud. [13] John Calvin argues that the context of the passage supports this view. [14] Marcus Dod notes that Lam 3:23-24 forms a better set of parallel verses in their structure and message with this translation, and he says the insertion of “we” is too abrupt for this passage. [15]
[12] Paul R. House, Lamentations, in Word Biblical Commentary, vol. 23B (Dallas, Texas: Word, Incorporated, 2002), in Libronix Digital Library System, v. 2.1c [CD-ROM] (Bellingham, WA: Libronix Corp., 2000-2004), comments on Lamentations 3:22.
[13] John Gill, Lamentations, in John Gill’s Expositor, in e-Sword, v. 7.7.7 [CD-ROM] (Franklin, Tennessee: e-Sword, 2000-2005), comments on Lamentations 3:22.
[14] John Calvin, Commentaries on the Book of the Prophet Jeremiah and the Lamentations, vol. 5, trans. John Owen (Edinburgh: The Calvin Translation Society, 1855), 407.
[15] Marcus Dods, Song of Solomon and Lamentations, in The Expositor’s Bible, in Ages Digital Library, v. 1.0 [CD-ROM] (Rio, WI: Ages Software, Inc., 2001), comments on Lamentations 3:22-24.
(3) Other Views – The LXX provides an additional translation:
Brenton, “ [It is] the mercies of the Lord, that he has not failed me, because his compassions are not exhausted.”
Lam 3:22 Comments – Psalms 136, where the greatest use of “ hesed ” ( ) (H2617) is found in the Scriptures, reveals that God does everything based upon His lovingkindness towards mankind and His creation.
Lam 3:23 They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.
Lam 3:23
Lam 3:24 The LORD is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in him.
Lam 3:24
Lam 3:25 The LORD is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him.
Lam 3:25
Lam 3:32-36 Comments Bitter Medicines Promote Health – Note these insightful words from Sadhu Sundar Singh.
“Pain and suffering are bitter as poison, but it is also well known that sometimes the antidote of a poison is itself a poison. And thus I sometimes employ pain and suffering as bitter medicines in order to promote the spiritual health and vigour of My believers. As soon as their perfect health is secured there will be an end of all suffering. Their pain is no pleasure to Me, for My one object is their eternal well-being (Lam. iii.31,33).” [16]
[16] Sadhu Sundar Singh, At the Master’s Feet, trans. Arthur Parker (London: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1922) [on-line]; accessed 26 October 2008; available from http://www.ccel.org/ccel/singh/feet.html; Internet, “V The Cross and the Mystery of Suffering,” section 1, part 3.
Lam 3:40 Let us search and try our ways, and turn again to the LORD.
Lam 3:40
Lam 3:40 “and try our ways” Comments – A person’s ways refer to a man’s lifestyle as opposed to individual acts of sin.
Lam 3:41 Let us lift up our heart with our hands unto God in the heavens.
Lam 3:42 Lam 3:42
Lam 3:42 “and have rebelled” Comments – If a man sees his transgression, and hardens his heart to turn back, he rebels against God. God does not pardon sin that is not repented of.
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
A Lament over Grievous Sufferings
v. 1. I am the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of His wrath, v. 2. He hath led me and brought me into darkness, v. 3. Surely against me is He turned, v. 4. My flesh and my skin hath He made old, v. 5. He hath builded against me, v. 6. He hath set me in dark places, v. 7. He hath hedged me about, v. 8. Also when I cry and shout, v. 9. He hath enclosed my ways with hewn stone, v. 10. He was unto me as a bear lying in wait, v. 11. He hath turned aside my ways, v. 12. He hath bent His bow, v. 13. He hath caused the arrows of His quiver, v. 14. I was a derision to all my people, v. 15. He hath filled me with bitterness, v. 16. He hath also broken my teeth with gravel-stones, v. 17. And Thou hast removed my soul far off from peace, v. 18. And I said, My strength and my hope is perished from the Lord.
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
EXPOSITION
Lam 3:1-21
MONOLOGUE SPOKEN BY AN INDIVIDUAL BELIEVER WHOSE FATE IS BOUND UP WITH THAT OF THE NATION; OR PERHAPS BY THE NATION PERSONIFIED (see Introduction).
Lam 3:1
Seen. “To see” in Hebrew often means “to experience;” e.g. Jer 5:12; Psa 16:10; Ecc 8:16. By the rod of his wrath. The idea is, not that Babylon has humbled Israel as Jehovah’s instrument, but that God himself has brought these troubles upon his people. “He had led me, hath hedged me about,” etc.
Lam 3:3
Is he turned; he turneth; rather, he turneth again and again.
Lam 3:4
Made old; more literally, worn away, as a garment (comp. Isa 50:9; Isa 51:6). Broken my bones. So Job complains, “His wrath teareth and persecuteth me” (Job 16:9); and, a still closer parallel, Hezekiah, “As a lion, so will he break all my bones” (Isa 38:13). Comp. Psa 51:8, “The bones which thou hast broken.”
Lam 3:5
He hath builded against me, and compassed me. A figure from the siege of a town. Gall. For the true meaning of the word, see on Jer 8:14. We need not trouble ourselves about it here, for the word is evidently used as a kind of “ideograph” for bitterness. Travel; literally, weariness.
Lam 3:6
This verse is verbally reproduced in Psa 143:3. In dark places; i.e. in Hades (comp. Psa 88:7). As they that be dead of old. A strange comparison; for what difference can it make whether the dead are men of the ancient or the modern world? The rendering, however, though perfectly admissible, is less suitable to the context than as they that are forever dead; who have entered “the land from which there is no return” (an Assyrian title of Hades). Comp. “the everlasting house,” i.e. the grave (Ecc 12:5), “the everlasting sleep” (Jer 51:39, Jer 51:57).
Lam 3:7-9
Three figures, interrupted by a literal statement of the ill success of prayer. A traveller who finds himself suddenly caged up by a high thorn hedge (comp. Job 3:23; Hos 2:6). A prisoner with a heavy chain. Again, a traveller suddenly shut up by solid stone walls (comp. Hos 2:8).
Lam 3:7
My chain; literally, my brass (comp. Jdg 16:21; 2Ki 25:7).
Lam 3:8
He shutteth out my prayer. There is a kind of barrier through which these futile prayers cannot penetrate (comp. on Lam 3:44).
Lam 3:9
Inclosed; or, walled up; the participle of this verb is rendered “masons” in the Authorized Version of 2Ki 12:12. Made my paths crooked; i.e. hath compelled me to walk in byways. But this hardly seems appropriate to the context. The semitas meas subvertit of the Vulgate is preferable. Render, therefore, turned my path upside down (comp. Isa 24:1). An analogous expression m Job 30:13 is rendered in the Authorized Version, “they mar my path.” Thenius thinks that the destruction of a raised causeway is the figure intended; but the word is quite correctly rendered “paths;” see the note of Delitzsch on Isa 59:8.
Lam 3:10
Was; rather, is. As a bear…as a lion. The comparison of the enemy to a lion is not uncommon; see e.g. Jer 4:7; Jer 5:6 (see note); Jer 49:19; Jer 1:1-19 :44; Psa 10:9; Psa 17:12; Job 10:16. The bear is only once mentioned in such a context (Hos 13:8). The two latter passages may possibly have been in the mind of the writer, as Jehovah is in both the subject of the comparison.
Lam 3:11
Hath turned aside my ways; i.e. hath caused me to go astray. Comp. Psa 146:9, “The way of the ungodly he maketh crooked,” i.e. he leadeth them to destruction. Made me desolate; or, made me stunned (“astonied,” Ezr 9:3 in our Bible). So Lam 1:13, Lam 1:16.
Lam 3:12
Set me as a mark. Precisely as Job complains of Jehovah, “He hath set me up for his mark” (Job 16:13).
Lam 3:13
This verse seems strangely shortit consists of only four words in the Hebrew, Probably something like “his weapons,” or “the weapons of death” (Psa 7:13), has fallen out. Restore them, and the verse becomes a two-membered one, like its companions. To enter into my reins. So Job (Job 16:12), “He cleaveth my reins asunder.” “Reins,” equivalent to “inward parts,” like “heart,” with which it is often combined; e.g. Jer 11:20; Jer 17:10; Jer 20:12.
Lam 3:14
A derision to all my people. If the text-reading is correct, these are the words of Jeremiah (or one like Jeremiah), describing the ill return accorded to his friendly admonitions. But the Massora mention Psa 144:2; 2Sa 22:44; Lam 3:14, as passages in which “my people” is used, whereas we should expect “peoples.” The Syriac Version of our passage actually translates “to all peoples,” and the prefixed “all” certainly favours the plural, and so, in a far higher degree, does the view we have been led to adopt of the speaker of this Lamentation (see Introduction). The correction (ammim for ammi) has been received by Archbishop Seeker, by Ewald, and by J. Olshausen. Their song. A reminiscence of Job 30:9.
Lam 3:15
With bitterness; literally, with bitternesses; i.e. bitter troubles. A reminiscence of Job 9:18. With wormwood; i.e. with a drink of wormwood (comp. Jer 9:15; Jer 23:15). We are slightly reminded of Psa 69:21, “They gave me gall for my meat.”
Lam 3:16
He hath also broken my teeth with gravel stones; i.e. he hath given me stones instead of bread (comp. Mat 7:9). The Jewish rabbi commonly called Rashi thinks that a historical fact is preserved in these words, and that the Jewish exiles were really obliged to eat bread mixed with grit, because they had to bake in pits dug in the ground. So too many later commentators, e.g. Grotius, who compares a passage of Seneca (‘De Benefic.,’ 2.7), “Beneficium superbe datum simile est pani lapidoso.” He hath covered me with ashes; rather, he hath pressed me down into ashes. A figurative expression for great humiliation. So in the Talmud the Jewish nation is described as “pressed down into ashes” (‘Bereshith Rabba,’ 75).
Lam 3:17
Thou hast removed my soul; rather, thou hast rejected my soul. The words look like a quotation from Psa 88:14 (Hebrew, 15), where they are undoubtedly an address to Jehovah. But there is another rendering, which grammatically is equally tenable, and which avoids the strangely abrupt address to God, viz. My soul is rejected (from peace).
Lam 3:19-21
These verses prepare the way for a brief interval of calmness and resignation.
Lam 3:19
Remembering; rather, remember. It is the language of prayer.
Lam 3:20
My soul, etc. This rendering is difficult. In the next verse we read, “This I recall to my mind, therefore I have hope,” which seems inconsistent with Lam 3:20 as given in the Authorized Version. An equally grammatical and still more obvious translation is, Thou (O God!) wilt surely remember, for my soul is bowed down within me. The latter part of the line is a reminiscence of Psa 42:5, at least, if the text be correct, for the closing words do not cohere well with the opening ones. The Peshito (Syriac) has, “Remember, and revive [literally, ’cause to return’] my soul within me,” which involves a slightly different reading of one word. But more tempting than any other view of the meaning is that of Bickell, though it involves a correction and an insertion, “My soul remembereth well and meditateth on thy faithfulness.”
Lam 3:21
This I recall to my mind, etc.; viz. that thou wilt remember me, or, thy faithfulness (Lam 3:20). Here again there appears to be a reminiscence of a passage in Psa 42:1-11. (Psa 42:4). Others suppose that “this” refers to the following verses; but in this case a new section would begin in the middle of a triad (the triad of verses beginning with zayin), which is certainly improbable.
Lam 3:22-36
RESIGNATION AND HOPEFULNESS.
Lam 3:22
It is of the Lord’s mercies, etc.; literally, The Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed. But the “we” is difficult, especially considering that in Lam 3:23 (which is clearly parallel) the subject of the sentence is, not “we,” but “the Lord’s mercies.” Hence it is probable that the reading of the Targum and the Peshite (adopted by Thenius, Ewald, and Bickell) is correct, “The Lord’s mercies, verily they cease not” (tammu for tamnu).
Lam 3:24
The Lord is my Portion. A reminiscence of Psa 16:5 (comp. Psa 73:26; Psa 119:57; Psa 142:5).
Lam 3:26
Should both hope and quietly wait; rather, should wait in silence. “Silence” is an expression of the psalmist’s (the Lamentations are psalms) for resignation to the will of God; comp. Psa 62:1 (Hebrew, 2); Psa 65:1 (Hebrew, 2), and see Authorized Version, margin. The thought of the verse is that of Psa 37:7.
Lam 3:27
In his youth. The thought of this verse reminds us of Psa 119:71. Youth is mentioned as the time when it is easier to adapt one’s self to circumstances, and when discipline is most readily accepted. The words do not prove that the writer is young, any more than Psa 119:9 and Psa 119:100 of Psa 119:1-176. prove that the psalmist was an aged man (against this view, see Psa 119:84-87). There is no occasion, therefore, for the textual alteration (for as such I cannot help regarding it), “from his youth,” found in some Hebrew manuscripts in Theodotion, in the Aldine edition of the Septuagint, and in the Vulgate. The reading was probably dictated by the unconscious endeavour to prop up the theory of Jeremiah’s authorship. The scribes and translators remembered, inopportunely, that the trials of Jeremiah began in early manhood.
Lam 3:28-30
He sitteth alone, etc.; rather, Let him sit alone let him keep silence (Lam 3:28) let him put (Lam 3:29) let him give let him be filled (Lam 3:30). The connection issince it is good for a man to be afflicted, let him sit still, when trouble is sent, and resign himself to bear it.
Lam 3:28
Because he hath borne it; rather, when he (viz. God) hath laid it.
Lam 3:29
He putteth his mouth, etc. An Oriental manner of expressing submission (comp. Mic 7:17; Psa 72:9).
Lam 3:30
He giveth his cheek. Notice the striking affinity (which is hardly accidental) to Job 16:10; Isa 1:6. The ideal of the righteous man, according to these kindred books, contains, as one of its most prominent features, the patient endurance of affliction; and so too does the same ideal, received and amplified by the greatest “Servant of Jehovah” (Mat 5:39).
Lam 3:31-33
Two grounds of comfort:
(1) the trouble is only for a time, and God will have compassion again (Lam 3:31, Lam 3:32); and
(2) God does not afflict in a malicious spirit (Lam 3:33).
Lam 3:33
Willingly; literally, from his heart.
Lam 3:34-39
These two triads form a transition to the renewed complaints and appeals for help in the following verses. The first triad is probably an amplification of the statement that “the Lord doth not afflict willingly.” This being the ease, the injustice which darkens human life cannot be approved by him.
Lam 3:34
To crush, etc. With manifest reference to the cruelties of the Babylonian conquerors of the Jews.
Lam 3:35
Before the face of the most High. In ancient phraseology, to bring a case before the judges was to bring it “unto the deity” (‘el ha-‘elohm), Exo 21:6; comp. Exo 22:8; or
. The text reading is, “the Lord seeth not.” This may be explained either as “the Lord regardeth not (such thing),” or as a question, “Doth not the Lord regard (this)?”
Lam 3:37-54
EXHORTATION TO REPENTANCE; RENDERED, LAMENTATION.
Lam 3:37, Lam 3:38
True, God does not desire our misfortunes. But equally true is it that they do not happen without his express permission (comp. Isa 45:7; Amo 3:6).
Lam 3:37
That saith, and it cometh to pass (comp. Psa 33:9; Gen 1:3, etc.).
Lam 3:39
Wherefore cloth a living man complain, etc.? The God of whom the poet speaks is the Searcher of hearts. Why, then, should a man complain when he knows that he deserves his punishment? The close of the verse should run, (Let) a man (rather sigh) over his sins.
Lam 3:40-51
Confession of sin, followed by sighs and groans.
Lam 3:40
Let us search. Our troubles being caused by our sins, let us search them out and correct them.
Lam 3:41
Our heart with our hands. It is to be sincere prayer; “spreading out the hands” is not enough by itself (Isa 1:25).
Lam 3:42
We thou. The pronouns are expressed in the Hebrew, and are meant to be spoken with emphasis.
Lam 3:43
Thou hast covered with anger. The clause seems imperfect; perhaps “thyself” has fallen out of the text (see next verse).
Lam 3:44
That our prayer should not pass through. So Isa 58:4, “Ye do not so fast at this time as to make your voice to be heard on high;” Psa 55:1, “Hide not. thyself from my supplication.”
Lam 3:46-48
Here occurs a break in the alphabetic order, as these three verses begin, not, as they should, with ayin, but with pe (see Introduction).
Lam 3:46
This verse is almost a verbal repetition of the first line of Lam 2:16.
Lam 3:47
Fear and a snare. An alliteration in the Hebrew, borrowed from Jer 48:43 (comp. Isa 24:17).
Lam 3:48
Runneth down, etc. (comp. Lam 1:16).
Lam 3:49
Trickleth down; rather, poureth down. Ceaseth not; literally, is not silent (comp. Jer 14:17).
Lam 3:51
Affecteth mine heart; rather, paineth me; literally, paineth my soul, the soul being mentioned as the centre of the feelings and emotions. The daughters of my city. The sad fate of the virgins of Jerusalem oppressed the spirit of the writer (pomp. Lam 1:4, Lam 1:18; Lam 2:10, Lam 2:21).
Lam 3:52-66
THE SPEAKER‘S SUFFERINGS; AN EARNESTLY BELIEVING PRAYER FOR DELIVERANCE. He speaks as a representative of the nation; if we should not rather say that the nation itself, personified, is the speaker. In the first triad some have supposed a reference to the persecution suffered by Jeremiah at the hands of his countrymen. The “dungeon,” or rather “pit,” will in this case be the “dungeon” (“pit”) mentioned in Jer 38:6. But a “pit” is a figure in the psalms for destruction (Psa 40:2; Psa 69:15), and there is nothing recorded in Jeremiah as to the” princes” haying cast stones at Jeremiah, or rolled a stone on to the top of the “pit.” Besides, the “pit” into which the prophet was cast had “no water, but mire.”
Lam 3:52
Mine enemies without cause. These words ought to be connected, as in the Hebrew.
Lam 3:54
I am cut off. Some words have to be supplied, and Psa 31:22 suggests which these are:”I am cut off from before thine eyes,” i.e. from the region on which the eyes of God rest.
Lam 3:55
I called. Bunsen renders, “Then I called.” But there is no connection indicated in the Hebrew between this and the preceding triad. Out of the low dungeon; literally, out of the pit of the lower parts (of the earth)a phrase borrowed from Psa 88:6 (Hebrew, 7). Sheol, or Hades, is signified.
Lam 3:56
At my breathing; rather, at my sighing; literally, at my relieving myself.
Lam 3:57
Thou drewest near, etc. The sacred poet reminds Jehovah of his former gracious interpositions.
Lam 3:58
Thou hast pleaded, etc. The reference is still to a former state of things which came to an end. It would make this plainer if we were to alter the rendering, Thou didst plead thou didst redeem. The speaker likens his case to that of a poor man who is opposed at law by a rich oppressor, and who, for want of an advocate, will, to all appearance, become his victim. Suddenly Jehovah appeared and supplied this want. Such are God’s “wonders of old time.”
Lam 3:59
Thou hast seen my wrong. Here the speaker returns to the present. This is clear from the following words: Judge thou my cause.
Lam 3:62
The lips stand here for “the fruit of the lips;” and the verb which governs the nouns is “thou hast heard,” in the preceding verse.
Lam 3:63
Their sitting down, and their rising up. Elsewhere the phrase is a comprehensive expression for all a man’s occupations (comp. Psa 139:2; Isa 37:28). I am their music; rather, their song; i.e. the subject of their taunting songs, p. in the parallel passage, Job 30:9; comas Psa 69:12 (Hebrew, 13).
Lam 3:64
Render unto them, etc. The sacred poet is familiar with the psalms; here we have a condensation of Psa 28:4. The tone of verses 64-66 reminds us of passages in the Book of Jeremiah (see Jer 18:23; Jer 20:12);
Lam 3:65
Sorrow of heart; rather, a covering of the heart; spiritual blindness, like the “veil upon the heart” in 2Co 3:15. Thy curse unto them. This should rather form a separate interjectional clause, “Thy curse upon them!”
HOMILETICS
Lam 3:1
The man that has seen affliction.
In the first and second chapters of Lamentations the desolation of the city of Jerusalem is described and deplored. The third chapter brings the picture to a focus by giving us the plaint of a single individualeither one typical or exceptionally distressed citizen, or the city regarded imaginatively as an afflicted man. Our sympathy is most moved by individual appeals. We are horrified by disasters that affect thousands; but we are more touched by the details of the suffering of one person. Nearness is requisite for sympathy, a nearness of view, at least, that enables us to see the humanity of the sufferer. Statistics of public distress do not so affect us as the sight of a few severe cases that are brought under our own eyes. We cannot pity “the masses;” we pity this man and that woman. Therefore we should bring ourselves into contact with the sufferers of our own neighbourhood, and not be content to follow only such promptings of benevolence as may arise from a distant survey of large fields of distress afforded by the formal reports of charitable institutions.
I. THE MAN THAT HAS SEEN AFFLICTION HAS CLAIMS UPON THE CONSIDERATION OF HIS FELLOW MEN. The sufferer of Jerusalem arrests our attention. He has a right to do so. Great distress is by itself sufficiently important to demand our notice. Moral merit will add to the force of the appeal of suffering. But even where the merit is lacking the suffering itself still has claims upon us. We must not roughly shake off the obligations of sympathy by the observation that the client is ill deserving. If the ill desert mean that the complaint is false and the distress a sham, of course it is to be visited with contempt or punishment. But suppose, with evil character, there is also real distress. In such a case we should take the distress into consideration. We may not help in the same way in which we would assist a deserving case, for perhaps similar assistance would be wasted, or abused, or in some way harmful. But we must remember that charity is not limited by merit. Like the mercy of God to sinners, it should flow out to those whose only claim upon it is their want and woe. Great sorrow does not atone for sin, especially where it leaves the sufferer impenitent. But it does call for pity. Whether she were innocent or guilty, we feel deep compassion for such a victim of torture as Beatrice Cenci, and even imagine a certain sacredness about her solitary pre-eminence of distress that hushes all harsh judgments.
II. THE MAN THAT HAS SEEN AFFLICTION IS IN DANGER OF REGARDING HIS SUFFERINGS AS WITHOUT PARALLEL. He feels his own trouble more acutely than that of his neighbour. Thus he comes to regard himself as exceptionally distressed. Pain is a good school in which to learn sympathy with others in similar trouble. But the sympathy is commonly attained after one’s own agony is lulled. It comes with the recollection of it called up by the sight of the present distress outside us. But while pain is being endured, especially if it is very acute, it tends to make the sufferer selfish for the time being. At least it wraps him up in himself and makes him magnify the severity of his own lot in comparison with that of other people. Let us be on our guard against this illusion, and the unkindness to others and murmuring and despair of ourselves which may come out of it.
III. THE MAN WHAT HAS SEEN AFFLICTION HAS GAINED KNOWLEDGE OF SOME OF THE DEEPEST FACTS OF LIFE. We do not know life till we have felt pain. Buddha, while kept from all suffering in his palace, was ignorant of the world and of man. Suffering opens the eyes to the facts of life and breaks up many idle dreams. Mere show and pretence are then felt to be vain and mocking. True friends are discriminated from idle acquaintances. The value of inward things is discovered.
III. THE MAN THAT HAS SEEN AFFLICTION HAS EXPERIENCED A VALUABLE DISCIPLINE. This is a useful “means of grace.” It may be sent to punish sin and check the thoughtless sinner on his road to ruin. Or it may be to remind the careless Christian of his declension. Or it may be like the pruning of the fruitful branch, a stimulus to make the fruitful Christian more fruitful. Various ends may be served. But in all cases the suffering is meant for our good. Nevertheless, the enjoyment of the advantage aimed at in the providential arrangement depends on the use we make of our trouble. We may receive this grace in vain. If we harden our heart under it it wilt be useless to us. Such a result is doubly disappointing, for we do not escape the pain, yet we come out of the ordeal worse instead of better.
V. THE MAN THAT HAS SEEN AFFLICTION IS A TYPE OF CHRIST. Like “the Servant of the Eternal,” in the latter part of “Isaiah,” this unnamed sufferer of the Lamentations seems to foreshadow the unique distress of the Man of sorrows. Christ claims our attention by his suffering, and the more that he suffered for us. He did not simply imagine his distresses to be great. He never posed for pity. But never was sorrow like unto his sorrow. He entered deeply into human experience by his sufferings, and became a High Priest touched with the feeling of our infirmities. Made perfect by suffering, he gives to us the fruits of his cross and passion as more than a “means of grace”as bread of life and blood of redemption.
Lam 3:6
Dark places.
The sufferer feels as though he were in the dark places of the dead, in the everlasting house which no tenant ever quits.
I. GOD SOMETIMES SETS HIS PEOPLE IN DARK PLACES. He permits the light of gladness to fade and the vision of truth to be dimmed and the conscious brightness of his presence to be lost, so that the soul is plunged in black depths of sorrow, doubt, and loneliness. Then the dismayed sufferer feels himself lost, well nigh dead. But he is not dead, nor even deserted by God. The very fact that he admits that God has set him in the dark place is a confession that the hand of God has been with him. Real death and utter desolation come from the desertion of the soul by God; the chastisement that he directly imposes evidences his presence and energy, and it therefore promises life.
II. WHILE IN THE LIGHT WE SHOULD BE PREPARED FOR THE DARK PLACES. We stumble in the dark, and are terrified and confounded by it because we do not know it and are not in readiness for it. Like Adam in ‘Paradise Lost,’ we are surprised at the first coming on of light. Because we expect the night and know that a new day will follow, we can contemplate the deepening gloom of evening without apprehension. The miner, prepared for the darkness of his subterranean work, takes his lamp with him. Every soul should be warned that it is likely some day to be plunged into spiritual darkness. If ready with the quiet inward light of faith, it need fear nothing. While we know that God’s rod and staff are with us to comfort us, we shall not be dismayed, though we shall be saddened, at being called to walk through the valley of the shadow of death.
III. SOULS LEARN LESSONS OF LIGHT IN DARK PLACES. In a deep well the stars above are visible at noon. In deep humiliation heavenly light is seen that is lost in the garish show of earthly commonplace life as well as on the heights of pride and presumption. Tears of sorrow purge the vision of the soul. It is well sometimes to be alone in the dark with God.
IV. THERE ARE DARK PLACES OF SPIRITUAL DEATH THAT ARE MORE AWFUL THAN THE ABODE OF DEPARTED SPIRITS. To the old world view Hades was a realm of sinless gloom. But worse than the darkness of this Hades is the darkness of those who are dead in trespasses and sin. Such men carry hell within their own breasts. The blackness of death broods over their spiritual natures so that they feel no qualms of conscience, and are awake to no voices from heaven. These darkest places are never assigned by God to his creatures. If they are found in them it is because they have plunged into them of their own will.
Lam 3:7
Hedged about.
I. EVERY LIFE IS SURROUNDED BY DIVINE LIMITATIONS. God hedges all of us about. Some have a narrow field of freedom and others a wider field. But every man’s field is fenced in. Within certain limits we have scope for choice and will. Yet even there choice is fettered. For there is not only the hedge that bounds our area of action, there is the chain on our own person that hampers our movements. Free will is far from being unlimited. Or, if the will is not fettered, the execution of it is. Note some of the things that make up the hedge which God plants about us.
1. Physical limitations, laws of nature, circumstances of our habitat, the measure of our bodily powers, special hindrances in external events that go contrary to us, and, with some, disease, maiming, or other bodily impediment beyond our control.
2. Mental limitations. There is a limit to what we can think of, imagine, or desire. Our knowledge is limitedboth knowledge of ends and knowledge of means. As one who finds himself a stranger in a mountainous country is shut in on all sides because he does not know the passes, our ignorance fetters us and hinders us.
3. Moral limitations. God fences our way with his Law. There are forbidden fields which no material barrier shuts off, yet from which the mysterious, invisible bands of righteousness keep us back. Thus the man whose conscience is awake is often aware of being hedged in and chained down where one of duller spirituality feels free to roam at pleasure.
II. THESE DIVINE LIMITATIONS ARE FELT TO BE IRKSOME TO US WHEN OUR WILL IS IN CONFLICT WITH GOD‘S WILL. All finite beings must be hedged about by their natural limits. Angels must be within the fence of their powers and rights. Pure spirits are under the law of God. But to these beings the barriers cannot be irksome. They must be submitted to with meek and happy complacency. No wistful gaze is cast beyond into forbidden pasture, no covetous greed vexes with longings for the unattainable or the unlawful But we men on earth live in frequent conflict with our heavenly Father’s will. We find the walls to be hard because we fling ourselves upon them. Our chain galls us because we chafe and fret ourselves against it. The wandering sheep is torn by the hedge, while the quiet obedient sheep knows nothing of the briars. When we rebel against God we murmur at his restraints. But, it is said, is not the bondage the same while unfelt? and is it not ignominious to be oblivious of it? and is there not something noble even in the hopeless blow that is struck for freedom? The most subtle spiritual temptation of the devil takes this form, and it tempts to the most wicked sinrebellion against God for its own sake. And it is a delusion. Far the highest obedience is not the restraint of our will before God’s will, but the assimilation of the two. We learn to will what God wills. Then we keep within the Divine limitations, and yet they cease to be limitations to us. They never touch us because we never attempt nor wish to cross them. Here lies the secret of peace as well as of holiness. So lofty an attainment can only be reached through that oneness with Christ of which he speaks when he prays that his disciples may be one with him and the Father, as he is one with the Father (Joh 17:21).
Lam 3:18
Strength and hope perished.
The sufferer feels as though his strength, or rather in the expressive word of the Hebrew, his “sap” were destroyed, and with it his hope also; and he attributes this desperate condition to the action of God, it is a condition Of spiritual affliction the pathology of which demands careful investigation, for it is symptomatic of a great progress of inward trouble.
I. IT INDICATES THAT EXTERNAL CALAMITIES HAVE PRODUCED INTERNAL DISTRESS. Every calamity assails the soul. But for a while the citadel holds out. Without the storm beats furiously. Within there is security and comparative quiet. At length, after a certain force of trouble is attained, in the addition of wave upon wave as in Job’s case, or in the access of some one overwhelming disaster as in the destruction of Jerusalem, the defence fails, the enemy enters the breach and pours in a flood over the whole fortress. Sorrow of heart follows the loss of wealth, sickness, or other trouble of outer life.
II. IT INDICATES THAT DISTRESS OF SOUL HAS UNDERMINED THE POWERS OF ENDURANCE. The “sap” perishes. For a time a man holds on bravely, though with bleeding heart. But as the grief grows upon him he “breaks down,” he can stand it no more, he says he cannot bear it. In one sense he can bear any amount of trouble .that does not extinguish his being. He can pass through it and come out of it alive. But to bear trouble in the sense of keeping self-possessed and calm under it may be no longer possible. Wild and reckless anguish takes the place of sober, patient grief. The strength of soul is gone. The spirit that bore up against the blast is broken. Crushed and helpless, the sufferer no longer contends with the storm, but permits himself to be tossed and dashed about at the sport of the cruel waves.
III. IT INDICATES THAT THE LOSS OF STRENGTH HAS ENDED IN DESPAIR. Hope also perishes. A broad line must be drawn between sorrow that is lightened by hope and sorrow without hope. So long as the faintest ray still glimmers on the horizon the prospect is not utterly dark. When hope goes the soul is indeed abandoned to its distresses. The most acute pain may be borne with comparative equanimity so long as there is prospect of relief. Directly that prospect is destroyed a much smaller trouble becomes unendurable. Now and again we meet with a soul that has lost hope; we see it drifting on the wild sea of life without rudder or compass, a mere wreck of its former self.
IV. IT IS AN INTERNAL CONDITION THAT SHOULD NOT BE TAKEN AS INDICATIVE OF CORRESPONDING EXTERNAL FACTS. We need not assume that there will be no bright future, for the desponding despair is not its own justification. It is often irrational, almost insane. It springs from grief that is big enough to hide all prospect of better things, but not to destroy the possibility of their ultimate arrival. The very fact that the trouble is traced to Godthis trouble is “from the Eternal”should help us to distrust the doleful prophecy of despair. If God our Father sends trouble, it is well. He will surely bring good out of it. For one who has faith in Christ no distress should be allowed to end in despair.
Lam 3:19-21
God taking notice of man’s affliction,
In his distress the sufferer cries to God, calling upon his great Helper to note his condition and remember it. Then he is calmed by prayer, and rests in the assurance that God does not forget his trouble. Recalling this thought to mind, he recovers hope.
I. THE CRY FOR GOD‘S NOTICE.
1. It is to God. At first it seems as though God bad forgotten his afflicted child. The vision of the Divine countenance is clouded; no voice speaks out of the darkness. Desolate and despairing, in misery that is bitter as wormwood and gall, the troubled soul seems to be deserted of God in the hour of greatest need. Then the sufferer cries out to God. Here is instinctive wisdom. We may or we may not be observed by our fellow men, and though human sympathy is a consolation, and indifference an additional bitterness, still in the heaviest trouble man can do little. It is not his notice that we should be most anxious to attract. The clamour of the afflicted for pity is an indication of weakness. But we do need God’s sympathy; this is true healing balm. To him let the cry of trouble ascend.
2. It is for God’s notice. It is not for relief, but for remembrance by God. There is good reason to trust that the remembrance will result in the relief. Nevertheless, the first and chief necessity is that God would take notice of us in trouble. If he do so we can leave the rest to him. It would be well if our prayers implied more simple reliance on the goodness of God, without perfect definitions of what we desire him to do for us.
II. THE ASSURANCE OF GOD‘S NOTICE. No sooner is the cry out of his lips than the sufferer comforts himself with the assurance that God does remember his affliction. Thus speedily is the prayer answered, even in the very act of uttering it. Nevertheless, it is not to be thought that God did not remember the affliction till he had been implored to do so. We should rather understand that it was always under the pitying eye of God, only the Divine compassionate recognition of it was not discovered until prayed for. Thus we often pray to God to do for us what he is already doing, and receive an answer to our prayers in the opening of our eyes to see the Divine action that has been hitherto unobserved. We pray that God will he merciful to us. He answers our prayer, not by becoming merciful, but by showing us that he is and has been merciful all along. This revelation comes to us in two ways.
1. We are able to believe more in the character of God, in his love and mercy. Then we can apply this faith to our present circumstances, and infer with confidence that such a God must be remembering us even when we see no proof of his notice, as a child when lost at first despairs, but, after reflecting on the love of his father and mother, comforts himself with the assurance that they will surely never desert him.
2. We are able to see indications of God’s notice. Sometimes we can-see how God is working for our deliverance when we shift our standpoint and regard our life from the footstool of prayer.
III. THE HOPE THAT SPRINGS FROM GOD‘S NOTICE. This is enough. God observes us. Still the trouble is great and bitter, But we know that he will not. permit us to perish. As the shipwrecked crew wave garments and make frantic efforts to attract the attention of a passing vessel, and recover hope directly they see indications that they are discovered, so troubled souls should lose all despair as soon as they learn that they are seen by God. It may still be impossible to see how God will save. But we can trust that to .him. Now, that we may enjoy this hope, it is necessary for us to call to mind the fact that God is remembering our affliction. Much depends on the aspect of affairs on which we dwell. If we turn to the wormwood and gall our lot will seem to be hitter without mitigation. We must voluntarily direct our thoughts away to the unseen remembrance of God, that we may receive the comfort of hope.
Lam 3:22, Lam 3:23
The unceasing mercies of God.
It would seem, according to the best authorities, that we ought to read the first of these two verses thus: “The Lord’s mercies, verily they cease not, surely his compassions fail not.” Thus we are assured of the enduring character of God’s mercies. How striking is this assurance, coming where it does after monstrous dirges of despair! In the Lamentations we meet with one of the richest confessions of faith in the goodness of God. The black clouds are not universal; even here there is a break, and the brightest sunlight streams through, all the more cheering for the darkness that precedes it. This is a remarkable testimony to the breadth and force of Divine grace. No scene is so terrible as absolutely to exclude all vision of it. Its penetrating rays find their way through chinks and crannies of the deepest dungeon. Were our eyes but open to see it, every one of us would have to confess to indications of its presence. Surely it is a great consolation for the desponding that even the exceptional sufferer of the Lamentations sees the unceasing mercies of God!
I. GOD‘S MERCIES NEVER CEASE.
1. We have no claim upon their continuance. Mercies are to the undeserving. It is much that such as we receive any. We could have no fight to complain if they all ceased. The least of them is beyond our merit.
2. We have dose much to provoke the cessation of them.
(1) By ungratefully accepting them;
(2) by complainingly ignoring them;
(3) by sinfully abusing them.
3. They sometimes appear to cease. They are not always equally risible. But as the moon which seems to wax and wane never changes in itself, the grace which appears to us to fluctuate, and even at times to be extinguished, is never lessened, much less is it destroyed.
4. They change their form. The morning light varies from the evening light. Yet both come from the same sun. God’s mercy is sometimes cheery, at other times it seems to frown upon us. But the wrath is mercy in disguise; and not only so, but under the circumstances that make it necessary it is more merciful than gentleness would be. There may be more mercy in the surgeon’s knife than in the bed of down.
II. GOD‘S MERCIES ARE CONSTANTLY RENEWED. The same mercies will not last forever. They are gifts and acts for a definite time. What suits one age does not agree with another. God adapts his grace to the immediate needs of the hour. His mercies are not statuesque and immobile. They ate living and suitable to need. They are never anachronous. They are never stale. God gives to each of us new mercies. He is living and acting in our midst every day and at each immediate moment. We read of God’s mercies in writings of David and St. John. But we have not to exhume the antique mercies that were bestowed on these men of the olden times. Our own mercies are fresh today. As God keeps the old world green by renewing it every spring, so he refreshes and invigorates his people by springtimes of grace. Moreover, it is well to see how he does this daily, and to wake in the morning with a joyous thankfulness in prospect of the entirely new mercies of the new day.
III. THE CEASELESSNESS OF GOD‘S MERCY IS A PROOF OF HIS FAITHFULNESS.
1. It is the fulfilment o/his promise that he will never leave nor forsake his people.
2. It is also a sign that he is still acting according to his ancient word. For the mercy, being not only continued, but also renewed, shows us that God is fulfilling his promise in the immediate present. The friend who builds us a house may be considered to be faithful to his promise to shelter us as long as the house stands. But he who promises daily bread gives an additional proof of faithfulness by visiting us every day. The manna showed that God was daily present to fulfil his purposes of grace. Daily mercies am recurrent reminders of the faithfulness of God.
Lam 3:24
The secret of hope.
The reader of the psalms is familiar with the utterance, “The Lord is my Portion.” The characteristic peculiarity of the adoption of this confession of faith by the sufferer of the Lamentations is his taking it as a ground of hope. The present is so dark that he can have little joy even in God. Earthly things are so unpropitious that he can hope little from them. But with God for his Portion he can look forward from the troubles of the present and the threatenings of earthly calamities to an unearthly joy in the future. Let us endeavour to see how to haw God for our Portion is the secret of hope.
I. GOD IS THE BEST OBJECT OF SORE.
1. Consider how God can be an Object of hope. We hope in God when we hope to enjoy, his presence, to bask in the sunshine of his love, to enter into the life of communion with him. To know God is satisfaction to the intellect. To have fellowship with God through love is to have rest and joy in the heart. To be reconciled to God is to have the trouble of conscience allayed. All the deepest longings of the soul find their end and satisfaction in God.
2. Consider how God is the one perfect Object of hope. The greatest disappointment of an earthly home is when the thing anticipated is given to us and yet the joy expected from it is not forthcoming. We clasp our treasure and find it to be dross, or we see it to be gold and we find that it will not stay the hunger of our souls. We are larger than the biggest . earthly hope. Our aspirations soar able the highest of them. But God is higher and deeper and greater than the largest desire of any soul. He is just what we all need for rest and gladness. He cannot disappoint us. If money is our portion it may be lost, or it may not buy ease of heart. If power, pleasure, success, or any other common end be our portion, we may be most wearied when we have gained most, God is the Portion to satisfy hope, and he only.
II. GOD IS THE BEST GROUND OF HOPE. We have most assurance that our hope will not fail us when we trust in him. Why?
1. Because he is good. Malignant beings take pleasure in frustrating hope; cruel people do it with indifference; and selfish and thoughtless men unwittingly. But God, who is love itself and who ever regards the needs of his children with merciful consideration, is too gracious to disappoint the hope we have in him.
2. Because he is faithful. He has invited our confidence and promised his inheritance to his obedient and trustful children. Thus he has pledged his word. His honour is involved. He will never prove false to his promise.
3. Because he is almighty. With the best intentions a man may be compelled to disappoint the confidence reposed upon him through simple inability to meet it. The bankrupt cannot pay his debts, however honest he may be. But as there is no limit to the power of God, so there will be no failure of hope in him.
4. Because hope in God is lawful and right. We need not fear that the strictest judgment will condemn it. It is a holy hope, and it is therefore likely more and more to be satisfied, as the judgment of God condemns and destroys unworthy objects of ambition.
Lam 3:25, Lam 3:26
Quiet waiting.
We are here first reminded that God does not disregard those who seek him. Though his grace may be delayed, it will come in due time. Then we are told that this waiting for God’s response to our prayers is for our good, provided it be patient.
I. GOD VISITS WITH GRACE THOSE WHO SEEK HIM, THOUGH THEY MAY HAVE TO WAIT FOR HIM.
1. He expects to be sought after. To wait for God implies attention and watchfulness. But direct effort to find grace in God is involved in seeking him. There are who say that this is a sign of distrust; that we should wait without seeking God; that to go after him implies impatience at his tarrying; and, in short, that all prayer which is positive petition, shows self-will, impatience, and distrust. But this hypercritical view of prayer is a delusion. For the act of seeking may develop a trustfulness and bring about a preparedness which would not be found without it. We have the invitation of Christ to “seek that we may find”
2. He may delay his response to our appeal. He may make us wait. The reason for this cannot be any reluctance or indifference on God’s part. But it may be that the time is not ripe for our receiving the response, or that we shall be disciplined into preparedness by waiting, or that, other interests beyond our own being concerned, the answer must tarry on account of them. Be the reason what it may, we must be warned to expect this delay, or we shall be grievously disappointed, perplexed, and even thrown into doubt and despondency.
3. He will surely respond in due time. God is good to all who truly wait for and seek him. He is not a capricious, partial, respecter of persons. Nor does he require a certain amount of merit in the petitioner. Our want is our sole claim, and the most unworthy are the most needy. But observe:
(1) we must truly seek God himself, and not merely pleasant things from God; and
(2) though God is good to all who thus seek him, his goodness does not take the same form to each. To some it is healing balm, to others purging hyssop.
II. WAITING FOR GOD‘S GRACE IS GOOD FOR THOSE WHO SEEK HIM, PROVIDED THAT THEY WAIT QUIETLY.
1. God permits them to wait for their own profit. Whatever other ends may be served by the delay, the good of the petitioner is aimed at in the providential arrangement. How?
(1) By testing faith. Thus it is seen whether faith be real, enduring, and constant.
(2) By requiring submission. One of the most essential conditions of profiting by Divine grace is willingness to submit to the will of God.
(3) By exercising our own spiritual powers. If the timid swimmer were succoured the moment he cried for help, he would never gain confidence and strength.
(4) By affording us opportunity for consideration. While we wait we can think. We may then measure our need and see what will supply it. Looking at the approaching salvation in the light of hope and imagination, we are better prepared to enjoy it.
2. In order that this waiting may be profitable it must be quiet. Impatience wrecks faith and submissiveness and obedience, and all the graces that are necessary for a right reception of Divine salvation. It is difficult to be quiet while waiting. We grow restless and fret ourselves as the weary hours drag past. It is harder to wait than to work, because work occupies us as waiting does not. Yet we lose much for lack of patience. We are not quiet enough to hear the still small voice that would bring salvation. In our patience we must possess our souls if we are to receive into them the richest gifts of the goodness of God.
Lam 3:27
Youth.
I. THE YOKE BELONGS TO YOUTH. It is common to hear youth spoken of as a time of pleasure. Older people do their best to damp the joyousness of the young by telling them that these are their happy days, soon will come the dark days of trouble, let them enjoy the bright time while it lasts. Even if such a view of life were correct, the wisdom of thrusting it forward is not easy to discover. Why spoil the feast by pointing to the sword of Damocles? Why direct the walk on a fair spring day to the graveyard? Surely it were wiser to say, “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” But this view is false. It arises from the disturbed imagination of later years. Grown morose with care, men look back on the earlier days of their life and imagine them to have been far brighter than those they now enjoy; but. they only do so by that common trick of memory that selects the pleasant pictures and drops the unpleasant ones.
1. Youth is a time of restraint. With all their lightness of heart, children feel the bonds of authority and long for the time when they shall be their own masters. It is difficult for grown men who have the free command of their own actions to understand the irksomeness of the necessary bonds of childhood. Restrained in the nursery and in the schoolroom under law and supervision, liable to ignominious rebuke, many children feel themselves in slavery. Wiser treatment gives more liberty; but still it necessarily continues many restraints. And in full grown life, when the bondage is more galling, young men commonly have to obey and submit to direction more than older men.
2. Youth is a time of toil. Men generally have to work hard in their younger years. The hours of labour are longest; the tasks imposed are the most disagreeable; the wages paid are the lowest. Most men as they advance in years work for shorter hours at more agreeable tasks and for greater rewards.
II. THE YOKE IS GOOD FOR YOUTH. We have seen that it is incorrect to regard youth as a time of exceptional pleasantness. For a normal life the day brightens as it lengthens, at least till the meridian is attained, and even later the soft light of evening is to many a source of deep, calm joy unknown in the feverish excitement of youth. Nevertheless, the very yoke of youth is good.
1. If it must be borne at all, the yoke can be best borne in youth. The mind is then most supple to shape itself to the unwonted burden and pressure of it, Then a man can yield to authority with most pliancy and face hard labour most confidently.
2. The yoke is necessary for youth. It is a good thing to bear it in youth.
(1) Restraint is then necessary. Liberty would be abused. Until an independent conscience has been developed, instructed, and strengthened, the external conscience of authority is needed.
(2) Work is also good for youth. Even the discipline of unpleasant tasks is wholesome. It conquers self-will and the idle love of pleasure, and trains in self-denial.
3. Later years are benefited by the yoke of youth. Even if the years during which it is borne are not so happy as they might be, the man himself is better in the whole of his life. He profits by the discipline. He learns habits of self-restraint and industry. He is able better to appreciate the privileges of advancing stages of life.
Lam 3:31-33
Chastisement only for a season.
I. THE FACT THAT CHASTISEMENT IS ONLY FOR A SEASON. God does “cast off” and “cause grief.” His love does not nullify his wrath. When grieved and disowned by God the soul feels utterly desolate. But the terrible judgment is only for a season. It will end in reconciliation and compassion. This great truth gives an entirely new complexion to our views of life and providence. We see at times the severe side. But we misjudge if we take that as a sample of the whole. Indeed the very severity prepares the way for mercy; for God can show compassion after chastisement to a degree that would not be good before the wholesome discipline. The sunshine, which would wither the plants before the storm, coming after it helps them to grow and flourish on the water it has brought to their roots.
1. This fact is no ground for reckless indifference. For
(1) the wrath is terrible enough while it lasts;
(2) it must endure as long as impenitent guilt is persisted in; and
(3) sin that presumes on mercy is the most gross and culpable ingratitude.
2. This fact should be a consolation in trouble. Hope may buoy up the sufferer. And resort ‘may be had to prayer. It seems as though the soul were abandoned. But if God has not cast it off forever, he must still feel interest in it, and may therefore be appealed to for mercy.
3. This fact is an encouragement to repentance. Endless punishment discourages repentance. It acts in the opposite way from that of all useful punishment. It tends to confirm sin. It is the prospect of mercy that. softens the heart and prompts feelings of penitence.
II. THE REASON WHY CHASTISEMENT IS ONLY FOR A SEASON. This reason is to be found in the character of God. “He doth not afflict willingly,” or rather, “from his heart.” There is an essential difference Between chastisement and mercy. Chastisement is necessary and sent reluctantly, but mercy springs from the heart of God and is given willingly. That is a false and libellous representation of God, according to which the theologian describes the outpouring of Divine wrath as though there were a real satisfaction to God in the process of causing pain to his creatures. The description of everlasting perdition as given to lost souls with a flood of wrath is more like the action of a malignant demon than that of a merciful God. It is sometimes so spoken of as though every attribute in God but mercy were eternal. Truth, justice, holiness, wrath, vengeance, are to endure forever. Only mercy has its day. Only this one grace is short-lived and soon to be exhausted. The calumny is a direct contradiction to Scripture, which teaches over and over again that the mercy of the Lord endureth forever. This attribute at least is eternal. This one springs most directly from the heart of God; for it is the fruit of love. While we say God is angry at times, we do not say God is anger, Because anger is not of the essential nature of God. But we do say, not only God loves, but God is love. But it may be said, if God does not afflict “from his heart,” why does he afflict at all? It must be because the circumstances of his children make it necessary. He does it not for his own sake. Then he must do it for their sakes. Seeing, however, that the chastisement is not agreeable to them, there must be some object in it, some result of it by which they are to profit. It must, therefore, cease in due time, that it may give place to that happy result.
Lam 3:38
How evil and good both proceed from God.
The Hebrew prophets show no inclination towards Persian dualism. They never attempt to solve the mystery of evil by the doctrine of two principles in nature, a good and an evil principle, in any respect coordinate one with another. On the contrary, they emphasize the monism of their creed by ascribing sole supremacy and originating power to “the Eternal.” Nevertheless, they do not teach that moral evil is caused by God. This they regard as springing from the heart of man. In the verse before us we have no question of this darkest kind of evil. It is not sin, but suffering, that is referred to, as the context clearly shows. We have just been told that God will not cast off forever because he does not afflict from his heart. We are now reminded that it is not the less true that God sends adverse as well as pleasant things.
I. THE WHOLE OF OUR LIFE EXPERIENCE IS UNDER THE DIRECTION OF GOD. Our conduct is in our own hands; but what is not thus immediately dependent on our own will is directed by God. Other men influence us, but they are overruled by the Most High. Chance and accident seem to strike us, but chance and accident only exist to our ignorance. They are not really, for Providence excludes them. We sometimes speak of visitations of God, as though he came and went. But that only means that we perceive his action at one time more than at another. God is ever working in us. “In him we live, and move, and have our being.” Things great and small, pleasant and painful, spiritual and physical, eternal and temporal, are under the hand of God and regulated by his will.
II. GOD TREATS US IN VARIOUS WAYS. He sends both evil and good. He has not one unchanging method of action. He varies his treatment according to requirement. To one he sends more evil, to another more good. Yet to none does he send experience of one kind only. The hard lot has many mitigations. The pleasant places have their shadows. As we pass through life we see how God deals with us in wise suitableness, now sending most good, now most evil.
III. WE MUST NOT INFER THAT IF GOD IS WITH US NO TROUBLE CAN BEFALL. If evil as well as good proceeds from the mouth of the Most High, no assurance of the presence of the Author of both wilt justify us in disbelieving in the coming of either experience. We must be on our guard or we shall be disappointed. We must be prepared to expect evil things even while we are under the care of God.
IV. WE MUST NOT INFER THAT IF EVIL BEFALL US GOD CANNOT BE WITH US. This inference of unbelief is the natural consequence of disappointment in the presumption that, if God is with us, we cannot suffer trouble. There is real comfort in the thought that evil is sent by God, if only by the removal of the common assumption that it indicates desertion by him.
V. WE MAY INFER THAT IF EVIL PROCEEDS FROM GOD IT IS PERMITTED FOR THE SAKE OF ULTIMATE GOOD. For God does not delight in sending evil. His heart is not in it. But his heart is in mercy. He may seem to send the two indifferently; hut he does not bestow them with equal pleasure nor with similar results, for the good is sent for its own sake, and the evil only that it may lead to higher good in the future.
Lam 3:40
Self-examination.
It is interesting to watch the progress of the thoughts and feelings of the writer who addresses us as a sufferer in the overthrow of Jerusalem. At first he bewails his lot, then he calls to God for assistance. After doing so he regains faith, and calls to mind the merciful kindness of God. This helps him to the assurance that the trouble is but temporary. He feels that since it comes from God it must not be complained of. It is rather a call to reflection and self-examination.
I. CHASTISEMENT SHOULD LEAD TO SELF–EXAMINATION. It does us little good until it makes us thoughtful. We must sit still under it and think. Then we should turn our thoughts in upon ourselves. We are inclined to look anywhere else, to discuss the justice of God, to complain of the conduct of men, to criticize the course of events. But the one thing necessary is to look within. This is difficult, as any one who has honestly tried it knows quite well. It is not necessary habitually. Too much introspection develops a morbid subjectivity. But there are special occasions for self-examination, and trouble is one of them.
II. SELF–EXAMINATION SHOULD INVESTIGATE CONDUCT. It is “our ways” that we are to inquire into.
1. The important question is as to what we do and how we live. People examine their feelings. The examination is delusive and unwholesome. They examine their opinions. But opinions should not be matters of moral trial so much as questions for calm intellectual testing. The chief point is as to our behaviour.
2. The most important questions of conduct are those which concern our habitual actions. “Our ways” are not isolated deeds, but courses of action. We may be surprised into a fall or spurred into a good deed. More significant is our normal, everyday conduct. This is what we should investigate most closely.
III. THE INVESTIGATION OF CONDUCT SHOULD BE SEARCHING AND JUDICIAL.
1. It should be searching. Evil is subtle. Plausible excuses cover bad deeds. We must not be content with condemning conscious and confessed wickedness. The hidden evil of our heart must be searched out. The detective must do his part before the magistrate does his.
2. It should be periodical. We must “try” our ways. It is unprofitable and demoralizing to conscience to confess guilt which we do not feel and see. Until we are convinced of it we are dishonest in attempting to blame ourselves for it. Conviction must precede the sentence. We should also be just to ourselves. Wholesale self-accusation is often dishonest and rarely profitable. We want point and specific charges in our judgment of ourselvesthe Law of God, the voice of conscience, the example of Christian standards by which to try ourselves. If we find the process difficult, we may pray that God will carry it on for us (Psa 139:23, Psa 139:24).
IV. THE CONVICTION WHICH FOLLOWS THE TRIAL OF OUR OWN CONDUCT SHOULD LEAD US TO REPENTANCE. It is of no use unless it does this. The mere sense of guilt is depressing and, left to itself, may lead us to ruin through despair. Repentance should follow. We are to know that we are in the wrong way only in order that we may turn from it to the right way. We all sin, and therefore self-examination should lead all of us through conviction of sin to repentance. Then we can return to God. He waits only for our confession of guilt. When we own to it he will pardon it.
Lam 3:44
God covering himself with a cloud.
There are dark hours when God not only seems to be hidden from view, but to be so wrapped in thick clouds that even our prayers cannot penetrate to him. Let us consider when and how far this is really the case.
I. SOMETIMES IT IS ONLY APPARENT. We lose heart and confidence. Discouraged and saddened, we cease to believe that God is listening to our cry. We can never see God nor hear any audible response to our cry and must always pray in faith; and therefore when faith fails we are ready to say that God does not hear us. We should remember that God’s attention is not confined to the evidences of it that he may afford to us. He may hear us without telling us that he does, or he may simply delay the response for good and wise reasons. Let us, therefore, beware of the folly of judging of God’s actions by our own passing moods.
II. SOMETIMES IT IS REAL, BUT MERCIFUL. God does not always accept our prayers even when he is regarding us favourably.
1. He may be trying our faith. It may be better for us that our faith should be tested and strengthened than that we should have the particular thing we desire.
2. We may be asking unwisely. Perhaps the greatest unkindness would be to answer our foolish prayer according to our wish. The mother must turn a deaf ear to the cry of her child for a poisonous fruit. It is hard thus to refuse. Nothing tries love more severely. It is a proof of the great love of God that he is firm in thus apparently treating us with indifference when all the while his heart yearns to comfort us.
III. SOMETIMES IT IS BOTH REAL AND WRATHFUL. God will not always hearken to prayer. There are circumstances that raise great banks of clouds between our souls and Heaven such as the most vehement petition cannot pierce.
1. Unrepented sin. If we have sinned ever so heavily and confess our iniquity, heaven is open to hear the faintest sigh of penitence. But against impenitence it is firm as brass.
2. Self-will. So long as we are praying, rebelliously demanding our own way and not submitting to God’s will, no prayer of ours can reach his throne in heaven. We may dare to lay our wish before God in humility, but yet in frank expression of it. Nevertheless, it can only be entertained by God when we add in spirit, if not in words, “Not my will, but thine, be done.” Thus may we cry to the void and have back only the mocking echo of our foolish prayer. We may send urgent requests towards heaven, and they will only lose themselves in the thick, black clouds of Divine disfavour which come between us and God. It is hopeful, however, for a soul to know this. When we see the cloud we are halfway towards the removal of it.
IV. IT IS THE WORK OF CHRIST TO DISSIPATE THE CLOUD THAT SHUTS OUR PRAYER OUT FROM GOD.
1. He permits us to pray in his Name, with his authority, and pleading his merit.
2. He teaches us to pray in the right spirit of penitence, submission, and faith.
Lam 3:49, Lam 3:50
Tears which only God can wipe away.
I. THERE ARE TEARS WHICH ONLY GOD CAN WIPE AWAY. Jerusalem is so desolate that one who mourns her sad estate weeps such tears. But in all ages there have been sufferers in similar trial.
1. When sorrow is acute. The lighter troubles may be patiently endured, or resisted, or mitigated, or driven away by sympathy and brotherly aid. There are troubles which no man can touch, sores which no balm of Gilead can ease, a secret bitterness known only. to the heart of the sufferer. In such agonies of distress comfort is a mockery, to attempt to console is only to intrude into the sanctuary of sorrow and to harrow the wounds we cannot heal.
2. When sorrow is chronic. The sudden flood of tears may be quickly stanched. There are people of mercurial temperament who seem to be in the depths of despair one moment and elated with pleasure the next. It is not difficult to stay the tears of these shallow natures. But when the tears flow on through the bright day as in the long night, this weeping without intermission passes the bounds of human aid. The broken heart, the ruined life, hopes shattered, and joys buried in the grave, open a fountain of grief that only God can stay. Now, it is important to recognize this fact. If we are only driven to see it by hard experience, we may lose ourselves in despair before we can find any consolation in God. It is well to know when we are in smooth water that storms are coming which our vessel cannot weather. Then we may be prepared to look for a haven.
II. THERE ARE NO TEARS WHICH GOD CANNOT WIPE AWAY. The sufferer weeps “till the Lord look down, and behold from heaven.” But when God looks the tears will be dried. Relief comes from God. It comes in a look from God. It comes when heaven is open to the troubled soul. One look from heaven is enough. How is this?
1. When God looks from heaven he manifests himself. He is always regarding us. But at times it seems to us that we are forgotten and deserted by him. Then again we see that he is observing us. The newly manifested nearness of God is a consolation,
2. When God looks he shows compassion. We express compassion by the eye more than by the voice. The look of pity is its surest, gentlest, most touching expression. This is the look of God when he beholds distress.
3. When God looks at the sufferer he sends help to him. God is not one who can contemplate suffering and then “pass by on the other side.” With him to see want is to aid it. It is therefore enough that God regards us. The rest must follow.
4. When God looks from heaven he draws the sufferer up to himself. He attracts by his wonderful look of loving kindness. The revelation of heaven lifts the troubled spirit up to heaven. By communion with heaven earthly tears are wiped away.
Lam 3:57
Fear not!
The recollection of how God has forbidden one not to fear in the past is a plea in praying that he will remove the ground of fear in the present.
I. WE MUCH NEED DIVINE ENCOURAGEMENTS TO OVERCOME FEAR.
1. In real danger. It is not only the coward who fears. Indifference often gets the credit of courage. Many fear not simply because they are blind. To see would be to tremble. For the great powers of the universe, “the terror by night and the arrow that flieth by day,” and the spiritual temptations that threaten our souls, are too strong for us.
2. In the threatening aspect of the future. Heavy clouds will gather to windward. Storms are plainly brewing out at sea. Whether they will burst over our heads or not we cannot say. But the very uncertainty adds to the terror; for fear feeds on vague alarms and may be conquered when the worst is known.
3. In the mystery of life. Even when we see no threatening danger the awful unknown is peopled to our imagination with strange horrors.
4. In the fears of otters. Nothing is so contagious as fear. Hence the madness of panics. It is hard to be brave among the timorous.
5. In hours of weakness. When we are weary courage flags. We can be brave at noon, but midnight awakens fear. Guilt is full of alarm.
II. WE HAVE MANY DIVINE ENCOURAGEMENTS TO OVERCOME FEAR.
1. In directly urging usher to fear. He has said, “Fear not!” He will not mock with empty words.
2. In promises of help. The Scriptures teem with words of grace for troubled souls, as when they are bidden to cast their burden upon God because he will sustain them, to call upon him in the day of trouble and he will hear them, etc. By the veracity and honour of God we have enough assurance in any one of these promises to dispel fear.
3. In the fatherly character of God. If we had no instruction not to fear and no promise of help, we might still know enough of God to rest confident that all must be well when we are in his hands. The child fears nothing when nestling on its mother’s bosom. Who shall fear that leans upon the bosom of God?
4. In our personal relations with God. Let it be noted that everybody under all circumstances is not to be urged to east fears to the wind. The guilty should fear. The impenitent have no excuse for abandoning fear. They who are at enmity with God should dwell in great trembling. It is when reconciled through Christ, forgiven and restored to our home, that as redeemed souls we can shake off fear.
III. DIVINE ASSURANCES AGAINST FEAR SHOULD INSPIRE OUR PRAYERS FOR HELP IN DANGER. We are to remember how God has bidden us not to fear. Here is a grand source of confidence when we cry for help. For it is the very Word of God that has led us to stand facing the storm. His action must be true to his Word. Nevertheless, we do need to pray for help in danger. God’s promises are conditional. When he dissuades us from fear it is on the understanding that we seek refuge beneath the covert of his wings. To the storm tossed soul he says, “Fear not!” but he expects that soul to welcome him as its Pilot. Then the storm will be weathered. God’s assurance of safety is for those who turn to his protection. It is those who are “in Christ Jesus” for whom there is no condemnation, and who therefore need fear nothing.
Lam 3:59-66
The great appeal.
We can see the advantage to justice of appealing from a lower to a higher court. Sometimes the process has to be repeated and the case tried again and again until the best attainable verdict is riot from the very highest tribunal. In the East, where justice was commonly neglected by indolence, outraged by violence, or prostituted by bribery, men felt strongly the value of an appeal To the believer in the supreme Judge it was a great satisfaction that he could turn from the corrupt and venal courts of human judicature to the high court of Heaven. It may often be a relief to make this appeal. For absolute justice between man and man is rarely obtained. Three things are wanted to make the result satisfactoryclear evidence, a just verdict, and a firm execution of the sentence.
I. CLEAR EVIDENCE. It is difficult to make one’s condition rightly apprehended by men. Frequently there are facts that cannot be explained, or the whole transaction stands on a different ground from what people imagine, or its features are warped by the atmosphere of prejudice through which it is regarded. But God sees clearly and knows all. “Thou God seest me” is the comforting reflection of the vexed soul. “Thou hast seen my wrong,” “Thou hast seen all,” is the first consolation. But for this assurance to give comfort it is necessary that our cause should be just. God sees truly both the merit and the fault. It is useless to appeal to God with a bad case. There is no deceiving him. Let us see that our cause is always one which we can refer to the thorough investigation of the all-seeing God.
II. A JUST VERDICT. The evidence may be clear, yet the decision may be unjust if the judge is partial or corrupt. It is the comfort of one who makes the highest appeal that God not only knows all, but will decide righteously. “Judge thou my cause,” says the troubled soul. God will judge all causes at the great tribunal of the judgment day. Injustice can only live till then. Should not the oppressed bear his brief wrongs with calmness when he knows that they will soon be righted? It is interesting to see that “the day of the Eternal,” which the Jews anticipated as the great judgment day, was not regarded by them with terror, as it is often regarded by Christians. This fact may be, perhaps, partially due to a duller sense of personal sin. But surely it is chiefly owing to the grand Hebrew love of righteousness. We see strange mysteries of inequality and injustice that are at times perfectly bewildering. The judgment of Heaven will set all right. And even now God may do much for his children by his providence.
III. A FIRM EXECUTION. The sufferer prays that God will “render unto them a recompense.” A Christian spirit should deliver us from the thirst for vengeance that was too pronounced even in the most devout Hebrew. But we must beware of a weak quasi-humanitarianism that would sacrifice justice and wholesome retribution to a one-sided gentleness.
1. It is necessary that justice should be done in action as well as that a just sentence should be pronounced in word.
2. It is for the good of all concerned the victim, the public, and even the wrong doer, that guilt should be chastised.
3. It is well to transfer vengeful feelings which we cannot utterly destroy into a passive resignation of our case to God. We are not to avenge ourselves, if only because God has said, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay.”
HOMILIES BY J.R. THOMSON
Lam 3:1
Afflicted by God.
Every child of God, nay, every son of man, has endured affliction. Jeremiah and the city which he hero personifies and represents may be said to have experienced affliction in an extraordinary degree. A fact so universal cannot be without special significance in human life. But not all the afflicted discern this underlying and profitable meaning.
I. AFFLICTION LEADS SOME TO DOUBT THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. It is not uncommon for people to say in their hearts, what some even venture to say with their lips, “If there were a God, I should not be suffered to pass through misfortunes and sorrows so distressing and so undeserved.”
II. AFFLICTION LEADS SOME TO DOUBT GOD‘S BENEVOLENCE AND KINDLY INTEREST IN HUMAN BEINGS. Not denying the existence of Deity, these afflicted ones question his moral attributes. They ask, “If God were a Being of boundless benevolence, would he suffer us to go through waters so deep, flames so fierce? His kindness and compassionwere such attributes part of his naturewould interpose on our behalf and deliver us.”
III. SOME WHO BELIEVE THAT GOD PERMITS AFFLICTION MISINTERPRET IT AS A SIGN OF HIS WRATH. This it may be; this it was in the case of Jerusalem. Yet God in the midst of wrath remembers mercy; he doth not keep his anger forever. And there are instances in which no greater misinterpretation could be possible than the view that suffering is mere penalty, that those who suffer most are necessarily sinners above all their neighbours.
IV. AFFLICTION SHOULD BE REGARDED BY THE PIOUS AND SUBMISSIVE AS A PROOF OF DIVINE MERCY AND AS MEANT FOR THEIR GOOD. Scripture represents suffering as the chastening of a Father’s hand. The experience of many a Christian is summed up in the language of the psalmist: “It was good for me that I was afflicted.”
V. AFFLICTION MAY THUS BECOME, IN THE EXPERIENCE OF THE PIOUS, THE OCCASION FOR DEVOUT THANKSGIVING. How often have mature and holy Christians been heard to say, “I would not, upon looking back, have been without the ruggedness of the road, the bitterness of the cup”!T.
Lam 3:7-9
The way of life hedged and built up.
The man who enjoys prosperity seems also to enjoy liberty; his way lies straight and level and open before him. But it often happens in human life that liberty is changed into restraint, that every path that is smooth and peaceful is closed, that, in the figurative language of this passage, a hedge is planted, a fence is staked out, a wall is built across the traveller’s way.
I. MAN‘S DELIGHT IS NATURALLY IN LIBERTY AND PROSPERITY.
II. PROVIDENTIAL CIRCUMSTANCES SOMETIMES COMPLETELY DEPRIVE HIM OF SUCH LIBERTY AND PROSPERITY.
1. One may miss the object of his heart’s earthly desire. He may have set his affection upon some object, he may have directed his aspiration towards some aim, he may have purposed some course in life; and all these expectations and hopes may come to nothing; circumstances may conspire against the fulfilment of such desires and intentions.
2. Another may find great delight in the service of God; and suddenly health may fail and such service may Consequently be forbidden, or powers of mind may be enfeebled, or means may be reduced, or fellow labourers, apparently necessary, may be removed by death.
III. THERE IS DANGER LEST IN SUCH A POSITION EVEN GOOD PEOPLE SHOULD BECOME IMPATIENT AND REBELLIOUS. Believing that the Almighty has power to remove every obstacle, and to make plain the roughest path, they are tempted to question the interest, the care, the benevolence of the Supreme, and to give way to fretfulness and murmuring, and to ask “Why should not God make light my heavy chain, pluck up the cruel hedge, break down the impenetrable wall?”
IV. YET IN SUCH CIRCUMSTANCES THE PATH WHICH GOD HAS APPOINTED SHOULD BE RECOGNIZED AS THE RIGHT PATH. Resignation to his will, waiting for his time of deliverance, confidence in his goodness,such is the attitude of heart in which true consolation and ultimate prosperity will be found.T.
Lam 3:8
Unheard prayer.
There were seasons when it seemed to the prophet that God not only refused to interpose in his behalf, but refused even to listen to his prayer. In such faithless and yet not unnatural imaginations and fears many truly pious natures have participated. Complaints are made by the afflicted that they have prayed, but have prayed in vain; that God has “shut out” their prayer.
I. THERE IS PRAYER WHICH GOD DOES SHUT OUT, i.e. THE PRAYER OF SELFISHNESS AND SIN. Men ask and receive not, because they ask amiss. They ask for gifts which God has never promised to bestow and which he has never encouraged them unreservedly to desire. There are bad things which men ask God for and which it would harm the suppliants to receive. There are things not bad in themselves, the bestowal of which, however, upon certain persons and in certain circumstances would be spiritually harmful. Such gifts are withheld, not in malevolence, but in mercy.
II. THERE IS PRAYER WHICH IS NOT UNHEARD, BUT THE ANSWER TO WHICH IS NOT IMMEDIATE AND IS NOT JUST WHAT IS EXPECTED. Denial is one thing, delay is another. Perhaps it may be said that every true prayer is both heard and answered. Forevery acceptable petition takes the tone of our Saviour’s ever memorable and incomparable prayer, “Not my will, O my Father, but thine, be done.” Misinterpretation is to be avoided. The reason of delay, of seeming denial, is to be sought in ourselves. God often withholds for a season, in order to awaken our faith and submission, what he intends eventually to confer.T.
Lam 3:17
Prosperity forgotten.
What a touching picture of extreme adversity and distress do these words present: “I forgat prosperity”! Days of happiness are so distant that they have faded into oblivion; their memory is obliterated by recurring sorrows, by continuous misfortunes.
II. ADVERSITY DOES NOT FULFIL ITS INTENDED PURPOSE IF IT LEADS TO DESPAIR. There are natures in which a reverse of circumstances induces depression, which gradually deepens into despondency. Where this is the ease there is ground for fearing that the affections and desires have been too much centred upon things earthly and perishable, that the gifts of a kind Providence have been regarded as possessions to which those who enjoy them have a right, that the higher purposes of this earthly discipline called life have been neglected.
II. ADVERSITY SHOULD BE REGARDED BY THE CHRISTIAN AS TEMPORARY, AND AS AN APPOINTMENT OF DIVINE WISDOM AND LOVE. To forget prosperity in the past is to forget that, for the devout, obedient, and submissive, there is prosperity in reserve in the future. The cloud comes over the sky, but the sunshine of the morning will be followed in due time by the brightness which shall close in glorious sunset. The disciple of Christ cannot lose sight of the fact that his Master was “a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief,” and that he assured his followers that “in the world they should have tribulation.” But the voice that foretold conflict promised victory. To the faithful favour shall be restored and prosperity shall be renewed. “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.”T.
Lam 3:19, Lam 3:20
Remembering affliction.
As the prophet entreats the Lord to remember the afflictions he and his countrymen have passed through, he records his own vivid recollection of bygone misery and humiliation. Now, the counsel of the world would beForget your troubles; they are past; why allow them to disturb and to distress the mind? There are, however, good reasons why this advice should be rejected, why the afflictions we have passed through should sometimes be recalled to mind.
I. THIS EXERCISE SERVES TO REMIND US OF THE UNCERTAINTY AND VICISSITUDES OF THIS LIFE. It is well that in days of prosperity men should not forget how soon the sky may be clouded, that in times of health liability to sickness and disease should be borne in mind, that the living and the active should hear a voice gently counselling them Memento mori!
II. THIS EXERCISE SERVES TO PRESERVE US FROM A DISPOSITION TOWARDS WORLDLINESS. In prosperity it is very common for men to cling to this world, to overestimate its wealth, its pleasures, its honours. Let them remember days of adversity; let them consider how possible it is that such days may recur; and thus preserve themselves from the threatened sin of worldly mindedness.
III. THIS EXERCISE MAY LEAD US TO GLORIFY THE DIVINE DELIVERER. Affliction is to many a thing of the past; they have left the tempestuous seas and are in the quiet haven. Let such Consider by whose great mercy such deliverance has been effected, to whom their gratitude is due. Who interposed upon their behalf and brought them into safety? Do they forget to sing, “This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him, and delivered him out of all his troubles”?
IV. THIS EXERCISE MAY SUGGEST THE EXPECTATION OF HEAVEN, AND MAY LEND ATTRACTIVENESS TO THE PROSPECT. The past naturally suggests the future. In remembering the afflictions of earth we are reminded of that state where “the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest.”T.
Lam 3:21
Hope reviving.
At length the unmitigated anguish and desolation expressed in the previous parts of this book seem relieved. A ray of light breaks through the dense mass of clouds. Despondency gives place to hope.
I. FROM WHAT STATE THIS LANGUAGE BETOKENS A REVULSION, A REACTION. Jeremiah has, not unnaturally, been plunged into distress, dismay, despondency. The terrible calamities which have befallen his nation are sufficient to account for this. Yet, as a child of God and a believer in Divine providence, he could not remain in desolation, he could not abandon himself to despair.
II. THE ORIGIN OF HOPE. How was the prophet lifted out of the discouragement and despondency into which he had fallen? It seems that here, as so often, hope sprang out of humility. When his heart was bowed and humbled within him, then he began to lift up his eyes unto the hills from whence alone his help could come.
III. THE GREAT OBJECT OF HOPE. The prophet saw nothing in existing circumstances which could afford a ground for anticipating better things and brighter days, But his hope was in the Lord, who listens to the lowly, the penitent, the contrite, and, in answer to their cry, delivers and exalts them in due time.
IV. THE EXPECTATIONS OF HOPE. When within the prophet’s heart the star of hope arose, to what did it point, with its enlivening, cheering rays? To consolation, to deliverance, to revival of natural life, to renewal of Divine favour, No hope, based upon God’s faithfulness and compassion, is too bright for him to fulfil and realize.T.
Lam 3:22
Sparing compassion.
At this point the meditations of the prophet take a turn. He looks away from his own and his fellow countrymen’s afflictions and directs his gaze heavenwards. The scene of his vision changes. No longer the calamities of Jerusalem, but the character and the purposes of the Most High, absorb his attention. There is a rainbow which spans even the stormiest sky. Earth may be dark, but there is brightness above. Man may be cruel or miserable, but God has not forgotten to be gracious.
I. THE LORD‘S GRACIOUS ATTRIBUTES. These are described as
(1) his mercies and
(2) his compassions.
It is the glory of revelation that it makes known a personal God, invested with the noblest moral attributes. The heathen saw in the ca]amities of cities and nations, either the caprice of angry deities or the working of inexorable fate. The Hebrews saw the presence, interest, and superintending providence of a God of righteousness, holiness, and grace,
II. THE UNFAILING EXERCISE OF THESE ATTRIBUTES FOR THE RELIEF AND SALVATION OF MEN. If “we are not consumed,” it is not through any excellence or merit of ours, but because of the forbearance and pity of him who does not willingly afflict the children of me. We tempt the Lord by our ingratitude and rebellion to lay aside his compassion, but he is greater and better than our highest and purest thoughts of him: “His compassions fail not.”
III. THE ADVANTAGES MEN ENJOY THROUGH THE EXERCISE OF THESE ATTRIBUTES. There is
(1) a negative advantagewe are not consumed; and
(2) a positive advantagewe are saved and blessed.
The language of the prophet receives its highest illustration in the dispensation of the gospel. It is in Christ Jesus that the attributes here celebrated appear in their greatest glory, and secure the largest and most lasting results of good for men. Hence the privilege of listening to the glad tidings. And hence the obligation under which all Christians are laid to extol the mercies and compassions of God, revealed in his Son, and practically securing for all who believe the blessings of forgiveness, acceptance, and eternal life.T.
Lam 3:23
New every morning.
Human life abounds in novelties. It is made up of experiences which combine novelty and repetition. But the mercies of the Eternal are ever new; no day breaks which does not open up some new prospect of Divine faithfulness and loving kindness towards the children of men.
I. THE SAME MERCIES ARE REPEATED AFRESH. Because a gift of God resembles a previous gift, it does not, therefore, fail in being a new proof of Divine beneficence and favour. The most necessary blessings are those which are most frequently bestowed, and are those which we are most likely to receive without attention and to undervalue.
II. NEW MERCIES ARE CONSTANTLY BESTOWED. The successive stages of our earthly pilgrimage reveal fresh wants, call for fresh supplies from the bounty and benevolence of our God anal Father. With new needs come new favours. Varying duties, fresh relationships, and changing circumstances are the occasion of ever renewed manifestations Of Divine goodness. And our repeated errors and infirmities are the occasion of new manifestations of Divine forbearance and forgiveness.
III. NEW CLAIMS ARE THUS ESTABLISHED UPON HUMAN CONSECRATION AND OBEDIENCE. If a human benefactor who has upon some one important occasion come to our assistance deserves lifelong gratitude, how can the claims of God be justly conceived and practically acknowledged, seeing that the hours of every day are laden with his favours? If a motive is needed to a new life, a life of devotion and holy service, where can a more powerful motive be found than here? Often as we have partaken of Divine goodness, often as we have enjoyed the assurance of Divine forgiveness, we are called upon by the favours which are new every morning to renewed devotion of ourselves to the God of all grace and forgiveness.
IV. NEW OCCASIONS ARE THUS AFFORDED FOR RENEWED PRAISES AND THANKSGIVINGS. With every new morning nature offers a new tribute of praise to Heaven. Shall man alone be silent and ungrateful? Shall the Christian, who is the chosen recipient of Divine favours, be slow to acknowledge their heavenly source, to praise the heavenly Giver?
“New mercies each returning day” etc.
T.
Lam 3:24
The Portion of the godly.
When the land of promise was divided among the tribes of Israel, no inheritance was assigned to one of the number, viz. the tribe of Levi. It appeared good to Divine wisdom that the consecrated and sacerdotal tribe should be distributed among the population, and that a regular provision should be made for their maintenance. To reconcile the Levites to their lot, it was declared to them by Jehovah himself that he was their Portion. The language here appropriated by the prophet, as his faith and hope revive, is language which every true servant of God may take to himself.
I. THE LORD IS AN INCOMPARABLE AND UNRIVALLED PORTION. Without the Divine favour, the greatest, the wealthiest, the most prosperous, are poor; with this favour, the lowliest and the penniless are rich. For that which pertains to the soul exceeds in value that which is external; circumstances are not unimportant, but to the just and reflective mind they are inferior to what is spiritual.
II. THE LORD IS A SUFFICIENT AND SATISFYING PORTION. With what jubilant, triumphant exultation did the psalmist exclaim, “The Lord is the Portion of mine inheritance, and my cup”! He who made and redeemed the soul can alone fully satisfy and supply it. Well might the apostle assure his Christian readers, “All things are yours;” and well might he reason for their encouragement, “Shall not God with Christ also freely give you all things?”
III. THE LORD IS AN ETERNAL PORTION. Whilst “riches take to themselves wings and fly away,” whilst “the bubble reputation” bursts, whilst death levels the kings of the earth with the beggars,the spiritual possessions of the pious remain undiminished in preciousness. In fact, the true value of the Portion of the godly can only be known in eternity. Here the estate is in reversion; there it is fully possessed and everlastingly enjoyed.T.
Lam 3:25, Lam 3:26
Waiting for salvation.
It is to most persons easier to work than to wait. Yet there are possessions, dignities, influence, which even here and now can only be attained by waiting. And religion, which is the highest discipline of the spirit, encourages this attitude and, indeed, in many instances demands it.
I. THE ATTITUDE OF THE PIOUS SOUL. He who is graphically described in these verses:
1. Seeks God. For we are not called upon to be utterly passive; we are not led to expect that blessings will come to us without any exertion upon our part. To seek God in our daily life, in the order of his providence, in the pages of his Word, is a reasonable and profitable exercise.
2. Hopes for his salvation. And why not? Has not the Most High revealed himself as a Saviour? And is not salvation the blessing we most urgently need?
3. Quietly waits for it. This beautiful expression implies that the word of promise is believed, and that without doubting the soul expects its fulfilment. A rebuke to those who think that seeking God is accompanied with noise and excitement.
II. THE REWARD OF THE PIOUS SOUL.
1. There is what may be called the reflex influence of waiting, The expectant seeker and suppliant finds the very posture he is led to assume good and profitable. “In quietness and in confidence shall be your strength.”
2. The Lord is actually good unto such as wait for him. He is pledged to this. His servants have ever found this to be the case. For the expectation honours him from whom the blessing is expected. The patient are delivered from their troubles, and to those who seek the Lord his glory is unveiled.T.
Lam 3:27
The yoke in youth.
This is not a welcome lesson. It is natural to all, and especially the young, to resist authority, to defy restraint, to resent punishment. As the young ox has to be brought under the yoke, as the young horse has to be accustomed to the bit and the bridle, the harness and the saddle, so the young must learn the practical and valuable lesson of endurance and submission.
I. IN HUMAN LIFE A YOKE IS IMPOSED UPON ALL. In some cases it is easier and in others more galling; but there is no escape, no exception. Labour must be undergone, the daily burden must be borne, restraints must be endured for the sake of the general good, sacrifices must be made, patience must be called forth and cultivated.
II. WHEN FIRST FELT IN LATER LIFE, THE YOKE IS ESPECIALLY HARD TO BEAR. It sometimes happens that youth is sheltered from the storm of adversity, which beats fiercely upon the inexperienced and the undisciplined only in later years. It is well known how severely trouble is felt in such cases; for the back is not fitted to the burden, the neck is not bent to the yoke.
III. THE DISCIPLINE EXPERIENCED IN YOUTH FITS FOR THE TOIL AND SUFFERING OF AFTER LIFE. This is why it is “good” then to endure it. Many of the noblest characters have known trouble in early life, and have thus learned the wholesome lessons of adversity which have stood them in good stead in after years. They who are afflicted in their youth learn the limitation of their own powers, learn the inexorable necessities of human life, and become apt scholars in the great school of Divine providence.
IV. RESISTANCE TO THE YOKE IS WRONG AND FOOLISH, SUBMISSION IS RIGHT AND WISE. It is hard to kick against the goads; it is useless to resent the appointments of Divine wisdom. There are cases in which a rebellious spirit lasts all through life, and it is unquestionable that misery accompanies it. On the other hand, if the yoke be borne early and borne patiently, it becomes easier with custom. And those who are strong to suffer are also strong to serve.T.
Lam 3:30
The cheek to the smiter.
Probably these verses should be translated by imperatives. The prophet, profiting by his own experience and by that of his country. men, admonishes all to meekness and submission. In resistance is neither peace nor deliverance; in patient subjection and waiting is true wisdom, for such is the way to contentment and to final salvation.
I. SUCH MEEKNESS IS CONTRARY TO NATURAL INCLINATION, AND IS INDICATIVE OF A CHASTENED SPIRIT. He who is smitten naturally smites again. But to act upon this principle is to perpetuate a state of war and strife. Revenge is indeed often honored in the world, yet the world’s records are records of the wretchedness which this habit produces. On the other hand, the Christian principle, commended by our Lord in language which seems borrowed from this passage, is a principle of forgiveness and meek submission, the prevalence of which does much to mitigate asperity and to check wanton injuries.
II. SUCH MEEKNESS IS INCULCATED BY THE LORD JESUS BOTH BY PRECEPT AND EXAMPLE. He was reviled, yet he reviled not again. And in taking without resentment or complaint the unjust stripes and blows and many indignities he endured, our Saviour has given the world the most glorious example of victory over self, of superhuman meekness.
III. SUCH MEEKNESS IS CONTRIBUTIVE TO THE HAPPINESS OF THOSE WHO EXHIBIT IT AND TO THE EDIFICATION OF THOSE WHO WITNESS IT. The meek and lowly in heart find rest unto their soul. And society is profited by every illustration of the power and beauty of self-government and self-control, of conciliation and patience.T.
Lam 3:31-33
Divine benignity.
It required great faith on the part of Jeremiah and his countrymen to think and to speak thus of God. It was easy for them to believe in the justice and in the power of God; their own affliction witnessed to these attributes. But it was a triumph of faith for those so afflicted to acknowledge the kindness and compassion of the supreme Ruler.
I. IT IS NOT INCOMPATIBLE WITH GOD‘S GOODNESS TO AFFLICT MEN. He “causes grief.” His providence appoints that human life should be largely a discipline of affliction, that human transgressions should be followed by chastisement. The Scriptures teach us that we may look all the stern and terrible facts of human life full in the face, and yet retain our confidence in the infinite kindness of the Divine Ruler.
II. GOD OBSERVES A LIMIT IN AFFLICTING HIS PEOPLE. His chastening is for a time. He will not always chide. He will not cast off forever. For it is not implacable revenge, it is fatherly discipline, which accounts for human griefs.
III. COMPASSION AND MERCY ARE DISCERNIBLE BENEATH DIVINE CHASTENING. It is benignity which delivers the children of men from the waters, so that they are not overwhelmed; from the flames, so that they are not consumed. But it is benignity also (although this is a hard lesson for the afflicted, and a hard lesson for the philosopher of this world) which appoints affliction and chastening. God does not allow our sufferings willingly, i.e. from his heart, as delighting in them. It is not for his pleasure, but for our profit, that we may be partakers of his holiness. And herein we see, not only the highest wisdom, but the purest love.T.
Lam 3:38
The source of evil and of good.
This passage may easily be misunderstood. Some have attributed moral evil as well as moral good to the great Ruler of the universe, and by making God the author of sin have introduced confusion into the moral realm. The presence of sin in the world is by the permission of the Most High; but, whilst we cannot understand the reasons for this permission, we are not at liberty to represent him as sanctioning evil. The good and evil of this passage are natural, not moral.
I. THERE IS HERE AN ASSERTION OF UNIVERSAL AND PARTICULAR PROVIDENCE. The inequality of the human lot has ever been the theme of meditation, inquiry, and study. It has been attributed to chance, to men themselves, to the operation of law. But the enlightened and religious mind recognizes the voice and the hand of the Most High in human society, even when the immediate causes of what takes place are apparent. Nothing is so vast as to be above, and nothing is so minute as to be beneath, Providence. The afflictions and sufferings of life, as well as its joys and prosperity, are all allowed and all overruled for good to God’s people. And all may become means of grace and blessing to such as receive them in a teachable and submissive spirit. Accordingly
II. THERE IS HERE AN IMPLICIT SUGGESTION OF THE MANNER IN WHICH GOOD AND EVIL SHOULD BE RECEIVED BY MEN. This is not to be regarded as a speculative question merely, though it is a subject upon which thinking men must needs exercise their thoughts. But inasmuch as we all receive both good and evil in the course of our life, it cannot be other than a matter of supreme concern to us to decide in what spirit all that happens to us shall be accepted.
1. It will be well to remember that there is nothing purposeless; that there is intention, meaning, in all providential arrangements.
2. The devout mind will recognize benevolence in the “dispensations” of providence, will see the movements of a Father’s hand and hear the tones of a Father’s voice.
3. The Christian cannot overlook the obvious fact that the real good can only be acquired by those who receive the happiness of life with gratitude and bear the afflictions of life with submission and cheerfulness.T.
Lam 3:39
Why murmur?
The world is full of complaints and murmuring. It sometimes is observable that those whose lot is peculiarly fortunate, whose circumstances are peculiarly favourable, are foremost in complaint when anything occurs to them which does not fall in with their expectations, which does not correspond with their desires. On the other hand, we now and again meet with the poor, the suffering, the friendless, who display a cheerful, uncomplaining disposition.
I. ALL PUNISHMENT IS DESERVED BY THOSE UPON WHOM IT IS INFLICTED. Conscience testifies to this. God hath not “rewarded us according to our iniquities.” No afflicted one can plead innocence, can justly affirm that he has been treated with undue severity. For this reason affliction should be endured in silence and with submission.
II. WHEN GOD CHASTISES HE DOES SO IN EQUITY, AND NOT IN INJUSTICE OR CAPRICE, The heathen attribute to arbitrary and fickle deities, even to malevolent deities, many of their misfortunes. But to us God is “righteous in all his works.” To rebel against him is to question the wisdom of the only Wise, the justice of the supremely Righteous. The afflicted should look through the chastisement to the hand which inflicts it.
III. TO REBEL AGAINST GOD IS TO RESIST HIS. PURPOSES OF COMPASSION WHICH INTEND our need. Observe that murmuring is not only wrong, it is most inexpedient. A complaining spirit is inconsistent with the disposition which alone can receive the wholesome lessons and discipline of sorrow and can turn them to highest and lasting profit.T.
Lam 3:40
Repentance.
Sin and suffering are the topic of much thought and inquiry and speculation. But it is of supreme concern to the sinner and the sufferer to act aright. He may or may not be able to explain the mysteries of the human heart, of the Divine government. But it is most important that he should repent and turn unto the Lord.
I. THE CONDITION OF REPENTANCE. The unreflecting and careless will not repent. There are two conditions necessary to such an attitude of mind.
1. Those afflicted because of sin should search themselves. To take a favourable view of self is natural; hut truth and justice require that every man should look below the surface, should explore his inmost nature. Thus the springs of action, its hidden motives, will be brought to light.
2. They should consider against whom they have sinned. It was a profoundly just exclamation of David, “Against thee, thee only, have I sinned!” We may indeed wrong our fellowmen, but we sin against our Creator and Lord. Conduct must be looked at in this light, in order that it may lead to repentance.
II. THE NATURE OF REPENTANCE. This exercise of the heart is accompanied with sorrow for sin, but it consists mainly
(1) in turning away from sin, and
(2) in turning unto the Lord.
This involves the seeking of pardon and acceptance, and the acceptance by faith of the Divine terms of mercy.
III. THE PROOF OF REPENTANCE. This may be said to consist in:
1. The hatred and loathing of the evil in which the sinner in his impenitence took pleasure,
2. The love and pursuit of holiness as pleasing unto God.T.
Lam 3:41
Sursum corda!
Religion takes possession of the whole of our nature. A service professedly of the heart, and of the heart alone, is a hypocritical service, which because of its insincerity God cannot accept, inasmuch as it is contradicted by the life. On the other hand, how can the Searcher of all hearts be pleased with a service which is of the hands, the outward posture and actions only, in which the heart has no share? The true worship and homage consists in the combination of the spirit and the body.
I. HEART AND HANDS ARE LIFTED IN PENITENCE AND CONFESSION. It seems to this exercise that the prophet here admonishes and invites. The heart has been engrossed by earthly pursuits and pleasures; and these it now quits, directing its contrite sighs to heaven, and lifting with it the clasped hands of penitence.
II. HEART AND HANDS ARE LIFTED IN EARNEST ENTREATY. In its anguish, in its conscious helplessness, the heart seeks mercy and acceptance with God; the hands are raised as in supplication, to give expression to the imploring petitions.
III. HEART AND HANDS ARE LIFTED IN BELIEVING CONFIDENCE. There is encouragement to trust in the Lord. The repenting and confiding Church of the Redeemer is ever lifting holy hands to heaven, in expression of that sentiment which is the condition of all blessing. It is the attitude of hope. “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills whence cometh my help.” And as the eyes of faith behold the God of grace upon the throne of power, they draw the heart upwards; the hands follow, and the posture of the spiritual nature is becoming to man and honouring to God.T.
Lam 3:48-51
Sympathetic sorrow.
This passage is sufficient to justify the title prefixed to this collection of sacred lyrics. It is indeed a “lamentation.” And, what is deserving of special notice, the lament is not for personal affliction, it is occasioned by the distress and woe of the fellow countrymen of the prophet.
I. THE OCCASION OF THIS SYMPATHETIC SORROW.
1. The affliction of “the daughters of the city.” Whether by this expression we are to understand dependent towns or literally the maidens of Jerusalem, in any case it is the calamities of his countrymen that awaken compassion.
2. This affliction is of the extremest kind, even “destruction.” Some of those whose woes call forth the prophet’s commiseration are homeless, some are wounded, and some are slain. A hard heart can witness the distresses of fellow creatures unmoved; but a sensitive nature views them with poignant sorrow. Our Lord wept over the same city when, at a later period, he foresaw a fate impending over Jerusalem even worse than that which occasioned the lamentation of Jeremiah.
II. THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THIS SYMPATHETIC SORROW.
1. It is cordial; not the sympathy of words merely, but of the heart. Politeness may dissimulate; sincere pity will feel. The sorrows of the soul because of human sin and woe are prompted by sympathy and consecrated by religion.
2. It is manifested. In the East and among simple nations grief displays itself in a more demonstrative way than amongst ourselves. There was nothing extravagant or unmanly in the pouring down of tears, in the running down of rivers of waters from the eyes, described in these verses. The manner in which sympathy is exhibited may vary, but this passage may suggest to us that the expression of compassion ought not to be withheld.
3. It is unintermitted; it ceases not. Such sympathy is not a mere paroxysm of grief; it is constant, enduring whilst the occasion of it endures.
III. THE PURPOSE AND HOPE ACCOMPANYING THIS SYMPATHETIC SORROW. Men sometimes speak of the uselessness of tears, the vanity of grief, etc. The godly sorrow exhibited by the prophet was not of this order; it had an aim, and that aim was the relief of those who were commiserated. Penitence and supplication were regarded as means to procure the regard, the interposition, the delivering mercy of Jehovah. Help, and help from above,this is the practical design which blends with the anguish and the tears of the Christian.T.
Lam 3:55, Lam 3:56
The cry from the dungeon.
There seems every reason for believing that, in these words, the prophet is recording his own actual experience. Under the reign of Zedekiah, when the doom of Jerusalem was near at hand, the faithful Jeremiah prophesied to the people, and by his warnings and predictions so offended the princes who were in authority in the city that they cast him into the pit of the prison. By Divine goodness he was delivered from this misery by the agency of the eunuch Ebed-Melech. Like a truly godly man, he witnesses to that God who is ever the Hearer of his people’s prayers,
I. THE CRY FROM THE DEPTH. It was indeed de profundis that Jeremiah raised his voice and called upon the Lord. From sorrow, suffering, destitution, desertion, misery, helplessness, let men cry unto the Lord. The evil condition that impels them to such a cry is not all evil; there is “the soul of goodness” in it, The dungeon of oppression, of persecution, thus becomes a church indeed.
II. THE WITNESS OF THE RESCUED. The prophet testifies that his cry had not been unheeded. Even when immured in a pit so deep that his voice could not reach his fellow men, his entreaty bad reached the ear and roused the pity of the eternal Lord. And he who had heard had answered too, and had sent his messenger to deliver his servant. Where is there a child of God who has not experienced the compassionate interposition of the Most High? The Church should be as one of those temples whose walls are covered with tablets and brasses testifying to mercies received at the hand of the All-gracious.
III. THE CONFIDENT PRAYER. All former troubles were as nothing compared to this disaster which now overtakes the city, the nation. Renewed calamity prompts to renewed entreaty, and the memory of compassionate interposition incites to faith and hope. “The Lord hath been mindful.of us; he will help us.”T.
Lam 3:57, Lam 3:58
Prayer heard and answered.
How natural that the mind of a pious man should, in seasons of distress and calamity, revert to the bygone days, remember the clouds by which they were overcast, and take encouragement at the vivid recollection of gracious interposition and help!
I. THE DAY OF DELIVERANCE.
1. This was a day of need and of distress, of sore need and of bitter distress.
2. It was a day of prayer, a day in which Divine aid had been zealously and urgently implored.
II. THE VOICE OF THE DELIVERER. “Thou saidst, Fear not!” How often are these words represented by the prophets to have been spoken by Jehovah! How often by the evangelists to have been spoken by Christ! They seem to constitute a “note” of Divine utterance. They are as reassuring and consolatory to man as they are appropriate and becoming to God.
III. THE FACT OF DELIVERANCE. Comforting words are welcome; how much more the exercise of mighty power! This passage depicts
(1) the approach of the mighty One, and
(2) the redemption of the captive’s life.
What was literally true of Jeremiah’s bodily condition is true of the spiritual state of sinful man; and all temporal interpositions are an emblem of the delivering, the redemptive grace of God in Jesus Christ.
IV. THE ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF DELIVERANCE. The testimony of the prophet is an example to all who have experienced the blessedness of Divine love and grace. Such acknowledgment should be grateful, cordial, public, and everlasting.T.
Lam 3:59-63
The Lord’s knowledge of his people’s sufferings and wrongs.
The first thought which occurs to people when oppressed and afflicted isThe Lord takes no heed; he has no compassion; he will not help; my judgment is passed over from my God. But it is afterwards felt that such language is language of impatience and injustice. And the pious soul comes to rest almost satisfied beneath the blows and contempt of men, because a conviction springs upIt is all known to the omniscient and sympathizing Lord.
I. GOD, IN HIS PROVIDENCE, PERMITS HIS PEOPLE TO SUFFER AND ENDURE CALUMNIES, REPROACHES, AND WRONGS. Their endurance of such, now and again, is an unquestionable fact. And if there be a God, and such a God as revelation declares, it is certain that he suffers his people to pass through much that is painful to flesh and blood.
II. GOD DOES NOT ALWAYS AND AT ONCE REMEDY THE ILLS WHICH BEFALL HIS PEOPLE. The thought occurs to the oppressed and wrongedCan it be that he sees and hears all that is said and done to us, unmerited as it is on our part? If he does, how mysterious that he withholds his hands from avenging us, from discomfiting our cruel foes!
III. DIVINE DELAY IS NO PROOF OF DIVINE INDIFFERENCE. Christ stood upon the mountain top, and by the misty moonlight watched his disciples tossed upon the lake, toiling in rowing, and sorely harassed. But he loved them, and if he did not come forthwith to their relief there was a good reason for his delay. So oftentimes men think God careless because their probation is prolonged; but in truth wisdom and love are the motives of all his acts and of even his apparent tardiness.
IV. GOD THUS TRIES HIS PEOPLE‘S FAITH AND STEADFASTNESS AND PREPARES THEM FOR HIS SALVATION. After the stormy tempest how grateful is the rainbow! After the black night how welcome is the dawn! The mere contrast, however it might heighten joy, would not account for God’s action in testing his servants. But there are moral ends to be secured. And the furnace alone can separate the dross from the gold. The storm alone can try, can elicit, can perfect, the faith of the mariner and his confidence in the Lord who seems to sleep.T.
Lam 3:64-66
Righteous recompense.
Our conscience requires and approves of justice. Our weakness is too often in danger of cherishing resentment and malevolence. It is not safe, on most men’s part, to hope for retribution upon their personal enemies. Perhaps the record of Jeremiah’s feelings is not intended to be taken for an inculcation, or even a permission, of such imprecations upon our foes.
I. THE GROUND UPON WHICH DIVINE JUDGMENT IS INVOKED.
1. It was not personal offence given which suggested such a cry for vengeance.
2. It was the overt, deliberate conduct of men who acted in disobedience and defiance towards God, and with inhumanity and barbarity towards their fellow men.
II. THE TRIBUNAL TO WHICH THE CONDUCT OF THE WICKED IS REFERRED.
1. Not the fallible court of human justice or human requital.
2. But the court of Divine equity, in which none receives good for evil, in which every plea for mitigation of sentence is heard, and from which none can depart with a complaint upon the lips.
III. THE PURPOSE FOR WHICH RETRIBUTION IS IMPLORED.
1. Not for the gratification of vindictive feelings.
2. Not for the exaltation of the oppressed at the expense of the oppressor.
3. But for the speedy deliverance of God’s wronged and harassed people.
4. For the advancement of God’s cause upon earth. For the honour of God’s glorious Name. “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?”T.
HOMILIES BY D. YOUNG
Lam 3:18
The sum of a terrible experience.
This chapter must doubtless be taken as the utterance of Jeremiah’s own feelingsfeelings induced by the continual stress and difficulty of his life. Through the first seventeen verses he alludes to some opponent and tormentor continually thwarting his every purpose, not for a single moment leaving him free. Are we to suppose, then, that the prophet really believed all these untoward experiences to come from some one agent who had special designs against him? or was he thus only trying to make more forcible the story of his sufferings? However this is to be settled, some of our difficulty is taken away when we find, on coming to verse 18, this clear reference to Jehovah: “My strength and my hope is perished from the Lord.” These words we may take to mark about the lowest point in reckless and unadvised speaking. They give a sort of confession as to what a deadly member the tongue may become in hours of suffering. What we only feel to be the reality is taken to be the reality, whereas the reality may be immensely better. The prophet came to speak in a worthier way, and lived to admit that, in the very depths, he discovered what God’s disposition to him really was. Note how the prophet made a double mistake.
I. HE SAID HIS STRENGTH AND HOPE WERE PERISHED. Yet these things, even when composed of purely natural elements, are not so easily destroyed. Even with all the weakness that belongs to human nature, there is immense strength in it. After a long life men wonder to look back and see what they have actually achieved, and the strain they have undergone. While we may be alarmed in the midst of our troubles and vicissitudes, God looks on very differently, knowing how much strength there is to get over them. The resources of our own natures have to be developed, and the resources of grace connected with them. Then, when the strength is brought out, the hope naturally springs forth at the same time. There is hardly a greater peril in life than to act from the conclusions coining to us in gloomy moods.
II. HE SAID HIS STRENGTH AND HOPE WERE PERISHED FROM GOD. From God. How came he to say such a thing, or even to think it for a moment? Probably because he had not sufficiently recollected wherein it is that God’s favour really appears. To that God who has all power nothing would have been easier than to have made the prophet’s path outwardly pleasant and straightforward. But where would have been the gain in that? The thing really wanted was that, when Jeremiah was left alone, bereft of earthly comfort and stays, he should be led into a state of mind where he could say, “Though I seem alone, and in my solitude weak and hopeless, yet I am not alone; for the God who made me a prophet is with me in ways which cannot be comprehended by my innumerable enemies.”Y.
Lam 3:21
How hope rises from the depths of despair.
This utterance needs to be contrasted with that in Lam 3:18. There the prophet says that hope is perished. Here he has hope, grounded on a “therefore” and strengthened by a resolved attitude of mind. Thus we are helped to get an explanation of his past depression, or, as we might even call it, despair. We are helped to distinguish between abiding Divine realities and the way in which they are coloured or concealed by our moods. How is it, then, the prophet is here able to come to such an inspiring resolution? Two things are to be noticed.
I. THIS HOPE COMES BY CONSIDERING THE RIGHT THINGS. The prophet says, “This will I recall to my mind,” or” take to heart.” This, that is to say, such things as he goes on to mention later in the chapter. He said that he had been led into darkness and confinement. That he had been led was only his own way of putting the thing; the important point to note is that he got into such confusion of mind, such preoccupation with mighty evils, as to be unable to see life in the whole. Darkness had covered gracious truth, or clouds had risen between it and his spiritual vision. We can easily come to the most melancholy conclusions if only we determine to shut certain considerations from the mind. Let it also be noted that, as satisfying hope comes from considering the right things, so delusive hope comes from letting the mind dwell exclusively on the wrong ones. And what is true of the production of satisfying hope is true of other satisfying states of mind. So men may pass from unbelief to the firmest and most fruitful Faith, and from selfishness to love.
II. THIS HOPE COMES FROM CONSIDERING THE RIGHT THINGS IN THE RIGHT SPIRIT. As the expression may be rendered, there must be “a taking to heart.” Loss of hope comes from taking to heart the sad side of human life. The same things are, of course, before us all. There is enough mysterious misery in the world to oppress any human heart that thinks of nothing else, but then along with this we should ever have before us, as things to be searched into with all earnestness, the great facts of the loving revelation of God in Christ Jesus, The resurrection of Jesus, rightly considered, will give a hope rooted deep below the most discomposing powers of this world. It is not enough to place the great facts before us; they must be dealt with as being very dear and necessary to the heart,Y.
Lam 3:22, Lam 3:23
The unfailing compassions of Jehovah.
Here indeed is a full retractation of the reckless falsehood recorded in Lam 3:18. He who had hinted that God was a Destroyer, that he delighted, as it were, in reducing his children to despair, is now found glorying in the same God as the great Preserver, the one effectual Guardian of man’s existence and peace.
I. NOTE THE DESTROYING POWERS THAT BESET HUMAN LIFE. God’s mercies are the only guarantee against our being consumed. How great, then, must be the perils of life! Jeremiah had nothing to do but look back on his own experience, and then he would be filled with wonder to think he had got so far. Think of the vivid way in which Paul summed up the perils of his life. It is indeed true that we do well not to think too much of such perils. All the comfort would be taken out of life if we thought of them too much. But there they are, and times do come when it is useful to pass them before the mind. And especially we should note those perils which are perils because they have temptation in them. One of the greatest perils of life is to make an inadequate estimate of perils. The greatest of all perils is to be false to truth and goodness for the sake of life or even of temporal prosperity. Our passions, our fears, and our pride are all ready to league with the great enemy of God and of mankind.
II. NOTE THE ONLY ADEQUATE DEFENCE AGAINST THESE DESTROYING POWERS.
1. That defence is to be found in Jehovah. With him alone is the might and the power requisite to make due provision. Man is ignorant and prejudiced, continually going into the way of death, under a firm conviction that it is the way of life. If Jeremiah had been left to himself, to his own prudence and his own notions of safety, the chances are he would have been a deadman in no long time after he had begun prophesying. The true wisdom is to put ourselves into the hands of God. Then the way of duty becomes the way of safety. We are no longer misled by appearances. We suffer from the lesser danger and escape the greater. We discover how true it is that a man may lose his life, and yet in the very losing find it.
2. The compassion and faithfulness of Jehovah are specially insisted on. We ask constantly why men do things, and what motives are at the bottom of their doings. And we must ask the same things with respect to God. From the thing done we may rise to understand the heart of the doer. And then, knowing what his character is, we may confidently calculate what sort of things he will do in the future. God’s mercies are new every morninglight after darkness, strength after sleep, conscious life with all its large endowments after hours of unconsciousness. And great is his faithfulness. The irregularities and forgettings of human procedure are not to be found in the dealings of God. And this is just the responsibility that comes to us from all the attainments of science, that the deeper we search into the constitution of the universe, the more we should be impressed with the greatness of God’s faithfulness.Y.
Lam 3:24
Those who have Jehovah for their Portion.
I. EVERY MAN HAS HIS PORTION. That which is his capital, which constitutes his resources, and out of which he has to build up the results of his life. It was only natural that an Israelite should make a great deal of portions. Israel had a portion, divinely secured and wonderfully packed with the raw materials of wealth. Each tribe had its portion, given by lot, so that there was no ground of complaint, and so to each household in due time there came a portion. In Israel, as in every other nation, there were the rich and the poorthose with great possessions and those with none at all. Thus there are inequalities, and not the least of them are those which inhere in the constitution of the individual. Our portion depends, not on what we legally possess, but on what we have the energy and the skill to use. The greatest of a man’s natural resources are in himself. Otherwise he may sit among large possessions which are of no more use to him than are his hoards to a miser.
II. EVERY MAN HAS IT IN HIS OWN POWER TO REMOVE THE INEQUALITIES OF HIS PORTION. Jeremiah shows us how. Whatever his natural portion may have been, it had well nigh vanished through the hatred of his people and even of his own acquaintance. Nor must we forget that he was speaking in the midst of a desolate land. Many portions had gone and left their owners not knowing which way to turn. But now Jeremiah both assures us of his own resources and advises us where to seek ourselves, by saying, “Jehovah is my Portion.” Thus he turns away the mind from mere external property. It is the dreadful character of all mere external wealth that there is only so much of it, and therefore, just in proportion as some grow rich, others must become poor. Besides which there is to be considered that moment when riches will take to themselves wings and flee away, and that still more serious moment when flesh and heart will fail. Thus we see that the complaint about the inequalities of life has more plausibility than force. All purely natural portions are reduced to the same vanity at last, and the man who trusts in them has but wasted his time and procured for himself the deepest disappointments. Whatever we may lack, we need not lack that portion which consists in the promises of God made to them who truly trust in him.
III. THE CONSEQUENCE OF HAVING GOD FOR A PORTION. The life is filled with hope. A man can only hope according to his portion. If his pertion is in this world, his hope will hate a corresponding character; whereas if his portion is really in God, his hope will partake of the necessary elevation and fulness of his portion. God takes care that those who are really his should have a feeling in their hearts which makes them look forward to a future always better than the present. We are saved by hope. The process is yet far from complete, hut it is our right to rejoice that we are in the hands of One who will make salvation complete in his own time.Y.
Lam 3:25, Lam 3:26
God’s goodness to the hopeful and the patient.
God’s goodness is one thing; that it should be made manifest to men so that they may get comfort out of it is quits another. Bad men will never see God to be good. Not being good themselves, not having kindly, generous, and unselfish feelings towards others, they can never come to look upon God from the point of view necessary to get a manifestation of his goodness. Hence we notice
I. HOW GOD‘S GOODNESS APPEARS TO THOSE BEHAVING THEMSELVES IN A RIGHT WAY. About the first thing that is required is to believe that God is good, however much his goodness is concealed, and however trying the experiences of life may be. We must not be contented to say, “Peradventure something good will come somehow.” But rather let us say, “The manifestation of the goodness will depend on our making ready for it.” We must wait, So to speak, we have to take our turn. When the seed is sown, the harvest must be waited for God could give us certain good things immediately, but not the best things. The child cannot receive the things of the man. The servant can only get his reward when his service is completed, and that in a worthy manner. Then besides waiting there is seeking. There is no proper attitude towards God without a combination of the passive and the active. God has made excellence in true knowledge the result of strenuous, long continued effort.
II. THE GREAT ATTAINMENT IN ALL TIME OF TROUBLE IS TO HAVE A DUE MINGLING OF HOPE AND PATIENCE. Jehovah can save, if only we have what may be called spiritual presence of mind. If we say, “I must get rid of my troubles now, or I shall straightway give up the struggle, then, indeed, the prospect of salvation retires to an immense distance. What is wanted is that we should put all our highest interests in the hand of God, and then go quietly about our daily opportunities of serving him. When the passenger goes on board ship at the beginning of a long voyage he puts complete confidence in the captain, and thus he hopes and quietly waits for the voyage to come to an end. Through all perils of the sea he can only hope and quietly wait, knowing that the master of the vessel is the only one who can guard against the perils. And so in the voyage of life; we cannot shorten it, we cannot. determine what its circumstances will be; but we can put ourselves in the hands of the great Guido. He will look after, our safety, if we only take hoed to our part in the doing of his work. Let silent waiting be our rule. We are Very likely to say foolish things in our criticism of the Divine ways, and therefore it is well to keep silent. But while we are silent we may think a great deal. That is good advice of the psalmist, “Commune with your own heart and be still.” It is through inward questionings and discontent with received traditions that we are to get at the comfortable truth. at last. But if we go on talking we are very likely to discompose and mislead others. The moods in which we are doubting, fearful, and weary, we should do our very best to keep to ourselves.Y.
Lam 3:27
The discipline of youth.
Remember how early Jeremiah was called to prophesy. He says at the beginning, “Ah, Lord God! behold, I cannot speak: for I am a child” (Jer 1:6). He had to bear the yoke in his youth, and doubtless this did much to fit him for a useful and well controlled life afterwards. The comparison, of course, is plain. An ox might be put under the yoke when quite young, and then, though the restraint would be irksome for a while, at last the sense of restraint would pass away, and the yoke become second nature; whereas if an ox had never been tried with the yoke until full grown, the chances were it would not accept it in a docile and serviceable way. There is this difference between the youthful ox and the youthful human being, that the youthful ox is entirely in the hands of his master, while the youthful human being has his own choice. For we do not take the yoke here to mean chiefly the external circumstances of life. The yoke is that which we take upon ourselves, seeing that it is the right and manly thing to do. Self-denial is a yoke. The effort needful in forming right habits is a yoke. The subordination of the present to the future, the lower to the higher, the human to the Divine, is a yoke. Not that we are to leave external circumstances altogether out of the question. Men who had hard times when young have come to be thankful, in after years, for those very hard limes. It is better to be an orphan than to be the child of parents who have both the means and the disposition which make them lavishly indulgent. Only bear in mind that external circumstances have not in themselves any disciplining power. The materials of a yoke might be used to make something else, The decision rests with us. One may make a yoke out of prosperity and favourable circumstances, while another so chafes and sulks under adversity as to become worse every day.Y.
Lam 3:31-33
God’s good purposes in causing pain.
All this is the language of hope and continues naturally what is said in Lam 3:21 and Lam 3:24. The existence of present trouble presses upon the heart, but along with it there is the confident assurance of future deliverance. Observe, then, certain admissions, along with the cheering qualifications which accompany them.
I. THE LORD CASTS OFF. There is a discontinuance of the signs of his presence. Enemies get their own way, and, worst of all, the prophets find no vision from the Lord. He is not towards Israel as he used to be. But then, what a qualification comes in! Not forever. Indeed, the casting off only emphasizes the bringing back. The casting off must not be taken too literally. God does not cast off as men do. They cast off and do not wish to bring back, or, if they so wish, they find they are not able. When God casts off, though there is a feeling of separation, and something is lost that is not to be gained by any effort, still the truth remains that in God even the castaway lives and moves and has his being. God casts men off, as it were, that they may realize their weakness and true state, and then, when they make the full discovery, God’s hand is stretched out to restore.
II. THE LORD CAUSES GRIEF. Great grief, pain of body and pain of heart, must have come from the casting off. And it is of no use to make nice distinctions between God causing pain and permitting pain. Really we do not know much about the causes of pain, and it may be that we attribute to God much that we ourselves produce. The one clear thing is that God shows forth a multitude of mercies. To most of us a multitude of mercies came before there were any pains at all, and the mercies remain through the pains, even though at times they be greatly eclipsed. We may be wrong in attributing the infliction of pain to God, hampered as we too often are by the conceptions of earlier ages. But we can never be wrong in glorifying God for the multitude of his mercies, We may spoil and misuse the mercies and thus make pain, but the mercies we could not get for ourselves. Our very wrong doing makes fresh mercies to arise in view. They are many, and each one of them is a great deep of love and wisdom.
III. THE LORD AFFLICTS THE CHILDREN OF MEN. This is but saying what is already said. The new thing is the qualification. He does not do it willingly. The distinction is plain between injury inflicted with malice and injury inflicted with reluctance. There have been, and, alas! there still are, too many who put all their heart into the hurting of others. Their very end is to cause pain; whereas the end God has in view is to remove the causes of pain. The surgeon does not inflict pain willinglyhe inflicts it because he cannot help it; and thus he welcomes and utilizes to the full the agent which brings unconsciousness while he performs his operation.Y.
Lam 3:40-42
Approaching God in sincerity.
I. THE ASCERTAINING OF OUR TRUE STATE. Such is the exhortation of Lam 3:40. The talk of complaining people is generally the hasty outbreak of superficial thoughtif, indeed, such loose operations of the mind are worthy to be called thought at all. Searching is above all things needful. Beneath the surface with which we are only too easily contented there are deep possibilities of good and evil. Note the figure here employed. We are in a wayfurther advanced today than we were yesterday. There is no standing still. This way we are urged to search and tryasking whither it goes, who are our predecessors, our leaders, our companions. Then note the result of all our searching and testing. The way is one in which God is not. He walks in quite another way, and therefore we must turn to him. Only one result of a real searching is deemed possible. The man without God who yet concludes that all is right, has in truth left the most important matters unexplored.
II. THE RETURN TO GOD MUST BE A REAL RETURN. There had, perhaps, been abundant lifting up of the hands on the part of many, with no lifting of the heart. But many more had not even lifted up the hands. We must not say that posture and gesture are mere trifles. To God, of course, the mere gesture in itself can matter nothing, but from its associations it may matter a great deal. Prayer to the unseen and spiritual One is such a difficult thing that we may welcome every aid. Still, the great matter is to lift up the heart. Lift it upfilled with gratitude, humility, repentance, submissiveness.
III. A SUGGESTION OF THE GREAT DIFFICULTY YET TO BE OVERCOME. God has not pardoned. On one side there is transgression and rebellion; on the other side, God angry with all this. And what is wanted is that Israel should see transgression as transgression, rebellion as rebellion. Here we are amid the confusion of life, and we do not see that for all the worst way in which that confusion affects us we are ourselves responsible. With a humble and repentant heart, taking continual cognizance of God’s righteous will, we could ride as in an ark over that deluge which overwhelms others. But with pride and selfishness in our hearts we are strong against all ameliorating forces. We will not come to God that in him we may have first pardon and then safety, peace, and blessing.Y.
Lam 3:51
The eye and the life.
“Mine eye affecteth mine heart.” More correctly, “Mine eye paineth my soul, or my life;” that is, what I see, so melancholy is it, that it preys on my mind and undermines my health. Note
I. THE EFFECT OF THE SENSES ON THE LIFE. The eye is more than an optical instrument. The effect produced by the image on the retina depends upon who it is that sees and what it is that he sees. Age, education, peculiarities of experience, will make all the difference. The very exercising of the senses was evidently intended to give pleasure. There is correspondence between the eye and the beautiful and sublime in nature; between the ear and melodious and harmonious sounds; and yet some peculiar experience may interpose, so that there shall no longer be beauty in the beautiful, melody in the melodious. What we get from the exercise of our senses will depend upon what we bring. The prophet saw desolation all around him where once there had been crowded and prosperous life. What could he do hut feel as if a broken heart would be the end of his thoughts? But the spoilers would look at the scene differently, for to them it was the place of enrichment and triumph.
II. COMPENSATIONS FOR THE LOSS OF SENSE. Loss of vision is a serious matter to one whose intellect is full of life and activity, So Milton seems to have felt, judging from his touching references to his blindness in his poetry. But this makes it all the more needful to recollect the other side. The blind have exemptions from some pains. They do not see the painful sights of the streets: the drunkard, the ragged beggars, the weary facesweary with incessant struggling for a position or a livelihood. They can guess much of the trouble of the world, but many of the manifestations of that trouble they only know when they are told. We do well to keep in mind and rightly estimate the compensations for natural losses.
III. RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE RIGHT USE OF OUR NATURAL POWERS. The expression of the prophet here indicates that he was in the right way. To have looked on such a scene with indifference or only mild regret would have argued a very wrong state of mind indeed. Surely in the judgment the question to many will be,” What use did you make of your eyesight? Did you gather up impressions which made you feel how deep is the spiritual sickness of the world, how certain it is that only Christ can make the world better? And further, did you lend practical help to bring men within reach of the saving power of Christ?” To this extent it will be better in the day of judgment for many blind than for those who have gone through the smitten world with both eyes open and yet as if they did not see,Y.
Lam 3:55
Jeremiah calling out of the dungeon.
This is no mere figure for a great extremity, as we are made to feel when we read Jer 38:1-28, of the prophecies. It was not from amid mere restraint that the prophet cried, but from miry depths, most perilous, painful, and disgusting. Note
I. THE PUTTING INTO THE DUNGEON. God does not stretch forth his hand to prevent his servants from being put into such dreadful circumstances He looks on while they are haled to prison and even to death. For a lesson has to be taught with regard to the limitations of human power. Jeremiah’s enemies might say to him, while down in the miry pit, “Where is now thy God?”, but this was because they estimated God’s favour to men according to the presence or absence of certain outward things. God’s favour is not shown by preserving us in certain external possessions. Even life may have to be yielded for his sake. God does not interfere miraculously, even with the conduct of wicked men, unless there is some very special reason. What he says is, “You shall really be safe whatever men may do.” He who allowed his Son to be put to death, did then open wide, so that no man can shut it, the gate that leads to eternal life.
II. THE TAKING OUT OF THE DUNGEON. This was in answer to prayer. And the prayer came from a spirit of trust that no gloom and discomfort of the pit could destroy. If Jeremiah had allowed himself to say that his conjunction with Jehovah had been a mere delusion, then he might have been left in the pit. And even with all his faith he might have been left in the pit. But then there would have been a clear assurance that death was better than life. And, indeed, it is probable that, if God had allowed his servant to go out of the world at the hands of his enemies, he might have been spared a great deal of pain and sorrow. What is to be looked to in these matters is, not the present ease o the individual, but the best way in which his life can be used for the good of men and the glory of God. Prisons are no prisons, pits are no pits, if God chooses to give to his servants liberty and continue to them their natural life. In one way or another he brings his servants out of the horrible pit and out of the miry clay.Y.
Lam 3:60-66
Jeremiah and his enemies.
I. THE PROCEEDINGS OF THESE ENEMIES. The spirit of vengeance is in their hearts. Jeremiah has spoken steadily against them what Jehovah had laid on him to say. They know the language in which they have been described. It was, of course, just the thing to be expected that bad men should cherish vengeful purposes. And Jeremiah had to bear the consciousness of thisthe very painful consciousness that he was the cause, however innocent, of showing up the worst passions in the hearts of others. This spirit of vengeance manifested itself in two ways.
1. Reproach. He was called all sorts of names, held up to derision and execration. He indeed had to reproach, but then there was a measure and dignity in the words he employed. His reproaches were meant to call the reproached ones to repentance. But the reproaches from his enemies meant immediate danger to himdanger from the populace on the one hand, and the authorities on the other.
2. Plotting. Society was just in the state when plots could be carried out with success. Jeremiah did not make one enemy or a few enemies, hut many. They were wicked men, and doubtless had subordinates ready to hand for any knavery that was going on.
II. JEREMIAH‘S BELIEF THAT GOD‘S EYE WAS UPON THESE ENEMIES. “Thou hast seen? It is a great matter to feel that God has his eye upon all human wickedness. We may suffer greatly from it, and yet see only a very small part of what he sees. We are forever running into extremes, exaggerating or palliating, magnifying the reality or else diminishing it. We look at things too much in reference to our individual selves, and as they concern us. But God sees things as they truly are, in all their relations and possibilities. Some things are worse than we think them, others better. And so we are enabled to feel that all wickedness is kept within comparatively innocuous limits, The mischief only reaches the outside of what is attacked, for the same God who watches the wicked watches the good at the same time.
III. THE PRAYER OF JEREMIAH. (Verses 64-66.) The vehemence, the almost savageness of these words staggers us. But then, we are not to expect the gentleness of a Christian from an old Jewish prophet. We are not required to justify every petition of God’s servants. We have to distinguish between the prophet taken out of himself by inspiration and the man of like passions with ourselves, who has to pass through a long discipline before he can pray as he ought to pray. We may feel here that a silent waiting upon God would have been better than any imprecations of vengeance, and yet, at the same time, we must acquit Jeremiah of anything like personal malice. He wished that the wicked might be recompensed according to the work of their hands. The wicked wished Jeremiah to be treated according to the ferocity of their own hearts.Y.
Lam 3:63
The music of the wicked.
I. THE PLEASURES OF BAD MEN. Musical tastes are, of course, irrespective of moral character. There are certain original qualities both in eye and ear which remain and demand satisfaction, whatever the moral character may become. If a person of musical tastes becomes a Christian, than his Christianity may be the better for his music, or possibly, if he is not careful, it may become worse. On the other hand, if a person of musical tastes becomes an utterly selfish and self-indulgent man, then music will become the instrument of all that is bad. And so we find that great excellence in arts has been found intermingled with the grossest profligacy. Men are not necessarily better because intellect and tastes have been cultivated. The only power which, allowed to work, must make men better is the Holy Spirit of God, and where he is working, such things as music and pictures may be welcomed to give additional beauty.
II. A MALIGNANT TENDENCY IN THE PLEASURES OF BAD MEN. Bad men must ever be hindered and thwarted by the good, and when the bad get any sort of temporary triumph over the good, they will make it a cause of exultation. To some degraded and embittered hearts great is the pleasure of giving pain. This is the peril of satirists. Great intellectual gifts and powers of literary expression are concentrated on a few polished verses, which pain the subject of them all his life. There is no diviner instrument than pain as a means to an end, but surely that heart is set on fire of hell that can make pain an end in itselfY.
Lam 3:64
The principle of retribution.
Whatever the feelings in the prophet’s heart may have been, at all events he lays down something like a principle on which he expects God will act in dealing with the wicked. It is not because he hates them, or because they have hurt him, that he wants them to suffer, but because they have done wrong. Further, he wants to see them dealt with according to the wrong they have done. Perhaps we ought to look at this question of recompense apart from its being made a matter of prayer. One would not like to think of it as a desirable petition in any prayer, that the wicked might be dealt with according to their wickedness. God’s law will secure all that is necessary, and we may trust the working of that law. Men will be recompensed according to the work of their hand, only this expression, “the work of their hand,” must be taken with a very liberal meaning. What the heart of the wicked purposes, his hand generally carries out to some extent, and yet many qualifications must be made. To go literally according to the work of the hand would be to deal too severely in some instances, too leniently in others. We have to infer the heart from the hand, and our calculation of motives is a very rough and ready one. Human law, trying to be just and adequate, is not unfrequently unjust and cruel. We are so under the influence of things seen and temporal that a punishment only looks real when we can see it in operation, manifest to all. Our confidence should rather be that God has so made things by their very nature that a wicked heart becomes a miserable one. Whatsoever a man sows, he reaps. But then there is also another thing to be considered, and that is that God makes room for repentance. He who sows repentance will reap forgiveness and renewal of heart. We cannot undo the works of our hands, but God can bring good out of evil.Y.
Fuente: The Complete Pulpit Commentary
Lam 3:1. I am the man that hath seen affliction The prophet here speaks partly in his own character, and partly in that of his countrymen and fellow-sufferers; and throughout the whole in such a manner as agrees admirably with the Lord Jesus Christ, of whom Jeremiah in his sufferings especially was a type. See Isa 53:3. The reader will find most of the expressions in this chapter explained in the book of Job, and the Psalms.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
3
The Middle Song Constituting The Climax Of The Poem: Israels Brighter Day Of Consolation Contrasted With The Gloomy Night Of Sorrow Experienced By The Servant Of God [as Represented By Jeremiah Himself]
This Song, which as the third one of the five holds the middle place, is the culmination point of the whole book, and thus affords a strong argument for the opinion, that the whole book is constructed on one carefully considered plan. It is the culmination point, both as to its matter and as to its form. As to its matter, because we have here the sublimest conceptions of suffering. As to its form, because here the art of the Poet displays itself in full splendor. This appears, first of all, in the alphabetical arrangement. Whilst the other songs have only twenty-two alphabetically arranged verses, this one contains sixty-six verses, arranged in triplets, the three verses of each triplet beginning with the same letter. Each verse is a distich, composed of a rising and falling inflection. The ternary division is observable not merely in reference to the verses beginning with the same initial letter, but with regard to the arrangement of the whole: for the whole Song is naturally divided into three parts. The first part embraces Lam 3:1-18 : the second, Lam 3:19-42 : the third, Lam 3:43-66.
PART I
Lam 3:1-18
Lam 3:1. I am the man who saw affliction
By the rod of His wrath.
Lam 3:2. He led me and brought me
Into darkness and not light.
Lam 3:3. Surely against me He turned His hand
Again and again the whole day long.
Lam 3:4. He caused my flesh and my skin to waste away,
He broke my bones.
Lam 3:5. He built around and encompassed me
With bitterness and distress.
Lam 3:6. He caused me to dwell in dark places,
As the dead of old.
Lam 3:7. He hedged me in that I should not go forth,
He made my chain heavy.
Lam 3:8. Also, lest I should cry and call for help,
He shut out my prayer.
Lam 3:9. He hedged in my ways with hewn stone,
He made my paths crooked.
Lam 3:10. A lurking bear was He to me
A lion in ambush.
Lam 3:11. He drove me asideHe tore me in pieces
He left me suffering and alone.
Lam 3:12. He bent His bow, and set me
As the mark for the arrow.
Lam 3:13. He shot into my reins
The sons of His quiver.
Lam 3:14. I became a laughing-stock to all my people,
Their song all the day.
Lam 3:15. He filled me with bitter things.
He made me drunk with wormwood.
Lam 3:16. He broke my teeth with pebbles,
He covered me with ashes.
Lam 3:17. Thou didst thrust me away from peace:
I forgot good.
Lam 3:18. Then I said, My confidence and my hope
Are perished from Jehovah!
ANALYSIS
After the first triad of verses, containing the theme, the Poet, or rather the person whom the Poet represents as speaking (and who will be understood as always intended, where the sense allows it, when for the sake of brevity we say the Poet,) describes what he had suffered physically, Lam 3:4-5; and in regard to light and freedom, Lam 3:6-7; how the Lord had rejected his prayer, Lam 3:8; shut up his way, Lam 3:9; attacked and worried him like a bear or lion, Lam 3:10-11; made him a mark for his arrows, like an archer, piercing into his very soul, Lam 3:12-13; how he had thus become an object of scorn to the people, Lam 3:14; and drunk with bitterness, Lam 3:15; and how, as it were, they had given him pebbles to bile and covered him with ashes, Lam 3:16. In Lam 3:17-18, he expresses the sense of these images in literal language; God has deprived him of peace and happiness, till he was well nigh compelled to throw away his confidence in God. Thus ends this first part, in which the name of the Lord is not mentioned except as the last word of Lam 3:18, where it appears with peculiar emphasis and, as it were, with a grating dissonance. It is to be observed, however, that in the whole of this first part, only those sorrows which God had sent upon His servant are spoken of; or rather, all sorrows which befall him are made to appear as Divine temptations. Hence the suppression of Jehovahs name till the very close; where at length it is announced, that it may be more dreadfully apparent whom it was that the Poet was on the point of renouncing.
Preliminary Note
The following general remarks on this section are to be observed. 1. It contains a description of the personal sorrows of one prominent man. This man was distinguished by his position as well as by his sufferings. The former is evident from Lam 3:14, where it is said he had become a derision to all the people; this could only happen to one who stood out conspicuously before the eyes of all the people. The second appears from the fact, that he is described as one burdened with sorrows more than all other persons (Lam 3:1-3). 2. We must recognize in the man thus made conspicuous the prophet Jeremiah. For not only the description beginning at Lam 3:52, undoubtedly refers to what befell this prophet as related in Jeremiah 38, but also, before that passage occurs, Lam 3:14 plainly indicates this prophet (see the exposition). There is then no doubt that this Song is put into the mouth of the prophet Jeremiah 3. As in chapter second, in the first nine verses, the destruction of Jerusalem is described as the act of God, so in this chapter the Poet ascribes all his sorrows to God as their author. He represents them as divine temptations. There is only this difference, that whilst in chap. 2, the name of God is frequently mentioned ( ,, Lam 3:1-2; Lam 3:5-8), in chap. 3. God is spoken of in Lam 3:1-16, only indefinitely in the third person, in Lam 3:17 He is first addressed in the second person, and in Lam 3:18 He is at last distinctly mentioned by name (). This is evidently a designed climax. I do not think with Engelhardt (p. 85), that a tender conscience prevented the Poet from indicating the Lord, explicitly by name, as the author of his profound mental agitation; for what he did in chapter second, and repeats in Lam 3:18 of this chapter, he could have done in Lam 3:1-16. But this making the name of God prominent in? the last verse, at the culmination point of the description of his sufferings, is due to the art of the Poet, of which this Song affords striking evidence.
Lam 3:1-3
1, 2I am the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of His wrath. He hath led 3me and brought me into darkness, but not into light. Surely against me is he turned; he turneth his hand against me all the day.
TEXTUAL AND GRAMMATICAL
Lam 3:1. not infrequent in Jer 17:5; Jer 17:7; Jer 22:30; Jer 23:9, etc. In Lamentations in this chapter only, and here four times, Lam 3:1; Lam 3:27; Lam 3:35; Lam 3:39.Jeremiah never uses see Jer 1:13. The choice of the word here seems due to similarity of sound with , comp. Psa 88:16. in Jeremiah only in the two critically suspected places, Jer 10:16; Jer 15:19, where is found. This exact phrase is found (as has not been before remarked, that I know of) in Pro 22:8, in that part of the Proverbs, too, which is acknowledged to be the oldest and which extends from Pro 10:1 to Pro 22:16. The expression there is used in the sense of being blamed by men; here, the suffix refers to it God., see Lam 2:2.
Lam 3:2. not in Jeremiah in any form.Hiph. Jeremiah often uses, Jer 2:16-17; Jer 31:9; Jer 32:5.The substantive never in Jeremiah. He seldom expresses this general thought, and when he does, he uses other words; , ,, Jer 13:16-17; Lam 2:6, ; Jer 23:12, ; Jer 2:31. [If he preferred here a word he never used before, euphony alone would suggest it to him. It happens, however, that of the five words in his prophecies above cited, four of them he uses only once, and the fifth, , only twice; and one of the five, , is not found elsewhere in the Bible. Where such variety of terms are used to express the same idea, the introduction of another new one may be deemed; as characteristic of the author. At least this word , affords no evidence against Jeremiahs authorship of Lamentations.W. H. H.], see Lam 2:1-2; Lam 2:14; Lam 2:17; Lam 3:7; Lam 3:49; Lam 4:6.With respect to the Acc. loci, see Lam 2:21.
Lam 3:3. . In regard to the peculiar idiom by which an adverbial idea is expressed by a finite verb, see my Gr., 95 g. n. [Also Greens Gr., 269]. In Jer 18:4, occurs in a similar construction [see marginal reading in E. V.]
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
Lam 3:1. I am the man.[The references to the personal experiences of the prophet Jeremiah in this chapter are too evident to be disputed. That these words were the words of Jeremiah himself must be the opinion of all who read this chapter unprejudiced by a theory to the contrary (see Introduction). But we are not to regard him as speaking here as a private person. He speaks as the Prophet of Jehovah raised up at that particular juncture, to stand between the people and their covenant God, to reveal His will to them and to present their interest to God at the throne of grace, for these were the twofold functions of the prophets office. The Prophet therefore was a representative man. He stood for the people. He suffered for the people. He spoke for the people. Hence in this Song Jeremiah easily passes from the singular to the plural forms of speech, from I and me, to we and us. [Gerlach: The supposition that in this chapter the personal sufferings of the Prophet are the subject of his Lamentation (Michaelis, Pareau, Maurer, Kalkar, Bleek in his Introduction), cannot be certainly proved, either from Lam 3:14 (see Comm. on that ver.), nor from the description contained in 5355, where the possibility of a figurative sense cannot be denied. In opposition to this opinion are the following arguments. 1. From the fact that we imperceptibly takes the place of I in Lam 3:22 and Lam 3:40-47, we may conclude that in the rest of the chapter also, the prophet does not speak only in his own name and of his own person. 2. Unless we would destroy the whole connection of the chapter, we must allow that the calamity, recognized in Lam 3:42-43, as the punishment of the sins of the people (we have sinned), is the same calamity which is described in Lam 3:1-18 with reference to the experience of a single individualan opinion, which, by manifold agreements between the two sections, is shown to be correct. 3. The lamentation of the Prophet over his own past suffering, in the actual presence of a great national calamity, would be no less improbable, than the position of this chapter, in the middle of four others lamenting the national calamity, would in that case be inappropriate. The Lamentation of this chapter is then correctly understood only, when it is regarded as a lamentation of every one of the individual pious Israelites, as a lamentation which, while proceeding from self-experienced mental sufferings, has its truth, neverthelesss, for all pious Israelites, in whose name the Prophet speaks. This was perceived by Aben Ezra, when he designated the individual Israelites as the subject lamenting, and in this most, modern interpreters (Rosenmueller, Ewald, Thenius, Neumann, Vaihinger) agree.W. H. H.]That hath seen afflictionwho saw misery, i.e., experienced it. Raschi is of the opinion that the verb here expresses the idea of living to see the fulfilment of the destruction predicted, which would suit Jeremiah alone. But in that case it would at least have been necessary to say () the affliction, or misery. The verb may have the sense, in a general way, of experiencing or living to see, as frequently (see Jer 5:12; Psa 16:10; Psa 49:10; Ecc 8:16; Ecc 9:9). But the distinction between prophecy and fulfilment is too feebly indicated, to admit of Raschis interpretation. The Poet has rather in view the distinction between higher and comparatively inferior degrees of suffering. He would simply say that he had suffered more than all other persons. Besides, man () would be too indefinite. We would expect seer (), or prophet (); [I am the prophet, or seer, who has lived to see the fulfilment of my own predictions.]By the rod of his wrath.The expression can only mean, that the Poet had seen misery in consequence of Gods using the rod of His wrath. Compare Isa 10:5, where the Lord calls the Assyrian the rod of My anger, and Job 9:34; Job 21:9, where the rod of God is spoken of in a general way. [Calvin: At the very beginning he acknowledges that whatever he suffered had been inflicted by Gods hand there is included in the word wrath a brief confession, especially when it is added by the rod, or staff.]
Lam 3:2. He hath led me and brought meHe led and brought meinto darkness but (or, and) not into light.The metaphor, [of light and darkness for prosperity and adversity] is found in Amo 5:18; Amo 5:20; Job 12:25, expressed in the same Hebrew phrase.
Lam 3:3. Surely against me.The threefold prominence given to the person speaking, by the repetition of the personal pronoun three times in the beginning of the Song, is not without a reason. These introductory verses thus acquire a thematic character, i.e., it is thus indicated that the speaker intends to make his own person especially a theme of discourse. His justification in this is, that he can with good reason assume to himself the personality punished to the greatest degree by sufferings of every sort. While he was this, he was also at the same time a leader, as it were, of all punished in the same way, therefore the representative of a whole class of sufferers,of the Israel, hated by men but beloved of God, of the the spiritual Israel. This explanation would not stand, if we were to understand the whole people as indicated by the man in Lam 3:1. That the whole people are not so designated by the man, will be seen further on. For the present, the expression itself, the man, furnishes an argument against it: for throughout the book Zion is always spoken of as a female. See his strongholds,Lam 2:5, where only the masculine pronoun is used in reference to Zion, and there only because the words are a quotation. [Probably the pronoun there refers to God, not to Zion. See the Notes.W. H. H.]Is he turned; he turneth his hand against me all the day.turned he his hand always again the whole day. [He turns His hand again and again the whole day long. The Hebrew is very idiomatic. The true construction is explained by the grammatical note of Naegelsbach above, referring to the use of a verb in an adverbial sense. The best grammarians and Versions agree in this construction. Our English Version is obviously wrong, not only because it translates both verbs transitively, but because it translates them in different tenses and is obliged to supply the words against me in the last clause. The verbs are both future and ought to be taken in the sense of the historical imperfect, because the Prophet would express the constant repetition of Gods strokes, or else as a present tense, because the prophet is referring to sufferings not yet at an end.W. H. H.] All the day.See Lam 1:13; Lam 3:14; Lam 3:62. [He smote me and continues smiting me again and again, all the day long.W. H. H.]
Lam 3:4-9
4, 5My flesh and my skin hath he made old: he hath broken my bones. He hath 6builded against me, and compassed me with gall and travail. He hath set me in 7dark places, as they that be dead of old. He hath hedged me about, that I cann 8get out: he hath made my chain heavy. Also, when I cry and shout, he shutteth 9out my prayer. He hath inclosed my ways with hewn stone: he hath made my paths crooked.
TEXTUAL AND GRAMMATICAL
Lam 3:4.Jeremiah uses often, Jer 7:21; Jer 12:12, etc.; , once, LamJer 13:23. The two words occur in connection, especially in Lev 13:2-4; Lev 11:38-39. Comp. besides Job 19:20, Pro 5:11; Lam 4:8; Lam 5:10.
Lam 3:5. involves, like , Lam 3:3, an adverbial relation to the principal verb, see Lam 3:3. [There is no necessity for this construction here, nor are the verbs so nearly synonymous as to render this construction likely. It is better to take the two verbs as having the same relation to , and the same subjective accusative in . . Gesenius: God hath builded against me, obstructed me, shut up my way on every side so that I cannot get out.W. H. H.], elsewhere frequently in the sense circuire, circumdare (see Jos 6:3; Psa 17:9; Psa 48:13, etc.), means also circumponere, and that which is placed around in the accusative by itself. So also Job 19:6. The word is not found in Jeremiah. (In Jeremiah only in the connection , Jer 8:14; Jer 9:14; Jer 23:15) is of uncertain derivation, but indicates undoubtedly poison (see Deu 29:17; Deu 32:32-33; Lam 3:19). The word connected with it, , does not occur in Jeremiah, although he used the verb , comparatively speaking, frequently, Jer 6:11; Jer 9:4; Jer 12:5; Jer 15:6; Jer 20:9. The meaning is difficulty, labor, Exo 18:8; Num 20:14; Neh 9:32; Mal 1:13.
Lam 3:6., not in Jeremiah., Jer 32:37. [This word does not imply the posture of sitting, as Henderson imagines, when he says the language may refer to an ancient custom of placing the dead bodies in a sitting posture in the sepulchres.W. H. H.]
Lam 3:7., Jeremiah never uses. [Observe, this is an initial word. See Intr., Add. Rem. (6), p. 31.W. H. H.] is found in Psa 88:9, word for word. For the construction [of with the future, that I could not go forth] see my Gr., 89, 3 b, 2; 109, 3. is, to say the least, foreign to Jeremiahs style. Comp. 1Ki 12:10; 1Ki 12:14., in the sense of a fetter, only here; elsewhere , Jer 39:7; Jer 52:11, etc.
Lam 3:8., in the sense of crying to God, frequently with Jeremiah, for example Jer 11:11-12; Jer 20:8; Jer 25:34.The verb (see Psa 88:14) used only in Piel, does not occur in Jeremiah; he uses only the substantive derived from it , which also occurs in our chapter, Lam 3:56.The verb , thus written, occurs only here. It is merely a scribal variety of ; see Lam 2:6. Jeremiah uses neither. The sense is obstruere (of wells, Gen 26:15; Gen 26:18; 2Ki 3:19; 2Ki 3:25), occludere, recludere (of prophetical mysteries, Dan 8:26; Dan 4:9). [Michaelis, Rosenmueller, Gerlach: Obstruxit precibus meis viam qua pervenire ad suas aures possint.]
Lam 3:9., not in Jeremiah. May there not be an allusion to stones with which, the grave is built up ? in Jer 6:16; Jer 18:15.Piel occurs only in Isa 24:1. Jeremiah uses Hiph. twice, ; Jer 3:21, ,, Jer 9:4. That indicates the destruction of the via munita, as Thenius would have it, I do not believe. For in Isa 24:1, signifies not evertere, but pervertere. [Gerlach: is not a carefully constructed causeway (Thenius), which is rather the meaning of , but is rather the path worn by the steps of the traveller, then any small by-road (see Jer 18:15, where is added epexegetically to .]
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
It may be observed here that the speaker, having in the introductory verses 13 designated himself, in general terms, as the man most severely punished, now proceeds to prove this in detail.
Lam 3:4. He begins with direct personal sufferings in his flesh, skin and bones. My flesh and my skin hath he made old.He wasted away my flesh and my skin. The verb rendered he made old, in the Kal, has an intransitive signification, atteri, consumi, to be wasted away by attrition, to be consumed, especially of garments (Deu 8:4; Deu 29:5; comp. Isa 50:9; Isa 51:6) and of the bodily faculties (Gen 18:12): in the Piel, which is used here, it means atterere, to wear out by attrition [the verb means to rub], consumere, to consume, waste away; it is found in this sense, besides here, in Psa 49:15; Job 21:13; Isa 65:22; 1Ch 17:19.He hath broken my bones.He broke (see Lam 2:9) my bones [Henderson:Broke in pieces]. The same phrase occurs in Isa 38:13. See Psa 51:10; Job 30:17, and the declaration of the contrary in Psa 34:21. [The breaking of the bones indicate, not only the loss of physical strength, but a condition of great suffering. The bones are often represented in the Scriptures as the seat of acute pain (Barnes.) Job 20:11; Job 30:17; Psa 6:2; Psa 22:14; Psa 31:10; Psa 38:3; Psa 42:10; Pro 14:30. We can only take the phrase here in the metaphorical sense. He was suffering both physical weakness and physical pain.W. H. H.]
Lam 3:5. Now follow the hindrances which have been raised against him from without. And first he says, he had been built around with poison and trouble.He hath builded against me and compassed me with gall and travail.He built up against me and round about me poison and difficulty. [He built around me, and encompassed [me] with bitterness and distress.W. H. H.] The image of a beleaguered city lies at the foundation of the thought here. But we are not, with the older commentators, to supply wall (), or some similar word after the verb built, but rather are to take gall and travail [poison and difficulty] as the object of that verb. The connection of words and thoughts here is singular, and has not up to the present time been sufficiently elucidated. Perhaps the Poet would say that the Lord had surrounded him, not only with hardships of every sort, but with adversities in themselves ruinous. It is however possible that in the word poison,, the idea of bitterness (see Psa 69:22) may predominate. Any way a sudden transition, from a figurative to a literal style of speaking, is effected. [There is perhaps no more difficulty here than is created by an attempt to reduce a metaphorical expression to the terms of a literal and actual fact. To enclose and encompass one with bitterness and trouble or distress (using the abstract for the concrete, i.e., with circumstances causing bitterness and distress), as if these were obstructing walls, is undoubtedly the sense of our text, and is adopted by most of the versions and commentators.W. H. H.]
[The Sept., the Targ. and the Arab. (not the Vulg. as Blayney says), render , as if it were , my head. But these and all the ancient versions translate the same word in Lam 3:19, by gall. The Sept. also translates as a verb, . Blayney adopts these readings of the Sept., but instead of elucidating the meaning, confuses it still more by a new translation of the first clause: He hath built upon me, and encompassed my head, so that it is weary. Henderson adopts partially the Sept. translation, but discovers a new and doubtful meaning for the second verb, , He hath builded against me and struck me on the head, and it is distressed.Fuerst proposes (See his Lex. under the word ) to carry out the military idea suggested by the verbs, thus; He has surrounded me with fortifications and a trench. But it is hardly necessary to accept the new and unauthorized derivations of these words, when their frequent use gives us a sense, that is, indeed, metaphorical, but none the less clear and expressive, and sustained so generally by the Versions, old and new.W. H. H.]
Lam 3:6. To the obstructions of the way are added the obstructions of light. This whole verse is reproduced word for word in Psa 143:3.He hath set me in dark places.He caused me to dwell in darkness.As they that be dead of old.As the dead of olden time.Psa 88:5-7; Psa 88:11-13, afford the best commentary on this. There are those dead before the appointed time, whom the Lord remembers no more, and to whom He shows no more the wonders of His grace. The expression is found only here and in Psa 143:3. [We may translate it either the dead of old, or the forever dead.Blayney: God had involved him in such a depth of distress, that he was as incapable of extricating himself, as those who had laid long in the dark mansions of the dead were of making their escape thence. Gerlach; He is thrust into the darkness of the grave (Psa 88:5-6), or of Sheol (Psa 88:7; Job 10:21-22)as an image of distress, Psa 30:4; Psalms 88like the dead of eternity, the forever dead (Vulg., mortui sempiterni).Most commentators (Michaelis, Rosenmueller, Maurer, De Wette, Ewald, Thenius, Neumann, Bttcher) explain, the dead old = those a long time dead; but whether dead a long or a short time makes no difference, and this, as Conz has correctly remarked, would occasion an absurd ambiguity, as if the dead, who have been but a little while dead and buried, might not lie in darkness. The Chal.:Mortui qui vadunt in alterum seculum (mundum).W. H. H.]
Lam 3:7. A climax! Not only has the Lord surrounded him with obstacles and deprived him of light, but He has also taken away his freedom. He is imprisoned and fettered! He hath hedged me about, that I cannot get out.He hedged me in that I could not get out [or, that I should not escape, or go forth.The very words of Christ in the passion Psa 88:9 (Words-worth)]. He hath made my chain heavy,He made heavy my chain, or fetter.
Lam 3:8. The Lord accepts none of the sufferers prayers. He hears him not. [Henderson: The prophet places himself in the position of a prisoner, who is securely immured, and to whose supplications for deliverance, how earnestly soever they may be made, no attention is paid.] Also when I cry and shout, he shutteth out my prayer.Also though I cry and call for help, my prayer has he barred or bolted. [The idea is, hindered or obstructed. He has taken means, by anticipation, to prevent my prayer for help from being heard, either by Himself, or by any other who might possibly come to the rescue. The change from the future tenses, to the preterite tense, seems to indicate this meaning.W. H. H.] The sense cannot be that the Lord prevented the prayer from going out of the mans heart, for in fact, he cried (see Rosenmuellerin loc), but that He shut up the way of access to His own ear and heart. Comp. Lam 3:44; Pro 1:28. [Wordsworth: So the suffering Messiah says, Psa 22:2, O my God, I cry in the daytime, but Thou hearest not. Gerlach: However loudly he prays, the Lord has closed His ear; Lam 3:44; Job 19:8; Isa 1:15; Jer 7:16; Psa 18:42; Pro 1:28.]
Lam 3:9. The right way is built up against the Poet, so that he seems compelled to false ways.He hath inclosedhe hedged in [same word as in Lam 3:7]my ways with hewn stones. If hewn, then large stones, for we do not build with small ones. Comp. Exo 20:25; 1 Kings 5:31; Isa 9:9; Amo 5:11; Eze 40:42.He hath madehe mademy paths crooked. The Poet would say that he had been forced to crooked and false paths. See crooked ways,Psa 125:5; crooked things,Isa 42:16. [At the first glance this would seem to be a continuation of the figure contained in verses 7, 8. This impression is due to the repetition of the word , hedgedin, and to the climax implied by hewn stone. The idea, in that case, is, that having imprisoned him and loaded him with fetters and shut out his cry for help, God proceeds, as it were, to make his imprisonment permanent and secure, by building up around him a wall of hewn stone. If this is so, then the last clause cannot mean He made my paths crooked, for one in the situation described must remain an inactive, passive sufferer; but it would mean that God had made all paths of escape impassable. The principal avenues of escape () are built up with hewn stones, barriers that cannot be scaled. The smaller paths () are broken up, turned upside down, and thus rendered impassable. This is Gerlachs view. It is better, however, to regard this verse as introducing a new metaphor, which is continued in Lam 3:10. He next conceives of himself as a traveller whose way is blocked up by a solid wall, and who, being compelled to turn aside into the devious pathways of the forest, is exposed to the rapacity of wild beasts (Henderson). This view is recommended by the following considerations. 1. The figure of an immured and fettered prisoner is already complete, and could receive no additional force from what is here said. 2. The repetition of the verb , hedged in, which in ordinary cases would indicate a continuance of the same subject, is accounted for here by the necessity of a word with the same initial letter. 3. The expressions my ways and my paths, favor this construction. They are his, because he is expected to pursue them. Were they simply the ways and paths of possible escape from the place of confinement, they would not, strictly speaking, be his at all, for he could not use them. 4. This explanation makes the next verse less abrupt, and produces a regular and beautiful succession of metaphorical pictures. 5. The idea of simply breaking up or turning over the bypaths, as expressed by the Hebrew verb , does not correspond with the security against escape expressed by building up the main avenues of escape with hewn stone. 6. The common translation, He made my path crooked, best agrees with the force of the Hebrew verb, and is adopted with great unanimity by the Versions and commentators. Owen: The meaning is turned aside. He had built, as it were, a wall of hewn stones across his way, and thus He turned aside his goings or his paths, so that he was constrained to take some other course. Wordsworth: Not only hath He blocked up my way with hewn stones, but He has turned my paths aside from their proper direction. So E. V., Broughton, Calvin, Blayney, Boothroyd, Henderson, and Noyes.W. H. H.]
Lam 3:10-18
10, 11He was unto me as a bear lying in wait, and as a lion in secret places. He 12hath turned aside my ways, and pulled me in pieces: he hath made me desolate. He 13hath bent his bow, and set me as a mark for the arrow. He hath caused the arrows 14of his quiver to enter into my reins. I was a derision to all my people, and their 15song all the day. He hath filled me with bitterness, he hath made me drunken 16with wormwood. He hath also broken my teeth with gravel-stones, he hath covered 17me with ashes. And thou hast removed my soul far off from peace: I forgat prosperity. 18And I said, My strength and my hope is perished from the Lord.
TEXTUAL AND GRAMMATICAL
Lam 3:10.Jeremiah never mentions bears. [The need of an initial would naturally suggest the bear in connection with the lion. See Intr., Add. Rem. (6), p. 31.W. H. H.]Jeremiah uses only once, in the phrase , Jer 51:12, Jeremiah uses often, Jer 13:17; Jer 23:24; Jer 49:10.
Lam 3:11., . . In the Aramaic it stands for in frustra dissecuit (Lev 1:6; Lev 1:12), for dilaniavit (Job 16:9), for dissecuit, fregit (1Sa 15:33; Psa 6:3). See Chr. B. Michaelis in Rosenmueller and Ges. Thes., p. 1153.For relation of to Jeremiahs style and use of language, see Lam 1:4 Jeremiah uses not infrequently, Jer 12:11; Jer 13:16; Jer 17:5, etc. [ would be suggested here as alliterative with preceding word.W. H. H.]
Lam 3:12. in Jer 5:26; Jer 31:21, in the sense of custodia, a place of custody, frequently in Jer 32:2; Jer 32:12, etc. In the sense of a mark, only here, Job 16:12, and 1Sa 20:20. See Gesen. Thes., p. 511 s. v., . With regard to its Aramaic termination (see , Lam 4:1). See Olsh., 38 f., 108 e [Greens, Gr., 196 d]. This is no evidence against Jeremiac authorship, since, not only analogies occur in Jeremiah (see , 1, 11;. , Jer 23:39), but scattered examples occur also in older books. See Olsh. as above., Jer 9:7; Jer 1:9; Jer 1:14, etc.
Lam 3:13.Hiph. often in Jer 3:14; Jer 20:5; Jer 25:9; Jer 25:13, etc.Jeremiah also uses (Jer 5:15), but occurs only here. The arrow is called in Job 41:20. See , sons of flame, of lightning, by which many interpreters understand arrows, others sparks, and others birds. See also , Zec 4:14; , Isa 5:1.
Lam 3:14.The words are taken from Jer 20:7, where it is said, Jeremiah never uses. See Lam 3:63; Lam 5:14.
Lam 3:15.Jeremiah uses Hiph. , Lam 5:7., besides here only in Exo 12:8; Num 9:11.Hiph. Jer 31:25., wormwood, absinthium, Jeremiah uses in Jer 9:14; Jer 23:15.
Lam 3:16The verb , contundere, comminuere, is found besides here only in Psa 119:20.The verb occurs only here. It is in Hiph., and means obruit, cooperuit. [All the ancient Versions seem to have considered same as . The Sept., , is rendered by Vulg. cibavit me cinere, as if from came the Latin word cibus (Blayney); but this meaning cannot be extracted from the fundamental sense of the root (see Fuerst). The Targ. rendered it laid low, which gives good sense, and is adopted by Blayney, Boothroyd, Owen and C. B. Michaelis. The Arabic, rolled me in the ashes, which is adopted by Luther, E. V. marg., J. D. Michaelis and Ewald. The Syr, besprinkled, or covered, which is generally accepted as the correct meaning.W. H. H.] in Jeremiah only in the kindred expression ,, Jer 6:26; Comp. Eze 27:30.
Lam 3:17. Jeremiah never uses: see Lam 2:7., Jer 23:39. frequently in Jer 14:11; Jer 18:10; Jer 18:20, etc.
Lam 3:18.. See Lam 3:54; Jer 3:17; Jer 3:19. Only occurs in Jeremiah, and that with reference to time, duration., Jeremiah never uses: but see Pro 11:7; Eze 19:5; Eze 37:11.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
Lam 3:10. While in what precedes we were told how the sufferer was deprived of all means of escape, what follows describes the positive weapons of offence with which he was assaulted. [By regarding Lam 3:9 as in close connection with what precedes, the introduction of the bear and lion in Lam 3:10 is abrupt and irrelevant. A prisoner, closely immured, has nothing to fear from bears and lions lurking in their coverts. Connect Lam 3:9 with Lam 3:10, however, and the sense is apparent. A traveller, prevented by barricades and stone walls from pursuing the way he would go, is compelled to follow crooked paths environed with danger of encountering lurking wild beasts. See notes on Lam 3:9W. H. H.]He was unto me as a bear lying in wait, and as a lion in secret places.A lurking bear was he to me,a lion in, ambush. The image of a bear lying in wait occurs only here. See, however, Hos 13:7-8; Amo 5:19; Pro 28:15. The figure of a lion lying in wait occurs in Jer 49:19; Jer 1:14; comp. Jer 2:30; Jer 4:7; Jer 5:6; Jer 12:8. Elsewhere, see Psa 10:9; Psa 17:12.
Lam 3:11. Bears or lions, when they attack a flock, spring upon them, tear the sheep in pieces and leave those they do not eat weltering alone in their blood. This last has happened to the Poet. He hath turned aside my wayshe drove me aside. He hath made my ways turn aside [lit.], that is to say, He drives me from the right, direct way. And pulled me in pieces, he hath made me desolate.He tore me in pieces and cast me away lonely and miserable. Should we translate, He tore me to pieces, mutilated me, and understand this to mean that the wild beast had eaten his victim, then this would not suit the other figures used in the text. On this account, we must understand this tearing in pieces only in the sense of discerpere, of mangling, lacerating. So Ewald,mich zerrupfend. The Poet would say that the beast of prey had seized one of the scattered flock, had throttled it and left it for dead, lying alone in its misery. For we must carefully observe the two ideas expressed here in the last Hebrew word, , that of desolation, destruction (see Lam 1:4; Lam 1:13; Lam 1:16), and that of solitariness, loneliness (Isa 54:1; 2Sa 13:20). [This word, , may express any object of suffering forsaken of God and men, exciting, therefore, either pity or astonishment. See the use of the verb and its derivatives in Lamentations 1; Isa 54:1; Job 16:7; Job 21:5; Psa 143:4. The fundamental signification of the root is to be motionless, filled with dread. This is the idea here. A solitary sheep, torn by the wild beast, lying alone in its suffering, and apparently dead. He made me desolate, or a desolation, may be a literal translation, but does not convey the sense which can only be done by inventing a phrase, as Naegelsbach has done. The idea is best condensed, perhaps, in the words, He left me suffering and alone.W. H. H.]
cannot be taken here in the sense it always has elsewhere, refractarius, rebellis. The word in this sense is Part. Kal. of , and occurs only in Hos 4:16. Here it can only be, either Pilel of [so Davidson], or Poel of (Olsh. 254). It is, in either case, a verbal form, occurring no where except here, and meaning He made my ways turn aside, that is to say, he drove me from the right, direct way. Thenius lays too much stress on the word, when he translates, He has dragged me aside. [The idea is, He causes me to diverge from the way, to escape the lurking beast; but in vain, for he springs upon me, rends me, and leaves me weltering in blood. Blayney gives us an original translation of his own. He hath turned full upon me. is applied, Hos 4:16, to a refractory heifer, that turns aside, and will not go forward in the straight track, as she is directed. Here it is to be understood of a bear or lion turning aside toward a traveller, to fall upon him in his way. Gerlach understands the word here to signify turning back, instead of turning aside, that is, arresting the fugitive and sending him back to prison. But neither the context, nor the signification of the word allow of this sense. Jarchi, according to Gerlach, regarded , as a denominative from , spinis opplevit vias meas. So Hugh Broughton,My ways hath He made thorny.W. H. H.]
Lam 3:12. In a new figure the Poet describes the Lord as an archer, who has made him his mark. [Henderson: The idea of a hunter was naturally suggested by the circumstances just referred to. This is beautifully expressed in language borrowed from such employment.] He hath bentHe benthis bow.See. Lam 2:4. And set me as athemark for the arrow. The second half of the verse seems to be an imitation of Job 16:12.
Lam 3:13. Continuation of the figure employed on ver, 12. He hath caused the arrows of His quiver to enter into my reins.He shot into my reins the sons of his quiver. The Lord not only aims at the mark. He hits it, and that right in the centre. The reins are here regarded as the central organs, as frequently with Jeremiah (Jer 11:20; Jer 12:2; Jer 17:10; Jer 20:12), not in a physical sense, however, but in a psychological sense, as appears from Lam 3:14. See Delitzsch Psychologie, 13, p. 268, 2d Edition.The expression sons of the quiver, occurs only here. Rosenmueller quotes not inappropriately the pharetra gravida sagittis of Horace (Ode. I. 22, 23).
Lam 3:14. It happens here that the Poet suddenly loses the figure. But it seems as if he would indicate by means of Lam 3:14, that by the arrows of which he spoke in Lam 3:13, he meant the arrows of derision. Jer 9:7 explicitly calls the deceitful tongue ( ), a sharpened arrow ( ) See Isa 49:2.I was a derision to all my people.I have become a laughing stock to all my people. Altogether unnecessarily many interpreters (even Thenius and Ewald) take , my people, as a rare plural form for , peoples, nations (as, it is asserted, in 2Sa 22:44; Psa 144:2. See Ewald. 177 a). This rests on the presumption that the subject of the Lamentation is not the Prophet, but the people of Israel. We have already above, at Lam 3:1-3, declared ourselves against, this opinion, and will return to the question again below, at Lam 3:40 sqq. [Henderson; Instead of my people, a considerable number of MSS. read , and four in the plural; but this reading, though supported by the Syr., seems less suitable than the former. There is no evidence that the Prophet was treated otherwise than with respect by foreigners. Instead of meeting with any consideration from his countrymen, fidelity in the discharge of his duty to whom had been the occasion of all his personal troubles, he was made the butt of their ridicu e, and the theme of their satirical songs. See Jer 20:7.] And their song all the day. [The conjunction and is not in the original, and is omitted by Naegelsbach.W. H. H.] The expression, their song (), is from Job 30:9; comp. Job 12:4; Psa 69:8-13.
Lam 3:15. After the short interruption of Lam 3:14, the Poet returns to the figurative style of speaking. He exhausts, as it were, his stock of images, in order to depict the adversities which befell him. He must also receive them as meat and drink, and that too in copious measure, and he must be covered with them as with ashes. [Scott: Lam 3:14-16. In the midst of his other troubles, the prophet was derided and insulted by the people, over whose approaching calamities he so pathetically mourned; and they made him the subject of their profane songs, for which they were at length made a derision and a song to their enemies. Thus the Lord filled him with bitterness and intoxicated him with the nauseous cup, of which he was made to drink, instead of the cordials that his case seemed to require, and instead of nourishing, palatable food, his bread was as it were mixed with gravel, which brake his teeth, and put him to great pain when he attempted to eat: and he was covered with ashes, as a constant mourner and penitent.]He hath filled me with bitterness (marg., bitternesses). He satiated me with bitterness. [The Hebrew verb is used to denote satiety after eating, Deu 6:11; Hos 4:10. The connection seems to require this sense here He was required to eat bitter things, or bitter herbs (see FuerstsLex.), and drink wormwood till he was filled.W. H. H.]He hath made me drunken with wormwood.He made me drunk with [or, made me drink to excess of] worm wood. See Lam 3:19.
Lam 3:16. He hath also broken [lit. And he broke. Lam 3:16-18 each, begin with and (or vav conversive) for the sake of the initial letter, which is translated here also. It can be omitted in translation altogether, though it may denote here an intimate connection between this verse and Lam 3:15, as between eating and drinking.W. H. H.] My teeth with gravel stones.He broke my teeth with pebbles. It is a matter of indifference whether we regard this as meaning bread mixed with stones, or stones instead of bread. He hath covered me with ashes.He covered me with ashes. The ashes here seem to be intended as a symbol of mourning, as they are in the well-known usages of mourning. See 2Sa 13:19; Job 2:8; Mic 1:10.
, lapillus, a little stone, occurs besides here only in Pro 20:17 (Psa 77:18). [Pro 20:17, Bread of deceit is sweet to a man; but afterwards his mouth shall be filled with gravel, seems to be an allusion to the grit that often is mixed with bread baked in ashes, and thus may explain this passage. Blayney, Boothroyd, Owen and Henderson, translate the word grit. Hendersons inelegant translation, He hath made my teeth cranch grit, and Ewaldser liess meine Zhne zermalmen Steine, is inconsistent with the use of the preposition , the presumptive power of the verb (see Gerlach), and the apparent meaning of this passage especially when compared with Pro 20:17,the pebbles were not broken by the teeth, but the teeth were broken by the pebbles.A curious result of translating from a translation is exhibited in the Vulg. The Sept. having rendered this , the Vulg., taking as calculus arithmeticus, translated Et fregit ad numerum (in full number, or by number, Douay one by one) denies meos.W. H. H.]
Lam 3:17-18. These verses constitute the conclusion and culmination point of the Lamentation. The speaker, dropping the metaphorical and adopting the literal style, utters a threefold declaration. 1. That the Lord had thrust him back, as it were, from the dominion of peace (, peace, is to be taken in its broadest sense, see below). To this objective act, what follows corresponds as subjective. 2. That the speaker has been deprived of all happiness, even to the recollection of it. 3. That heand this is the acme of his sorrowregarded even his confidence and hope in Jehovah as destroyed.
Lam 3:17. And thou hast removed my soul far off from peace.Thou thrustedst away my soul from peace. This is a quotation from Psa 88:15, which Psalm our Poet so often avails himself of. This explains why the Poet so suddenly addresses God in the second person. [Wordsworth: By an affecting transition, the Prophet turns to the Almighty, whom he sees present, and addresses Him, Thou hast removed my soul far off from peace; adopting the language of another Passion Psalm (Psa 88:14-18).] Peace () is happiness in the widest sense, as often, and stands in parallelism with good (). See Jer 8:15; Jer 14:9, We looked for peace, but no good came. I forgat prosperity (marg., good).I forgot good. The speaker has been deprived of all happiness, even to the recollection of it. [Lowth: So Joseph speaking of the seven years of famine saith that plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.]
Many old translators take as the subject of . Jerome:Expulsa est a pace anima mea. Venet. Gr.: . Syriac:data est oblivioni a pace anima mea. [Calvin:Et remota fuit a pace anima mea. Broughton:and my soul is cast off from peace.] But these translations evidently proceed from philological ignorance. For is never used intransitively (not even in Hos 8:5). These translators seem also to have stumbled at the fact that here suddenly God is addressed in the second person. Among the moderns also, Thenius and Ewald take as the subject. But they take likewise in a sense it never has, namely, of loathing. Thenius translates, so that I loathe happiness. Ewald:Happiness has become loathsome to me. To this we object, because no one ever feels a loathing of happiness,nor is equivalent to life, in which case it might indicate a satiety or weariness of life, but is the enjoyment of life. They have overlooked the fact that this passage is a quotation from Psa 88:15, of which our Poet so often avails himself. There it is said . This explains why the Poet so suddenly addresses God in the second person, and determines the meaning of , which can only be, as everywhere else, rejicere, repellexe. That is construed with (as elsewhere, only once, in Hiphil, 2Ch 11:14) need not surprise us, for there is nothing in the word itself that would make this construction appear as unauthorized or even strange. [Gerlach, while rejecting the opinions of Thenius and Ewald, adopts the idea of the old translators, Und es ward verstossen vom Frieden meine Seele, and strangely appeals to 2Ch 11:14, to justify the intransitive use of the verb.W. H. H]
Lam 3:18. And I said, My strength and my hope is perished from the LordOver and gone from Jehovah is my confidence and hope. [Broughton:And I thought in myself, my state is undone and my hope from the Eternal. Henderson:And I said, My confidence is perished, and my hope from Jehovah. Not only had all present enjoyment been annihilated, but all prospect of future prosperity had been cut off.] The Poet here represents the sum total, as it were, of his punishment, the separate details, which he has been narrating, beginning at Lam 3:1, being garded as the several items of a sum in arithmetic. The result is an alarming one. His confidence and his hope in the Lord had been almost destroyed by the unintermitted blows of the rod of wrath (Lam 3:1-3). But they had not been actually destroyed. This we learn from the expression, and I said, . Without this word Lam 3:18 would have a much more equivocal sense. But this indicates that the Poet would represent the loss of his confidence, not as an actual fact (else he would have said ), but as merely an anticipatory thought. He said, i.e., he thought so to himself, as in Jer 3:7, represents merely a speaking to ones self, i.e, a thought, a feeling. [See instances of this use of the expression in Gen 26:9; 1Sa 20:3; 2Sa 21:16; 1Ki 8:12, etc.W. H. H.] That he had not actually lost his confidence is, finally, most apparent from what follows, where the Poet, with all his souls energy, refastens the bond of confidence that had threatened to break. [Henry: Without doubt it was his infirmity to say thus, Psa 77:10, for with God there is everlasting strength, and He is His peoples never failing hope, whatever they may think.]
followed by , has different senses. This often indicates the person or place suffering the loss; ; Psa 142:5; comp. Job 11:20; Job 18:17; Jer 18:18; Jer 25:35; Jer 49:7; Jer 49:38, etc. It can be taken thus here. For the thought that Jehovah has lost the confidence of the Poet, can be expressed in the form here used. Yet it is well to observe here that the words cannot be translated, my confidence and my hope in Jehovah are lost [as Noyes does]. For the object of confidence is always indicated by , ,, or, as especially after , Psa 39:8, by . But the sense is, my confidence is perished away from Jehovah, it has lost its direction towards Him. It is a constructio prgnans: my confidence is turned away from God, and thus has become destroyed. could also be taken with reference to the efficient cause. See , Job 4:9; Psa 80:17. [So Blayney and Boothroyd:Jehovah hath caused my strength and my hope to fail.] Yet, if had only this sense, and not at the same time the local sense of away from, we would rather expect as we read Psa 68:3, . That this root contains the ideas of splendor, strength and endurance, is certain. Which is its original meaning is disputed. Here, as in 1 Sam. 5:29, the idea seems to be strength with the modification of perseverance, persevering steadfastness and confidence. At least this best suits the intimately connected word .
PART II
Lam 3:19-42
Lam 3:19. Remember my affliction and my wandering,
The wormwood and the gall.
Lam 3:20. Yea, Thou wilt indeed remember
That my soul is bowed down in me.
Lam 3:21. This will I take to my heart,
Therefore will I hope.
Lam 3:22. Because of Jehovahs mercies, we are not consumed;
For His compassions fail not:
Lam 3:23. They are new every morning:
Great is Thy faithfulness.
Lam 3:24. My portion is Jehovah, saith my soul;
Therefore will I hope in Him.
Lam 3:25. Good is Jehovah to them that wait for Him,
To the soul that seeketh Him.
Lam 3:26. Good is it both to hope and silently wait
For the salvation of Jehovah.
Lam 3:27. Good is it for a man,
That he bear the yoke in his youth.
Lam 3:28. He sitteth alone and is silent,
Because He imposed it upon him:
Lam 3:29. He putteth his mouth in the dust,
Peradventure, there may be hope!
Lam 3:30. He offereth his cheek to him that smiteth him;
He is filled with reproach.
Lam 3:31. For the Lord will not cast off
Forever!
Lam 3:32. For though He hath caused grief.
Yet is He moved to compassion according to His great mercy.
Lam 3:33. For He doth not willingly afflict
And grieve the children of men.
Lam 3:34. To trample under his feet
All prisoners of the earth,
Lam 3:35. To deprive a man of his rights
Before the face of the Most High,
Lam 3:36. To subvert a man in his cause,
The Lord approveth not!
Lam 3:37. Who is he that spoke and it was done,
Except the Lord commanded?
Lam 3:38. Cometh not the evil as well as the good
From the mouth of the Most High?
Lam 3:39. Why murmur living men
Every one for his sins?
Lam 3:40. Let us search and try our ways,
And return to Jehovah.
Lam 3:41. Let us lift up our heart together with our hands
To God in the Heavens,
Lam 3:42. Wehave sinned and rebelled.
Thouhast not pardoned.
ANALYSIS
In the second part, Lam 3:19-42, the Poet rises out of the night of sorrow into the clear day of comfort and hope; yet he allows, as it were, a morning dawn to precede, and an evening twilight to follow this day. Lam 3:19-21 contain a transition. The Poet can again pray! He prays the Lord to be once more mindful of him, Lam 3:19-20; and on his own part he sets about to seek for grounds of comfort, Lam 3:21. These he finds, first of all, in the fact that Israel is not completely destroyed, that there is yet a remnant, as a starting point for a return to the better fortune which is now at hand. This fact is due to the grace and mercy of God, the continuation of which the Poet recognizes with the deepest joy, Lam 3:22-24. From this point of view, afforded by the Divine mercy, the Poet now looks upon his sorrows:the Lord even when He smites, always means it for good, Lam 3:25-27;if it be borne patiently, with silent submission, Lam 3:28-30,then the rays of Divine compassion will again appear, Lam 3:31-33. Viewed from this stand-point, every sorrow, even that inflicted upon us by human malignity, seems a wholesome divine ordinance,so that not the sorrow itself, but only the sin that caused it, is to be deplored, Lam 3:34-39. Such a lamentation for sin, the cause of the affliction suffered, the Poet now begins, not in his own name, but in that of all the people, Lam 3:40-42. And as he had skilfully introduced this lamentation by the self-accusation in Lam 3:39, so these three Lam 3:40-42, serve him as a means of transition to a new lamentation over the misfortunes that had befallen the nation. With the words , Thou hast not pardoned, Lam 3:42, he turns to the description of the common misfortune.
Preliminary Note
In this eminently consolatory passage, Lam 3:19-42, with its introduction, Lam 3:19-42, and conclusion, Lam 3:40-42, every triad of verses constitutes, as regards sense, a complete whole. The effect of similarity of construction is further heightened in Lam 3:25-39, by the fact that the triplets of each verse begin, not only with the same initial letter, but with the same word, or with similar words. Thus Lam 3:25-27 begin with , Lam 3:28-30 with the Imperfects , ,, Lam 3:31-33 with , Lam 3:34-36 with before an Infinitive, and Lam 3:37-39 are interrogative sentences. It should also be observed that from Lam 3:22 the Poet no longer speaks in the first person singular. It is as if he felt the necessity, at this culmination point of the Poem, of letting the individual step back behind the sublime and universal truth which he pronounces.
Lam 3:19-21
19 Remembering mine affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the gall. 20, 21 My soul hath them still in remembrance, and is humble in me. This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope.
TEXTUAL AND GRAMMATICAL
Lam 3:19.. See remarks Lam 1:3., see Lam 1:7. [Gerlach translates it expulsion, exile, verstossung. Blayney, Boothroyd, Owen abasement. Henderson: persecution. Broughton: vexation.], see Lam 3:15., see Lam 3:5.
Lam 3:20.[illegible] occurs, except here, only in Psa 44:26; Pro 2:18. The root is nowhere found.. To take in the sense of quod (Rosenmueller, Vaihinger, Engelhardt), is an arbitrary rendering that receives no support from the reference to Gen 30:27.
Lam 3:21.The expression , to take something to heart, is never found in Jeremiah: see Deu 4:36; Deu 30:1; Isa 44:19; Isa 46:8; 1Ki 8:47. See Jer 4:19. The anomalous form there found, , is traced back to or , but in no form occurs in Jeremiah; therefore here again a difference in the use of language is apparent. Forms of occur in Lamentations only in this chapter, namely, verb forms in Lam 3:21; Lam 3:24, noun forms in Lam 3:18; Lam 3:26. [If Jeremiah could coin an entirely new word in his prophecies and use it only once, we might allow him to introduce into the Lamentations words already coined and familiar to him in other Scriptures, even if he confine this use to one place or one chapter.W. H. H.] has its usual signification, therefore, for that reason.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
The artistic management of the composition should be here observed. The whole preceding recital from Lam 3:1, constitutes a crescendo movement, which ends in Lam 3:18 with a shrill dissonance, enhanced by the fact that it closes with the name of Jehovah, here mentioned for the first, time. But this dissonance, after Lam 3:21, is lost in the most agreeable harmony. The three intervening verses, 1921, constitute the transition from discord to harmony.
Lam 3:19-20. As if shocked that so terrible a thought could come into his mind, the Poet rouses himself up and directs a cry of anguish from the depths of his heart to the Lord, that He would not forget and reject him, but would graciously remember him. [Gerlach: The prophet is certain, that if God will only be rightly mindful of the misery poured out over him, His pity must be excited (Vaih.), and this certainly is immediately expressed with assurance in Lam 3:20.]
Lam 3:19. Remembering mine affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the gall.Remember [so E. V., margin, all the English versions except Blayney, the Targ., Vulg., and Syr.] my affliction and my wanderings (see Lam 1:7), wormwood and gall! The Poet thus represents to the Lord the most striking features of his sufferings as depicted in the preceding verses. [The repetition of the three emphatic words, in which the idea of misery is condensed, affliction or misery, Lam 3:1, wormwood, Lam 3:15, gall or bitterness, Lam 3:15, shows that this verse is a brief and emphatic recapitulation of the whole preceding description. But with all these in view, the Prophet rejects the thought he was tempted to indulge, as expressed in Lam 3:18, and does not let go his hold on the God of his life; but is convinced that if He will only regard him, all will be well (Henderson).W. H. H.]
Many interpreters stumble at the fact that the Poet, immediately after the cry of despair in Lam 3:18, should again address a prayer to Jehovah. Many, therefore, (Bttcher, Thenius) take and , Lam 3:20, as the subject of a hypothetical proposition, Remember my misery yea, my soul remembers it and humbles itself in me. [E. V.: Remembering mine affliction My soul hath them still in remembrance and is humbled in me.] But to take the Inf. Constr. in a finite sense, is altogether ungrammatical and without precedent. Ewald, indeed, takes as an Imperative, but as an address to the first best hearer. He also takes , Lam 3:20, for the third person feminine, My soul, holds up before itself [remembers with self-reproach], it humbles itself in me. It seems to me that all these interpreters exaggerate the suddenness of the transition from the cry of Lam 3:18 to the prayer of Lam 3:19, and do not rightly apprehend it. They overlook the softening effect of , and I said [i.e., to myself], and they fail to observe that the prayer immediately following in Lam 3:19, plainly shows that the language of Lam 3:18 was the expression of a rash but conquered moment of despair. Thus the Poet, by the fact that he can again pray in this way, plainly gives us to understand that his despair had secured no strong foot-hold in his breast. Some regard , Lam 3:20, as the second person masculine indeed, but in the Indicative sense,truly thou thinkest thereon,indicating the hearing of the prayer uttered in Lam 3:19. But in that case the sentence should not be continued with the Imperfect. It should have been, . See my Gr., 84, n. f. [The perfect is used to denote a fact which can only be represented as accomplished in actual reality, but which happens, as respects time, in the immediate, unconditioned future. NaegelsbachsGr.] We not only regard as a prayer directed to the Lord, but , Lam 3:20, as an emphatic repetition of it. [Some old commentators translated as the Inf., but regarded Lam 3:19, as in close connection with Lam 3:18. See Muenster:Secundam quosdam estinfinit., ut sit sensus: periit spes mea, recordante me afflictionis me (Gerlach). The interpretation of this verse must be determined by the gender and person, or subject of in Lam 3:20.W. H. H.]
Lam 3:20. My soul hath them still in remembrance, and is humbled in me.Remember, yea remember, that my soul composes itself in me.1 [Lit. Remembering Thou wilt remember, i.e., according to the familiar Hebrew idiom, Thou wilt certainly remember. Cranmer Bib.:Yea thou shalt remember them; for my soul melteth away in me. Owen:Remembering thou wilt remember them, for bowed down within me is my soul. Noyes:Yea, thou wilt remember them, for my soul is bowed down within me. Gerlach:Remembering Thou wilt indeed remember that my soul is bowed down within me. The last is undoubtedly most literal and exact.W. H. H.]After the prayer, so emphatically repeated, Remember, Oh do Thou remember, what immediately follows can only indicate something favorable,that my soul composes itself in me. The meaning of the verb (see also and ) can only be sedere, desidere, [to sit, sink or settle down]. The Kal in Psa 44:26, is evidently taken in a bad sense, For our soul is bowed down to the dust, . The Hiphil (for there is no apparent reason for forsaking the Ktib) is to be taken either in the indirect causative sense, denoting to cause that something sinks, sits down, or in direct causative sense, to cause sinking, to sink ones self, to sit down. Since, according to what precedes, the Poets soul had been excited in the highest degree, furiously agitated (see , Lam 1:20; Lam 2:11), the meaning to sink itself, sit down, become calm, would be admirably appropriate here, and the more so because, according to what precedes, the Poet had brought reproach upon his soul, by an ebullition of feeling of an unjustifiable kind, and bordering upon defiance. It is certainly seemly for such a soul to sink down, as it were, into itself, and to become still, as the ocean returning to rest after a furious storm. The expression in me, , is used here as in Ps. 42:5, 6, 7, 12; Psa 43:5; Psa 131:2; Psa 142:4; Jer 8:18, etc. See DelitzschPsych., IV., 1, pp. 151, 152. There lies in it the idea of heaviness, as if the heart felt burdened. [Wordsworth: My soul * * * sinks down upon me. The soul (Hebr. nephesh) is the seat of the agitated affections, and it sinks down, as it were, in a swoon, upon the Spirit (Hebr. ruch), the diviner faculty, and overwhelms it. Comp. Psa 42:4-6; Psa 44:25; Psa 77:3; Psa 142:3.The commentators have succeeded in obscuring the meaning of this verse, by many possible or impossible translations, for which the curious may safely consult Gerlach, but the real meaning is expressed by the most natural translation of the words, Remembering Thou wilt remember, i.e., Thou wilt surely remember, that my soul sinks within me, or is bowed down in me, or upon me (literally, according both to Naegelsbach and Wordsworth), i.e., is humbled in penitence and overwhelmed with sorrow. So Gerlach.W. H. H.]
Lam 3:21. This I recall to my mind (marg., make to return to my heart), therefore have I hope.This will I take to my heart, on this account will I hope. The effect of the souls becoming submissive and acquiescent is, that it now again takes to heart those facts which, notwithstanding all hardships endured at the hand of the Lord, yet always encourage the exercise of confidence in Him. This () cannot refer to what precedes. Still less can therefore (), of the second clause. For what precedes is only a prayer, with no positive promise. Lam 3:21 is the immediate introduction to the impressive consolatory section which begins with Lam 3:22. It is shown in what follows, why the Poet still cherishes hope. See the conclusion of Lam 3:24, therefore will I hope in Him. [The awkward reference of the this and therefore of Lam 3:21, to what follows, which is rendered necessary by the translation of Lam 3:20, adopted by Naegelsbach and others, is a strong argument against the correctness of that translation. 1. The position of the this, as the first word of the sentence, strengthens the likelihood that it refers to something just stated, rather than to something about to be stated. If we explain its position in the sentence by the necessity of the proper initial letter, this may show how much the style is affected by the artificial structure of the poem, and greatly weakens the argument of those who imagine they discover differences between the style of the Lamentations, and of Jeremiahs Prophecies. But 2. The this and therefore, if they refer to what follows, lead us to expect an immediate, clear and definite proposition, to which they would logically correspond. But there is no such proposition stated, but certain general truths follow, which only remotely and by a mental process of our own minds, can be made to satisfy the requirements of the this and therefore in Lam 3:21. 3. The attempt to establish a connection between the therefore I hope in Lam 3:21, and the same expression at the end of Lam 3:24, as if one were an index finger pointing forward, and the other an index finger pointing backward, showing that all that lies between them is the this, on account of which the prophet says therefore I hope, is open to the following objections. (a) The therefore of Lam 3:24, can only logically refer to the words immediately preceding, Jehovah is my portion, saith my soul. (b) The therefore, in Lam 3:24, is restricted to what immediately precedes by the addition of the words in Him. If it had been intended to correspond with and explain the declaration of Lam 3:21, it should have been therefore I hope in this, i.e., in the doctrine contained in all the preceding verses, to which the this of Lam 3:21 refers. (c) The fact that there is as much in the verses immediately following Lam 3:24, as in those immediately preceding it, to afford hope and comfort, makes it exceedingly improbable that Lam 3:24 terminates a section begun in Lam 3:21. (d) If the therefore, of Lam 3:24, refers to a proposition preceding and not following it, it is likely that the therefore of Lam 3:21 does also. 4. The translation of Lam 3:20, as Cranmers Bible, Owen and Noyes translate it (see above on Lam 3:20), or as Rosenmueller translates it (Enim vero reminisceris, hoc animo meo meditor), and still more as Gerlach translates it, Thou wilt certainly remember that my soul is bowed down in me, or upon me, renders the meaning of Lam 3:21 clear and unequivocal. This assurance, that God is mindful of the soul that is bowed down upon itself, in sorrow and penitence, the Prophet takes to heart, and therefore hope revives in his bosom. We thus have a graceful and easy introduction to the beautiful passage that follows in which the thought expressed in Lam 3:20, that God is mindful of the submissive patient sufferer, is expanded and reappears at every point.W. H. H.]
Footnotes:
[1][Wordsworth mistranslates Naegelsbach,Remember, remember Thou, that my soul sinks within me. Gedenke, ja gedenke, Dass meine Seele sich beruhige in mir. Sich beruhigen means to quiet, compose ones self. Besides, his notes explain the Hebrew in the sense of sinking down into a state of rest after great agitation.W. H. H.]
Lam 3:22-24
22 It is of the Lords mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions 23, 24 fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in him.
TEXTUAL AND GRAMMATICAL
Lam 3:22.[. Gerlach argues that the use in Jeremiah 44 of , in Lam 3:18, for the first person plural, and of , in Lam 3:12; Lam 3:27, for the third person plural, is decisive evidence of the Jeremiac use of language in the Lamentations.W. H. H.]The plural , not found in Jeremiah, is frequent elsewhere, Lam 3:31; Gen 32:11; Isa 63:7; Psa 79:2; Psa 107:43, etc., Jer 16:5; Jer 42:12., Jer 8:20; Jer 14:6; Jer 16:4, etc.
Lam 3:23. is in apposition to ., Jer 31:22; Jer 31:31., Isa 33:2; Psa 73:14; Psa 101:8. Jeremiah uses in this sense only once., Jer 5:1; Jer 5:3; Jer 7:28; Jer 9:2.
Lam 3:24.The expression occurs only here.. This construction with occurs, Psa 38:16; Ps. 42:6, 12; Psa 43:5; Mic 7:7, etc.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
Lam 3:22-24. It should be especially observed here that the passage which is full of the richest comfort and which includes Lam 3:22-42, constitutes the middle portion both of the third chapter and of the whole book. For as chapter third occupies the middle place among the five Songs, so the two decades of verses, Lam 3:22-42, constitute almost exactly the middle part of chapter third. Here the author skilfully introduces the sunshine. He permits the bright day of hope and resignation to follow the night of despair described in Lam 3:18. Immediately following these verses, however, the misery of the people and of the Prophet is again depicted in the gloomiest colors, so that this bright part is, as it were, framed in on both sides with deep darkness, which serves as a back-ground to make the colors of this picture of consolation stand out with greater distinctness. And so, as it were, the dome of the building, artistically constructed of these tearful Songs, rises up as a pyramid of light out of painful darkness, by which means the comforting truth, that for believers the sun of happiness will at last triumph over the night of misery and suffering, is placed conspicuously in the clearest and strongest light. First of all the joyful announcement is made, Lam 3:22-24, that, by the grace of God, Israel is not yet completely undone. There is still a remnant which can serve as a connecting link for the new order of things. This great favor Israel owes to the mercy of God, which is not yet exhausted, but rather in consequence of it the faithfulness of God renews itself every morning, so that the Poet can proclaim with assurance, as a noble anchor of hope and consolation, that the Lord is his portion, and that he may still say to his God Thou art mine.
Lam 3:22. It is of the LORDS mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not.Because of Jehovahs mercies we are not consumed [Gnaden Jehovahs sind es, dass wir nicht gar aus sind. So also, word for word, Gerlach], for his compassion has no end. [The E. V. is more accurate, because his compassions fail not.W. H. H.] The fact that the Poet here speaks in the first person plural, when elsewhere, down to Lam 3:40, he speaks only of himself, is explained by what has been already shown, that he fastens the cords of his own personal hope to the fact that the people still exists, even if only as a weak remnant. But that even such a kernel remains, he ascribes to the grace of God. [See these transitions from singular to plural and back again, explained in remarks introductory to the chapter.] The use of the plural in mercies involves the idea of manifestations of grace, or illustrations of grace, in the way of instruction and of example. Many acts of Divine grace shown to many individuals, combine in the result. Since the mercies (the several acts of grace) of Jehovah can only be regarded as the effluence of His compassion, we take the second as a causative particle, for His compassion has no end. The compassion of God is the ground of His graciousness, in consequence of which Israel is not entirely undone.
If we could take for the third person plural, as the Chaldaic, Syriac and many moderns do (Ewald, Thenius, Delitzch on Isa 23:11), the sense of this place would be entirely clear. [We could then translate with Calvin,The mercies of Jehovah! surely they are not consumed. In which Owen, Blayney and Boothroyd substantially agree.W. H. H.] But, notwithstanding the fact that in Psa 64:7, seems even more plainly than here as if it must be taken for the third person plural [not necessarily. See J. A. Alexanderin loc.], yet Olshausen is certainly right when he shows, 82 u, that the insertion of as a compensation for the reduplication of the consonant, is in violation of all the established rules of Grammar. It may be that at several of those doubtful places that are referred to (Isa 23:11; Lam 3:22; Psa 64:7; Pro 26:7; Ezr 10:16) false readings have slipped in. But here this supposition is unnecessary. Here as in Num. 17:28, and Jer 44:18, is the first person plural.
Lam 3:23. They are new every morning. [They, i.e., the mercies of Jehovah, which are ever renewed because His compassion fails not: for His mercies are the fruit of His compasson (see notes on Lam 3:22).W. H. H.]Great is thy faithfulness.Faithfulness is only a form of compassionate love. It is love enduring in all circumstances. [Calvin: Were God to take away the promise, all the miserable would inevitably perish; for they can never lay hold on His mercy except through His word. This, then, is the reason why Scripture so often connects these two things together, even Gods mercy and His faithfulness in fulfilling His promises.]
Lam 3:24. Lam 3:22-23, treated only of objective facts. From these a subjective conclusion is now drawn. Since the Lord is so gracious, merciful and faithful, the Poet esteems Him as the dearest treasure of his soul, as his best portion, and the foundation of his hope. The LORD is my portion.My portion is Jehovah. This seems to refer to Num 18:20, where the Lord, having told Aaron that he should receive no hereditary portion in the land, says to him, I am thy part [portion] and thine inheritance. The same expression is found in Psa 16:5; Psa 73:26; Psa 119:57; Psa 142:6. See Jer 10:16; Jer 51:19; Deu 32:9. Saith my soul.[Calvin: He speaks emphatically, that his soul had thus said. The unbelieving also confess that God is the fountain of all blessings, and that they ought to acquiesce in Him; but with the mouth only they confess this, while they believe nothing less. This then is the reason why the Prophet ascribes what he says to his soul, as though he had said, that he did not boast like hypocrites that God was his portion, but of this he had a thorough conviction.] Therefore will I hope in him.See Lam 3:21.
Lam 3:25-33
25 The Lord is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him.26 It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the 27, 28 Lord. It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth. He sitteth 29 alone and keepeth silence, because he hath borne it upon him. He putteth his mouth 30 in the dust, if so be there may be hope. He giveth his cheek to him that smiteth 31 him: he is filled full with reproach. For the Lord will not cast off for ever.32 But though he cause grief, yet will he have compassion according to the multitude 33 of his mercies. For he doth not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of men.
TEXTUAL AND GRAMMATICAL
Lam 3:25.Kal of is not found in Jeremiah; he uses only Niphal Jer 3:17, and Piel Jer 8:15; Jer 13:16; Jer 14:19; Jer 14:22. Kindred expressions are found in Psa 25:3; Psa 69:7; Isa 49:23.The expression is found in Jeremiah several times and in different senses, Jer 10:21 (?); Jer 21:2; Jer 29:13; Jer 37:7. Yet none of these places seem to have been in the Poets eye. If some earlier declaration was in his mind, it was apparently Deu 4:29, where it is said .
Lam 3:26.[See crit. notes below.], Jer 3:23.
Lam 3:27.. See Lam 1:14. occurs only here. frequently in Jer 3:4; Jeremiah 24:25, etc.
Lam 3:28., not in Jeremiah. It occurs, besides here, only in 2Sa 24:12; Isa 63:9. , Isa 40:15, is probably from , to turn aside (see Delitzsch at this place), of which verb Jeremiah makes frequent use, Jer 16:13; Jer 22:26; Jer 22:28.
Lam 3:29.[This verse is wanting in the Sept.] Jeremiah uses often, Jer 21:2; Jer 26:3; Jer 26:7; Jer 51:8. [Calvin: The particle expresses what is difficult; for when anything appears to be incredible, the Hebrews say, If it may be.]The phrase is found not only in Pro 19:18, but also in Jer 31:17.
Lam 3:30.Neither the Part. , nor , see Lam 1:2, occurs in Jeremiah: is found in Isa 1:6.The expression occurs only here, yet there is a similar construction [of with , instead of Acc.] in Psa 65:5; Psa 88:4, The words and , by themselves, are current in Jeremiah; see for the first, Jer 31:14; Jer 46:10; Jer 1:10, for the other Jer 6:10; Jer 15:15; Jer 20:8; Jer 24:9, etc.
Lam 3:31.Jeremiah never uses , see Lam 3:17; Lam 2:7.
Lam 3:32., see Lam 1:4; Lam 5:12., often in Jer 12:15; Jer 31:20; Jer 42:12, etc. is found, pointed thus, Psa 106:45, besides Isa 63:7.With regard to grammatical construction, see Lam 3:22.
Lam 3:33.The verb inclinatum, depressum esse (Piel again in Lam 5:11) Jeremiah uses in no form., see Deut. 16:28. is Imperf. Piel of , the Hiph. of which we have in Lam 3:32. This form occurs only here: it is shortened from , as , Lam 3:53, from . See Olsh., p. 547. , not found in Jeremiah; he says only once , Jer 32:19. [If he could use this latter phrase only once, he was not so addicted to it that he could not use the other only once.W. H. H.] The phrase, besides here, is found only in Psa 4:3; Psa 49:3; Psa 62:10. At the last two places occurs in the immediate context.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
Lam 3:25-33. The thought underlying this section is,the Lord has kind purposes towards the children of men in all circumstances; even if He chastises them, He does it for their good; men should so deport themselves in misfortune that they may ensure the attainment of the Lords wholesome intention. Then will He permit His mercy to return again. [Here we plainly see the expansion of the assertion made in Lam 3:20, that the Lord will be mindful of the soul bowed down upon itself in submissive sorrow.W. H. H.]The three Lam 3:25-27, begin with the same word , good, and evidently belong together, as in this section generally the connection of verses beginning with the same initial is very apparent. Thus in the three following triads, Lam 3:28-36, the verses begin not only with the same letter, but with homogeneous words.
Lam 3:25. The LORD is goodGood is Jehovahunto them that wait for him,to them who trust in Him. [Wait, waiting in hope, is the correct idea.W. H. H.],to the soul that seeketh him.The idea of = good, is presented to us in three aspects in Lam 3:25-27. Here we have the fundamental idea, that the Lord Himself is good. This belongs to His nature. He is good even when He causes pain. Man though in trouble, perceiving the goodness of the Lord, cannot defiantly murmur or faintheartedly despair. He must rather hope even in Him who slays him, seek even Him who seems to thrust him away from Himself.
Lam 3:26. It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the LORD.Happy is he who keeping silence waits for the salvation of Jehovah. [The Hebrew construction is difficult. The authorities differ on important points. But all the translations result in the same essential meaning, which is, on the whole, as well expressed in our common English version, as in any. It is good both hopefully and silently, i.e, unmurmuringly, submissively, to wait for the salvation of Jehovah.W. H. H.] From the proposition that the Lord is good to those who wait for Him and seek Him, follows necessarily this other, that the man is fortunate, even in the midst of chastisement, who patiently and silently hopes for the salvation of the Lord. Thence it appears that , good, here is to be taken in the sense of felix, happy, fortunate, which it undoubtedly has in Lam 4:9; Jer 44:17; Isa 3:10; Psa 112:5.
[. The attempt has been made to take this word in verses 26, 27 as a repetition of the statement in Lam 3:25, that Jehovah is good. Thus Neumann (sec Gerlach), Good is Jehovah to those who hope in Him Goodand who waits Good to the man, etc. This creates a very harsh ellipsis in Lam 3:26, and reduces the meaning in Lam 3:27, down to this, that Jehovah is good to that man only who bears the yoke in his youth. Blayney and Boothroyd avoid these two difficulties, by translating in Lam 3:25 as a singular noun (which Owen claims as the correct reading on the authority of the Syr.), and by introducing an illative particle (therefore, hence) in Lam 3:26, that is not in the Hebrew, Blayney:Jehovah is gracious unto him that waiteth for Him He is gracious, therefore let him wait He is gracious unto a man, etc.Boothroyd:Jehovah is good to him that waiteth for Him He is good, hence let him hope, etc. Besides the grammatical difficulties above stated, these two translations, by making an independent proposition of Lam 3:27, teaches the wretched doctrine that God is necessarily gracious or good to a man who is afflicted in his youth They are, too, open to the grammatical objection that Gerlach brings against Neumanns translation, that it would require the suffix at the end of verse 26, instead of the name Jehovah. The repetition of the word in these verses should, doubtless, be regarded merely as a sort of initial rhyme, intended to please the ear and the eye, and to fix the attention.W. H. H.]If is taken in the sense of felix, the following explains itself. It is insufferably harsh to take this as Imperf. Hiph. as many do. Ewald refers to this, 235 a. The examples adduced by him in that place, afford no analogy to the case before us Why should not here be construed precisely as it is immediately afterwards in ver 27? The double is easily explained, if we take as a verbal adjective from , as Gesenius (Thes, p 590. comp. 327). Winer, Fuerst and others do, although this adjective does not occur elsewhere. An objection to this may be urged from , which is only found besides here in Isa 47:5, and Hab 2:19, where it has an adverbial signification. But the question is, whether is a a pure adverb, or not rather an original adjective noun (see , a forefront, porch). Ewald affirms the latter, 204 b. Comp. 163 g. In this original adjective signification may stand here. Maurer, indeed, proposes to take and substantively, bonum est expectare et silere; propr., expectatio et silentium = tacita expectatio. He refers in this connection to . But, as Ewald shows, 153 a, this formation occurs even where it has an abstract sense, as obtrectratio, totality, yet there is always a passive idea beneath it, as, for example, retributio originally retribution, disposition originally the being disposed. So also was originally obtrectatum, consummatum. According to this would be expectatum. But this sense does not suit here. The connection requires the pure abstract idea of expectatio. Therefore we take and in the adjective sense, and the double for as well as, as also, or bothand. [Both hopeful and silent or submissive.]
Lam 3:27. It is goodGood is itfor a man that he bear the yoke in his youth.If that one is happy, who silently waits and endures, then it follows that sorrow itself has its good side: for it begets that silent endurance. It is the hot fire that ripens that noble fruit. Therefore in the next place the Poet calls bearing the yoke something good. He adds, it is true, in his youth. This seems to have caused the interpreters difficulty, even in old times. The Aldine edition of the Sept., and thereupon Theodotion, translated , from his youth. And in fact many Codices read , from his youth. But the idea of youth is not to be taken in too restricted a sense. By it the Poet would indicate evidently, not youth in opposition to manhood, but the period of still fresh unbroken strength, in opposition to the period of broken and diminished vitality. He would then understand manhood as included in youth. He would not exclude the thought that it may be wholesome, in a certain sense, for the old to bear the yoke. He means only that the time of vigorous strength is especially the time when bearing the yoke may be of advantage. For then a man is pre-eminently pliable. Then can he learn, in the school of the cross, things that will be of the greatest use to him in his later life. [Calvin understands the yoke as that of instruction, instead of chastisement; submission to the teacher. So the Chaldee paraphrases explain it. But the whole context requires us to understand the yoke of affliction and submission to Divine Providence. See especially the following verses, 2833.W. H. H.]
J. D. Michaelis has concluded from this verse, that Jeremiah wrote it when a young man. It seems to me that there is some truth at the foundation of this remark. In this third chapter the person of the speaker stands out in the foreground. In the connection of this chapter, then, this expression can certainly be better understood in the mouth of a man in the vigor of his strength, than in the mouth of an old man. Since then Jeremiah, at the time of the capture of Jerusalem, stood at the very least on the threshold of old age, having a ministry of forty-two years behind him, which he had begun rather after, than before, or at his twentieth year (see Introduction to Jer. Proph., p. xiii.), therefore this place is rather against than for Jeremiahs authorship of this Song. [Is it natural for a young man to talk about patiently and silently bearing a yoke? Is it not natural for an old man, looking back upon a long experience, to recognize the benefit of early crosses and afflictions? Could we imagine anything more likely to be said by the pious Prophet in his old age, than what is here said? And is it not just what his personal sufferings that begun in his youth long before Jerusalem was destroyed, would have led him to say? And, finally, do we not recognize everywhere in these Lamentations, the spirit of one who has been long a stranger to happiness, who,unlike the young man, strong, sanguine and self-reliant,has lost all hope save a hope in God, looking far onwards into the hidden future, that is to be waited for in silent passive, submission?Wordsworth: The sentiment before us is very appropriate to Jeremiah, who had been chastened in early life by God, and had thus learnt a lesson of patience and cheerful resignation under the severest personal afflictions; and he here recognizes the benefit of that early discipline.W. H. H.]
Lam 3:28. He sitteth alone and keepeth silent.The bearing of the yoke is not unconditionally wholesome for a man, but only when it is done in the right way. That is no right and wholesome way of bearing the cross, when one is impatient and perverse, and desires to shake off the yoke. Rather, the yoke should be borne in silent and patient submission.The sitting alone is in opposition to cheerful intercourse with men. This Jeremiah himself makes explicitly conspicuous, when he says, Jer 15:17, I sat not in the assembly of the joyful [E. V., the mockers], nor rejoiced; I sat alone, because of Thy hand: for Thou hast filled me with indignation. Only in silence and solitude do Divine chastisements affect the heart. Whoever permits himself to be diverted by the noise of the world, drowns the voice of God, which speaks to our heart by means of the yoke. Compare, besides, Lam 1:1; Lev 13:46.And is silent: comp. Lam 2:10; Lam 2:18; Jer 47:6; Jer 48:2.Because he hath borne it upon him,when [because] He imposed it on him. The old translators (Sept., Jerome, Syriac) have taken the verb in the sense of taking upon ones self [so E. V., Calvin and Owen], because they thought, the subject being wanting, the subject of the immediately preceding verbs must be supplied. But the Hebrew verb (, as also ) means tollere, imponere [to lay upon, to impose]. The whole context readily supplies Jehovah as the subject, and the word itself gives the object. [Broughton, Henderson, Noyes and Gerlach, all agree with Naegelsbach, in taking the verb in an active sense, and in making God the subject of the verb,because, or when He laid it upon him. Calvin, evidently dissatisfied with his own rendering, confesses that the expression does not seem natural to him, and suggests another reading. Noyes remarks that the name of God is understood, as often in Job. and refers to his note on Job 3:20.W. H. H.]
[Luther, Pareau, De Wette, Maurer, Thenius and Noyes, make Lam 3:28-30 dependent on , that, in Lam 3:27, and expository of the meaning of bearing the yoke. It is good that a man bear the yoke in his youth, that he sit alone and is silent, etc., that he put his mouth in the dust, etc., that he give his cheek to him that smiteth him, etc. This gives a good sense; but the emphatic idea in Lam 3:27, is,not that a man bear the yoke, but that he bear it in his youth; it is hardly possible, therefore, that Lam 3:28-30 can be an expansion of Lam 3:27, without showing why it is good for a man to bear the yoke in his youth. We are compelled, therefore, to interpret Lam 3:28-30, independently of Lam 3:27.W. H. H.]
Lam 3:29. He putteth his mouth in the dust.This expression is found only here. It is different from the expression lick the dust (Psa 72:9; Mic 7:17; Isa 49:23). For whilst the latter denotes only the lowest degree of subjection, the former denotes likewise speechlessness, since he who has put his mouth in the dust cannot speak. Yet it is not meant that he who is humbled in the dust cannot say anything at all. Only he shall restrain himself from murmuring. Ejaculations of humble imploring prayer may be extorted from the heart. As such an ejaculation we must regard the wordsif so be there may be hope,perhaps there is hope. For if we take these as the words of the Poet, then we cannot understand why they occur just here. They would in that case stand as well or better at the end of Lam 3:30, in place of he is filled full with reproach. Here at the close of Lam 3:29, they are only in place, if they can be brought into organic union with the first member of the verse. This is done if we take them as what the humbled one is permitted to say, or rather to think, in spite of his putting his mouth in the dust. I do not on this account think, that we should supply , saying, for it would illy suit to sayhe becomes dumb speaking. We must, therefore, understand the sentence, as indeed a declaration of the humbled one, but as an independent exclamation, not grammatically connected with the preceding sentence.
Lam 3:30. If the three propositions, Lam 3:28-30, be compared one with another, a certain gradation will be perceived. For sitting alone and silent is comparatively easy. To put the mouth in the dust and yet to hope, is more difficult. But the hardest of all, without question, is to present the cheek to the smiter and patiently accept the full measure of disgrace that is to come upon us.He givethoffershis cheek to him that smiteth him.By him that smiteth him we are not to understand, exclusively and immediately, God. For God smites not immediately, but by the instrumentality of men. The Lord hath bidden him, said David in reference to the revilings of Shimei (2Sa 16:11). For the sense, see Job 16:10; Mat 5:39. [Calvin: There are many who submit to God when they perceive His hand; as, for instance, when any one is afflicted with a disease, he knows that it is a chastisement that proceeds from God; when pestilence happens, or famine, from the inclemency of the weather, the hand of God appears to them; and many then conduct themselves in a suitable manner: but when an enemy meets one, and when injured, he instantly says, I have now nothing to do with God, but that wicked enemy treats me disgracefully. It is then for this reason that the Prophet shows that the patience of the godly ought to extend to injuries of this kind.]He is filled full with reproach.[Calvin: There are two kinds of injuries; for the wicked either treat us with violence, or assail us with reproaches; and reproach is the bitterest of all things, and inflicts a most grievous wound on all ingenuous minds.]
Lam 3:31-33. The triad now following states the reason why it is good not to despair in trouble, but to persevere in silent hope. The reason is contained in three specifications; or, more correctly, in two, the second of which is shown in two particulars.
Lam 3:31. The first reason is a negative one. For the Lord [Adonai, not Jehovah. Yet see Intr., Add. Rem., p. 32,] will not cast off for ever.The same expression as Psa 77:8; comp. Psa 44:24; Psa 74:1. Calvin: It is certain there will be no patience, except there be hope As patience cherishes hope, so hope is the foundation of patience; and hence consolation is, according to Paul, connected with patience; Rom 15:4.]
Lam 3:32. The second reason contains two particulars. The first is a positive one: the compassion of God after He has a long time smitten, will yet appear again. But though he cause grief, yet will he have compassion according to the multitude of his mercies.For if He has afflicted, then is He moved to compassion according to His great mercy. With regard to the meaning, see Hos 6:1, Job 5:18; Psa 30:6 (5). [See also Isa 54:7-8; Psa 89:32-34.]
Lam 3:33. The second particular of the second reason is expressed in a negative form: God must, after He has smitten, have compassion again, because chastisement is not with Him an end, but a means. The essential disposition of His heart is love. Therefore chastisement is not the proper or true expression of His feeling towards us. For he doth not afflict willingly [marg., from his heart], nor grieveyet He grieves [and grieve.W. H. H.] the children of men.From the heart: Not out of His heart, but if we may be allowed to speak of God anthropopathically, chastisement comes from His head. The antithesis indicated here is not expressed in the context [willingly, see Num 16:28]. For the sense, see Psa 119:75; Jer 32:41; Deu 28:63.
Lam 3:34-39
34, 35To crush under his feet all the prisoners of the earth. To turn aside the 36right of a man before the face of the Most High. To subvert a man in his cause,37the Lord approveth not. Who is he that saith, and it cometh to pass, when the38Lord commandeth it not? Out of the mouth of the Most High proceedeth not 39evil and good? Wherefore doth a living man complain, a man for the punishment, of his sins?
TEXTUAL AND GRAMMATICAL
Lam 3:34-36.The three infinitives which begin these verses, can only depend on . But in connection with or has the meaning of intueri in aliquid, fixing the eyes on something (Isa 17:7; Exo 5:21). Owing to the affinity between , and (See Ew., 217, c, d, i), can be used for . So Psa 64:6, and here [Gerlach refers also to 1Sa 16:7]. The necessity of choosing a word beginning with , on account of the alphabetical arrangement, has here at any rate decidedly prevailed. [Neumann, according to Gerlach, makes these infinitives dependent on of Lam 3:33, God does not willingly allow all that Israel suffers; but this involves great difficulty in interpreting last clauses of Lam 3:35-36.W. H. H.]
Lam 3:34. does not occur in the Kal, Jeremiah uses it once in the Pual, Jer 44:10.The suffix in (the peculiar opinion of Otto, who takes it as synonymous with , we dismiss), can only be referred to the subject concealed in . Use the Participle instead of the Infinitive, and the reference is instantly plain. Jeremiah never uses.
Lam 3:35.The phrase never occurs in Jeremiah. [Yet he was most familiar with it, especially in his favorite book of Deuteronomy.W. H. H.] He uses many times in another sense, Jer 5:25; Jer 6:12; Jer 7:24, etc., comp. , Jer 5:28. as a name of God, not in Jeremiah; he uses the word only twice, in a local sense Jer 20:2; Jer 36:10. [See Intr., Add. Rem. p. 32.]
Lam 3:36. , only Piel, Pual and Hithp., occur. The word does not occur at all in Jeremiah. In Lamentations the substantive , Lam 3:59, is also found., Jer 15:10; Jer 25:31, etc.The construction seems to be chosen to vary the phrase from Lam 3:35; for elsewhere we find only (Job 8:3; Job 34:12), (Job 8:3), or (Psa 146:9).
Lam 3:37.[. Naegelsbach in his Grammar refers to a similar use of 3d Pers. Fem. Sing, of verb in Jdg 10:9; 1Sa 30:6, ; Jer 7:31; Jer 19:5, ; Jer 44:21, ; and Jos 11:20; 2Ki 24:3, The last two examples show that Owen is wrong when he says that this verb is probably always masculine when it has this meaning, and should, therefore, be taken here as second person masculine.W. H. H.]
Lam 3:38.I do not think that Lam 3:38 depends on in Lam 3:37, as Luther translates, Who then may say, that such a thing is done without the Lords command, and that neither evil nor good comes out of the mouth of the Most High ? For in Lam 3:37 is not merely to say, but it involves here the abstract idea of command, which does not need an object following after it, in order to define it. But Lam 3:38 must be taken independently as a question. See Exeg. notes below on Lam 3:36., Jer 44:9.
Lam 3:39. reminds us of the grammatical construction of , Psa 42:3; Psa 84:3; 2Ki 19:4; 2Ki 19:16. Jeremiah uses the adjective only in the formula of an oath, ; or, , Lam 4:2; Lam 5:2; Jer 12:16, etc.: in Jer 38:2, it seems to be a verb,see at that place., see Lam 1:8; Jeremiah uses neither in the singular nor in the plural.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
Lam 3:34-39. We have already, at Lam 3:30, discriminated between an indirect and an immediate chastisement. It is there left undecided, which may be intended. But this point remaining uncertain must now be made plain. All the grounds of consolation, brought together in what precedes, must be acknowledged as valid and substantial. But they apply only to such sorrows as those of which God is esteemed the immediate author. But how is it with those sorrows which the malice of men inflict upon us? The opinion might arise, that these evils befall us without the intervention of God, and that He takes no notice of them. Yet these evils are very numerous; and what consolation can be afforded against these evils from what is said in Lam 3:25-33, to those who are suffering under the hand of God? To this question it is now explicitly answered, in Lam 3:37-38, that nothing in the world is done without Gods will, that no man has the power to act with absolute creative independence, that both good and bad fortune depend on the will of the Lord. Consequently there is no reason for sighing despairingly over any calamity, whatever it may be. There is no absolute misfortuneexcept sin! All sorrow of the heart then concentrates itself on the source of evil, on wickedness.
Lam 3:34. To crushto trampleunder his feet.The pronoun his must refer to the subject of the infinitive to crush. [Owen absurdly refers it to man in the last verse, where the last words literally are children of man.W. H. H.] All the prisoners of the earth.This cannot mean literally all the prisoners on the whole earth. This is evident from the use of the verbto see (), Lam 3:36, in the perfect tense. The Poet can only have in his eye real, concrete circumstances. Only those prisoners can be intended, already spoken of above, Lam 1:3; Lam 1:5; Lam 1:18. , earth, [improperly translated land, by Blayney, Boothroyd and Henderson] is not against this; see Psa 44:4; Psa 37:3. Delitzsch at this place, Gesen.Thes., p. 154. [Blayneys arguments that the prisoners intended are those held and enslaved for debt, could satisfy no one but himself.W. H. H.]
Lam 3:35. To turn aside the right of a manto bend the right of a man [i.e., to deprive a man of his legal rights.W. H. H.]. See Exo 23:6; Deu 16:19; Deu 24:17; Deu 27:19; 1Sa 8:3; comp. Pro 17:23; Pro 18:5; Isa 10:2.Before the face of the Most High.The author thinks here of the omnipresent and omniscient God, who enthroned on high looks far down on Heaven and earth (Psa 113:5-6). [Blayney translates (the Most High) here a superior: asserting that it cannot refer to God, because no one can wrest judgment where He is the Judge. The meaning evidently is, however, to pervert judgment at earthly tribunals, though this is done, as it were, before the very face of the Most High, who sees all things and is present everywhere.W. H. H.]
Lam 3:36. To subvert.The word means to bend, to bend down, and is used both in reference to persons (Job 19:6; Psa 119:78; Ecc 7:13), and things (Amo 8:5; Job 8:3, etc.). A man in his causein his law-suit.The Lord approveth (marg., seeth) not.Has not the Lord seen that? In this sentence the signification of the verb and the form of the proposition are doubtful. As regards the meaning of the verb , I do not believe it can be taken in the sense of choosing, preferring (see Gen 41:33; Deu 12:13; 2Sa 24:13); or in a sense derived from that meaning, agreeing to, allowing (Ewald). For where has the meaning of choosing, there are always a number of objects placed before the sight, among which the subject, after looking round by way of examination, makes his choice. But it cannot be said that where God permits the injustice done by men, He has positively chosen it. [The learned and sagacious commentator, in the heat of his argument, has made a singular blunder. The proposition is not necessarily a question, involving an affirmative answer, but may be a direct affirmation, that God does not approve, choose, or look with favor on such injustice ().W. H. H.] Further, this sense would not suit the construction of the infinitive with depending on (see Gram note, Lam 3:34-36, above). We are obliged then to take this verb in its natural, original sense of seeing. But in that case it is clear that the proposition must be taken as a question, as in verse 38. For it were a contradiction to say, the perverting of the right before the face of the Most High, the Lord does not see. What is done before the face of the Lord, He cannot fail to see. This is the very basis of the argument. If there were anything which the Lord doth not see, we might allow that that particular thing was done without His consent. But since He sees everything, then must everything that is done, be done with His consent. The absence of the interrogation is no more remarkable than at Lam 3:38. See for example Job 2:10, my Gr., 107, 1. The perfect form of the verb, , shows that the Poet had here especially in mind the oppression that had befallen Israel and the Prophet. He would say, Must not the Lord have seen all the misery which the Israelites had suffered as captives, or by the injustice of the mighty, all the misery especially which had extorted from the Poet the foregoing lamentation? If he had had in his eye, not the concrete and actual, but merely general and possible facts, he would, without doubt, have used , as Bttcher has remarked. See below , Lam 3:38. [The English version, the Lord approveth not; or as Broughton has it, the Lord liketh not, is undoubtedly correct, and is adopted by Blayney (who translates the verb seeth not, but explains it in the sense of not approving), Boothroyd, Henderson and Wordsworth. It avoids the harsh and arbitrary explanation of supposing Lam 3:34-36, the language of an objector, who affirms the Lord doth not regard these acts of oppression and injustice, as Calvin and Owen suggest. It also avoids the equally arbitrary assumption of Naegelsbach, Gerlach and Noyes, that these words are put interrogatively. There is nothing in the form or context to suggest a question. Lam 3:38 is no parallel to this case: for there the question is suggested by the question that precedes and the question that follows it: the whole triplet is in the interrogative style. It is dangerous to allow the right to assume an interrogation for the sake of surmounting a difficulty. Were this license generally accepted, the Bible could be made to teach the very reverse of what it does teach, by assuming that its positive affirmations, are interrogations emphasizing the contradiction of what is apparently asserted. The opinion that means to view with pleasure, preference or approbation, only when followed by the preposition , has been so generally accepted, that Dr. J. A. Alexander hesitated to give followed by that meaning in Isa 53:2. Yet only that meaning suits that passage: and in 1Sa 16:7, we have with twice in this exact meaning of regarding with pleasure, with favor, with approbation,man looketh on the outward appearance, but Jehovah looketh on the heart. It will be found on examination of those passages where is construed with , that the preposition intensifies the sense and seems to denote looking steadfastly at a thing, feasting the eyes upon it with inward delight, or with exultation as over a prostrate foe. But without , is also used to express the idea of looking at a thing with indulgence and allowance, where no special complacency is implied. It is thus used here, and in exactly the same sense that it has in Hab 1:13, Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, . Wordsworth: The sense is,For a man to crush under his feet all the captives of the earth (as the Chaldeans crushed indiscriminately their Hebrew captives, without regard to sex or age), to pervert a mans cause in the face of the Most High, to subvert a man in his causethis the Lord does not look on with approval. For He is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity.W. H. H.]
Lam 3:37. Who is he that saith, and it cometh to pass, when the Lord commandeth it not?Who is he that spoke and it was done, unless the Lord commanded it? [Noyes: Who is he that can command anything to be done, so that it shall be effected, unless Jehovah permit or order it to be done?] This verse affords the proof that the evils, enumerated in Lam 3:34-36, had not befallen those who suffered them, without Gods consent. This verse reminds us that there is only one single absolute creative causality; for the words [He saidand there was] do, without doubt, refer to the creative-word (Gen 1:3, etc.). Were there a man of whom it could be said,He spake and it was done, He commanded and it stood fast (Psa 33:9), then it might be possible that those evils had befallen Israel at his command, and not Jehovahs. Evidently the Poet has in mind these words just quoted from Psa 33:9, although he quotes from memory as appears from the substitution of for . But see the femin. in such cases, my Gr., 60, 6 b [see Gram note above]. The second clause of Lam 3:37 is evidently suggested by the second clause of Psa 33:9, only it is changed into a negative sentence, which serves likewise to define the implied negative of the first clause. There are some, indeed, in reference to whom the expression [he spoke and it came to pass] might in a certain sense be used, but only when the Lord has also commanded what is done. There is no one whose will is efficient without the consent and command of the Lord. The explanation, Who then may say, that such a thing is done without the Lords command? (Luther, Rosenmueller and others), is ungrammatical. It ignores the Imperfect with Wav consecut. [The thought is the same as in Amo 3:6, Shall there be evil in a city, and the LORD hath not done it?Owen gives an entirely new version. Who is he who says, That Thou art Lord who dost not command? This is on the assumption that Lam 3:34-38 contain the sentiments of an objector, whose argument now is, in Lam 3:37-38, that God as a Lord or Sovereign does not command or order events, and for this reason, because both evil and good cannot come from Him. This interpretation, harsh, difficult and against authority, could only be accepted in case , Lam 3:36, must mean does not see, regard or observe, and not does not approve, (see notes, Lam 3:36), and also in case in this verse, must be rendered as 2d person masculine, and not 3d person feminine (see Gram note above).The connection of this triplet with the preceding one, according to Dr. Naegelsbachs interpretation of Lam 3:36,has not the Lord seen that?is very obvious. But it is no objection to the other interpretationthe Lord does not approve, that these three verses recognize Gods agency in the evils that befall men. It is the problem constantly recurring in the Bible, that God does not approve of oppression and injustice, and yet God makes sin the punishment of sin. No one can sinfully injure his neighbor with Gods approbation: and yet the injury he does is Gods providential chastisement of transgressors.W. H. H.]
Lam 3:38. Out of the mouth of the Most High proceedeth not evil and good?Goes not out of the mouth of the Most High the evil and the good? If there is no one who is able to make his will efficient without Gods permission, then follows necessarily the general proposition, that everything, as well evil as good, proceeds from the mouth of God, i.e., is done by Gods command. It certainly is not the Poets intention here to suggest any reflections on the origin of moral evil. He has in his eye, according to the whole context, only the contrast of prosperity and adversity. By the evil he means physical evil or misfortune, and by the goodphysical good or happiness. And although misfortune is frequently a consequence of moral evil, according to Lam 3:34-36, yet he regards this consequence only with reference to its bearing on human welfare, and not with reference to its causation. What he wishes to say is, that the Lord permits wrong and violence, as well as those actions that tend to promote happiness, in order, according as His purpose may be, to chastise or to bless. But he did not intend to say that God had positively willed what is evil, although the signification of evil is not exhausted in the idea of chastisement.
Lam 3:39. Since happiness and misfortune are both equally willed of God, both must be good, and nothing belonging to either of them should cause us to murmur. As a man who has brought upon himself wholesome sickness by means of bitter medicine, ought not to complain of that medicine, but should blame himself for having caused the necessity of using it, so a man should not complain of the evils which befall him, for these are only the necessary means of curing the sickness of sin, of which he himself is guilty. If he will lament, let him lament for his sin. See Jer 30:15.Wherefore doth a living man complain (marg., murmur).For what sighs the man who lives? The verb, , is respirare, gemere, to sigh with the kindred idea of murmuring,Num 11:1, which is the only place except this, where the word occurs. The expression a living man, , is difficult. It cannot be taken, with Pareau and Rosenmueller, as synonymous with , a man, in which case , living, would be, properly speaking, superfluous. Neither can it be taken for , vita, life, in which case the sense would be cur queritur homo vitam scil. calamitosam (Maurer) [why complains man of life, i.e., because it is calamitous]? As little can it be called as long as he lives (J. D. Michaelis); or, although he lives, since he yet lives and could do something better than sigh (Ewald). The only sense corresponding to the context is, what does the man as a living one sigh for? As a living one, i.e., as one who still finds himself in this lifes school of discipline. How should we in the time appointed for affliction mourn over our afflictions? A living man should not allow himself to be surprised by the fiery trial as if thereby some strange thing happened unto him (1Pe 4:12): only that happens to him which is natural and inevitable. A man for the punishment of his sins?Every one on account of his sins. This can only be the answer to the question proposed in the first member of the verse, designed to rectify the evil in view,not sufferings, but sins should be lamented.
[The difficulties of this verse are great, as is evident from the variety of translations and interpretations it has suffered. Four questions are to be answered. 1. The meaning of the verb rendered complain or murmur? 2. The force of , living? 3. The sense in which a man, of the second member of the verse is to be taken? 4. Whether the whole verse composes one question, or includes a question and a responsive exhortation or a question and a simple answer?1, The meaning of the verb ? Aben Ezra derived it from , and rendered it by , to lie (see Calvin, Fuerst, Gerlach). Hence Muenster, taking Lam 3:38 as a denial of Divine Providence, explains Lam 3:39 thus: blasphema hc vox est mentiturque homo in peccatis suis,this is a blasphemous saying and man is a liar in his sins (Gerlach). Isaaki derived the verb from (Fuerst). From this root possibly, by some far-fetched analogy, Broughton brought his unique translation, which has the sole merit of relieving us of the difficulty of explaining a living man, , and a man,, by making one the subject, and the other the object of the verb,what should living man grudge any person after his sin? But what this means the learned Hebraist has not explained. Calvin is very positive that the word here and in Numbers, means to weary ones self. Why should he weary himself, a living man, and a man in his sins? for as long as men thus remain in their own dregs, they will never acknowledge God as the judge of the world, and thus they always go astray through their own perverse imaginations. Others render it in a similar sense: Why doth he afflict himself by his sins? Why doth he procure evils to himself by the committing of sin?Why doth he vex himself? (to wit, by impatient carriage under Gods hand), even a man in his sin, persisting still in the same (see Gataker). The Versions and Lexicographers, however, with great unanimity, and apparent reason, derive the verb from , to breathe hard, to sigh, and take it in the sense of murmuring, complaining, as above. There is no room to doubt that this is its meaning. 2. What is the force of . Pareau and Rosenmueller, deny that this word is emphatic. They claim that , alone, is used for man, referring to Psa 143:2, and regard , added here, as a mere redundancy of language by Jeremiah, who was not chary of words, verborum non parcior. We are then to take the expression living man, as meaning simply a man, as we often say living man, or mortal man where the adjective is superfluous: (Rosenmueller translates the text simply mortalis.) To this we answer 1. The word in Psa 143:2, is emphatic:None living, i.e., no living man is just, or innocent in Gods sight. The inference may be allowed, possibly intended, that those not now living may have passed into a state of innocency in Gods sight. 2. The position of the word after (reminding us, as Naegelsbach says, of , see gram note above) and also the accent it bears2 show that the word is emphatic. In this case it is difficult to assign any other meaning to it, than that which Ewald and most commentators do, why sighs man living, i.e., since he lives. Dr. Naegelsbach says it cannot have this meaning: but he gives no reason why it cannot: and his own translation involves this sense, (what does a man sigh for who lives, der lebt?) while his explanation in the commentary, man as a living one (als ein Lebender), i.e., as one who still finds himself in this lifes school of discipline, adds to the original, and what he calls impossible idea, of one who yet lives, another and fanciful notion of his own. Michaelis, Ewald, Gerlach, Blayney, Boothroyd, Henderson and Noyes, all agree in the sense which our English Version seems to suggest, which Wordsworth also adopts and explains thus: Wherefore does a man, whose life is still spared by Gods mercy, and to whom, therefore, the door of repentance and pardon is not yet closed, murmur (see Num 11:1, where the same word, literally signifying to breathe hard, is used), instead of using his breath and life in order to pray for forgiveness, and to amend his practice? 3. In what sense are we to take , a man, in the second member of the verse? While is the generic name for man in the widest sense, is supposed to be a more distinctive and honorable designation, as implying a man possessed of manly qualities. Some suppose that it is used emphatically here in this sense, as Blayney suggests. Since most languages have a variety of words signifying man, most of the Versions render of the first member, and of the second, by terms of corresponding significance, as if intending to express an emphasis in the last term,, ; homo, vir; Mensch, Mann,a distinction that seems to be aimed at in English in a version given by Gataker,Why should a living wight complain, or murmur, any man for his sin? This distinction, if intended, would give a good sense, Why should a living man, a truly manly man murmur at the punishment of his sins? The Arabic gives the following sense: He who dissolves himself in lamentations and sighs, is a weak man; the strong man is ashamed of his sins (Prediger-Bible).Corn. Van Waenen, according to Rosenmueller, inferred from the Arabic that has the sense of being affected with shame, and joining it to in spite of the strong disjunctive accent, translated thus: Why does the mean man (homo vilis) dissolve himself in lamentations? The noble man (vir nobilis) will restrain himself for shame on account of his crimes. But there are no proofs or analogies for this strongly contrasted use of and . We can, however, take here, as Dr. Naegelsbach does, in a sense that often has, of every one, each man individually considered. See Joe 2:8 : Jer 17:5; Jer 17:7; Jos 7:14; Jos 7:17-18; 1Ch 23:3. There are many other passages where the word may be rendered every man or every one.Gesenius gives it this meaning in our text. This rendering prevents the necessity of breaking up the verse into two separate and distinct members. 4. Does the whole verse include a single question? Many versions take the first member as a question, and the second as a responsive exhortation. So the old Geneva, which Noyes adopts: Wherefore then murmureth the living man? Let him murmur at his own sins!Gerlachs objections to this are well taken. The antithesis would then require that in the question some cause of murmuring should be stated, which the prophet would indicate as an improper one; as, Wherefore murmureth living man on account of his misfortunes? Let him murmur on account of his sins. It may be said that the cause may easily be inferred from the context. Still it would seem strange that such an important antithesis was not distinctly expressed. Besides, this rendering makes it necessary, not only to repeat the verb contained in the first member and not expressed in the second, but to change it from the Indicative mood to the Imperative, why does he murmur, let him murmur. These difficulties are overcome by taking the verse as a question and a simple answer, not expressed in a hortatory form. So Dr. Naegelsbach:Why does the man who lives, mourn? Every one on account of his sins. So Maurer, quoted by Gerlach,quid i.e., cur queritur homo dum vivit? Unusquisque ob peccata sua. Hinc ill lacrym! Peccatis sibi quisque contraxit de quibus queritur mala. Why does man mourn whilst he lives? Every one on account of his sins. Hence those tears! By his sins each one has brought on himself the evils he complains of. A great objection to dividing this verse into question and answer is, that it mars the rhythmical parallelism which is a peculiar feature of this poem [see Intr., Add. Rem., p. 23], and quite destroys the remarkable and beautiful symmetry between the several verses of each triplet, which prevails in this part of the poem. For the same reason that each verse in this triplet should be a question, if one is, each verse ought to contain a question and an answer, if one does,or else each verse should form an entire question by itself. Besides, the connection seems to require such a construction. The declarations that God does not inflict evil willingly, from His heart, that He does not look with favor on oppression and injustice, and yet that nothing comes to pass without His permission, whether it be evil or good, prepares us for the question, Why then does man murmur when he suffers in the righteous Providence of God for his sins? Why should living manman whose life is mercifully sparedcomplain or murmur, every one on account of his sins, i.e., of the effects of his sins? The idea of dividing the sentence into a question and response arose, undoubtedly, from the difficulty of taking in the usual sense of a man. But by rendering it every one, and remembering that is generic, like homo,, Mensch, and can be best expressed in English by men, as even in German Luther rendered it, Wie murren denn die Leute im Leben also? the apparent difficulty of construction entirely disappears. Why should living men complain or murmur, every one on account of his sins? There can be no valid objection to understanding sins as put for their effects, the sufferings or punishment they involve. So most of the versions and interpreters. Or we can take sin in the sense of guilt, liability to punishment. Wordsworth: Literally, for his sinsfor his own fault. Why does the sinner murmur at God for that which he has brought on himself by his own sin, and which may be removed by repentance? See what follows.The Future form of the verb implies here a conditional sense, why should, etc.W. H. H.]
Footnotes:
[2] Owen, in utter violation of the accents, connects with , and translates,
Why complain should man,
Any man alive, for his sin?
Lam 3:40-42
40Let us search and try our ways, and turn again to the Lord. Let us lift 41up our heart with our hands unto God in the heavens. We have transgressed 42and have rebelled: thou hast not pardoned.
TEXTUAL AND GRAMMATICAL
Lam 3:40., perfodere, pervestigare, is not found in Jeremiah. See Psa 64:7; Pro 2:4; Pro 20:27., fodere, eruere, perscrutari, occurs in Jer 17:10; Jer 31:37.[Gerlach: The LXX have taken the forms and for fem. part. niph.] is emphatic, Ewald, 217, e. let us go back, not half way, but the whole. [Rosenmueller and Thenius deny that it is emphatic, and represent it as equivalent to . Gerlach agrees with Naegelsbach, and refers to Hos 14:2-3, where both prepositions stand side by side with a difference of meaning not to be mistaken.]
Lam 3:41. is cumulative, as Lev 18:18; Eze 44:7. [Also Eze 7:26. The unusual use of this preposition led the Rabbins to fanciful interpretations of the text. Some have put upon it the mystical sense, lift up our heart to our hands, in order to second prayer with practice, (Gataker).W. H. H.] occurs only here. occurs not in Jer. See Deu 3:24; 1Ki 8:23.
Lam 3:42., only occurs six times in the Old Testament, viz., besides here, Gen 42:11; Exo 16:7-8; Num 32:33; 2Sa 17:12, seems to be chosen here only for the sake of the acrostic. [Very likely; yet, as a master of art, the Poet has made the necessity of the choice subserve the force and beauty of thought and expression. and , both expressed, are emphatic and antithetical.W. H. H.] in Jer 2:8; Jer 2:29; Jer 3:13, etc., See Lam 1:13; Lam 1:20; Jer 4:17; Jer 5:23., frequently in Jer 5:1; Jer 5:7; Jer 31:34, etc.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
Lam 3:39 constitutes the transition to something new. If there must be sighing, let it be sighing over sin says Lam 3:39. This exhortation is responded to in Lam 3:40-42, for these contain a penitential lamentation of the people for their sins. This shows that our explanation of the last member of Lam 3:39 is right. For, unless , sin, be taken in the entirely unadmissible sense of punishment (Meier, Ewald), [E. V. See notes on Lam 3:39], that second member of Lam 3:39 cannot be taken as a continuation of the question, but only in the sense of an affirmatory restriction, as we have done. It is to be observed, moreover, that the Poet here again speaks in the first person plural. We have shown above, at Lam 3:22 (), that the consoling hope, declared in the passage beginning with Lam 3:22, rests directly upon the fact that the people is not extinct, that there is yet a kernel remaining which can serve as a point of connection for the restoration. After the Poet, on the ground of this matter of fact, which he regarded as a pledge for the continuance of Divine grace, had made known his hope, and declared likewise his convictions that sufferings were no real misfortune, and that not on their account, but for sin, should men sigh, it is entirely natural that he utters the penitential lamentation, enjoined in Lam 3:39, not in his own name alone, but in that of the whole people. For the sufferings, of which he had before spoken, were not in fact punishments for his sins; but they were the righteous chastisement of the sin of the whole people. The whole people then has to join in the penitential lamentation, which the Poet begins to sing in Lam 3:40.
Lam 3:40. All true penitence must begin with acknowledgment of sin. But the knowledge of sin with men is the result of candid self-examination. Therefore, the penitential lamentation of the people begins with an exhortation to self-examination. Let us search and try our ways.Let us examine our ways and search. [Instead of murmuring against God, let us examine and search our conduct for the causes of Gods displeasure and our misfortunes, in order to correct them.W. H. H.].And turn again to the lord.And return to Jehovah. The preposition in the Hebrew is forcible. [See Gram, note above]. Let us go, not half way back, but all the way back to Jehovah. Such a half-way return was, for example, the Reformation under Josiah; see Jer 4:1-4, and the remarks at that place. This idea of returning to Jehovah, as is well known, plays a very conspicuous role in Jeremiah; see Jer 3:1; Jer 3:4; Jer 3:12; Jer 8:4-5; Jer 31:16-22, and the comments on those passages. [Henderson: From the assumption of the plural in this and the immediately following verses, it is obvious that, in those which just precede, Jeremiah has in view the punishment to which the Jews, as a people, were subjected.]
Lam 3:41. Let us lift up our heart withtogether withour hands unto God in the Heavens.Without the lifting up of heart and hands to God there is naturally no right return to God imaginable. [Calvin: He bids us banish all hypocrisy from our prayers. * * When affliction comes, it is a common thing with all to raise up their hands to heaven, though no one should bid them to do so; but still their hearts remain fixed on the earth, and they come not to God. * * As prayers, when they are earnest, move the hands, our Prophet refers to that practice as useful. At the same time he teaches us that the chief thing ought not to be omitted, even to raise up the hearts to God; Let us, then, he says, raise up our hearts together with our hands to God; and, he adds, to God who is in Heaven: for it is necessary that men should rise up above the world and go out of themselves, so to speak, in order to come to God. It should not be overlooked that the Prophet connects the outward forms of expression with the hearts sincerity as constituting the prayer of true penitence. There is nothing here to encourage those to think that they pray, who discard the attitude and gestures and even words of prayer, and fancy that they pray in their hearts. That prayer is an unuttered desire, a trembling emotion of the soul, a sigh, a tear, the glancing of an eye,are only poetical truths, and, in plain prose, are only half-truths, and, as sometimes understood, half-falsehoods. The Bible never separates the prayer of the heart from its formal expression in words and acts.W. H. H.]
Lam 3:42. The first half of the verse attains the summit of the succession of thoughts begun in Lam 3:40, and to which the path was broken in Lam 3:39.We have transgressed and rebelled.We have sinned and have been disobedient. [Rebelled is a better rendering. The pronoun we, doubly expressed in the original, as the first word in the sentence and in the forms of the verb, is here emphatical, as though the faithful had taken on themselves the blame of all the evils, which the greater part ever sought to disown (Calvin). Owen: To give the proper; emphasis to the pronoun, the version ought to be as follows, We, transgressed have we, and rebelled.W. H. H.]By these words the exhortation contained in last clause of Lam 3:39 is complied with, for they are the expression of a deep and sincere grief for sin. The second half of the verse constitutes, in a way similar to that of the last clause of Lam 3:39, the transition to what follows. For the wordsThou hast not pardonedconstitute an intermediate member between the two statements, which have respectively for their subjects, guilt and punishment. Guilt is followed with punishment, if not pardoned. That it is not pardoned in the present instance, this last clause of the verse declares.Observe the pronouns answering to each other. WeThou. [Both doubly expressed in the Hebrew. Both, therefore, emphatic.W. H. H]Hence it is evident that the Poet does not wish to reproach the Lord, but, on the contrary, to make His proceedings conspicuous. [Henderson: The confession is supposed to be made while the exile still continued. There is implied a fervent hope, that now it was made, the captivity would be reversed.The breaking up of this verse into two distinct separate propositions is not such an injury to the versification as was deprecated in Lam 3:39. Because we have now passed the section where the symmetrical uniformity of the verses was to be preserved: because, again, this verse is a real transition to what follows, with which it is so intimately connected that Gerlach begins the new section with Lam 3:40 : because, again, the We,, and Thou,, preserve a perfect antithesis, and give us a parallelism in sentiment as well as in rhythm and because, finally, the poetical effect of this abrupt appeal to God, like the sudden outburst at the end of Lam 1:11, See, O Jehovah, and consider, justifies the departure from the stricter forms of construction.W. H. H.]
PART III
Lam 3:43-66
Lam 3:43. Thou didst cover Thyself with wrath and pursue us,
Thou didst slay,Thou didst not pity.
Lam 3:44. Thou didst cover Thyself with clouds
So that no prayer could pass through.
Lam 3:45. Thou madest us offscourings and
refuse
In the midst of the nations.
Lam 3:46. All our enemies
Gaped at us with their mouth.
Lam 3:47. Terror and the pit came upon us
Desolation and destruction.
Lam 3:48. Mine eye runneth down with streams of water
For the ruin of the daughter of my people.
Lam 3:49. Mine eye overfloweth unceasingly,
Without intermission,
Lam 3:50. Until Jehovah from Heaven
Look down and behold.
Lam 3:51. Mine eye paineth my soul
Because of all the daughters of my city.
Lam 3:52. They that were without cause my enemies
Hunted me down like a bird.
Lam 3:53. They destroyed in the pit my life
And cast a stone over me.
Lam 3:54. Waters flowed upon my head.
I said,I am lost!
Lam 3:55. I called upon thy name, O Jehovah,
Out of the depths of the pit.
Lam 3:56. Thou heardest my cryhide not Thine ear
From my prayer for relief!
Lam 3:57. Thou drewest near on the day when I called to Thee:
Thou saidst,Fear not!
Lam 3:58. Thou didst espouse the causes of my soul,
Thou didst rescue my life.
Lam 3:59. Thou, O Jehovah, hast seen the wrong done to me.
Judge Thou my cause.
Lam 3:60. Thou hast seen all their vengeance,
All their devices against me.
Lam 3:61. Thou hast heard their revilings, O Jehovah,
All their devices against me.
Lam 3:62. The lips of my enemies and their thoughts
Against me, all the day long,
Lam 3:63. Their sitting down and rising up, observe Thou;
I am their song!
Lam 3:64. Render to them a recompence, O Jehovah,
According to the work of their hands.
Lam 3:65. Give them blindness of heart.
Thy curse on them!
Lam 3:66. Pursue them in wrath and exterminate them
From under the Heaven of Jehovah.
ANALYSIS
The third part, Lam 3:43-66, is to be compared to the night returning again after the day. From Lam 3:43 to Lam 3:48, the Poet speaks in the first person plural. The whole people unite in describing the severe calamity suffered on account of Gods wrath. From Lam 3:48 to the end, the Poet again speaks in the first person singular. But in the first part of this passage, in Lam 3:48-51, the common misfortune is still the subject of his lamentation. He begins again to speak of himself in Lam 3:52. He first describes, Lam 3:52-54, the terrible ill-treatment suffered at the hands of men, according to Jer 38:6 Lam 3:55-66 contain a prayer, so that this Song, as well as the first and second, closes with a prayer. This prayer is in three parts. Lam 3:55-58, thanks for deliverance from the grave. Lam 3:59-63, a statement of all the injury which his enemies had done, and were constantly doing to the Prophet. Lam 3:64-66, a prayer for righteous vengeance. The symmetry of the external form, which we have observed in the middle section of the Song, is wanting here, as it is also in the first part of the Song. For according to the sense, first, five verses are connected together, Lam 3:43-47; then, four, Lam 3:48-51; then, three, Lam 3:52-54; finally, twelve, which are again separated into subdivisions of four, five and three verses. The articulations of the discourse no longer correspond with the triplets of verses: neither is the symmetry of the initial words carried out.
As the evening twilight gradually deepens into night, so the discourse of our Poet passes over from the bright day-light of consolation, which irradiates the noble central section of our book, back again into the gloomy description of those sufferings with which Israel and the Prophet of the Lord were punished. We stand at the threshold of the last of the three sections of the third Song. If not exactly, yet almost exactly has the Poet distributed the lights and shadows, so that the first and the last of the three parts contain the shadows, and the second one affords the light. For of the 66 verses of the chapter, 22 constitute a third part. But the middle section, after the transition verses, 1921, extends from Lam 3:22 to Lam 3:40, after which Lam 3:40-42 follow as another transition, corresponding to the first one as the evening twilight does to the dawning of the morning. If we add both of these transition passages to the middle section, then the first of the three sections consists of 18, the second of 24, and the last again of 24 verses.
Lam 3:43-47
43Thou hast covered with anger, and persecuted us: thou hast slain, thou hast not 44pitied. Thou hast covered thyself with a cloud, that our prayer should not pass 45through. Thou hast made us as the offscouring and refuse in the midst of the people. 46, 47All our enemies have opened their mouths against us. Fear and a snare is come upon us, desolations and destruction.
TEXTUAL AND GRAMMATICAL
Lam 3:43., which does not occur in Jeremiah, is used as a direct causative, as afterwards, Lam 3:44; See Psa 140:8. [Gerlach: Gesenius Thes., and Otto take as a reflective verb. Otto, quoted by Rosenmueller, says At reciprose verbum usurpari posse, non dubium; but he prefers here to supply nos as the object of the verb. To make the pron. suf. in the object of , however, is impossible, since the latter, when it has the meaning of covering, is always construed with , or affixed to its object.W. H. H.], see Jer 21:5.[. Henderson: Upwards of eighty MSS., twelve printed editions, the Alex. copy of the LXX., the Arab., Syr., Vulg. and Targ, read .]
Lam 3:44.Jeremiah uses only the plural of , and that only once, Lam 4:13. . for the construction, see my Gr., 106, 6. [The preposition is very peculiarly used as a negative. When the idea of motion from a place is involved, then that which is denied is connected with the verb simply by . Naeglelsbachs Gr., 106, 6.]
Lam 3:45. from , detergere, everrere, Esr. 26:4, is sweepings, dirt. It occurs only here. [In Isa 5:25 we have , sweeping, refuse, fifth (J. A. Alexander).W. H. H.], as a substantive, only here. See Ewald, 240, aJeremiah expresses the thought contained in this verse in another fashion, see Jer 15:4; Jer 24:9; Jer 29:18; Jer 34:17; Jer 42:18. seems to imply the dispersion of Israel among the nations. is nowhere found in Jeremiah, he always uses instead , Jer 12:16; Jer 29:32; Jer 40:1; LamJer 41:8, etc.; once only he uses , Jer 6:1, and besides with suffixes frequently Jer 4:14; Jer 14:9; Jer 23:9. etc. [Certainly then is not foreign to his style.W. H. H.]
Lam 3:47. is a quotation from Jer 48:43; Isa 24:17. . The paronomasia, an imitation of , is an invention of our Poet, for it is found only here., apparently from , tumultuari, strepere, is contracted from . In Num 24:17, is found . The meaning seems to be the same as that of , strepitus, tumultus. See , Jer 48:45, and the remarks at that place. Also , Isa 59:7; Isa 60:18., see Lam 3:48; Lam 2:11; Lam 2:13; Lam 4:10, is very frequent with Jer 4:20; Jer 6:14; Jer 8:11; Jer 8:21, etc.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
Lam 3:43. Thou hast covered with anger, and persecuted us.Thou madest out of Thy wrath a veil [or covering] and didst pursue us. As Thou hast not pardoned, Lam 3:42, constitutes a negative term of connection, so does Thou madest a covering of Thy wrath a positive one. For the veil of wrath with which the Lord covers Himself, conceals in its bosom the lightnings of wrath of which the Poet proceeds to speak. [The causative meaning given to the verb by Dr. Naegelsbach, and implied, though not affirmed by Gerlach, is certainly possible (see Psa 91:4, , lit., With his wing He will make, or provide, J. A. Alexander,a covering for thee), and is strongly recommended here by the absence of an object expressed. He made a covering of the wrath and pursued us, is the same as saying. He enveloped Himself in His wrath and pursued us. The definite article before wrath, the wrath, points to Jehovahs wrath, and makes the reflective force of the verb more apparent. In the next verse, where the cloud does not specify any particular cloud, but only clouds generically, the expression of , for Thyself, is more elegant. These slight grammatical distinctions can hardly be expressed in English, in which it is best to give the same form in both verses.The purpose of the covering not that of concealment, but of preparation for the pursuit of His enemies. He dismisses His pity and gathers His wrath around Him as a veil that covers the whole person, that He may slay and not pity. Or His wrath itself may be regarded as furnishing His weapons of offence, the armory out of which flash the lightnings of His wrath. Therefore the objection of J. D. Michaelis, Boettcher and Thenius, that he who conceals himself, does not pursue others (although a concealed enemy may, nevertheless, be a pursuer), is not valid. We must, either take the verb in a causative or reflective sense, or supply , Thyself, from the next verse. This last is exceedingly awkward. If the order of the verses was reversed, this might be tolerated, though even then it is inconsistent with the usual independent completeness of each separate verse in the Lamentations. But to say Thou didst cover with wrathand then hold the mind in suspense, as to the object covered, till it is announced in the next verse, is awkward to say the least, and certainly has the effect, as Thenius asserts, of throwing all that follows the word wrath into a parenthesis.Our English Version and others which make us, at the end of the verse, the object of the covering cannot be correct if the verb is here used in the sense of covering (see Gram, note above). Some old expositors, alluded to by Gataker, take the verb in the sense of being hedged in.Blayney and Owen take it in this sense, and suppose an allusion to the practice of hunters, who surrounded their game with toils, and then attacked them. Thou hast fenced in with anger and chased us (Blayney). Thou hast in wrath enclosed us and chased us (Owen). But how can there be an allusion to this practice of hunters in the next verse, where they give the verb the same meaning,Thou hast enclosed Thyself in a cloud (Owen)? Henderson also, without allusion to hunting however, gives the verb in both verses a similar meaning, Thou hast shut us up in anger,Thou hast shut Thyself up in a cloud. But the Hebrew verb when followed by the preposition , to, prefixed to the pronoun, as it is in the next verse, certainly means covering ones self with something, as with a garment or a veil. See Lam 3:44, note. Hence it is best to take it in the same sense in this verse.W. H. H.]Thou hast slain, thou hast not pitied.Thou didst kill without mercy. [The E. V. is more literal. Many versions have spared, instead of pitied. The latter meaning is better here, and the more usual signification of the verb when not joined to a preposition. See Lam 2:2; Lam 2:17.W. H. H.] See Lam 2:21. Here begins the enumeration of the aggressive acts of the Divine punishment, through which the wrath, as it were, spent itself. See Lam 3:66; Lam 1:6; Jer 29:18, etc.
Lam 3:44. Thou hast covered thyself with a cloud, that our prayer should not pass through.Thou madest of the cloud a covering for Thyself that no prayer could pass through. See at Lam 3:8. The twice recurring verb , thou coveredst, has been differently interpreted. Ewald would take what follows the word wrath, in Lam 3:43, as a parenthesis. But these words closely connected with what precedes by consecutive, contain no mere secondary thought. Others (Luther, Thenius) translate, Thou hast covered (overwhelmed) us with wrath. But the verb has always and only the meaning of friendly sheltering, veiling or covering: and further, in that case we would expect at least [instead of , with wrath, instead of with the wrath]. But, aside from the constraint put upon the Poet by the alphabetical arrangement [inducing him to repeat the same word for the sake of the initial letter], I think that two grades or kinds of covering are indicated. The first was that, in consequence of which persecution and war came upon Israel,the second was that, in consequence of which, God heard not the prayers addressed to Him amidst the calamity of war. In favor of this view is the twofold nature of the veils or coverings indicated. The first time it is the wrath with which the Lord envelops Himself. Out of this veil of wrath shoot forth the lightnings, as out of a thunder-cloud, which kindle the fire of war in Israel. The second time the veil or covering is only a gloomy, dense cloud, which, like a bulwark, prevents prayer from passing through. Whether the Poet here thought of the historical pillar of cloud (Psa 99:7), or of an ideal one (Psa 97:2), must remain undecided. See, besides Lam 3:8; Psa 55:2, and especially Sir 32:16-17.
Lam 3:45. Thou hast made us as the offscouring and refuse in the midst of the people.Thou didst make us offscourings and refuse in the midst of the nations. Since the Lord permitted no prayer to pass through to Him, the work of destruction, spoken of in Lam 3:43, made unimpeded progress; the consequence of which was, that Israel, ground down to the dust, is now an object of contempt among heathen nations. [Offscouring, sweepings, what is swept away.Refuse, what is rejected as worthless, what is thrown away.Calvin: Paul says, that he and his associates were the offscouring () of the world, 1Co 4:13. He means that they were despised as offscourings or scrapings. * * What the Prophet had in view is not obscure; for he means that the degradation of the people was not hidden, but open to all nations, as though God had erected a theatre in Judea, and there exhibited a remarkable and an unusual example of His vengeance,among the nations.Wordsworth: The nations, among which we Israelites are scattered. Such the Jewish nation has been for 1800 years; and such it will remain till it turn to God in Christ.W. H. H.] See Isa 24:13.
Lam 3:46. Here again, in the order of the initial letters, is followed by , and not . That this was the original order of the verses and not the result of later changes, the context undeniably proves. It is, therefore, certainly incomprehensible how any one could have thought of placing the triad of Lam 3:46-48, after that of Lam 3:49-51 (Meier) [Boothroyd, likewise].All our enemies have opened their mouths against us,gaped at us with their mouth. This verse, which contains only a more particular definition of what is meant by [refuse, or as Dr. Naegelsbach translates it Schande, shame, disgrace] in Lam 3:45, has already occurred almost word for word, in Lam 2:16, which see.
Lam 3:47. Fear and a snareterror and the pit. A quotation from Jer 48:43; Isa 24:17. [Calvin, Broughton, Blayney, Noyes, Naegelsbach and Gerlach, all translate the second word pit, as it is rendered in Jeremiah and Isaiah, in the places cited above. In the latter place, Dr. J. A. Alexander says, It is a probable, though not a necessary supposition, that the terms here used are borrowed from the ancient art of hunting. [fear] would then denote some device by which wild beasts were frightened into snares and pitfalls. It is at least a remarkable coincidence that the Romans gave the name formido to an apparatus used for this purpose. We may, however, take fear in its usual sense, without destroying the allusion to hunted wild beasts, suggested in this passsage by pit, and in Jeremiah and Isaiah by pit and snare. He who flies for terror falls into the pit. So Jarchi, quoted by Gerlach. Calvin: He compares here the anxieties into which the people had been brought, to a pitfall and dread. * * The meaning is, that the people had been reduced to such straits, that there was no outlet for them; * * filled with dread, they sought refuge, but saw pitfalls on every side.W. H. H.] Is come upon us,fell to our lot [happened to us, or came upon us], desolation and destructionshame and hurt. [The E. V. is better, and is adopted by most versions. See Gram. note above.W. H. H.] In these pithy and forcible words the Poet sums up all that Israel had suffered.
Lam 3:48-51
48Mine eye runneth down with rivers of water for the destruction of the daughter 49of my people. Mine eye trickleth down, and ceaseth not, without any intermission. 50, 51Till the Lord look down, and behold from heaven. Mine eye affecteth mine heart, because of all the daughters of my city.
TEXTUAL AND GRAMMATICAL
Lam 3:48.The first clause is found in Psa 119:136, almost word for word. For construction, see my Gr., 69, 2 a. [After verbs of plenty and want, the accusative denotes the more remote object (Naeg. Gr.)]. Jeremiah never uses. [Observe it is here the initial word, where special choice and even preference for novelty of expression would be expected.W. H. H.]
Lam 3:49.The verb , of which Jeremiah uses the Hiphil, once only [Jeremiah seems to have been predisposed to use words only once,so new words in Lamentations need not surprise us, Jeremiah being the author.W. H. H.], Jer 18:21, occurs only in Niph., Hiph. and Hoph. Such places as 2Sa 14:14; Job 20:28; Psa 77:3, give it the sense of overflowing, as well as of being poured out. reminds us of , Jer 14:17. seems to be only another form of the same thought in Psa 77:3, where we read the words is debilem, languidum esse, viribus defici (Gen 45:26; Hab 1:4). Both , Lam 2:18, and , signify remissio, relaxatio. Both are . . See Lam 2:18 and remarks there.
Lam 3:50. (comp. , spectare) is prospicere, despicere. It occurs only in Hiph. and Niph.; is not found in Jeremiah; see Deu 26:15; Psa 14:2; Psa 53:3; Psa 102:20, in all of which places the word is used with the addition of or .
Lam 3:51.If we compare the Hithp. , which in such places as Num 22:29; Jdg 19:25; 1Sa 31:4; Jer 38:19, has the sense of satisfying ones desire by violence; if, further, we compare the substantives ,, and , which denote, not merely generally facinus, a deed, but also especially a bad deed (see Deu 22:14; Deu 22:17; Psa 141:4; Eze 20:43; Jer 14:18; Jer 11:18, etc.);there can be no doubt that the idea of doing a harm inheres in the Poel also. In Lam 1:12; Lam 1:22; Lam 2:20, where also this word occurs, this idea is made expressly apparent by other words of this sense. But we are authorized by the above citations, to take the word in this sense, without such express indication of its meaning in the context. [Gerlach: with , to do some one an injury, occurs in Lam 1:12; Lam 1:22; Lam 2:20; therefore there is nothing unusual in the here, as Ewald says.]Bttcher would read , of all the weeping of my city. But even if Piel is authorized by Jer 31:15; Eze 8:14,and with the Inf., by Deu 4:7, yet would be expected [and then would be ungrammatical, as Gerlach shows]. But no change in the reading is necessary. is causal, as Deu 7:7-8; Joel 4:19; Isa 53:5; Pro 20:4, etc., Isa 45:13; 2Sa 19:38.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
Lam 3:48-51. These four verses treat of the eye of the speaker, as the organ by means of which he manifests his pain:for Lam 3:50 contains only a thought subordinated to that of Lam 3:49. The new succession of thoughts begins with the last member of a triad (the triad). Nothing like this has occurred before in this Song [where the triplets have been remarkable for their unification]. Would the Poet thus intimate that he has passed the culmination-point of his Poem, and therefore the culmination-point of its artistic structure also? It is not easy to decide. Besides, the fact that these verses are of the character of one sustained and continuous transition period, is itself an indication of artistic execution. For while in these verses the Poet himself is the speaker, yet he speaks of his own pain with reference to the public calamity [thus connecting what is here said with what precedes], whilst from Lam 3:52 he not only himself speaks, but he speaks of himself [so that these verses form a connecting link with what follows, and the subject gracefully passes from the public calamities to the private griefs of the speaker.W. H. H.].
Lam 3:48. Mine eye runneth down with rivers of water.See Psa 119:136. We find the same sentiment in Jer. 8:23 [E. V., Jer 9:1], Jer 9:17 [E. V., Jer 9:18], Jer 13:17; Jer 14:17; Lam 1:16.For the destruction of the daughter of my people.See Lam 2:11.
Lam 3:49. Mine eye trickleth down, and ceaseth not, without any intermission.Mine eye overflows unceasingly, without intermission. [Lit., My eye is poured out, or overflows, and ceaseth not, so as not to be (from not being) intermission. In correct English, My eye overfloweth, unceasingly without intermission. Gerlach: intermissions, not of miseries (Michaelis, Rosenmueller, see Vulg.), but so that there is no cessation, without discontinuance. See Lexicons and Ewald, 323, a.W. H. H.]
Lam 3:50. Tillor untilthe LORDJehovahlook down and behold from Heaven.As already remarked, this is a thought subordinate to that of Lam 3:49, which it limits, or qualifies. The Poets tears shall flow without ceasing, not absolutely for ever, but until the Lord, by graciously regarding them, shall cause them to cease. [When God looks down and beholds, He begins to hear prayer and afford saving grace. See Psa 102:19-20. Henderson translates, While Jehovah looketh down and beholdeth from Heaven, and remarks, The Prophet regarded it as a great aggravation of the calamity, that the Lord should see it all, and yet not interpose for its removal. But this is to take the Hebrew preposition , in an unusual sense, and is wholly inconsistent with the constant tenor of Bible language, which represents God as averting His face from those who offend Him, and as looking only on those who are objects of His favor. Besides, here God has wrapped Himself in His wrath, Lam 3:43, and in dark impenetrable clouds, Lam 3:44, that He may not be moved to compassion either by the sight or the cries of the sufferers.W. H. H.]
Lam 3:51. The description passes, as it were, from without to within. In Lam 3:48-49, the weeping of the Poet had been described with regard to its extent [its unintermitted continuance], but here the intensity of that weeping is made apparent from its internal effect on his soul.Mine eye affecteth mine heart (marg., my soul)Mine eye paineth my soul [or gives it pain, thut meiner Seele weh, makes my soul ache.] The eye hurts the soul, when it increases the pain of the soul, by adding thereto a physical pain. It is true that weeping is generally a relief to the sorrowful. But when weeping weakens the eye so that it smarts, then the soul, as I said, feels that as an aggravation of its own pain. See Psa 6:7. [Calvin: Mine eye grieves my soul. He had said, that his eye flowed down, and then, that it was like a fountain, from which many streams or rivers flowed: he now adopts another mode of speaking, that his eye troubled or grieved his soul. Broughton: Mine eye worketh into my soul. Blayney: Mine eye worketh trouble to my soul. Noyes and Gerlach take my soul as if it were simply a personal pronoun. Mine eye is painful to me (Noyes), or pains me (Gerlach). But to my soul, , as the expressed object of the verb, is indubitably emphatic. So Wordsworth: Mine eye vexeth my soul (nephesh), the seat of passion (see Lam 3:20) by the misery which it sees, and for which it weeps. See Gram. notes above.W. H. H.]Because of all the daughters of my city. It is not necessary to change the Hebrew here, as Bttcher proposes (see Gram. notes above), for Lam 1:4; Lam 1:18; Lam 2:10; Lam 2:21, show that the Poet regarded the sad fate of the tender virgins as one of the culmination points of the general calamity. For the same reason, I do not think that by the daughters of my city are intended daughter cities. [Tchterstdte, i.e., cities dependent on Jerusalem. So Ewald, Blayney too: Probably the lesser cities and towns dependent on the metropolis are hereby intended, see Jer 49:2.] The Poet nowhere else refers to such cities. Besides, it should be observed, that daughters of my city is in parallelism with daughter of my people, Lam 3:48. This gives a beautiful symmetry to the whole paragraph; the first and last verses, Lam 3:48; Lam 3:51, each closes with a statement of a reason for his weeping, while the intervening verses describe the extent and character of his weeping. [The English version indicates in the margin a possible translation, which Calvin alone has had the audacity to adopt: Mine eye affecteth mine heart more than all the daughters of my city. This would seem to mean, that his heart was more affected by his own grief, than by that of all the daughters of Jerusalem; or, that his grief affected his own heart, more than it did the daughters of his city. But Calvin explains it as meaning, that he wept more than all the girls in Jerusalem! As the female sex, as it is well known, are more tender and softer than men, the Prophet amplifies his lamentation by this comparison, that in weeping he exceeded all the young women of the city, so that he had almost forgotten his manhood. Kalkar takes the daughters of the city in the impossible sense of incol urbis (an ingenious adoption of a feminine form used for common gender), and translates I was more vehemently affected than all the inhabitants of the city. The simple and natural translation of the words gives such good sense and is so in harmony with the sentiments of the whole poem, as shown above, that it is astonishing what wasteful invention has been used to find out some other sense.W. H. H.]
Lam 3:52-54
52, 53Mine enemies chased me sore, like a bird, without cause. They have cut off 54my life in the dungeon, and cast a stone upon me. Waters flowed over mine head; then I said, I am cut off.
TEXTUAL AND GRAMMATICAL
Lam 3:52.The verb Jeremiah uses once, Jer 16:16. Jeremiah never uses. [Jeremiah often uses in the collective sense for fowl or birds. In one single verse, Jer 12:9, he twice uses , meaning birds of prey, ravenous birds. This passage in Lamentations is the only place where he has occasion to speak of a single bird pursued by the hunter. If he had ever used another word in the same sense, would have been chosen for this place for the sake of the alliteration, , and also as suggesting the twittering of the helpless victim.W. H. H.]The expression occurs only here. In Psa 35:19; Psa 69:5, occurs, both times in parallelism with . This shows that belongs, as an adverbial qualification, to , not to .
Lam 3:53. occurs in Kal only here. Niph. is without doubt extingui (Job 23:17), exarescere (of water, Job 6:17); Piel is perdere, to destroy (Psa 88:17; Psa 119:139); Hiph. has the same sense (Psa 18:41; Psa 54:7; Psa 69:5, etc.). might indeed have an intransitive sense, to be sunk in silence, in speechlessness, that is to say, to be destroyed, to perish, in favor of which sense are the kindred roots , ,, and the Dialects. [So Henderson: They have made my life silent in the dungeon.] But since in all the parallel members of the paragraph, Lam 3:52-54, the enemies are the subject, it is necessary to regard them as the subject of also, and to take this word in a transitive sense. If signifies destroy, can signify in the pit, or into the pit. In the latter case it would be constr. prgnans. This would be more correct, because it better answers to the fact. For the enemies did not succeed in destroying the life of the prophet in the pit, but casting it down into the pit for the purpose of destruction.. with reference to the form, see Lam 3:33 [Greens Gr., 150, 2.]
Lam 3:54. is manare, fluere. Kal occurs only here. Elsewhere the Hiphil at two places, Deu 11:4; 2Ki 6:6. [The use of Kal may indicate that the word here denotes, not as in Hiphil, dashing over, overwhelming, but, like and , to melt, dissolve, flow, trickle down. This sense is favored by the preposition , to, on, not over.W. H. H.], see , Lam 3:18. is dissecare, discindere. Jeremiah never uses it. Niph., besides here, in Isaiah 51; Isa 1:8; Psa 88:6; Eze 37:11, etc.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
Lam 3:52-54. The speaker here returns to the description of his own personal sufferings. The central point of these sufferings is the pit, into which the Prophet has been thrown, and that by enemies who were personally hostile to him without cause (Lam 3:52), and who pursued him incessantly (Lam 3:52) with vindictiveness and mockery (Lam 3:60-63). Ought we to interpret all that is said of the pit as merely figurative? So far as what is said of the pit alone, this could be done. But what the Poet says of his enemies, cannot possibly be a mere figure of speech. When he mourns that though he had given them no cause for hatred, they had, nevertheless, incessantly insulted him and pursued him with measureless vengeance,this surely is no figurative way of speaking. We have already shown that the subject who speaks in this song (except in those parts in which the Poet speaks in the first person plural) cannot be the people. The enemies, further, cannot be the Chaldeans, because they are called those that are my enemies without cause, and because the Poet speaks of his being already delivered from their power and now only invokes [not deliverance from them but] the vengeance of God upon them (Lam 3:55-66). On the other hand, Jeremiah speaks of his enemies, Jer 20:7-12, exactly as is done here. He describes their insulting mockery (For I heard the defaming of many) and their vindictiveness (we shall take our revenge on him, , Lam 3:10, comp. Lam 3:60), and hopes that God will avenge him upon them (let me see thy vengeance on them, Lam 3:12). Since the description of his enemies in this place exactly corresponds with that which Jeremiah gives of his enemies, all of which is confirmed by so many facts related in his prophetical book (Jer 11:18-20; Jer 12:1-6; Jer 26:8; Jer 37:11-15; Jer 38:4-6), can we doubt that what is said of the pit should be taken literally, especially if we consider the fact that what is here said agrees substantially with what Jeremiah says, chap. 38, of the pit into which he was actually thrown by his enemies? We are sure, therefore, that the Poet here had in his eye the persecutions which Jeremiah suffered from his enemies. He personates Jeremiah. The chief subject of the third song is Jeremiah.
Lam 3:52. Mine enemies chased me sore, like a bird, without cause.Hunted, hunted have they me like a bird, all mine enemies without cause. Like a bird: see Psa 11:1, where the soul of the persecuted innocent is likewise compared to a bird. [They that were without cause mine enemies hunted me down like a bird. So Blayney and Noyes render the verb , which seems to mean, not to hunt, in the abstract sense, but to obtain by hunting, to seize, to lay hold of, and as used here in an intensive sense, would imply persevering and successful hunting. Douay: My enemies have chased me and caught me like a bird. Hunted me down like a bird expresses the idea suggested by the comparison.As even a bird is at last tired out and hunted down by a persevering pursuer. The point of the comparison is the perseverance of the successful hunter in pursuit of a bird: as David says of Sauls tireless and remorseless pursuit of him, The King of Israel is come out to seek a flea, as when one doth hunt a partridge in the mountains (1Sa 26:20). This idea is expressed in the Paris ed., 1805, of the French, Ceux qui sont mes ennemis sans cause mont poursuivi outrance, comme on poursuit un oiseau. The French of Martin gives the same sense. The commentators generally fail to explain the comparison. Calvin, who supposes the lack of both prudence and courage in birds is referred to, is evidently wrong, both as to the fact that birds are thus deficient, and as to its application here. Both Gesenius and Fuerst explain the verb, , as used here, in the sense of laying snares as for a bird. This gives a good sense, and carries out the comparison; but it is adopted by none of the versions, and seems inconsistent with the general use of the verb and the intensive meaning suggested by the duplication.W. H. H.]
Lam 3:53. They have cut off my life in the dungeon.They destroyed in the pit my life [i.e., sought to destroy it. See Gram. notes above. From Jer 38:4, it is certain that their object in throwing him into the pit was to kill him.W. H. H.]And cast a stone upon me,and threw stones upon me. But should we translate they threw stones upon me, or they cast a stone over me [i.e., over the mouth of the pit]? Jeremiah 38 says nothing of either the one or the other. Yet it is possible that Jeremiah, whose statements in that chapter were confined, with admirable reserve, to the principal circumstances, might have omitted this point. And it is also possible that the author of our song, in case he were not Jeremiah himself, may have added this particular, either from hearsay, or out of his own invention. [The addition of a new fact affords a strong presumption that Jeremiah wrote this book. One personating him would have adhered to facts well authenticated in his history.W. H. H.] Grammatically considered there is nothing in either the verb or the noun decisive in favor of the one or the other explanation. The verb , which is used in Joel 4:3, Oba 1:11; Nah 3:10 of casting the lot, and in Jer 1:14 of shooting an arrow, Zechariah uses also of throwing down iron [?] horns (Lam 2:4; E. V. Lam 1:21). The word only occurs in the places cited. But if Zechariah uses the word of throwing down objects of such size and weight, then it could properly be used also of throwing a heavy stone over the opening of the pit. The noun, , further, can as well signify collectively a number of stones as one stone, for it frequently has that meaning after , Lev 20:2; Lev 20:27; Lev 24:23; Jos 7:25; 1Ki 12:18 ( ), comp. Num 14:10; Num 15:35; Deu 21:21. But the preposition, , upon me, favors the explanation they cast stones on me. For the difference between and or is, that the former, as Fuerst says, denotes decided vicinity, or such motion as is connected with the attainment of its object, whilst by the latter is expressed motion toward without nearness. They threw a stone on me, that is to say, over me on the mouth of the pit, would be expressed by . [Though there is a foundation for this distinction between these two prepositions, yet they are often used indiscriminately, without affecting the sense, as for instance with the verbs . . ,, too, is used in the general sense of over, as with , in the sense of ruling over, or having the management of affairs, see Psa 103:19; Gen 24:2; Gen 45:8; Gen 45:26; Deu 15:6; Jdg 8:22; Jos 12:5; 1Ki 5:1. If the use of here in the sense indicated by E. V. is not absolutely forbidden, it is certainly to be preferred. 1. It would have been a wanton outrage to throw stones upon the Prophet after he was cast into the pit. 2. It seems incredible that Jeremiah should not in his narrative of the affair have mentioned such a remarkable incident, if it had occurred. 3. They could only have thrown the stones for the purpose of killing him, and how then had he escaped death? 4. The fact that the pit was covered over with a stone, to prevent his possible escape, was a most likely occurrence, and yet one that, because likely and even to be presumed, might have been passed over without special mention. Finally, all the versions, except Naegelsbachs and Gerlachs, render it as in E. V.; Gataker indicates both senses without deciding in favor of either.W. H. H.]
Lam 3:54. Waters flowed over my head.Waters dashed (surged) over my head. This cannot be meant of the flowing together of the water in a physical sense, over his head. For in Jer 38:6, it is expressly said that there was no water in the pit, only mud. Besides, the flowing together of water over his head must inevitably have had for its speedy consequence the death of him who was thrown into the pit. Either the words mean merely, water ran on my head; or, what is more likely, this way of speaking should be understood as metaphorical, as also in Psa 69:3 (Psa 69:2), Psa 69:15 (Psa 69:14), Psa 69:16 (Psa 69:15), he who is sunk in the mire, speaks at the same time of being drowned by the water-flood. That he intends this as an image descriptive of the greatest peril of death (see Psa 18:17 (Psa 18:16); Psa 32:6; Psa 42:8 (Psa 42:7); Psa 88:17 (Psa 88:16), Psa 88:18 (Psa 88:17); Psa 130:1; Psa 144:7), is evident also from Psa 69:2 (1), where for the waters are come in even to my soul can only be taken in a figurative sense. [In Psalms 69 all is figurative. But here, where all the rest is literal, to take one term alone as figurative, is unnatural. It would be better, with Henderson, to take the whole description as figurative, and as having no direct allusion to the account given in Jer 38:6-12. But this is not necessary. The words may only mean Water ran on my head. See Gram. notes above. If there was mud in the bottom of the pit, there was a supply of water in some quantities from some source. The mere condensation of the vapor in the atmosphere against the sides of the pit, would produce some, and there may have been from small springs supply enough to trickle down and splash upon his head. The language, if suggested by any Psalm, was more likely that of Psa 40:3 ( Psa 40:2), than of the 69and brought me up from a pit of noise, and from the miry clay,where the noise referred to seems to be that of running water. The Prophet, sinking in the mud beneath, and reminded by the water falling on his head that he was in danger of drowning, might well exclaim I am lost, I am already as good as gone!W. H. H.]Then I said, I am cut off,I said, I am cut off. Noyes: I am undone. Gerlach: I am lost. Comp. Psa 88:5.]
Lam 3:55-66
55, 56I called upon thy name, O Lord, out of the low dungeon. Thou hast heard 57my voice; hide not thine ear at my breathing, at my cry. Thou drewest near 58in the day that I called upon thee: thou saidst, Fear not. O Lord, thou hast 59pleaded the causes of my soul; thou hast redeemed my life. O Lord, thou hast 60seen my wrong; judge thou my cause. Thou hast seen all their vengeance, and 61all their imaginations against me. Thou hast heard their reproach, O Lord, 62and all their imaginations against me. The lips of those that rose up against 63me, and their device against me all the day. Behold their sitting down, and 64their rising up; I am their music. Render unto them a recompence, O Lord, 65according to the work of their hands. Give them sorrow of heart, thy curse 66unto them. Persecute and destroy them in anger from under the heavens of the Lord.
TEXTUAL AND GRAMMATICAL
Lam 3:55. . This expression does not occur in Jer.; he uses only once , Jer 10:25. [There is not enough difference in the two expressions to afford the shadow of an argument for or against the authorship of Lamentations, even if the latter expression had been frequent with Jeremiah; but as in fact it only occurs once, who can say which of the two expressions was characteristic of his style?W. H. H.] . Psa 87:7, . Elsewhere occur only the expressions , Jos 15:19, and , Eze 26:20; Eze 32:18; Eze 32:24 [in each case in close connection with .W. H. H.], or , Isa 44:23; Psa 63:10; Psa 139:15. is to be regarded as related to in the genitive not in the accusative sense.
Lam 3:56. The verb Jeremiah uses in no form. The expression occurs only here.[Henderson: Before , the preposition has the signification of with a view to; before , it takes its temporal signification, at, at the time of.], once in Jer 8:19; see Lam 3:8; Psa 34:16.
Lam 3:57. Jeremiah uses only once in the Hiphil, Jer 30:21.The Perfects, ,, of this verse and ,, Lam 3:58, stand parallel to the Perfect Lam 3:56. They contain the specifications of that general declaration. They are therefore to be translated in the Perfect, not in the Present. does not conflict with this, as Thenius thinks, for the Imperfect stands here to represent the repetition of the act in times past. See my Gr. 87, f.
Lam 3:58. The expression is found in Jeremiah twice, Jer 50:34; Jer 51:36. Yet Jeremiah never uses the plural , which occurs, besides here, only in Psa 18:44 (2Sa 22:44). [The singular here would be inappropriate, if the meaning of the phrase is that God interposed to deliver him from all the causes which endangered his life, see Lam 3:53. is not merely a circumlocution for the suffix, my, (Noyes), but are caus qu vitam ac salutem meam concernunt (Gerlach), dangerous transactions (Fuersts Lex.).W. H. H.]Jeremiah uses only the Part. of , and that only once, Jer 50:34. See elsewhere, Psa 69:19; Psa 103:4; Psa 119:154.
Lam 3:60. Instead of several Codd. have , which corresponds better with the way in which Jeremiah expresses himself in Jer 11:19; Jer 18:18; but is apparently only a correction suggested by Lam 3:61. See besides at , Lam 3:34. [Henderson: For twenty-three MSS., originally thirteen more, now two, the LXX., Targ., Syr., Vulg., and Venet. Greek, read as in Lam 3:61; where, on the other hand, seventeen MSS. read for .]
Lam 3:61. is used here in an active sense, as in Jer 51:51; Job 16:10; Zep 2:8, etc.[The difference between of this verse, and of Lam 3:60, according to Owen, is occasioned by the verbs Thou hast seen and Thou hast heard. God had seen the thoughts or purposes effected against him; and He had heard the purposes formed concerning him. He refers first to the purposes carried into effect, and then, as it is common in the prophets, he refers to the purposes previously formed respecting him. This difference of meaning in the two verses is, however, entirely due to the verbs, and not at all to the prepositions, which would even better express the ideas Owen attaches to them if their positions were reversed,have seen their devices executed upon me, and heard their devices devised with reference to me.W. H. H.]
Lam 3:62.[This verse may be dependent on Lam 3:61, Gerlach and most of the translators; or on Lam 3:63, Thenius, Naegelsbach. To supply the substantive verb , sunt, before , as Rosenmueller suggests, is altogether unnecessary and inelegant.W. H. H.]., for enemies, is found in Jeremiah only in the expression , Jer 51:1. is not found in Jeremiah; [nor anywhere else except Psa 9:17; Ps. 19:15; Psa 92:4. It is an unusual word on which no theory of authorship can be rested.W. H. H.]
Lam 3:63. is found only here. , see Lam 1:11. is . . [Gerlach: The opinion of Boettcher deserves at least some consideration, that here as in Mal 1:13, there lies concealed in the a (quam, quale; what a Saitenspiel [derisive song] I am to them). But this is not in accordance with the punctuation and receives support from none of the versions except the Syr. See Psa 89:48.]
Lam 3:64. is found in Psa 28:4; Psa 94:2; Joel 4:4, 7; Oba 1:15; Pro 12:14. In Jeremiah occurs only Jer 51:6. is found in Jer 25:14 (a place critically suspicious), Psa 28:4.
Lam 3:65. is . . [Broughton translates it a bursting of heart, following Chaldus, , confractio cordis. Blayney derives the word from Piel of , to deliver or make over; a delivery of the heart, that is, a willing one, to which the heart consents; and translates, omitting the first on the authority of the ancient versions and one MS., and making a single member of the verse in defiance of accents and analogy, Thou wilt give with a hearty accordance Thy curse unto them. Sept. , covering; Vulg. scutum, a shield; Syr. sorrow.W. H. H.]., from , a curse, is . . [Sept. and Vulg. seem to have read from . For construction see Ps. 3:9. super populo tuo sit benedictio tua. Rosenmueller, Gerlach.W. H. H.]
Lam 3:66. . See Lam 1:6; Isa 14:6; Jer 21:14.Of the root Jeremiah uses only the Niphal, Jer 48:8; Jer 48:42.The expression is found only here.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
Lam 3:55-66. These twelve closing verses contain a prayer, so that Lamentations 3, like chs. 1 and 2, ends with a prayer. This prayer is divided into three parts. In the first part, Lam 3:55-58, the speaker thanks the Lord for his deliverance from the pit. In the second part, Lam 3:59-63, he reminds the Lord of all that his (the speakers) enemies had done and were still doing to him. In the third part, Lam 3:64-66, he prays the Lord to avenge upon his enemies the evil they had done to him.
Lam 3:55. I called upon thy name, O LordJehovah. The speaker begins by recalling the prayer which he had addressed to the Lord out of the pit. Hitzig is of the opinion that we have this prayer in Psalms 49. Delitzsch also concedes that there is much to favor this opinion; see his Bible Commentary on the Psalms, 1867, p. 438. [The caption of this Psalm ascribes it to David. There is no internal evidence sufficient to set this aside and to prove that the Psalm was written by Jeremiah or some one else during the captivity at Babylon. Its appropriateness to Jeremiah when in the pit, is only a proof of the singular adaptation of the inspired psalms to the wants of Gods children in all varieties of emergencies and circumstances. That Jeremiah repeated this Psalm when in the pit, is most likely. That it was present to his mind when writing these Lamentations is rendered probable by many suggestive thoughts and sentiments.Gerlach and Noyes translate the verbs, from Lam 3:55 to the end, in the present tense. This makes the translation in some respects smoother and the sense in some places more apparent. But the references are to deliverances past, pointing hopefully, amidst present and unrelieved afflictions, to deliverances yet in the future. For this reason alone, the preterite sense of the verbs should be retained, even if the difficulties of translation were greater than they really are.W. H. H.].Out of the low dungeonout of the hellish (hllischen) pit. A similar expression [differing only in the preposition.W. H. H.] is found in Psa 88:7. If our Poet had in mind Psalms 88, which I regard as certain, then it is probable that he used this peculiar expression in the same sense in which it is used there. Psalms 88, it is true, is commonly understood of an affliction of another kind (by leprosy, Lam 3:9; Lam 3:16): but there is room for the question, whether this psalm, the gloomiest of all the lamentation psalms, as Delitzsch says, does not also apply to that gloomiest of all situations which any servant of the Lord in the Old Testament ever experienced? In that case , hellish, should be understood, not of Hades itself, but of the Hades-like place in which the Prophet found himself. It would then indicate not merely the locality, but the condition of the Prophet. [See Gram. notes above. There is not necessarily in these words an allusion to Sheol, nor is hellish pit even a correct translation of the words, which mean literally, a pit of low or under places, or pit of depths; out of the depths of the pit, if not an exact is yet a sufficiently accurate rendering. Gerlach, while he also supposes an allusion, in a figurative sense, to Sheol, translates, aus der Grube der Tiefen, out of the pit of the depths, meaning perhaps, figuratively, the infernal regions. But the passages in which this and similar expressions occur do not justify the idea that the pit of Hell or Sheol, i.e. the place of the dead, is intended, even figuratively. The literal sense out of the pit of depths, a poetical expression for depths of the pit, is most consonant with the fact that the Prophet alludes to the time when he was literally sinking in the mire at the bottom of the well.W. H. H.]
Lam 3:56. Thou hast heard my voice,Thou heardest my voice. The Poet gratefully recognizes the fact that the Lord heard his cry,Hide not thine ear at my breathing, at my cry.[saying] Hide not Thine ear to my refreshment, to my cry. This is not a prayer which the speaker now addresses to the Lord [but the prayer which he did make when he was in the pit]. It is connected with , my voice, as an explanation of the purport of that cry, and it shows what the speaker prayed for at that time.The word [E. V. breathing, Naegelsb.refreshment] occurs besides here only in Exo 8:11 (15) [and is there rendered by Sept. ], signifies undoubtedly the obtaining breath, (see 1Sa 16:23; Job 32:20; Est 4:14). It is not synonymous with , cry, but it denotes the end to which the latter serves as the means. [The sense is, as given by Noyes: Hide not Thine ear from my cry for relief. But a more exact translation is given by Blayney: Hide not Thine ear from my relief at my cry;so Broughton: Hide not Thine ear from my release at my prayer. The verb means strictly to veil (and is so rendered here by Gerlach, Veil not Thine ear), and then to conceal, hide. To veil the eye is, not to look at what is set before it; and to veil the ear is, to render it deaf to what is said; remarks Owen, who proposes the translation Deafen not Thine ear. Fuerst, in his Lex, says, Turn not away Thine ear. Calvin renders it, Close not Thine ear.My breathing. Wordsworth: My respiration, my recovery of breath. Comp. Exo 8:15, the only other place where the word occurs, and where it is rendered respite. The word relief seems in accordance with the use of the word in that passage, and exactly to represent the sense it has here.But how are these last words connected with the first words of the verse? The difficulty which has embarrassed commentators here, is one of Gerlachs arguments for taking the perfect verbs in a precative sense and rendering them in the present, which apparently meets the difficulty. But the objections to this have been stated above on Lam 3:55. To supply intermediate words and thoughts between the first and second members of the verse, as Thou heardest my voice, therefore now, in my present exigency, hide not Thine ear, etc., or therefore I now am encouraged to pray Hide not, etc., is at least arbitrary.3 To regard the last member as independent of the first, an interjectional prayer, introduces an abrupt and serious break in the consecutive flow of the thought. Besides, both of these interpretations are open to the objection that , Thou heardest my voice, is not equivalent to saying, Thou didst answer my prayer, or receive it favorably; a mistake that even Gerlach has fallen into. The word denotes any audible sound or noise. Thunder (1Sa 7:10), the blast of a trumpet (Exo 19:19), the crackling of thorns under a pot (Ecc 7:6), the rustling of a shaken leaf (Lev 26:36), the singing of birds (Psa 104:12), the bleating of sheep and lowing of oxen (1Sa 15:14), the roaring of a lion (Jer 12:8), the shout of a multitude and clamor of a battle (Exo 32:17), etc., the sound of the human voice in speaking, singing, weeping, etc., are all represented by the common generic word , a sound, a noise. In three passages the word is used in the sense of rumor, or the bruit of common fame: Gen 45:16; Ecc 10:20; Jer 3:9. When connected by or to verbs implying compliance with a request, obedience to a command, acceptance of advice, or the like, usage allows the word to stand in a specific sense for prayer, command, injunction, or the like; as Gen 30:6, , hath heard my voice, i.e. my prayer. In no other case does this word, alone and by itself, signify a command, prayer, or speech, or words spoken. It does not designate articulate utterance, but the sound produced by speech, or aught else that makes a noise, or is audible. Its meaning is always evolved from the context, and when spoken words are intended, it is almost invariably followed by ,, or some similar word. Its use in Hebrew is so purely idiomatic, that the sense may often be better given in English by its entire omission, than by a verbally literal translation. This is often done in our English version: Gen 45:2, he wept aloud; 1Ki 18:27, cry aloud, Lam 3:28, they cried aloud; Neh 8:15, publish and proclaim; Job 29:10, The nobles held their peace; Pro 26:25, when he speaketh fair, etc. In Son 2:8; Son 5:2 (see Prof. Green in Lange), and Isa 40:3; Isa 40:6 (see Ewald.), the word may be rendered as an interjection, Hark! It is obvious, therefore, that cannot be translated prayer. can only mean Thou heardest the sound of my voice. What that sound was, whether of weeping, lamentation or supplication, is left to be explained, and is explained by the words following; the sound, or cry was, Hide not Thine ear from my prayer for relief. Similar constructions are frequent, especially with Jeremiah. Jer 3:21, a sound was heard upon the high placesweeping supplications; Jer 4:31, The cry of the daughter of Zionwoe is me now! etc.; Jer 8:19, The voice of the daughter of my peopleIs not Jehovah in Zion? etc.; see Jer 31:15; Eze 3:12, I heard a voiceBlessed be the glory of Jehovah, etc.; Job 33:8-9, I have heard the cry of wordsI am clean, etc.; Lam 4:16-17, I heard a voiceshall mortal man, etc.; Psa 116:1, He hath heard my voicemy supplications; Psa 119:149, Hear my cryJehovah quicken me, etc. See Isa 28:23-24; Isa 32:9-10; Pro 8:4-5; Mic 6:1-2; Pro 1:20; Pro 1:22; Pro 8:1; Pro 8:4-5. In all these passages the word is immediately put into expository words. So in our text, the second member of the verse is in apposition with the first and explanatory of the word , Thou heardest my cryHide not Thine ear from my prayer for relief.W. H. H.]
Lam 3:57. The Poet now describes what the Lord did after hearing the prayer of the suppliant.Thou drewest near in the day thaton the day whenI called upon Thee. See Ps. 20:10; Psa 56:10; Psa 102:3; Psa 138:3.Thou saidst, Fear not. See Jer 1:8; Jer 30:10; Jer 46:27-28.
Lam 3:58. The Lord has not only spoken, but also acted. [Lam 3:57-58 are amplifications of Lam 3:56, showing how the Lord heard the prayer there recorded.W. H. H.].O Lord, thou hast pleaded the causes of my soul.Thou hast fought, O Lord, the fights of my soul! It is evident that the Poet intends by these conflicts () the attacks of his enemies, which he has described in Lam 3:52-55, and for which, from Lam 3:59 onward, he implores vengeance. That the struggles on which his life depended were severe, appears both from Lam 3:52-55 and from the following words Thou hast rescued my life. [The Versions generally take the words in the judicial sense, as in our English Bibles. The commentators fail to explain the significance of the metaphor. Pools annotation is a curious instance of blindly unsaying in the note what is said in the text,Thou hast been wont to take my part against my enemies, not like a lawyer by word of mouth, but actually and really pleading my cause. Pleading a cause, metaphorically speaking, must at least involve the idea of securing justification, or exemption from punishment, before some legal tribunal, real or imaginary. This idea is not appropriate here, nor is it so in other places of the Bible where the same Hebrew words are similarly translated. This leads us to doubt the judicial interpretation of the terms used. Dr. Naegelsbachs translation is supported by Isa 49:25, I will contend with him that contendeth with thee, and I will save thy children; Isa 41:11, they that strive with, thee shall perish; Isa 34:8, the controversy of Zion; Psa 35:1, E. V., Plead my cause, O Lord, with them that strive with me: fight against them, that, fight against me, where the first clause is rendered by Dr. Alexander, Oppose my opposers, strive with my strivers, or contend with my contenders, which is recommended by the parallelism; and Jer 51:36, E. V., I will plead thy cause and take vengeance for thee, which Dr. Naegelsbach translates, I fight thy fight, and avenge thy vengeance. But the words may have another meaning still. has an acquired sense, from the idea of conducting a cause before a tribunal, of managing anothers affairs, and also of protecting their person, properly and rights. In this sense the word seems to be used in Isa 1:17, E. V., plead for the widow. J. A. Alexander: Befriend the widow, take her part, espouse her cause. * * The common version (plead for the widow) seems to apply too exclusively to advocates, as distinguished from judges;a remark that will especially apply in the present case. The word seems to have the same sense in Isa 51:22, and Jer 50:34. In the last the expression is , E. V.: He shall thoroughly plead their cause, Luther and Naegelsbach, He will certainly accomplish, or carry through (durchfhren) thy cause, where the idea seems to be that of zealously and successfully prosecuting the interests of another. This is the meaning which Gerlach adopts, Thou managest the business of my soul, i.e., as he explains, the affairs which concern his life and his salvation. This idea of Gods controlling interposition in those matters in which the Prophets life was in jeopardy seems to me the idea here expressed.W. H. H.]Thou hast redeemed my life.Thou hast rescued my life. [The propriety of connecting this verse with Lam 3:55-57, instead of with Lam 3:59-60, and thus dismembering the triplets, is very dubious.W. H. H.]
Lam 3:59-63. These verses embrace, as remarked above, the second part of the prayer. The speaker here reminds the Lord of all the evil which he had suffered from his enemies, as the Lord Himself had seen and heard, and prays Him (Lam 3:62-63) to consider well what, his enemies yet continually designed against him. These verses contain a brief intimation of the prayer which he presents at large in Lam 3:64-66, that the Lord would execute justice (Lam 3:59).
Lam 3:59. LORDJehovahthou hast seen.By these words, which are repeated in Lam 3:60, and the words Thou hast heard in Lam 3:61, the speaker confirms the reality of the deeds of which he accuses his adversaries. [They are also to be understood as expressions of faith in Gods love, and personal interest in His saints. Not only is everything open to the eye and ear of God. But He is observing the conduct and the language of those who injure His people, with jealous indignation, which will eventually break out in judgments.W. H. H.]My wrong. The Hebrew word , occurs only here, but the verb from which it is derived is found in Lam 3:36, . If the latter is used in the sense of bending [deflection, subversion] and in particular of bending of the right [subverting one in his cause], then the noun here means, violation of right, injury illegally done to one. [Calvin and Gerlach translate the word oppression, or subversion, suggesting judicial perversion of justice. It is generally, however, taken in the more general sense of wrong or injury. Calvin says the word is rendered by some iniquity, but in an ironical sense, i.e., the wrong my enemies impute to me. But the word is with almost entire unanimity taken in a passive sense. Rosenmueller: qu mihi fiat injuria. Noyes: the wrong done to me; so Blayney and Boothroyd,W. H. H.].Judge thou my causejudge my right. [So Broughton. Gerlach: Secure to me right or justice. Literally, it is judge my judgment, where the noun seems to be taken in the cognate sense of my cause. See Fuerst, Lex. Noyes: Maintain Thou my cause.W. H. H.] These words are a pious ejaculation, anticipatory of the prayer fully detailed in Lam 3:64-66, and evidently called forth by the antithesis of , my wrong. To judge the right of a man is to bring it to its deserts by means of judgment. A kindred passage is Jer 5:28. Comp. Zec 7:9; 1Ki 3:28; Isa 16:5. [See also Psa 9:5 (4).]
Lam 3:60. Thou hast seen all their vengeance.The word is not in its original meaning vindictiveness, as Thenius supposes, but simply ultio [taking vengeance] (comp. , Psa 79:10, Jer 50:28, , Psa 94:1, etc.). Here also it is vengeance, but in an abstract-collective signification, inasmuch as his adversaries had executed on the Prophet more than one single act on vengeance. See Jer 11:20; Jer 20:12. [Calvin: vengeances. Gerlach: revengefulness.]And all their imaginations against meall their devices against me. The Poet seems to allude to certain passages in Jeremiah, namely, Jer 11:19; Jer 18:18, where this very same word, , is emphatically used of the machinations of his adversaries.
Lam 3:61. Thou hast heard their reproachrevilingO LORDJehovah. See the introductory remarks above on Lam 3:22-24.And all their imaginationsall their devicesagainst me.Twice in the Book of Jeremiah the devices, , of his adversaries are spoken of; twice also the Poet uses it here.
Lam 3:62. It is better every way to refer this verse to the Behold or observe, , of Lam 3:63, than to the, , Thou hast heard, of Lam 3:61. For if referred to what precedes, Lam 3:62 would contain a tautology, because what is the product of their lips and their thoughts must be, in any case, substantially the same with what the Lord has heard according to Lam 3:61. But if Lam 3:62 be referred to what follows then we gain a beautiful gradation; the lips indicate what the enemies speak, , their meditation, what they think, and their sitting down and their rising up, what they do. [The position of the word Behold, , in the Hebrew, at the end of the first member of Lam 3:63, favors this construction. Yet it ought to be remarked, that the connection of Lam 3:62 with Lam 3:61, creates no unpleasant tautology but the repetition of the same ideas under new terms would be forcible and poeticalW. H. H.]The lips stand for what they utter. [Calvin, Boothroyd, Henderson, translate speeches; Noyes, words.] See , lips, or language of Canaan, Isa 19:18; a lip or language I understood, not, Psa 81:6 (Psa 81:5). Compare utterance of my lips, Jer 17:16.Of those that rose up against memy adversaries [so Blayney, Boothroyd, Noyes, Rosenmueller, Gerlach].And their device against meand their thoughts against me. Thoughts, , meditation, Ps. 19:15 (Psa 19:14). [Blayney, Boothroyd and Owen, render the word muttering. Henderson and Noyes, machinations. But the sense of meditation, thoughts, is adopted generally. Rosenmueller, cogitatio.W. H. H.]All the daylong: a particular conspicuous also in Jer 20:7-8.
Lam 3:63. Behold their sitting down and their rising up.To refer these words, with Thenius merely to consessus [sitting and deliberating together] of the enemies, is inconsistent with the context and the use of the words. For evidently, according to the context, the Lord should observe the whole conduct and doing of the enemies, and that not merely with regard to what was common to them all, but with respect to individuals. And further, according to the usage of the word, as apparent in such places as Psa 139:2; Isa 37:28 : Deu 6:7; Deu 11:19, the expression indicates the daily conduct and actions of a man. [Grotius: otia et negotia. Calvin: By sitting and rising, he means all the actions of life, as when David says, Thou knowest my sitting and my rising, Psa 139:2; that is, whether I rest or walk, all my actions are known to Thee. By rising, then, the Prophet denotes here, as David did, all the movements or doings of men; and by sitting, he means their quiet counsels; for men either deliberate and prepare for work while they sit or rise, and thus move and act.]I am their musicsong. See Lam 3:14. He calls himself their song, their sing-song (Ewald), because they busy themselves with him all the day long, though in a malevolent and scornful way. As one often hums a melody to himself all day long so they do not let the thought of the hated servant of God depart out of their heads, but are constantly devising evil against him. I am their song denotes, then, the result of what is said in the first member of Lam 3:62 [Thou hast heard their reproach], and the first member of Lam 3:63 [observe the lipsthe languageof my enemies], and relates to the all the day long, of Lam 3:62, and their sitting down and rising up, of Lam 3:63. [I am the constant subject of their derision and merriment. Wordsworth: Compare the Passion Psalm Psa 69:12, I was the song of the drunkards. There the word neginah is used, here the cognate word manginah.W. H. H.]
Lam 3:64-66. In these last three verses, the Poet prays directly that the Lord would take vengeance on his enemies according to their desert.
Lam 3:64. Render unto them a recompense, O LordJehovah,according to the work of their hands. [Broughton: St. Paul translateth this verse against Alexander, the copper-smith, 2Ti 4:14 The phrase is borrowed from Psa 28:4.W. H. H.]
Lam 3:65. Give them sorrow (marg., obstinacy) of heart. Thou wilt give them blindness of heart. The word rendered blindness, , according to the fundamental idea of the root , to enclose, to veil (see , ,), can only mean veiling, covering ( , veil of the heart, 2Co 3:15). It seems then that blindness [Calvin, Rosenmueller, Noyes, Gerlach], not hardness [Boothroyd, Henderson], is meant. See Deu 28:28. On what Delitzsch (Psychol., p. 291) grounds his conjecture, that it may be a name for madness, I do not comprehend. [The opinion that the word means madness is derived from the Arabic, and is maintained by C. B. Michaelis and A. Schultens. See Rosenmueller, Gerlach. See Text. and Gram. notes.By blindness of heart we are to understand a reprobate mind, involving the idea of stupidity (Calvin) produced by sin.If the future verbs in Lam 3:54; Lam 3:56, are taken as Imperatives, the verb in this verse should also be so translated, Give them blindness of heartW. H. H.]Thy cur unto them.upon them.
Lam 3:66. Persecute and destroy them in angerPursue them in wrath and exterminate themfrom under the Heavens of the LORDJehovah. See Deu 9:14, which place seems to have been in the eye of the author. [Calvin, regarding the Heavens as designating Gods throne, interprets the meaning to be that their destruction should testify the Divine sovereignty and Providence. So Fausset: destroy them so, that it may be seen everywhere under heaven that Thou sittest above as Judge of the world. This is very forced. The idea is simply that of utter extermination; destroy them so completely, ut non sint amplius sub clis, that they may no longer exist under Heaven. Michaelis, Gerlach.Broughton concludes the chapter with the following characteristic note: Jeremy, Jeremiah 24, told how the men of the third captivity should come to nothing. And Ezekiel prophesied only in their days, but they would take no warning. This threefold alphabet endeth in their threefold and absolute destruction. Yet Ezra was of that captivity; but an infant. And of Anathoth, cursed by Jeremy, one hundred and twenty-eight returned, Ezra 2.The enemies of Jeremiah returned not.W. H. H.]
Footnotes:
[3] Diodatis comment on this verse is an instance of interpretation, where a fervid imagination supplies ideas not contained in the words themselves: Thou hast always been ready to relieve me when I have called upon Thee; O continue in doing so now at this present.
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. [It has been alleged, that some of the prophetic portions of Holy Scripture which foretell the sufferings of Christ, especially the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah and the sixty-ninth Psalm, have no reference to Jesus of Nazareth, but were fulfilled in the person of Jeremiah. True it is, that the language of that fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, and of that sixty-ninth Psalm, had a remarkable applicability to Jeremiah. But why was this? Because Jeremiah was not only a prophet, but a prophecy. Jeremiah is among the prophets what Job is among the patriarchs. Jeremiah is the suffering prophet. He was a signal type of the Man of Sorrows. He was a figure of Him who suffered on the cross, and who conquered by suffering. Wordsworth, Intr. Jer., p. 9. Jeremiah is called by the Christian Fathers the of the Prophets, and this qualified him to be what he is also called by them, the . 1 b. note. The Christian church, from ancient days, has set apart the Lamentations of Jeremiah, for her own solemn offices in the week of her Lords Passion; and in contemplating the Prophet Jeremiah sitting amid the ruins of Zion and pouring out his sorrow there in piteous cries of agony, she has ever had a vision of Christ hanging upon the Cross, and mourning over the ruins of our fallen human nature, which caused the bitterest pangs of His anguish there. Ib., p. x.]
2. In this chapter, the heralds of the word are admonished, that it is their duty, in times of great distress, to prescribe to their hearers a suitable remedy for their misfortunes, the component parts of which would be, 1. The recognition of sins by means of the punishments inflicted: 2. Confidence in Gods compassion: 3. Earnest prayer. As for the rest, this chapter compared with the others, shines like a star of exceeding brilliancy, from which the rays of a variety of doctrines emanate and give forth their light. Frster.
3. [I am the man, Lam 3:1. This Lamentation is only rightly understood, when it is regarded as a lamentation of every pious Israelite,as a lamentation which, while proceeding from self-experienced spiritual sorrows of the Prophet, has its truth for all pious Israelites, in whose name the Prophet speaks. Aben Ezra, long ago, perceived this, and indicated the individual Israelites as the subject of the lamentation. In this opinion later commentators mostly concur (Rosenmueller, Ewald, Thenius, Neumann, Vaihinger). Ewald finely says, in connection with the close of chapter second, which is so barren of consolation: Yet, will lamentation and despair nowhere end? Then, there suddenly appears, in the third place, a particular man; the very one who can, from his own peculiar experience, lament most profoundly, so that here for the third time the cry of despair is renewed with still greater vehemence; but he is the one who can also, from his own profoundest reflection on the eternal relation of God to humanity, come to a right knowledge of his own sins and of the necessity of repentance, and therewith also to the exercise of believing prayer. Who is this individual, who thus laments, thus thinks and prays?whose I unconsciously, but at exactly the right place, passes over into the we? O man, he is the representative of thine own self! Let every one now speak and think as he does! And thus, by the direct means of this speech, begun with the greatest difficulty, the sense of pain has been imperceptibly lost in the exercise of prayer. Thus this composition shows us how in the wildest whirlpool, divine composure is to be won: each one must win it by sinking down himself into the full earnest truth; and even if one does not immediately find it, yet there is no more likely beginning for something better; wherefore here a particular individual is set before us as accomplishing in himself this most necessary work. In this individualizing lies also the explanation of the manifold points of resemblance between our chapter and the Book of Job, from the passion-history of which the Prophet derives lamentations and images for the representation of the passion-history of Israel. Dr. Ernst Gerlach, Klag. Jer., p. 81].
4. Lam 3:1-18. Here we have, at first, a lamentation of the Prophet Jeremiah, not so much over his people, as rather over his own misery. Here we see, that the pious are subjected to two different sorts of affliction. One of these is temporal, affecting the body or worldly possessions and welfare; the other is spiritual, affecting the soul, when they think, that God has become their enemy, and will no longer be gracious to them, but will reject them now and forever. The first is, in truth, a cause of much suffering, especially to flesh and blood; but this pain is nothing, compared with that spiritual temptation, when one can no longer confide in the favor and grace of God, as we here see in the case of Jeremiah, who so ruefully bemoans himself, that he is a wretched man, who must bear the rod of the wrath of God, who has thrust him out of the light into the darkness, and pursued him as a bear or a lion, or as a more open and declared enemy. David also experienced many of the same temptations, as we find ever and anon in his Psalms. Thine arrows stick fast in me, and Thy hand presses me sore, he says in Psa 38:3 (2). I said in my despair, I am cut off from before the eyes of the Lord, Psa 31:23 (22); whilst at other times he had been so courageous, that he said, I was not afraid of many hundred thousands that set themselves against me round about, Psa 3:7 (6); God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble; therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, Psa 46:2-3 (1, 2). This sounds very differently from the lamentation here of Jeremiah, who represents God as his worst enemy. This should, first of all, serve to comfort the pious; if they fall into similar temptations, they should not think that they are the first to whom such things have happened, but should know that many pious and holy persons have experienced the same trials. But to the ungodly, this should serve as a warning; they should consider, if this is done in a green tree, what will be done in the dry? (Luk 23:31). If the righteous are scarcely saved, where will the ungodly and sinner appear? (1Pe 4:7). Wrtemb. Summarien.
5. Lam 3:1-9. Jeremiah speaks here in his own name, and whilst he utters the grief of his own heart he seeks by his example to excite others to repentance, for the key-note that sounds through all his lamentations is, that his distress comes from God. The greatest cause of distress is this, that prayer, the only resource in misery, avails no more. Elsewhere it is said, The name of the Lord is a strong fortress, the righteous man runneth thither and is protected,and, He who will call on the name of the Lord shall be blessed,or, Call on Me in trouble, then will I deliver thee, then thou shalt praise Me. In truth, the Holy Scriptures are crowded with, testimonies, which promise answers to prayer and help to the prayerful; indeed, since one of the titles of God is He who heareth prayer, it is evident that to hear prayer is founded in His eternal nature. What then the Prophet here says is contrary to Scripture. But it is true, and so we must understand Jeremiah, that God not seldom hears the prayers of believers, whilst He proves their patience and leaves them long in darkness and uncertainty. This has been, as it was with Jeremiah, the common experience of Christians, who have been obliged to observe in themselves, how quickly the human heart loses courage and prayerful ardor, when God does not hasten to our help. Heim und Hofmann, die grossen Propheten.
6. The Prophet first describes what he himself experienced of the holy cross under the Old Testament. It was necessary for him to be typically a sacrifice for all people. He was obliged to this according to the purpose of God. Gods object in all this was, to use him in His kingdom to the end of time as one of the most important of His instruments. In this respect he is indeed a real type of Christ. Although the light is not wanting in his dark sayings, yet it shines not nearly so clearly as we experience it in the New Testament, by the testimony of the Apostles, where they also testify of their cross. For they already behold His glory with their eyes. On this account Paul gloried most lovingly in his cross and his weakness. Diedrich.
7. In this third chapter such an earnest, intense lamentation of the Prophet is written, that many have regarded it as referring to nothing else than to the sufferings and death of Christ. For this reason, where Christ is painted with His body lacerated with the thongs and the crown of thorns on His head, the beginning of this chapter is found recorded in Latin on the picture. Eg. Hunnius.
8. The old expositors find here free scope for their allegorical interpretations. Thus Paschasius Radbertus, in his Preface to his third book on Lamentations, says, The more attentively I examine thisas it werefuneral lamentation over the whole body of the people, the more profound are the mysteries which appear concerning Christ and His body, so that the mournful discourse may be by turns interpreted, now of the Synagogue, then especially of the Church, and then again of the Passion of Christ. Ghislerus, p. 120. And of Bonaventura the same author remarks, that he says, This is so evidently a lamentation for Christ and His members, whose sufferings are here described, that it is impossible to find in it a literal sense, without distortion.
9. Lam 3:2. By light he represents prosperity, by darkness adversity, Isa 5:30; Isa 45:7; Isa 58:10; Job 22:11, on which last passage the great Luther, in a marginal gloss to the text of the German version of the Bible, comments very nervously, thus: Trouble and misfortune are called darkness, happiness and prosperity light. Here the verses of Camerarius, written on 2Ch 20:12, may be quoted:
In tenebris vit densa et caligine mundi,
Cum nihil est toto pectore consilii,
Tum nos erigimus Deus ad te lumina cordis,
Nostra tuamque fides solius orat opem.Frster.
10. Lam 3:7. To God , i.e. To God every impassable road is passable. Of the same purport are the following sayings, which are worthy of being observed and remembered: Philo: deficiente omni humano concilio incipit divinum, where human expedients fail, Divine begin; Taulerus: egrediente natura ingreditur Deus, God enters when nature exits, Luther: tempus desperationis tempus auxilii, the time of despair is the time when help comes. The greater the need, the nearer is God. Frster.
11. Lam 3:8. Bonaventura refers the words to the prayer of Christ on the Mount of Olives,If it be possible let this cup pass from Me (Mat 26:39). Ghisler., p. 129.The Omnipotent God, knowing what is to our advantage, feigns not to hear the cry of the suffering, that He may increase their usefulness and that their lives may be purified by discipline and they may seek elsewhere that tranquil rest, which cannot be found here. Rhabanus, in Ghisler., Ib.The most efficacious antidote () to this temptation is Hope (Heb 12:3-11), to which effect are the sayings of Augustine, God does not give quickly, that thou mayest learn to desire more ardently; and, What God would give, He withholds. Frster.
12. Lam 3:8. [Prayer: Grant, Almighty God, that as Thou didst in former times so severely chastise Thy people, we may in the present day patiently submit to all Thy scourges, and in a humble and meek spirit suffer ourselves to be chastised as we deserve; and that we may not, in the meantime, cease to call on Thee, and that however slowly Thou mayest seem to hear our prayers, we may yet persevere continuously to the end, until at length we shall really find that salvation is not in vain promised to all those who in sincerity of heart call on Thee, through Christ our Lord. Amen. Calvin.]
13. Lam 3:10. The real appearance of the Lord is not that of a lion or a bear (Isa 38:13; Job 10:16), but of a Shepherd taking the most faithful care of His sheep. With respect to this pastoral care, see Psalms 23; Isa 40:11; Jer 23:3-4; Eze 34:16. And Bernard beautifully says, Christ redeems His sheep at a costly price, feeds them sumptuously, leads them with solicitous carefulness, lodges them securely. Frster.[Harsh is the complaint when Jeremiah compares God to a bear and a lion. But we have said that the apprehension of Gods wrath so terrified the faithful, that they could not sufficiently express the atrocity of their calamity; and then borne in mind must also be what we have stated, that they spoke according to the judgment of the flesh; for they did not always so moderate their feelings, but that something fell from them worthy of blame. We ought not, then, to make as a rule in religion all the complaints of holy men, when they were pressed down by the hand of God; for when their minds were in a state of confusion, they uttered much that was intemperate. But we ought, on the other hand, to acknowledge how great must be our weakness, since we see that the strongest have thus fallen, when God exercised severity towards them. Calvin.]
14. Lam 3:17-18. All other temptations are as nothing, compared with those in which God seems to set Himself in hostility to a man. For as long as the pious taste the grace of God and perceive His fatherly tenderness, every adversity is so much the more easily endured by them and they can be joyful and of good cheer even amidst external causes for sorrow. See Psalms 56, 62, 73. But, on the contrary, if God disguises Himself in some severe aspect before them, and dissembles, and acts as if He hears them not, is not favorably disposed to them, but may be in the highest degree opposed to them and against their interests,then lamentations commence, then begins that secret sorrow of the soul, that excessive anguish, under which they faint away and must sink to Hell, did not God hold His hand over them and abridge their anguish. These are the buffetings of Satan, the very dregs of hellish temptations, they are the floods of Belial that will overwhelm human strength. Then they [the tempted] lose heart; for when, as it were, they lie in darkness, immured in an eternal prison of every kind of trouble, when the Lord closes His ears to their pitiable cry, yes, when He has bent His bow against them and set them up as a mark to shoot against them all His darts and arrows, when He has utterly ejected them from peace and all that is good, in all respects which the Prophet here relates in detail of himself, then at last they come to think, as Jeremiah did, when he said, My strength and hope is perished from the Lord, until God again lets the gentle sun of His Divine heavenly consolation and fatherly goodness shine out from amidst the darkness of the temptations; but in the meanwhile they must for a long time have a taste of that future wrath, which the damned must hereafter eternally suffer. Besides Jeremiahs case here, the Scripture presents us with a pitiable representation and sorrowful instance of a man thus distressed, and a special example for us, in the case of the patient Job. David also in Psalms 31, I said in my haste I am cut off from before Thine eyes. Yes, even the Son of God was compelled to feel in His holy soul a similar spiritual temptation (yet without any sin), when on the cross He said, My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me? Egid. Hunnius.What is here written by Jeremiah is not new and unheard of; but very many examples occur in Scripture, of those who have been harassed by this same temptation. The following examples, however, are especially appropriate here: Abraham, Gen 16:1 (2); David, Psa 31:23 (Psa 31:22); Psa 77:8-10 (Psa 77:7-9); Hezekiah, Isa 38:10, Job 7:15; Job 19:6; Job 19:22; Jon 2:5 (Jon 2:4); Paul, 2Co 12:9; to whom may be added, those most eminent Theologians of our own age, Matthesius, Weller and Hausmann, and especially Luther, who was obliged to sit in that sieve of Satan, particularly in the year of Christ 1527, about the time of the festival of the Visitation of Mary, concerning which paroxysm of his, by far his most violent one, D. Joh. Bugenhagius has written a curious account, which is contained in Tom. 3 Jen. Germ. Fol. 401. Frster. In the Leipzig edition, this production is found in Vol. XXII., pag. 498 ff., under the Title, D. Jo. Pomerani und Justi Jon Historie von Lutheri geistlichen und leiblichen Anfechtungen anno 1527.[Faith sometimes is so stifled, that even the children of God think that they are lost, and that it is all over with their salvation. There is no doubt but that the Prophet also expressly reminded the faithful that they ought not to despair, though the devil tempted them to despair, but that they ought then especially to struggle against it. This is indeed, I allow, a hard and perilous contest, but the faithful ought not to faint, even when such a thing happens to them, that is, when it seems to be all over with them and no hope remains; but, on the contrary, they ought nevertheless to go on hoping, and that indeed, as the Scripture says elsewhere, against hope, or above hope (Rom 4:18). Were any one to ask, How can it be that hope and despair should reside in the same man? the answer is, that when faith is weak, that part of the soul is empty, which admits despair. Now, faith is sometimes not only enfeebled, but is also nearly stifled. This, indeed, does not happen daily, but there is no one whom God deeply exercises with temptations, who does not feel that his faith is nearly extinguished. It is then no wonder, that despair then prevails; but it is for a moment. In the meantime, the remedy is, immediately to flee to God and to complain of this misery, so that He may succor and raise up those who are thus fallen. Calvin.]
15. Lam 3:19. Just as wormwood tastes very bitter, but serves many useful purposes, so the cross, for the present, seemeth not to be joyous (Heb 12:11). Nevertheless, it is a medicine for us. Wormwood (Vermuth) has its name, thus (wehre dem Muth), control the spirit [temper, or mettle of the soul]. For wormwood restrains from lewdness, disperses the bile, neutralizes poison, and destroys all bad vermin and corruption, all of which and much more, in a spiritual sense, is done by the dear cross. Therefore, let us esteem this our spiritual medicine. Cramer.Was it necessary that Christ Himself should be given gall to drink, why then should we be able entirely to abstain from the like? Cramer.
16. Lam 3:19-33. We see here that there are two sources of consolation, internal and external. The internal is, when one is sure in his heart that he has a gracious God, of whom he may expect every good thing in all difficulties and distresses. But this consolation sometimes expires, as we see here in the case of Jeremiah, and from the words and sayings of David, as we have shown above from his Psalms. It often seems as though God Himself, together with Heaven and Earth, is against one. How now should it be with one placed in such temptation? Answer: He should lay hold of the external consolation, which he finds, not in his heart, but in the Holy Scripture, in so many and divine consolatory declarations, which God therein presents to us, together with many examples in the cases of those to whom God has fulfilled and verified such promises. And then also he should carefully consider these heart-moving words, which Jeremiah here uses, which he did not get from his heart, for that, spoke to him in a very different fashion, but he received them from the Holy Ghost; thus, It is of the Lords goodness, that we are not consumed, His mercy fails not, but it is new every morning; The Lord is gracious unto him who waiteth for Him, and to the soul that inquires after Him; It is an excellent thing to be patient and to hope for the help of the Lord; He does not cast off for ever, but He is indeed sorry and moved by compassion according to His great mercies, etc. These and similar sayings we should, in great temptations, take hold of and hold them fast in faith, in spite even of the thoughts and objections of our own hearts. Thereby will God revive in a troubled heart the internal consolation, so that one can say with Jeremiah, Thou wilt be again graciously mindful of me, for so my soul assures me. This I take to heart, therefore I still hope. Wrtemb. Summarien.It is the habit and custom of God, first thoroughly to prove men by affliction, and after that to hear His children, if they, as fine gold and silver tried in the oven, are found to be clean and pure. As it is again written, Whoso adheres to wisdom shall dwell securely, and although at first she sets herself in opposition to him, and brings fear and dread upon him, and proves him with her rod and tries him with her chastisements, until she finds that he is without guile, she will then return to him in the right way, and comfort him and show him her secrets. Sir 4:18-21 (1518). Egid. Hunnius.
17. (Lam 3:21. Prayer. Grant, Almighty God, that as there are none of us who have not continually to contend with many temptations, and as such is our infirmity, that we are ready to succumb under them, except Thou helpest us,O grant, that we may be sustained by Thine invincible power, and that also, when Thou wouldst humble us, we may loathe ourselves on account of our sins, and thus perseveringly contend, until, having gained the victory, we shall give Thee the glory for Thy perpetual aid in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen. Calvin.]
18. Lam 3:22-24. These are approved texts and cordials for all stricken hearts. 1. Gods mercies and compassions, which we may set over against God regarded as a consuming fire, Deu 4:24. 2. That His compassions fail not, with which we may resist the temptation, that God will no more be gracious and has forgotten our affliction and oppression, Psa 44:25 (Psa 44:24). 3. That His mercies are new every morning, which we oppose to our temptation when we are compelled to say with David, I am chastened every morning, Psa 73:14. 4. That God is faithful, to meet the temptation, that God will make it too hard for us to bear, 1Co 10:13. 5. That God will be our portion and reward, that we will be richly recompensed in Heaven. Cramer.
19. Lam 3:22-23. The whole purport of this truly golden maxim is consolatory, and to this end it is to be pleaded in view of the magnitude of the evil both of our guilt and of our punishment. With this accord Rom 5:21, and Psa 130:7, as well as the following from Augustine, Gods compassion exceeds the misery of all mankind. The abuse of this maxim is fourfold. The first is that of the Epicureans, who, from like passages of Scripture, in which the immensity of the Divine pity is treated of, deduce that ancient piece of jargon (), Let us continue in sin that grace may the more abound, Rom 6:1. The second abuse is that of Origen, who concluded that, because of the infinite compassion of God, the damned would at length some time or other, be liberated from the torment of Hell and be saved (Hom. 9 in Jerem.). The third abuse is that of Huber (Samuelis mort., 1624), who, from the amplitude and universality of Gods compassion, presumed to fabricate the doctrine of universal and unlimited election. The fourth abuse is that of the Photinians, who so far expand the words of Scripture concerning the compassion of God, as blasphemously to assert, that God, out of His mere compassion alone, forgives our sins, without any compensation and satisfaction rendered by Christ. Frster.
20. Lam 3:24. Luther has finely comprised the distinction between hope and faith, in the following well-rounded period: Faith looks at the word which promises, Hope at the thing promised, (Fides intuetur verbum rei, spes vero rem verbi). Frster.[Were God to take away the promise, all the miserable would inevitably perish; for they can never lay hold on His mercy except through His word. This, then, is the reason why Scripture so often connects these two things together, even Gods mercy and His faithfulness in fulfilling His promises. Calvin.]
21. [Lam 3:24-25. It next occurred to the Prophet, that whatever he lost or suffered, or witnessed of the sufferings of his people, his grand interest was secure. He was satisfied that the Lord was his all-sufficient Portion. He was conscious that he had chosen Him as his portion, and expected his happiness from Him, and not from the world; and therefore he determined still to hope in Him, and refer all his concerns to His wisdom, truth, and love. In this he evidently proposed himself as an example to his people, that they might seek comfort from God when all other comfort failed. And though they might not be able confidently to aver that the Lord was their Portion, yet they might remember that He was kind and merciful to those who wait for Him and seek Him. Scott.]
22. Lam 3:25. When we men are in trouble or temptation, the Devil is accustomed to portray and represent God to us as very different from what He really is. For he depicts him as an ungracious, pitiless, wrathful Judge, not to be treated with, who would only kill us and damn us and not wish us to be happy, and thus the Devil would frighten us and drive us to despair. We should remove our eyes from this frightful image of Satans conjuring, and look upon the Lord as the Prophet Jeremiah here depicts for us His countenance, as it were; yea, as God portrays Himself in His holy word, namely thus, The Lord is friendly to the soul that seeks after Him. Egid. Hunnius.
23. Lam 3:25. Gods love both prepares the way for and rewards ours. Being more benignant it precedes ours: being more faithful it is returned [by ours]; being more attractive it is, sought after. It is rich to all who invoke its aid, yet has nothing better than its own self. It devotes itself to the deserving, reserves itself for a reward, applies itself to the souls of the saints for their refreshment, gives itself in payment for the redemption of the captive. Thou art good, O Lord, to the soul of him who seeks Thee. How gracious, then, to him who finds Thee! But here indeed is something wonderful, that no one can successfully seek Thee unless he have first found Thee. Dost Thou, therefore, wish to be found that Thou mayest be sought; to be sought, that Thou mayest be found? Thou art one who can be sought and found, yet not prevented (prveniri). For although we say, In the morning shall my prayer prevent Thee, Psa 88:14 (13), yet there is no doubt that all prayer is lifeless that inspiration has not prevented (non prvenerit). Bernardus in libro de diligendo Deo, quoted by Ghisler. p. 144.
24. [Lam 3:25-26. God is good to all His creatures; but in particular to them that wait for Him, to the soul that seeks Him. While trouble is prolonged and deliverance deferred, we must patiently wait for Gods gracious returns to us; and while we wait for Him by faith, we must seek Him by prayer; they that do so will find it good, Lam 3:26, and to hope that the Salvation of the Lord will come, though difficulties lie in the way, to wait till it does come, though it be long delayed; and while we wait to be quiet and silent, not quarrelling with God, or making ourselves uneasy, but acquiescing in the Divine disposals; Father, Thy will be done! If we call this to mind, we may have hope that all will end well at last. Matt. Henry.]
25. Lam 3:26. In the practice of Christianity, hope and patience, the most efficient of virtues, engage mutually in common labors, and neither without the other can discharge its duty. Frster.The little herb, Patience, does not grow in every bodys garden But we are admonished to seek it, because, 1. It is a very precious virtue, and a part of the service we owe to God, according to the first table. 2. It contains in itself another virtue, namely, hope in God. 3. It is easier for us to practice it, if we accustom ourselves to it from our youth. 4. It can over come many wrongs, abuses and outrages. 5. Misfortune will not continue for ever, Isa 54:7. 6. At all events the end will be favorable. 7. God does not willingly afflict us (from His heart,) but always designs something different and better for us, and dearly wishes that He might not punish us at all (Hos 11:9). Cramer.
[God, when He takes my goods and chattels hence,
Gives me a portion, giving patience
What is in God is God; if so it be He patience gives,
He gives Himself to me.
Robert Herrick.]
26. Lam 3:26-36. These are admirable and, beyond measure, comforting words, with which the holy Prophet opens the abyss of Gods mercy and comforts therewith himself and the people. As if he would say, It is against Gods nature to subject us to such hard discipline, and to let us be driven and injured by the world. But He does it for the very best reason, not to ruin, but rather to edify, not to grieve but to fill with joy forever. For He is not of the disposition of the children of men, who, if their anger is once excited, there is no end to it. But God, although He causes grief, and lets His wrath, sternness, and justice be seen, yet He is again moved to pity as soon as men cordially repent of their sin and transgression. Therefore, this present captivity should not be regarded as if He had eternally rejected His poor people, and would never turn their captivity, or as if He would indeed allow His captives to be trodden under foot, or, much less, as if he would subvert the right of a man, or allow his cause to be turned aside before the Most High, as if the Lord saw it not, or knew nothing of it. Far be it from this! He knows and sees how cruelly the tyrants oppress their captives; He, moreover, graciously regards the patience of the oppressed, and will help them again according to His mercies. Egid. Hunnius.
27. Lam 3:27. It is added here that a man should be accustomed to cross-bearing ( ) from his youth. And we may also with propriety apply here that saying of the Poet, A teneris assuescere multum est, There is great advantage in being accustomed to a thing from a tender age. For patience begets experience (Rom 5:4).experience, I mean, in matters of cross-bearing. Vexation gives understanding (Isa 28:19, [Vulg. and Douay]). But what doth he know that hath not been tried? (Sir 34:9). For, as Nazianzen puts it, , , Christianity is faith, not outward appearances. And Luther says, Unexperienced persons are merely unprofitable theorizers. But since it is of advantage, in order to become more fully acquainted with any course of discipline, that one should be subjected to it from a tender age, so does it especially conduce to the acquisition of experience in matters of crossbearing, if one is trained in them from his youth. Frster.Jeremiah himself bore the yoke in his youth. He was very young, according to Jer 1:6, when he was called to the prophetical office (in the 13th year of Josiah), and from the beginning he experienced much opposition and many trials, hence after eighteen years under Joakim and eleven years under Zedekiah, he was able to endure yet severer persecution. The earlier he had learned to bear the yoke, the better was he able to bear it later in life. It is a golden truth that is here expressed. The cases of Joseph and David also confirm it. A youth of hardships has already brought forth much fruit of godliness, and educated many staunch men for the kingdom of God. Therefore be thou also reconciled to a youth of hardship. Calwer, Handbuch der Bibelerklrung,We ought not only to bear the yoke, but to bear it in our youth. For if we bear it late in life, we begin by exercising penitence for the past, rather than by acquiring strength. Let us then anticipate the flight of the years of our youth by suitable discipline, that we may each of us say, O God, who feedest [E. V., Thou hast taught] me from my youth (Psa 71:17); rather than be obliged to lament at the remembrance of our faults, saying, Remember not the sins of my youth and of my ignorance (Psa 25:7 [See Vulg.]). Ambrose, Serm. 2, on Psa 119:9.Deus vult longi prlii militem, God chooses the soldier who has passed through a long fight. Hillarys Exposition of Psa 119:9, quoted by Ghisler., p. 146.What praise is due to old men, if failing in strength and having been released from long continued labor, they prefer to take their rest? On the other hand, what glory is due to young men, when in the very fervor of youth itself, they moderate their lives by a regimen of strict morality? Cassiodorus, in Psa 119:83, quoted by Ghisler., p. 147.
28. [Lam 3:28. He has learnt that necessary lesson of independence, that shows him how he is to serve himself; to give no trouble to others; and keep his troubles, as far as possible, in his own bosom. Adam Clarke.]
29. Lam 3:29. , if so be, peradventure. This particle affords to the Romanists no support for their fiction of doubt.* Luthers interpretation may be seen in his marginal note on Joe 2:14. Frster.
*[I.e., in regard to Gods willingness to pardon, on which they rest the necessity of propitiating Him by penance.W. H. H.]
30. Lam 3:30. It may be asked here, whether this sentence refers to toleration [the passive, non-resistant endurance of evil]; whether the words, if any one is struck on the cheek, etc., may not seem to support the Anabaptists, who endeavor to prove, from this and similar passages of Scripture, especially from Mat 5:39-40, that all species of revenge is forbidden to Christians? But a distinction must be made between public and private, and lawful and unlawful revenge. Frster.
31. [Lam 3:31-33. Prayer. Grant, Almighty God, that as it is expedient for us to be daily chastised by Thy hand, we may willingly submit to Thee, and not doubt, but that Thou wilt be faithful, and not prove us with too much rigor, but that Thou wilt consider our weakness, so that we may thus calmly bear all Thy chastisements, until we shall at length enjoy that perfect blessedness, which is now hid to us under hope, and as it were sealed, until Christ Thy Son shall reveal it at His coming. Amen. Calvin.]
32. Lam 3:33. He does not afflict men from His heart. This is not to be understood absolutely (), but comparatively, namely, with respect to [what may be called] Gods own special work, which consists not in afflicting, but in doing good. Briefly, His disposition towards us is like that of a father towards his son, in reference to which Augustine very beautifully says, He is both a father and a God when He caresses; and when He smites, still is He a father. With which agrees this saying of Nazianzen: . The measure of His philanthropy exceeds the measure of His severity as a disciplinarian. Frster.The very essence of His being inclines Him to bless, therefore it is written, He does not afflict from His heart His children of the human race; but if they despise His blessing, it is His to smite and requite them with the greater severity. Tholuck, Stunden Christl. Andacht, XXII., S. 120.
Deines Wesens Wesen nur die Liebe ist,
Strenge nur bei Dir aus lauter Liebe fliesst.
Ib., Andacht, XXX., S. 171.
32. [Lam 3:34-39. Prayer. Grant, Almighty God, that as we are at this day tossed here and there by so many troubles, and almost all things in the world are in confusion, so that wherever we turn our eyes, nothing but thick darkness meets us,O grant that we may learn to surmount all obstacles, and to raise our eyes by faith above the world, so that we may acknowledge that governed by Thy wonderful counsel is everything that seems to us to happen by chance, in order that we may seek Thee, and know that help will be ready for us through Thy mercy whenever we humbly seek the pardon of our sins, through Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen. Calvin.]
33. Lam 3:37-38. In respect to the sins of men, He is not entirely inactive. Not, indeed, as if He took pleasure in their sins, or moved men to commit them, or had ordained men to their sins. That be far from Him! But because from the very first He had entire knowledge of them (Jer 23:24; Psa 139:7-12; Job 24:23; Sir. 23:27, 28; Wis 1:6-10). Therefore it follows, that all the punishments of sin are sent and controlled by God, to His own people, indeed, for the purpose of discipline, but to the ungodly, for their punishment (Isa 45:7; Amo 3:6). Therefore that is an execrable error of some of the heathen philosophers, who taught that what happened to a man, whether good or evil, came by chance, even as his luck befell him: but that God troubled Himself with the affairs of men, was not to be thought of: but that He sits in Heaven, in undisturbed repose, and lets men here, between themselves, plunge, wade or swim as they can, since He takes no concern in their affairs. Egid. Hunnius.Who then can say that anything is done without the Lords command? This is a precious word. For first, all adversaries, however lively their devices may be, are only messengers and servants of my Lord, and must obey Him, when He has purposes of love in my behalf for them to accomplish. And, as Luther says, Our God is entire Master of the art of whipping a rogue by the hands of others. For the rest, I should not regard the thoughts and devices of all my adversaries, but the loving purposes which my Lord intends to accomplish by them, as David sings, He has spread a table for me in the presence of mine enemies, and filled my cup to overflowing. Whilst they rage and roar, be of good cheer and say, St. Peter cannot prevent God from giving what He will.
Ihr lieben Feinde sorgt so viel, mir Noth und Gram zu machen.
Seht doch, ihr seid Handlanger blos in meines Herren Sachen!
Wohl grmte ich mich bitterlich, wenn ich es nicht erkennte,
Dass doch mein Herr der Wundarzt ist und ihr nur Instrumente.
Wie selig, wer er hat erkannt, dass aller Fden Enden
Von aller Menschen Werk und Wort ruhn doch in Gttes Hnden.
There is then only one real misfortune for men on earth, and that is Sin! Tholuck, St. Christl. Andacht, XXVIII, S. 162.
34. Lam 3:38. Two words occur here which need to be more accurately defined. The first question is, what is the exact idea of evil in this passage? Calvin, too, broadly extends its meaning so as to cover all the evils that are done, and that happen in the world, thus not obscurely embracing all sins. But from the context even a blind man may perceive, that the Prophet is not speaking of evil in general, but in fact of that particular species of evil, which is usually called the evil of punishment. For the evil of crime, as such, evidently cannot and ought not to be in any manner attributed to God as its author or producing cause (Deu 32:4; Psa 5:5 (4); Rom 9:14; 1Jn 1:5; Jam 1:13); but the evil of punishment is, here and in various other places in the Sacred Scriptures, imputed to God as a just Judge (Isa 45:7; Amo 3:6; Sir. 40:32). The other word referred to, is that translated commandeth (, jubere). In the Hebrew it is . Calvin twists this word to mean the secret decrees of God, by which He bends the purposes of men hither and thither, according to His own arbitrary will. Whence he infers, that nothing is done without the command and foreordination of God. He adduces the example of Shimei [2Sa 16:5; 2Sa 16:10], who had command to curse. If he had understood this with reference to the evil of punishment, his words would have borne the appearance at least of truth. But what Calvin in this passage makes so broad, that he writes, Nothing can be done without the Divine mandate, including sins likewise, cannot and ought by no means to be allowed; for the contrary is most clearly attested by what is written in Jer 19:5; Jer 23:32; Jer 29:23; Sir 15:10-20. Frster.[Let us now see how God commands what is wrongly and foolishly done by men. Surely He does not command the ungodly to do what is wicked, for He would thus render them excusable; for where Gods authority interposes, there no blame can be. But God is said to command whatever He has decreed, according to His hidden counsel. There are, then, two kinds of commands; one belongs to doctrine, and the other to the hidden judgments of God. The command of doctrine, so to speak, is an evident approbation which acquits men; for when one obeys God, it is enough that he has God as his authority, though he were condemned by a hundred worlds. But God is said to command according to His secret decrees what He does not approve, as far as men are concerned. So Shimei had a command to curse, and yet he was not exempt from blame; for it was not his purpose to obey God; nay, he thought that he had offended God no less than David [2Sa 19:19-20]. Thus this distinction ought to be understood, that some things are commanded by God, not that men may have it as a rule of action, but when God executes His secret judgments by ways unknown to us. Thus, then, ought this passage to be understood, even that nothing is carried on without Gods command, that is, without His decree, and, as they say, without His ordination. It hence appears, that those things which seem contingent, are yet ruled by the certain providence of God, so that nothing is done at random. And what philosophers call accident, or contingent (), is necessary as to God; for God decreed before the world was made whatever He was to do; so that there is nothing now done in the world which is not directed by His counsel. * * * Now they who object and say that God is thus made the author of evils, may be easily refuted; for nothing is more preposterous than to measure the incomprehensible judgment of God by our contracted minds. This, then, is our wisdom, to embrace only what the Scripture teaches. Now, when it teaches us that nothing is done except through the will of God, it does not speak indiscriminately, as though God approved of murders, and thefts, and sorceries, and adulteries; what then? even that God by His just and righteous counsel so orders all things, that He still wills not iniquity and abhors all injustice. How much soever the most wicked may indulge themselves in their vices, He still rules them, that He may punish sins with sins, as Paul teaches us, for he says that God gives up to a reprobate mind those who deserve such a punishment, that He gives them up to disgraceful lusts, that He blinds more and more the despisers of His word (Rom 1:28; 2Th 2:10). And then God has various ways, and those innumerable and unknown to us. Thus we see that God is not the author of evils, though nothing happens but by His nod and through His will,for far different is His design from that of wicked men. In a word, as far as the Heavens are from the earth, so great is the difference between the works of God and the deeds of men, for the ends, as I have said, are altogether different. Calvin.]
35. Lam 3:39. The danger here is, that very few sufficiently examine themselves. Whoever does this will discover, how God punishes our sins, and we suffer no undeserved distress. Heim u. Hoffmann, die grossen Propheten.It is usual with unrenewed men commonly, to become enraged at him who punishes them, even when their punishment is entirely just. Thus we read in the Revelation of John (Rev 16:9; Rev 16:11; Rev 16:21), that men will blaspheme the name of God, who pours out the vials of His wrath upon them, and that they will not repent of their sins. This perversity of the heart, which mistakes right for wrong, and wrong for right, will reach its utmost height in the last days, but its roots reach back to the beginning of the world, where they started with the lies of the Serpent (Gen 3:4-5).The evils of punishment are only the effects, or fruits, of the evils of sin (Rom 6:23; Jam 1:15). Hence Augustine says, with great propriety, Punishment daily increases, because sin increases daily; the chastisements of God continue without cessation, because crimes among the people are equally persistent. But, on the other hand, Ambrosius says, with truth; God had been ready to change His sentence, if thou hadst been willing to amend thy wickedness by penitence. Frster.
36. Lam 3:40-42. [How are we to get the pardon of our sins? The Prophet tells us:1. Let us examine ourselves. 2. Let us turn again to the Lord. 3. Let us lift up our heart; let us make fervent prayer and supplication for mercy. 4. Let us lift up our hand; let us solemnly promise to be His, and bind ourselves in a covenant to be the Lords only: so much lifting up the hand to God implies. Or, let us put our heart on our hand and offer it to God: so some have translated this clause. 5. We have transgressed; let our confession of sin be fervent and sincere. 6. And to us who profess Christianity it may be added, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ as having died for thee; and thou shalt not perish, but have everlasting life. Adam Clarke].
37. Lam 3:40-41. When Jeremiah says, Let us search and try our ways, and turn again to the Lord; let us lift up our hearts with our hands unto God in the heavens; he reminds us of the proper method to be observed in prayer, namely, sincere confession of sin and repentance must precede our petitions. For we know that God does not hear impenitent sinners (Joh 9:31). This method God Himself also has taught us to observe, since He says in Isa 1:15, If ye make many prayers, I will not hear you. Why? For your hands are full of blood. But He immediately adds good counsel: Wash and make yourselves clean, put away your evil doings from before Mine eyes, then come and let us reason together. Wrtemb. Summarien.
38. Lam 3:39-42. Here two very different kinds of murmuring are indicated. One that of the ungodly which Isaiah has described, Isa 8:21, If they suffer hunger, they will fret themselves and curse their king and their God. But besides this, a very salutary kind of murmuring is suggested, which is not directed against God or men, but consists in a mans being discontented with himself and fretting over his sins and forsaking them, and in examining his life that he may know how wicked he has been, since he has not been afraid to sin before the face of God, most holy (Isa 64:6; Dan 9:5-14). But that prayer and confession of sins may be acceptable to God, it is required, that not only the mouth may pray, but, as Jeremiah says, the heart and the hands must be lifted up to heaven. For where the mouth only prays, and the heart is not in it, God esteems such spiritless prayer as little as the prayer of those Pharisees and heathen, who, when they wished to pray, babbled much with their mouths, without spirit or sincerity (Mat 6:5-8; Isa 29:13). Yet we learn from these few brief words of the Prophet Jeremiah, that prayer is not to be deferred too long, nor delayed by impenitence. Otherwise it will be too late to call on God and come to Him with prayer, as happened to the Jews, who delayed their repentance and prayer till Gods wrath was already kindled. And when they afterwards called on God, it availed nothing (with regard to averting spiritual punishment), therefore they uttered this lamentation. Thou hast covered Thyself with a cloud, that no prayer could pass through (Isa 1:15; Isa 59:1-3; Mic 3:4; Pro 1:28.) Egid. Hunnius.
39. Lam 3:41. In such prayer we must persevere, and not as it were desist if help does not come immediately, but must always continue to pray, till the Lord look down from Heaven and behold us, as Jeremiah here says. For God has not such tender ears that He would soon grow weary of hearing, as those men of whom it is said, a beggar may be neither poor nor worthy,but they will treat him graciously, if he persist tenaciously in his entreaties (Luk 11:9; Col 4:2; 1Th 5:17). Wrtemb. Summarien.
Ut tua pertingat penetretque in oratio clum,
Corde sit ex puro, sit brevis atque frequens.Frster.
[Let us lift up our heart with our hands,the antidote to hypocrisy. Psa 86:4; 1Ti 2:8. Fausset.]
40. Lam 3:42-43. [The Prophet proceeded to direct the confessions of his people and to put words into their mouths. He humbly acknowledges that they had transgressed and rebelled against God; and as He had not pardoned, it was plain they had not repented; this was the cause of all their miseries, of which he led them humbly and submissively to complain to the Lord. He had covered them with His anger, pursued them by His judgments, and destroyed them without pity: and He had so covered Himself with a thick cloud, that their prayers could find no admission. The hypocritical prayers of the people for deliverance were rejected; and even the fervent prayers of the Prophet in that behalf were discouraged. Scott.If the Lord has not pardoned our sins, we may be sure, that it is because we have not repented and believed His Gospel: yet we may be forgiven, even though we have not the comfort of it. Scott.]
41. Lam 3:44. This cloud is not physical but mystical, a cloud, namely, condensed from the mists and vapors of our sins, the Holy Spirit thus interpreting it in Isa 59:1-2; Psa 66:18; Joh 9:31. With which agrees that saying of Augustine, Prfacti peccatores sunt Dei illusores non oratores, Hardened sinners mock God, they do not pray to Him. If therefore we wish our prayers to be heard, this cloud must be dispersed by true and sincere repentance, as Isaiah exhorts, Lam 1:15-18. Frster.However it may have an angry and threatening appearance, that God should draw a dark cloud-covering over His face, yet after all it is no iron wall, but only a cloud that may be easily dissipated, and when God removes our sins as a veil (Isa 44:22), then He drives this cloud away. Cramer.
42. Lam 3:44-49. [The prolonging of troubles is sometimes a temptation, even to praying people, to question whether God be what they have always believed Him to be, a prayer-hearing God; and the distresses of Gods people sometimes prevail to that degree, that they cannot find any footing for their faith, nor keep their head above water, with any comfortable expectation. Henry.]
43. Lam 3:50. Till the Lord behold from Heaven. This phrase is found also in Psa 102:20 (Psa 102:19); Psa 14:2; Psa 33:13; Gen 18:21. Zanchius ( 1590) endeavors to prove from this expression that Heaven in which God is said to dwell, is a place in the created universe (ens creatum) above the visible heavens. But this is absurd. For it would follow, 1. That God is not everywhere, but is contained in Heaven, which is contrary to the doctrine taught in 1Ki 8:27. 2. That the birds in the air are nearer God, than are the pious and faithful on earth; thus Augustine argues (Book 2, the Sermon on the Mount, Lam 9), If the habitation of God is believed to be in the Heavens, regarded as the higher parts of the world, then the birds are in reality better off than we, for their life is nearer to God. Frster.
44. Lam 3:51. His grief is so great, that it is not diminished by tears (as it ought to be, according to the ordinary course of nature), as the Poet says,
Expletur lacrymis, egeriturque dolor,
[Ovid, Tristia, 4, 3, 38], (appeased by tears and spent is grief), but rather is so intensified that it consumes his soul, i.e. his life, the heart, the seat of life, being consumed. Frster.
45. Lam 3:53. We are aroused to fervent prayer, by our own special calamity, as by an alarm-bell. Thus the people of God here acknowledge, that in the deepest anguish, when almost sunk into the ground in the graves of the lost, they had called on the name of the Lord and had been heard. As often then as God now casts a man into the grave, that is to say, lets him sink into some temporal misfortune or mental despair, he should remember that he is thereby summoned to prayer, that he should lift his heart to God and call upon Him with sighing and weeping. Eg. Hunnius.
46. Lam 3:55. The prayer of the righteous, says Augustine, is the key of Heaven; as prayer ascends, the compassion of God descends. Frster.
47. Lam 3:48-66. Jeremiah thought that injustice was done him, although he did not regard himself as innocent before God, but ascribed everything that befell him and his people, to his own sins and to the sins of the people; yet he held that injustice was done him by his enemies, who persecuted him on account of the word of God. And in the same way may one, when he suffers wrong from his enemies, appeal to his innocence before God and men, as David says, Lord do me justice, for I am innocent (Psa 26:1). But before God no one should esteem himself guiltless, but we should remember that the evil which befalls us undeservedly at the hands of our enemies, is deservedly sent upon us by God, on account of other sins, that we should repent of. In repentance, moreover, no one should look and wait for others, before he himself makes a beginning, but as Jeremiah here sets an example of repentance before others, so should every one else do. Then, at least, there will be a general repentance, and God will regard our repentance and will hear us according to His promise, for which we shall praise Him for ever and ever. Amen. Wrtemb. Summarien.
48. Lam 3:57. [Fear not. How powerful is this word when spoken by the Spirit of the Lord to a disconsolate heart. To every mourner we may say, on the authority of God, Fear not! God will plead thy cause, and redeem thy soul. Clarke.]
49. Lam 3:60. [Thou hast seen. Everything is open to the eye of God. Distressed soul! though thou knowest not what thy enemies meditate against thee; yet He who loves thee does, and will infallibly defeat all their plots, and save thee. Clarke.As soon as any trial assails us, we imagine that God is turned away from us; and thus our flesh tempts us to despair. It is hence necessary that the faithful should in this respect struggle with themselves and feel assured that God has seen them. Though, then, human reason may say, that God does not see, but neglect and disregard His people, yet on the other hand, this doctrine ought to sustain them, it being certain that God does see them. This is the reason why David so often uses this mode of expression. Calvin.]
50. Lam 3:60. Qu hic tormenta, erunt illic ornamenta. What are our torments here, will be our ornaments there. Augustine.
51. Lam 3:64-66. With regard to prayer against enemies, see Doctrinal and Ethical remarks on Lam 1:20-22.[Prayer. Grant, Almighty God, that as at this day ungodly men and wholly reprobate so arrogantly rise up against Thy Church, we may learn to flee to Thee, and to hide ourselves under the shadow of Thy wings, and fully to hope for Thy salvation; and that, however disturbed the state of things may be, we may yet never doubt but that Thou wilt be propitious to us, since we have so often found Thee to be our deliverer; and that we may thus persevere in confidence of Thy grace and mercy, and be also roused by this incentive to pray to Thee, until having gone through all our miseries, we shall at length enjoy that blessed rest which Thou hast promised to us through Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen. Calvin.]
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
1. Lam 3:1-18. The lamentation of the Prophet. 1. A source of consolation to the pious in severe temptation. 2. A solemn warning to the ungodly. We learn, here, how God often permits even His dearest children and the most holy of His chosen ones to be deeply tempted on earth, that they may have to some extent a taste of the agony of Hell. But the ungodly, who live in this world tranquilly and happily, should regard the case of the righteous as a mournful foretokening of the pains of Hell, whereby they will yet, at some time, as by a mighty thunder-clap, be awakened out of their profound and dangerous sleep of false security. Eg. Hunnius.
2. Lam 3:19-21. How he who is tempted should strengthen himself in severe affliction. 1. He should lament his sorrow unto the Lord (pour out his heart before Him, Psa 62:9 (8); Psa 102:1 (title); Psa 142:3 (2)). 2. He should be assured that God is mindful of him (by Christ we have the knowledge of Divine Adoption, Rom 8:15-16). 3. He should, on this account, rejoice in hope (Rom 12:12; 1Th 5:16; Rom 5:2).
3. Lam 3:22-23. Sermon on a special day of fasting and prayer by the court-preacher Grueneisen, in Palmers ev. Casual-Reden, Bd. 1., S. 271. Our text instructs us, 1. How God, even in times of affliction, shows His regard for us. 2. How we also, in such affliction, should show our regard for God.
4. Lam 3:22-23. With what we may comfort ourselves when we feel that we are forsaken. 1. The goodness of the Lord, that helps to sustain us, so that we are not utterly overwhelmed. 2. The compassion of the Lord, which we experience every day. 3. The faithfulness of the Lord, which enables us to hope firmly in the fulfilment of all His promises. Florey, bibl. Wegweiser fr geistliche Grabreden, Nr. 46.
5. Lam 3:24-25. The happiness of a believing soul even in painful circumstances. 1. The consolation which it takes to itself,God is my portion. 2. The resolution to which it is stimulated.I will hope in Him. 3. The experience it makes proof of,the Lord is gracious. Florey, ib. Nr. 47.
6. Lam 3:26-27. The benefits of early affliction. 1. They teach at a time when men are most susceptible of instruction; and they teach them [what they most need to learn at that time of life] to recognize the vanity of earthly things and to give heed to the Word of God. 2. They purify at a time when the heart is in the greatest danger of being corrupted; and they purify them from [those besetting sins of youth] selfishness and sensuality. 3. They strengthen them at a time when strength is weakest and temptations to sin are the strongest; and they strengthen them especially to patient endurance on this earth and separation from this earth. Florey, ib. Nr. 48. See Trost und Mahnung an Grbern, ii. Bndch., S. 154.
7. Lam 3:27-33. The chastisements of the Lord. 1. He chastises not for the sake of making men miserable (Lam 3:33). 2. He chastises not forever (Lam 3:31-32). 3. He chastises that we may learn, (1) patience (Lam 3:27-28), (2) silence, quietness (Lam 3:29), (3) meekness (Lam 3:30), (4) hope (Lam 3:29).
8. Lam 3:27-33. The Divine discipline. 1. Its source; Love (Lam 3:31-33). 2. Its means; Sorrow and joy (Lam 3:27-33). 3. Its aim; the perfecting of the man of God (Lam 3:27-30, see 2Ti 3:17).
9. Lam 3:31-33. The blessed change with which believing Christians may console themselves. 1. After pain follows pleasure. 2. After death, life. 3. After separation, a restoration. Florey, as above, Nr. 49.
10. Lam 3:32. The history of the years harvest an image of our history for the year. The resemblance appears in these respects: 1. How finely the whole country looked; 2. With what difficulty it withstood the power of the storm; 3. How, nevertheless, Gods hand has protected us. Beyer S. E. (in Plauen), Harvest Sermon, 1866.
11. Lam 3:37-38. No misfortune happens without Gods will. 1. This is a great comfort to those on whom misfortune has fallen; for (1), they will not vex themselves unnecessarily with self-inflicted reproaches; (2), they will be more susceptible to the voice of the Gospel; (3), they will humble themselves under the mighty hand of God. 2. This is a strong support for the confidence in God of those who properly consider it; for (1), they will be freer from anxious cares; (2), stronger in their reliance on Gods guidance; (3), they will be more perfect in the spiritual man. 3. This is a solemn warning to those who embrace this opinion; (1), that they do not sin against the wisdom of God; (2), that they do not violate brotherly love; (3), that they do not forestall the judgment of Gods word. Florey, same as above, Nr. 251. See Trost und Mahnung an Grbern, i. Bdchen. s. 216.
12. Lam 3:18-39. Sermon of G. Chr. Deichert on Midlent Sunday (see Stern aus Jakob, Stuttg., Liesching, 1867: This Lenten Sunday brings us into sorrows school, where we shall learn hope in God, under severe chastisement and in bitter trouble; where we shall learn submissive meekness, and yet have hours of respite, when we may take breath, gather fresh strength, and address ourselves anew to the conflict. But the first thing is that we pass the examination [or trial for entrance into this school].
13. Lam 3:39-42. Weighty words for every one who is under the cross and in trouble. This, then, is no time for unbelieving, impatient, impenitent murmuring, but a time when we should examine ourselves, and learn in what respects we deserve what the Lord says to us, by means of such chastisements, and when we should submit patiently to His will, who smites us righteously, and thus implore grace. Calwer Handbuch Bibelerklrung.If God chastises the sinner, but with measure, so that He still spares his life, then should not man, whose life is spared by the grace of God, lament on account of Gods righteousness, and on account of the punishment of his own sins; rather every one should lament on account of his own sin, which has brought that punishment upon him; every one should complain of himself (not of God), for this is an indication of true penitence. Lisco.
14. Lam 3:39-42. The murmuring that is forbidden and that which is commanded. 1. Forbidden, because unjustifiable, is murmuring over the evil we are obliged to suffer as a punishment of our sins (Lam 3:39; Lam 3:42). 2. Commanded, is murmuring over our sins, by which we have offended God; and this is right only when it results (1), in sincere repentance (Lam 3:40); (2), in hearty prayer for Gods grace.
15. Lam 3:44-50. Of wrestling with God in prayer; 1. This presupposes an attack that God has made upon us, through the cross and trouble (Lam 3:45-47, comp. Lam 3:1-17). 2. It consists (1), on our part, in vehement prayer (Lam 3:48-49); (2), on Gods part, in the repeated rejection of our prayer (Lam 3:44.) 3. It ends (1), on our part, with believing perseverance in prayer; (2), on Gods part, with God-like acceptance of our prayers (Lam 3:50).
16. Lam 3:48-66. Prayer of the innocent and persecuted man for help against his enemies. 1. Description of the wanton oppression of his enemies and the heart-felt lamentation of the oppressed (Lam 3:48-54). 2. Whither this one had turned himself [for help] in this difficulty. (Lam 3:55-58; We, who had been cast, as it were, into the pit of destruction and the abyss of terror and distress, knew not whither to betake ourselves, except unto Thee alone, O Lord! We called upon Thee out of our anguished hearts, and Thou didst hear us. Since Thou hast begun to hear, hide not now Thine ears from our sighs and our cries.) 3. Prayer, that God will not let the wickedness of his enemies go unrevenged. (Lam 3:59-66 : With Thee, truly, O Lord, I have nothing to say, because one cannot answer Thee for one thing of a thousand. But this we commend to Thee, O Lord, as the Righteous Judge, that our enemies, without any justifying cause, have tyrannized over us so grievously. Thou hearest also their reproach, which is uttered not only against us, but much more against Thy holy name. Because they will not cease
from this outrageous insolence, do Thou then set about to requite them, as they have deserved. Let their heart be terrified, that is now defiant; let them feel Thy curse, which now they despise). Fifth Sermon of Egid. Hunnius on the 3d chap. of Lamentations.
Fuente: A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical by Lange
I am the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of his wrath.
The same subject of lamentation runs through the whole of this Chapter.
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
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. 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 travail. He hath set me in dark places, as they that be dead of old. He hath hedged me about, that I cannot get out: he hath made my chain heavy. Also when I cry and shout, he shutteth out my prayer. He hath inclosed my ways with hewn stone, he hath made my paths crooked. 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. 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. 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.
If we do by this scripture as the Apostle enjoined upon another occasion, compare spiritual things with spiritual, we may discern some striking features of One greater than the Prophet thus expressing himself. 1Co 2:13 . I am free to allow, that the mournful Prophet might truly say; in reference to his own personal calamities, that he was a man of affliction; but still I think the personal afflictions of Jeremiah would not have been considered sufficiently remarkable, to have demanded a book of elegies in the volume of scripture. And when I behold expressions in this sacred book of God, similar to what is found elsewhere in the Bible, and directly spoken of Christ; and in a spirit of prophecy by Christ; I must at least be obliged to connect so much together of both, as to have my mind led out in contemplation upon the person of my Lord. Let the Reader meditate upon many things said in these verses, and then recollect what is said elsewhere of Christ, and by Christ; and I venture to think, that the application will be striking. Jeremiah was a mournful Prophet indeed: but Jesus, as the Head and Representative of his people, was the only One that could in a way of personal and peculiar appropriation say, I am the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of his wrath. See Psa 22 ; Heb 5:7 etc. Some have thought, that it is the Church which is here venting her sorrows by the pen of the Prophet. And if it be so, is not Jesus the Head of his Church, eminently the first mourner: and the Church in all her members beheld in him? Reader! remember, I do nothing more than merely propose the humble question. I assert nothing. But I conceive, that it will always be found profitable, in all the parts of lamentation and suffering, to eye Him who was made perfect through suffering; and I humbly believe, that we shall not lose an atom of profitableness, if then our views of the Church or of individual believers be beheld as in Him.
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
The Shadow of the Cross (For Palm Sunday)
Lam 3:19
We celebrate Today an event that stands alone in the sacred life of Jesus, the solitary occasion on which He was publicly honoured and escorted into Jerusalem amid popular rejoicings the central Figure in a grand procession of triumph. Palm Sunday is a day of triumph, but still there is something sad even in the triumph, and so we take our text from Lamentations.
I. The Shadow of the Cross. The week which opens with a triumph closes with a death and a burial; the brightness of Palm Sunday fades only too soon into the still, solemn quiet of Holy Week and the gloom of Good Friday. On Palm Sunday with the glad shouts of Hosanna ringing in our ears, the sight of the waving palms before our eyes, we are tempted to forget the life of sorrow. But even in His brief days of earthly triumph His Passion has already begun. He can read the future. Is it hard then to understand the ‘affliction and misery’ even in this very triumph? Think of that scene with the excited, rejoicing crowd, and in the midst the only sad face, His, to whom all this homage was being given. He knows how brief the triumph will be; what a terribly different scene will in a few short days be enacted by the walls of Jerusalem. And so as He rides along a dark shadow lies across the sunlit path before Him the shadow of the cross and Jesus sees it there.
II. The Attitude of the Disciples. Look again. See His disciples full of joy and pleasure. It is a glad day for them. They think that at last He is going to assert His rights and be an earthly conqueror; that He will become King of Jerusalem and redresser of His country’s wrongs. They love Him, these chosen ones. Will they ever forsake Him? Yet one of them is a traitor! He will betray his Master with a false kiss. It is that which hurts you more than anything when your best friend turns against you, one whom you have loved and trusted. Others may revile you, misjudge you, but when your bosom friend turns and curses you, that breaks the heart. Here was such an one, and Jesus knew it. And what of the other disciples? In His darkest hour, in His sorest need, they will all forsake Him and flee. When He stands before His murderers He will stand alone. And He knows it. Yet how He loves them, how He yearns over them in prayer! His ‘little flock’. Ah, we may well remember His ‘affliction and misery ‘.
III. Our Attitude. Now shall we forsake Him in this Holy Week? Ah, we say, we could never be like Judas, or even like Peter and the others. Think again. When you are among those who serve Him, in the midst of waving palms and glad Hosannas, it is comparatively easy to be true. But when you are among those who jeer at religion, and the fear of God, and doing right, have you never felt ashamed of Him? Have you never denied Him? When He has asked you to share His cross have you ever rebelled against Him? Then let our past offences bind us closer to Him now, that we may learn through this Holy Week the lesson the cross will teach about sin and the way it may be overcome.
The Reason of Hope
Lam 3:21
We should inquire into this ‘therefore’. It ought to be to us like a great gate of entrance into a king’s house. If the logic fails here it fails everywhere. We must keep our eye upon the therefores of Divine and human reasoning and providence.
I. It is as if insanity suddenly emerged into sobriety, self-control, and a true spiritual realization of the meaning and purpose of things. The very memory of the gall and the wormwood makes me hope; I have had so much of them that there cannot be any more to have; it has been so terrible that now surely it is going to be summer-time and joy. This man handles life well. He is a true poet; he sees somewhat of the measure of things, and knows that at a certain time the dawn cannot be far off. I tell you I will number the hours and give you a forecast I have been here in this prison of gloom and doubt and desolateness one hour, two hours, three hours, all the winter, all the summer, all the winter again; it must now be not far from morning. We need those great prophetic voices. Sometimes we need the very biggest soul that ever lived, and we seem to need him every whit all his brains, all his heart, all his music. He is not too much for us because our grief is so deep and so sensitive, and the whole outlook is a horizon of blackness, and darkness has no history and no measuring points.
This is where the religious element enters into life with great copiousness, and where it should be received with unutterable welcomes. This is not as if one human being were addressing another; the words certainly come through a human medium, but they bring a Divine meaning with them. Words have an atmosphere. It is the atmosphere that is, as we say, supernatural, Divine, transcendent.
II. The vital point in the text is the word ‘therefore’; and it comes upon us suddenly, unexpectedly, it is as a flaming bush at the foot of the mountain, the mountain all grim barrenness.
‘Therefore.’ I have never seen the stars except in the darkness, therefore the night may have something to show me as well as the day the night of loneliness and desolation and bitter sorrow. There may be a. star on purpose; one star in all the uncounted millions of stellar points was marked out as His star as if the jewels starry were already appropriated and labelled, as if for personal acceptance and enjoyment.
III. Intellect grows, therefore character may grow. The little may become great, the weak may become strong, that which is far off may be brought nigh, and that which is barren may be fruitful. Yesterday’s providence should be Today’s prophecy, hope, and poem of assurance. And, said one who wrote that bitter chapter against the day of his birth, He hath been with me in six troubles and in seven He will not forsake me. Who can draw a line at six and say the Deity ends here, or here Providence finally stops? No one. I will take the whole six as meaning the culminating seven. God Himself is an odd number; He is One or He is Three: and He will deliver me out of the odd number of my affliction and sorrow. Seven shall not frighten the Trinity.
Joseph Parker, City Temple Pulpit, vol. Iv. p. 88.
Reference. III. 21. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xi. No. 654.
It Is of the Lord’s Mercies
Lam 3:22
No text expresses more perfectly the old Puritan temper and faith than this: ‘It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed’. The Christianity it uttered was not completely normal, but there were elements in it for lack of which our modern religion is suffering.
I. To begin with, the old Puritanism was profoundly aware of the tragical element in life, and met it fairly. That element remains with us, and science has brought it nearer. Whose heart has not fluttered at the sight of a telegram? The skies above us are charged with possibilities of tempest and destruction. We hold nothing securely. We walk continually by the edge of a precipice. We go to sleep knowing that next day may bring us news which will darken all the days to come. ‘It is of the Lord’s mercies’ if it does not. These bolts strike us oftenest from an unclouded heaven, and make the very earth reel under our feet. So often is the lesson read that fear looks out even from innocent blue eyes of hope, and a nameless sudden chill falls on the most rapturous hours. How are we to master this? Not by the murder of nobler thought and sweeter instinct, not by the substitution of casual lusts for faithful affection, not through trampled and conquered love, but through victorious faith. There is enough in life to make us sober to moderate moods of triumph, to teach us that there are worse things than death. The Puritans knew this; and they knew also that, strange as it seems, the Christian may realize peacefully that the things which are seen are temporal. Not by loving less, but by loving the creature in the Creator, are we fortified to take the worst that time can do, saying, ‘The things which are unseen are eternal’. What came into this sphere of time may vanish from it; what we loved in God abides in God, and we go to find it. Thus after ‘the wreckful siege of battering days’ there often comes over the worn and furrowed face that blessed light of childhood, with its sure hope of happiness. Thus we may rise to say, ‘Whom have I in heaven but Thee, and there is none on earth that I desire beside Thee,’ and know the secret of loving God with heart and soul and strength and mind. Thus we may learn not merely to bless God for the stroke averted, but to bless Him in the moment of its falling; to arise at midnight and give thanks because of His righteous judgments.
II. This Puritan motto gives us the true viewpoint from which to apprehend the Cross. That form of Calvinism which sought to destroy humanism, and to treat the Church as a body whose members have no relation with the world, is dead. The doctrine that human nature was demonic, a doctrine which practically denied any lingering trace of the image of God, is no longer held anywhere. But modern teaching has largely swung to the opposite extreme. Men hear so much about God’s need of them that they do not think as they should about their need of Him. People sit listlessly while the preacher tells of the Divine craving, but do not understand the terrible love of God:
So great that saints dread more
To be forgiven than sinners do to die,
and they never will understand it till they cannot so much as lift up their eyes unto heaven till they feel that it is of the Lord’s mercies they are not consumed. As McLeod Campbell has said, this is a doctrine for all. ‘The true protection from any limiting distinctions as to the forgiveness which we receive, and which we are to cherish and to manifest, is seeing ourselves in that light of truth in which we thankfully and with the utmost self-abasement cease from the hopeless task of weighing our own unworthiness by putting sins and ignorance into one scale, the ideal of good in the other, in order to raise our hope of mercy by taking from the demerit of our sin, and bless God that, taking the lowest ground, and as being the chief of sinners, we still find all our utmost need met in the forgiveness which the Gospel reveals.’ The beginning and the end of Christianity is the death of pride.
W. Robertson Nicoll Ten Minute Sermons, p. 159.
References. III. 22, 23. J. Vaughan, Sermons (11th Series), p. 13. III. 23. T. G. Selby, The Imperfect Angel, p. 64. A. Tucker, Preacher’s Magazine, vol. xix. p. 323. III. 24. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. viii. No. 451. III. 27. W. Brock, Midsummer Morning Sermons, p. 1. J. Thain Davidson, Forewarned Forearmed, p. 19. III. 39. H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 2216. III. 57. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxx. No. 1812. IV. 22. Ibid. vol. viii. No. 480. V. 1. A. P. Stanley, Sermons on Special Occasions, p. 310.
Fuente: Expositor’s Dictionary of Text by Robertson
“Handfuls of Purpose”
For All Gleaners
“I am the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of his wrath” Lam 3:1
The third chapter would seem to be the property of all sorrowful men. From century to century persons who have been subjected to great suffering have felt that this chapter has expressed their feeling and their aspiration better than any other human composition. Job’s lamentation over the day of his birth, and Jeremiah’s lamentation over his personal sufferings, are the heritage of sorrow throughout all time. We never know what sorrow is until we feel its personality. It is one thing to look upon sorrow at a distance, and to feel amazed that men can endure such burden and stress; and another to feel how weighty is the burden, and how hard to bear is the stress that urges us downwards. Yet this personality of sorrow is enriched with many advantages. Every man must have his own sorrow, must receive sorrow into his nature, so that the whole plan of life may, so to say, be saturated with tears, and be made to know how much weight God can lay upon human life, as if he were heaping it up in cruelty. What would be sorrow to one man would be no sorrow to another; hence the infinite variety of the divine visitation of our life. God knows where the stroke would hurt us most, and there he delivers the blow, so that we may know ourselves to be but men. Every man having a sorrow of his own is thereby tempted to make a species of idol of it. It is curious to observe how variously sorrow is treated by men. It is possible for even death itself to become a kind of commonplace in the family; child after child may have died, and friend after friend may have departed, until death is looked for with a kind of resigned expectancy. Are there not persons who make a luxury of this kind of sorrow? Are they not pleased to be the objects of social interest and sympathy, instead of being humbled by their losses and taught to seek the true riches which are in heaven? Are they not inclined to allow their sorrow to evaporate through much sighing and speaking in vain? Silent sorrow is the most poignant. If sorrow could sometimes shed tears it would be relieved of its keenest agony. In many cases it is impossible for the sufferer to give expression to his distress, and therefore he is deprived of all the compensation and holy excitement to be derived from earnest and intelligent human sympathy. If a man has not seen affliction, what has he seen? The deepest students of human life assure us that unless joy has in it somewhat of a tinge of melancholy it is not pure gladness. When the fool delights himself with laughter he supposes himself to be glad. Fools can have no real joy, because they can have no real sorrow; even when loss falls upon them they are not sufficiently in earnest to estimate the value of that of which they are deprived; frivolity, lightness of mind, superficiality of thought can never know the height and depth and intensity of truest joy. How often is men’s moral condition as to happiness estimated by the expression of the countenance! We look upon men and say, How sad they are! when in very deed their joy is broad and deep. It is a fatal mistake to suppose that frivolity and gladness are equivalent terms. Yet, on the other hand, who could steadfastly and continuously look only at the sorrowful side of life? Sorrow coming upon sorrow, like storm following storm, would take out of life all its joy and all its hope. We must look at both sides of the picture; we must allow the light and the shadow to interplay, and judge not by the one nor by the other, but by the result.
Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker
Profitable Discipline
Lam 3:22-23
Taking the opening of the chapter along with this portion, we seem to find a good deal of inconsistency, and in fact positive contradiction. Spiritual experience must be looked at as a whole. It is not right to fix attention either upon this side or upon that, to the exclusion and the forgetfulness of the other. One side is very dark and full of sadness, sharply inclined towards despair; the other is brighter than the summer morning, tuneful, sunned with all the lustre of saintly hope: so we must take the night with the morning, if we would have the complete day. Jeremiah had rare power in sounding the depths of disciplinary sorrow. He walked familiarly through the chambers of dark dispensations: life was often to Jeremiah little better than a thunder-gloom: hence he often had to find his way by fitful gleams of lightning rather than by the clear and steady shining of the sun. It does us good now and then to talk to such a man. The soul cannot always live in laughter; the man who has seen much sorrow, and turned it to a right use, will help us more in all that is deepest and truest in our nature than the man who has always lived mirthfully, and who does not know what it is to have sorrow, a black and exacting guest, tenanting and tormenting his soul. He is not a man who has never had a trial or a sorrow. He knows little who has not received a great deal cf his learning through the dimness of his tears. We do not read the deepest of God’s words, and the tenderest of his messages, when there is no cloud in the sky, when the morning is bright and blue and lustrous, and there is no intercepting cloud. God often lowers his voice to a whisper when the heartbroken feel that the clouds are very many and the way crooked and extremely perilous. When Jeremiah does laugh his joy will be rich and full; when he does sing he will fill heaven and earth with his resounding joy. No man can be truly joyful who has not been deeply, heart-brokenly sorrowful. It should be pointed out that depression is not an exclusively religious state. It might be supposed from a great deal that one hears that not until we become religious do we become depressed; not until we love and follow God do we know what is meant by heart-sinking and stealthy walking in perilous places. This is a mistake from beginning to end. We may find depression in all the conditions of life that are healthy. Sometimes the painter cannot paint with his soul: his hand has lost its cunning, because his spirit has lost the key of mystery and has no vision of the invisible. Sometimes the poet cannot sing: he cannot read the parable of nature, nor construe the language of the fretted shadows, nor detain the sweet spirit which baptises the dreaming soul at the font of God. To painter and poet the world often becomes dark at noontide; beauty retires and music ceases, when painter and poet would give half their living to retain those twin angels in their heart’s confidence. The fact is that religious spirits are most depressed simply because they are most exalted. Where we find the highest mountains we find the deepest valleys. In proportion to the range and spirituality of the world in which a man lives will be the pensiveness and gloom of his occasional hours. If the poet droops when his harp does not respond to his touch, how must the soul faint when God hides himself? If the timid child moans because his chamber-light has gone out, with what bitterness of complaint should we speak if the sun were extinguished? If men say they are never depressed, that they are always in high spirits, it is probably because they never were really in high spirits at all not knowing the difference between the soul’s rapture, mental and spiritual ecstasy, and merely animal excitement. What can the barn-door fowl know of the experiences of a disabled eagle? The man who is breaking stones on the highway may never be depressed, but his elder stone-breaking brother, who moulds marble into angels, may often sigh for a clearer light and a daintier touch. So everything depends upon the world we live in; and, depend upon it, there is something wrong with a man somewhere if he be always in the same high key. No year that God ever made was made from beginning to end of July, This is a very wonderful strain of talk on the part of the lamenting Jeremiah. Gather together lines out of his third chapter, and put them into couplets; and see what very startling and pathetic contrasts may be made out of his complaint. Let us hear Jeremiah:
Here are two men having a little talk about a district of country through which they have passed. The speech of one of them is this: “It is a poor, desolate, barren land; I never wish to go through that district of country again: it is so featureless, wanting undulation and variety, and that brokenness of line which delights an artistic eye, defective in colouring too, it is altogether a poor, wretched piece of country. I do not care ever to retrace my steps over it.” The other man’s speech is this: “I do not know a piece of lovelier country anywhere; the undulation is so easy, the lines are so beautifully broken up, there is such pleasing variety, you have all the features that can enter into a piece of beautiful landscape on a small scale, not to be romantic, I do not know any lovelier expanse of English scenery.” “Why!” you say, “the fact is that both these statements cannot be true, either the one man or the other is mistaken: they contradict each other flatly, and therefore both their statements cannot be true.” A third man puts this question: “When did you go through that district?” “Why, sir,” the first man says, “I went through it in November, one of the foggiest, murkiest days that I ever found in the English climate.” “When did you go through the district?” is the inquiry put to the second man; and he says: “I went through it about midsummer, and a lovelier day I think never shone upon the island.” Now we begin to see a little, at least, as to how the discrepancy came. A great deal depends upon atmosphere. The mountains are there in the night-time, but you cannot see them. The rich, verdant, flowery meads are there at midnight, but you cannot light up the landscape with your little candle. You must have the medium as well as the object. A great deal depends upon the clearness of the atmosphere as to whether we appreciate this object or that in natural scenery. So it is with souls. A great many of us seem to have such long winters, short days, with poor artificial light, and such murky, gloomy, dispiriting weather, with cruel fogs. Others of us have more sunshine, more summer weather in the soul. But what we want to understand is this that religion, right relations with God, a true standing before the Almighty, does not depend upon this feeling or upon that; it is not a question of climate, atmosphere, air, spirits: it is a question of fact. The question is not, How do you feel today? but, Where are you standing? are you on the rock? The rock will not change; the climate will. Be right in your foundation, and the season of rejoicing will come round again. So many people are occupied with the question of mere experience of feeling that they are apt to forget that the primary question, the vital question, is the soul’s relation to God at the foot of the Cross. Where there is an established standing upon the Rock of Ages, the foundation laid in Zion, there will be carefulness of judgment, patience of waiting, in relation to all climatic annoyances and all the atmospheric variations of the soul’s feeling. He who is right in his principles will come right in his feelings. He who lays hold of God by the truth that is in Christ Jesus will patiently, quietly, and successfully wait for the incoming of the dazzling glory of the sun. I wish to speak with discrimination, with judgment, perhaps with severity, but only with the severity of truth, about this question of depression and feeling. There is a depression which admits of explanation. Here is a man who in the time of trial succumbed; he spoke the coward’s word when he ought to have been resolute. He was timid, not with modesty, but with cowardice. Here is a man who has been rolling iniquity under his tongue as a sweet morsel, rolling that iniquity under his tongue in the very act of singing hymns and uttering the words of formal prayer. Here is a man who has some evil purpose in his heart, luxuriating over prospects on which God’s disapprobation rests like an immovable frown. He has been planning forbidden enjoyment, scheming pleasures at the expense of conviction, conscience, righteousness, and Christian standing, and he comes to church in a depressed state of mind. Thank God! If that man could be as joyful as the pure little child-heart in Christ’s kingdom, then God hath forgotten to be Judge, and there is no righteousness in his law. The question therefore is: Can our depression be traced to moral causes? Have I been keeping false weights and balances? Have I been clever at the expense of virtue and righteousness? Have I been untrue to my vows, faithless to my professions? Then I have no right to expect anything but depression, and if I were not depressed there would be something wrong in the moral government of the world. Yes, and a man may be depressed though he may be showing at the time great animal exultation; but there is a ring about honest excitement and true joy which is not to be mistaken by practised ears. Many a man seeks to drown his conscience and to dismiss his depression by overstrained religious excitement, and he cannot do it. The ghost is there! He hangs up a veil before the spectre, and says, “Now it is gone, I shall be at ease.” He takes up the veil. Behold! there it is grim, grizzly, ghastly, with judgment written upon every lineament. And it is well that a man cannot dismiss these memories, these presences, that ought to be to him terrible as the light, awful as the judgment of God.
Taking Jeremiah’s experiences as a whole, what do we find that sanctified sorrow had wrought in him? In the first place it gave him a true view or divine government Jeremiah was brought to understand two things about the government of God. He was brought to understand that God’s government is tender. The word tenderness we do not very well connect with the word government. When we think of government, we think of something severe, stern, inflexible, unyielding, imperial, majestic, magnificent, dominating. But that is only half a truth so far as the government of God is concerned. What words do you suppose Jeremiah connected with the government of God? Why these two beautiful words, each a piece of music, “Mercies,” “Compassions.” A man can only get into that view of government by living the deepest possible life. We are always jealous when we find sentiment entering into governmental relations and governmental decisions. But here is God, Almighty God, and all tender, ruling with infinite majesty, stooping with more than motherly grace. God’s government is not composed of huge, unsympathetic, tearless strength. A God all strength would be a monster. A God throned on ivory, ruling the universe with a sceptre of mere power, could never establish himself in the confidence and love and trust of his creatures. We might fear him, but when we got together in some corner where his face was excluded for a moment, we should turn round upon him with many execrations! Man cannot be ruled and governed by mere power, fear, overwhelming, dominating, crushing strength and force. So we find David saying, “Power belongeth unto God: unto thee also, O Lord, belongeth mercy.” Power in the hands of mercy, Omnipotence impregnated by all the tenderness of pity. “This is the God we adore, our faithful, unchangeable Friend.” That preaching would be untrue, one-sided, misleading, which dwelt entirely upon the regal, majestic aspect of God. That is the true exposition of divine nature which opens up the fatherliness, motherliness, mercifulness, and compassion of God’s great heart.
This discipline wrought in Jeremiah the conviction that God’s government was minute. Speaking of God’s mercies he says, “They are new every morning.” Morning mercies daily bread. This is what we find in the Old Testament, and in the New; but the Old Testament saints seemed only to be able to get from one morning to another, just the clock once round, and then they wanted more. New every morning! A beautiful word in the Old Testament is that, and we get in the New Testament What? Daily bread, new every week, new every year? No. “Give us this day our daily bread.” That is it. God shutting us up within a day and training us a moment at a time. The Psalmist said, “Thy mercies have been ever of old.” And another singer said, “Thy mercies are new every morning.” Is there no contradiction there? Ever of old every morning! Time is old: every morning is new. Existence comprises a long, long succession of years, but no year ever had an old May given to it, or an old June thrown into it. Thy mercies have been ever of old, and they have been new every morning. Old as duration, new as morning; old as human existence, new as the coming summer. These are all inconsistencies that mark our life. Age and infirmity, the Ancient of Days, the Child of Bethlehem; the root out of the dry ground, the rose of Sharon, the lily of the valley; the despised and rejected of men, but the desire of all nations. And you cannot grasp the contradictions and inconsistencies till you have been closeted long with God and got to know something of the mysteriousness of his dear heart.
Jeremiah having given this view of the divine government, gives two notions about human discipline as regulated by God the Judge and God the Father. He tells us two things about discipline. He tells us, in the first place, the goodness of waiting: it is good for a man to wait. It does one good to have a lesson of that sort from a grey-headed and wrinkled-browed man, to have a word from a man who has come cut of very dangerous and terrible places. One wishes to get near him the very first moment, and say, “Well, what is it? what have you to say to us now?” And Jeremiah coming up, crushed, sorrowful, heart-wrinkled, pained, says to the young people who are at the door, “Do not enter yet. It is good, my children, to wait.” That is the lesson to us. We do not like to wait: impatient because incomplete. Observe you: wait for God. I am not called upon to wait because somebody has put a great waggon across the road; I might get that out of the way. But if God had set an angel there, I must make distinctions. There is a waiting that is indolence; there is a waiting that is sheer faithlessness; there is a waiting that comes of weakness. This is the true waiting, wanting to get on, resolute about progress, and yet having a notion that God is just before us teaching patience. A determination to go, yet a willingness to stand still, that is the mystery of true waiting.
Jeremiah tells us this second thing about the divine government. It is good for a man to bear the yoke. Ephraim like a bullock bemoaned himself; the yoke was very heavy on the shoulder; he was as a bullock unaccustomed to the yoke, and he chafed sorely under it, complained and moaned; but by and by the yoke was worn with ease. And then God came and said, “Ephraim is my dear child.” God puts yokes upon us, heavy yokes upon our necks; sometimes he binds our hands in manacles, and our feet in fetters, shuts us up and feeds us on bread of affliction and water of affliction; then we say, “This cannot be good for us.” But it is. Commend me to the man who has been through deep waters, through very dark places, through treacherous, serpent-haunted roads, and who has yet come out with a cheerful heart, mellow, chastened, subdued, and who speaks tenderly of the mercy of God through it all. And that man I may trust with my heart’s life. If he speak not words which to my natural taste are best and sweetest and most to be coveted, yet under all his instruction there is a divine mystery, a fatherly tenderness; and it is better to yield to the remonstrance and instruction of such a man than be driven with great urgency and made impatient by a creature who never knew what it was to have a heart torn in two and the prospects of his life clouded and smitten.
Some of us have given way to an abuse of divine discipline, and so we get worse and worse. A right acceptance of God’s schooling, God’s rod, God’s judgment, and God’s mercy, mingled together, will cause us to become learned in divine wisdom, tender in divine feeling, gentle and charitable in all social judgment; good men whilst we are here, and always waiting, even in the midst of our most diligent service, to be called up into the more fully revealed presence and the still more cloudless light. May all our discipline be to that end! Amen.
Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker
XIII
JEREMIAH’S LAMENTATIONS
Lamentations 1-5
We will now take up a brief survey of the book of Lamentations. This book belongs to the third division of the Old Testament, known as the Writings, the Greek Hagiographa. The book of Lamentations is grouped with four other small books and these five are known by the Jews as the Meghilloth. These five books are Songs of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, and Esther. They are read at special seasons of the year by the Jews, and the book of Lamentations was read, and is still read, on the anniversary of the fall of Jerusalem, which occurred on the ninth day of the fourth month of their year, corresponding to about our August 9. For 2,200 or 2,300 years this book has been read in their assemblies at this time. Not only has it been read, but it has also been quoted by thousands and tens of thousands of Jews who tarry at the Jewish wailing place in Jerusalem. It has voiced the sorrow of the Jewish people over the destruction of their city and its Temple for more than 2,000 years. It will continue to do so until the Jews are brought to Christ and realize that there is no need for the Temple and the ritual; that these were done away by Jesus Christ.
Tradition says that shortly after the fall of Jerusalem, when Jeremiah was partly free, he sat down in a quarry, a few miles north of Jerusalem near the road to Damascus, and there composed these lamentations. The authorship of Jeremiah has been questioned by the critical school, but this tradition goes back as early as the third century before Christ, and the Septuagint Version says at the beginning of this book that Jeremiah wrote these words. The book itself is an elegy on the fall of the city of Jerusalem. Its theme is the destruction of the city and it voices the dismay and sorrow that fell upon the nation at that awful event.
A fine example of an elegy in modern literature is Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard. Lamentations is also an elegy but composed by a prophet, and as such it has been rather unpopular, is seldom read, seldom used, and seldom preached from.
The form of the book which is not brought out in the translation, is that of an acrostic poem, except the last chapter. The first letter of the first Hebrew word in each verse begins with a corresponding letter in the Hebrew alphabet. There are twenty-two verses each in Lamentations 1-2. In Lam 3 , sixty-six verses, a multiple of twenty-two. In the fourth, twenty-two. In the fifth, twenty-two.
Now, in Lam 1:1 , the first word begins with the first Hebrew letter of the alphabet. In Lam 1:2 the first letter of the first word is the second Hebrew letter, and so on through the alphabet. Lam 2 is the same. In Lam 3 , the three first lines begin with the first letter, and the second group of three lines begins with the second letter, and so on to the end of that chapter.
The writer chose the word which contained the right letter at the beginning of that word. In many cases it was doubtless a difficult task. Some can hardly imagine Jeremiah taking the time to do that, and yet it is the tradition that he did. It seems to them that his state of mind would hardly lend itself to such a mechanical arrangement of his verse and his thought, but the book is before us, and the tradition is that Jeremiah wrote it, and we must take it as it is. Lam 5 is not written in the acrostic form. The first four chapters only are thus arranged.
Now, the style, or form of the verse, is peculiar. The Hebrews had a form of verse, or stanza, which they used to express sorrow and which is called “the lament,” or “the dirge.” The form of the stanza is this: The first line is of average length, the second line a little shorter; also the next verse, or stanza, has the first line longer than the second, and so on all through the poem, which gives a peculiar funeral dirge effect to their song with a pathetic and melancholy cadence as they repeat it.
I call attention here to a few of these. Notice in Lam 1:1 : How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people! She is become as a widow, that was great among the nations) She that was a princess among the provinces is become tributary!
Thus, a large part of the poem has that peculiar, pathetic, melancholy, dirge like cadence which expresses, perhaps more accurately than any other form of poetry could express, the feeling that animated the hearts of those people.
The following is an outline of the contents:
I. The desolation and misery of Jerusalem (Lam 1Lam 1Lam 1 ).
1. The poem bewails the solitude and desertion of the city; her people are in exile, the enemy has seized her treasures, her glory is departed (Lam 1:1-11 ). Almost every point of view from which one can look at it is given; almost every possible expression of feeling and emotion are brought out here.
2. The city herself declares the severity of the affliction (Lam 1:12-16 ). Lam 1:12 is regarded as a messianic expression in Handel’s Messiah, and may be likened unto the suffering of Jesus Christ. It is the voice of the city expressing itself through the prophet, calling attention to the unparalleled sorrow through which it has passed.
3. She acknowledges Jehovah’s righteousness and prays for retribution upon her foes (Lam 1:17-22 ).
II. Jehovah’s anger with his people (Lam 2Lam 2Lam 2 ).
1. The stress is laid on the causes of the suffering. Jehovah is her enemy; he has cast off his people, his land, and his sanctuary. That is brought out in Lam 2:3 and others. As in other verses of the poem, he turns the kaleidoscope of his imagination upon the awful event and presents it in almost every phase (Lam 2:1-9 ).
2. The agony of the people in the capital, the contempt of the passers-by, and the malicious triumph of her foes (Lam 2:10-17 ). Here is doubtless one of the most terrible pictures of a siege to be found in all literature. He speaks about the virgins of Jerusalem; then he speaks about his own sorrow, then about the young children, the babes starving and crying to their mothers for bread and wine.
3. The nations are invited by the prophet to entreat Jehovah on behalf of its dying children. It responds in the prayer of Lam 2:18-22 .
III. The nation’s complaint and its ground of consolation (Lam 3Lam 3Lam 3 ).
1. They bewail their calamities (Lam 3:1-20 ). Here he seems to call up every phase of it, and uses almost very figure to describe suffering. This section is paralleled in almost every line with some statement of Job where he describes his sufferings. I call attention to Lam 3:19 : “Remember mine affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the gall.” This is the origin of that expression, Sinners whose love can ne’er forget, The wormwood and the gall.
2. They console themselves by the thought of God’s compassion and the grace he may have in the visitation (Lam 3:21-39 ). Here we have some jewels in this poem. Lam 3:22 is one: “It is of Jehovah’s loving-kindnesses that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not.” That means that they are not totally consumed because of the mercy of Jehovah. Jeremiah had said that he would not make a full end, because “his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.” A man who could write that after going through the horrors through which Jeremiah passed, while he was looking upon the deserted city, his own loved capital, has achieved one of the greatest victories of faith that man can possibly achieve.
Everything had been taken away from Jeremiah except his life and God. He had nothing. Then he said, “The Lord is my portion,” i.e., “He is enough for me.” Another beautiful expression is Lam 3:27 : “It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth.” This is a fine saying and contains a fine philosophy.
3. The people are invited to confess their guilt and turn to God in penitence (Lam 3:40-54 ). Here we seem to be reading out of Jeremiah’s own experience. This passage expresses how Jeremiah felt when he was put down into that dungeon, but they did not cut off his life.
4. He becomes more hopeful (Lam 3:55-57 ).
5. A confidential appeal for vengeance on the nation’s foes (Lam 3:58-66 ). That is Jeremiah still. Almost every time he is under persecution and affliction he calls for vengeance.
IV. Zion’s past and present contrasted (Lam 4Lam 4Lam 4 ).
1. The former splendor, and present humiliation of Zion and its inhabitants (Lam 4:1-11 ). He contrasts first, the gold that has become dim, the pure gold that is changed. Then the precious sons of Zion are mentioned. Their condition at present is contrasted with their condition in the past. “The daughter of my people” is also mentioned and her condition in the past contrasted with the present. “Become cruel like an ostrich in the wilderness.” The infant, the nursing child, is different now. “Its tongue cleaveth to the roof of its mouth for thirst.” They that have been reared up in scarlet, now embrace the dunghills, searching for some morsel to appease the pangs of hunger. Her mothers are also contrasted with their past condition.
2. Priests and prophets are so stained by guilt that they find no resting place even among the heathen (Lam 4:12-16 ). Lam 4:13 : “Because of the sins of her prophets and iniquities of her priests that have shed the blood of the just in the midst of her.” As a result of that they wander as blind men in the streets; they are polluted with blood. Men cannot touch their garments; they say, “Depart ye, unclean, depart! depart! touch not.” When they fled away and wandered, men said among the nations, “They shall no more sojourn here.” They were so vile that even the heathen nations spurned them.
3. The people cannot escape their pursuers. Egypt has disappointed them, and Zedekiah, the anointed of Jehovah, has failed (Lam 4:17-20 ). Zedekiah, the anointed of the Lord, was captured by the Chaldeans and treated as if he were little more than an animal.
4. Though Edom may triumph for awhile, Israel’s punishment will be completed and the cup will be passed to the foes (Lam 4:21-22 ). There is sarcasm here: “The cup shall pass through unto thee also; thou shall be drunken, and shalt make thyself naked.”
V. The nation’s appeal for Jehovah’s Compassionate Regard (Lam 5Lam 5Lam 5 ).
(As we said, this chapter of the poem is not acrostic; is a little different from the other chapters; and may have been written later, a few years after the people had been in exile.)
1. He calls upon Jehovah to consider the affliction of the people, indicating the nature and severity of that affliction (Lam 5:1-18 ). Here, again, over and over in a great many different ways and fashions and forms and figures he reiterates the same sad truths and presents the same great sorrows. In Lam 5:7 he voices the sentiments of the people that are suffering, both those in the city and those in exile. The complaint was heard by Ezekiel away off in Babylonia! Our fathers sinned, and are not; And we have borne their iniquities. That cry and complaint both Jeremiah and Ezekiel had to meet and answer. It was the cry that the people had to suffer for the sins of their fathers, and of which they were innocent. See Eze 18 .
2. Zion’s desolation brings to his mind, by way of contrast, the thought of Jehovah’s abiding power, and on the ground of this he repeats his appeal for help (Lam 5:19-22 ).
This is the greatest elegy ever written, though it begins in the greatest heights of confidence at the end.
Jeremiah was an ardent patriot, one of the greatest patriots of history. The Hungarian patriot, Kossuth, was worldfamed, but no Kossuth loved his country and suffered more for it than Jeremiah, no Garibaldi ever fought and bled for his nation with truer heart than did this prophet, and no George Washington ever fought and prayed and worked and toiled more than did Jeremiah for his land. But even Jeremiah could not stay the inevitable; he could not save Jerusalem. Savonarola could not save Florence, nor could Kossuth save his country.
Jeremiah was a statesman-prophet, a prophet to the other nations as well as to Israel. He did not confine himself to the narrow realm of his own little nation and country; he saw what was going on throughout all the world and saw God’s hand in history. He was bigger than his people. He took in all the known world in his horizon. He foresaw what was coming and he gave advice to all the nations.
His nature was deeply emotional. No man had greater tenderness of heart than Jeremiah; no man could sympathize more with his people. No man could be more overpowered with sorrow over their sins and their destruction. He even prayed that his eyes might be a fountain of tears, pouring forth their grief and sorrow and if possible wash away the sins of the people. Some of the greatest depths to be found in all human experiences are to be found in Jeremiah. He was the most human and most outspoken of all the prophets. He was not afraid to lay bare his heart. He allows us to see down into its very depths. He laments, he complains, he even complains to Jehovah, and writes his complaints in the inspired Word. He calls for vengeance upon his foes. He feels like accusing God for having called him into the prophetic work. When in the depths of despondence, he curses the day he was born, and actually censures his mother for having brought him forth. He even considers the question of quitting the ministry altogether. He was like a weaned child that has its struggle and cries, but by and by it rests upon its mother’s bosom. So in the latter part of Jeremiah’s life he is at rest, calm and patient. He has had his fight and is quiet. How human he was!
His nature was one of surpassing strength. It is generally considered that one of the fundamental things in Jeremiah’s character was weakness. The fact that when he was called to the ministry he said, “I cannot speak, I am a boy, I am only a youth,” does not mean that he was fundamentally weak. It is not a sign of weakness, that a man has a sense of weakness when called to such a work. The keener our sense of weakness, the stronger we are, because it makes us feel our dependence upon God, and we go to him for strength and he is with us and helps us by his Spirit.
Jeremiah was a strong man, one of the strongest the world has ever known from the moral point of view. He never shrank from his duty, even when it brought him face to face with death. There was a fire within him which burned, and when it burned Jeremiah spoke forth, no matter what it cost. The word of God was the very essence of his being. He even tried to prevent the inevitable, and fought for forty years against it the inevitable, that Judah should perish. He has been described as “a figure cast in brass, dissolved in tears,” which expresses better, perhaps, than any other statement, his character. Though all the world was against him he never flinched, he never shrank, he maintained a consistent attitude all that period of nearly fifty years, and never failed.
His prophetic insight was of the profoundest kind. No man saw deeper into humanity than Jeremiah. He was the first man to say, “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, who can know it?” He got a vision of the higher moral truths of the new dispensation of Jesus Christ, and in his prophecy of the new covenant he reaches greater heights than any other prophet. He saw true religion as no other man had seen it. His grasp of truth was so deep that he became absolutely dependent upon God, and was satisfied to lean on him alone because his people were against him. He was a sublime optimist. His prophecy of the restoration is sufficient comment upon that. He saw the better age clearer than any other prophet; he pictured a better covenant, a new dispensation.
His emotional nature is shown in his literary style, which is free from many adornments, has a great many common figures in it and does not compare with the beauty of Isaiah, nor with the finished and literary elegance of Ezekiel. It expresses his emotional nature. He repeats, he has many favorite phrases. At times he is poetic and there are in the book of Jeremiah a great many passages that are classic and immortal. His style resembles that of the book of Deuteronomy, the highest type of hortatory eloquence, for Jeremiah was influenced mightily by the Book which was discovered in the early part of his career.
From being the most despised of all the prophets, he came to be considered the greatest of all. In the book of 2 Maccabees where Judah is in doubt and difficulty, there appeared to him in vision a man, resplendent in beauty, magnificent in physique, with excellent glory beaming from his countenance. He gives to Judah a golden sword with which to smite his foes. It was Jeremiah. This is only a legend, but it shows the estimation in which he was held. When Jesus Christ came preaching and teaching, the people knew not who he was; some said he was John the Baptist, some said he was Elijah, some said he was Jeremiah. They never mistook him for Ezekiel, Isaiah, or Daniel.
He, in several respects, resembled Jesus Christ:
1. Both appeared at a similar crisis in the history of Israel forty years before the end of the nation and the Temple.
2. Both were persecuted for predicting the fall of the ceremonial institutions and the ritual.
3. Both were at variance with the accepted orthodoxy of the time, and were regarded as heretical and dangerous.
4. Both showed that there could be a religion without a Temple and ritual, and thus saved religion in the downfall of these institutions.
5. Both made the way open for a positive statement of new doctrine.
6. Both suffered most at the hands of the religious leaders of the time.
7. Both lived lives of seeming failure, and died at the hands of their countrymen.
8. Both might have the words of Isaiah applied to them (Isa 53:3 ): “A man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and as one from whom men hide their face he was despised; and we esteemed him not.” Also to both may be applied Lam 1:2 : “Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is brought upon me.”
QUESTIONS
1. To what division of the Old Testament does this book of Lamentations belong, how is it grouped, and what its special uses by the Jews?
2. What the testimony of tradition and the Septuagint concerning its authorship, what its theme, what its character as literature, and what its artistic features?
3. What can you say of its style, or form of verse? Illustrate.
4. Give the outline of the book.
5. What can you say of Jeremiah as a patriot?
6. What of him as a statesman?
7. What of his emotional nature?
8. What of him as human?
9. What of his strength of nature?
10. What of his prophetic insight?
11. What of his optimism?
12. What of his style?
13. What of his rank among the prophets? Illustrate.
14. What of his resemblances to Christ?
Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible
Lam 3:1 I [am] the man [that] hath seen affliction by the rod of his wrath.
Ver. 1. I am the man. ] Here Jeremiah, in the name and place of all the Jewish people, setteth forth his sufferings very passionately and elegantly. O , saith Synesius; for nothing is more rhetorical than a man in misery. See on Lam 1:12 .
By the rod of his wrath,
a Oecolamp.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Lamentations Chapter 3
Lam 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 too 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.
Lam 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.
Lam 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 Psa 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. Psa 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.
Fuente: William Kelly Major Works (New Testament)
This chapter contains twenty-two verses: each verse having three lines: each line beginning with the same letter: and so, onward to the end of the alphabet.
I am the man. The prophet is representative of the nation, and speaks in the name of the whole. He is also typical and prophetical of Another, Who, in after years, took on Himself and bore the nation’s sin. App-85. The chapter must be read in connection with the Passion Psalms (Psa 22:69, Psa 22:88). The Figure of speech is Prosopopoeia (App-6), by which the nation speaks as one man.
man = strong man. Hebrew. geber. App-14.
affliction: or, humiliation.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Chapter 3
In this third lamentation he begins from the depth of depression and despair. He begins with hopelessness, and hopelessness is always the experience behind depression. Depression is the loss of hope, no way out, nothing I can do. Hopelessness leads to depression.
I am the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of his wrath. He has led me, and brought me into darkness, but not into light ( Lam 3:1-2 ).
It seems like God has turned against the prophet. “I have seen the wrath of God. God’s brought me into darkness, not into light.”
Surely against me is he turned; he’s turned his hand against me all the day. My flesh and my skin hath he made old: he hath broken my bones. He’s built against me, and circled me with gall and travail. He has set me in dark places, as they that be dead of old. He hedged me about, that I cannot get out: he has made my chain heavy. Also when I cry and shout, he shuts out my prayer ( Lam 3:3-8 ).
God isn’t listening to my prayer. God seems to have closed every door of escape. There is no way out. I’m in the hole and there is no place to go. I’m in this darkness, and God isn’t listening to my prayers.
[It’s like] he has enclosed me with hewn stone ( Lam 3:9 );
That is, he’s built a wall around me.
and he’s made my paths crooked. He was unto me as a bear lying in wait, and as a lion in secret places. He has turned aside my ways, and pulled me in pieces: he has made me desolate. He has bent his bow, and set me as a mark ( Lam 3:9-12 ).
I’m a target for God’s arrows.
He has 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 has filled me with bitterness, he has made me drunken with wormwood. He has also broken my teeth with gravel stones, he has covered me with ashes. You have removed my soul far off from peace: I forgot prosperity. And I said, my strength and my hope is perished from the LORD: Remembering mine affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the gall. My soul hath them still in remembrance, and is humbled in me ( Lam 3:9-20 ).
Boy, that is about as low as you can get. That’s the bottom, that’s the pits. He’s down, just the bottom. And out of the depths of his despair and depression, suddenly there is a dramatic change. That dramatic change is explained; the reason for it is explained in verse Lam 3:21 . In the midst of his hopelessness, in the midst of his despair, when it seems that all is forsaken, there is no way out, that God isn’t even listening, and God isn’t ready to help me, in the midst of this place of total despair, he said,
This I recall to my mind, therefore I have hope ( Lam 3:21 ).
He changed his whole mindset. The Bible speaks about our renewing our minds. The Bible speaks about our bringing every thought into captivity unto the obedience of Jesus Christ. And we can think ourselves into a miserable mood. We can think ourselves into despair and hopelessness. You can think yourself into the grave. Or, by setting your mind upon the Lord, renewing your mind in Him, you can come into a whole new state of consciousness. No longer one of total despair and hopelessness, but one now of victory and hope.
And that’s what Jeremiah did. He changed the thought patterns from, “Oh, woe is me. Oh, this is the end. Oh, there is no hope. Oh, I’ve had it. Oh, there’s no one to help. Oh, I’m boxed in,” to thinking about the Lord. As we think about ourselves, we often become depressed, because none of us are all of what we would like to be.
We, each of us, have a divergence between our ego and our super ego, the real me and the ideal me. Oh, but you see yourself in an ideal way. “This is what I really am,” providing everything is all right. It’s only because of these other factors that you see me like this, this nastiness isn’t the real me. I’m very sweet, and generous, and kind, and benevolent, and loving, and marvelous, and a very lovable person. The person that you see is what has happened to me, because of, you know, what you’ve done. But that’s not the real me, you see. So, there is this idealization, the ideal me, the super ego, and then there’s the real me.
Now if there is a vast difference between your super ego and your ego, then you’re going to have real problems of mental instability. The more well adjusted a person is, is in measure to the distance between his ego and super ego. If your ego is close to your super ego, then you’re a well adjusted person. If there is a wide divergence between your ego and super ego, then you’re very maladjusted in your life. Now the psychologist says, “Bring your super ego down. You’ve got too high of ideals. You’ve got too high of standards. No one can live to those. You’ve got to lower your ideals.” The Lord says, “Bring your ego up, through the power of the Spirit, through My help. Become the person that I want you to be. Receive My strength, receive My ability, and I will make you that person that is pleasing and glorifying unto God. That person who is loving, who is kind, who is compassionate, who is filled with joy.”
So, he came to a change of mental attitude. No longer thinking about himself, but now thinking about the Lord. It made such a great difference. Oh, if we could only get our minds off of ourselves and onto the Lord. In the times of discouragement, in the times of defeat, in the times of depression, if we could only get our minds off of ourselves and onto the Lord. That’s the secret of the way out. Rather than wallowing in this self pity. Just get our minds and hearts… “Thou will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on Thee” ( Isa 26:3 ). Keep your minds stayed on the Lord and God will keep you in perfect peace. Get your mind on yourself and you’re going to have all kinds of turmoil and depression.
[So when I recall to my mind,] this I recall to my mind ( Lam 3:21 ),
What does he recall to his mind? First of all,
It’s the LORD’S mercies that we’re not consumed ( Lam 3:22 ),
Things are bad, but they could be worse. It’s God’s mercies that we’re still here. The fact that I wake up in the morning is proof that God is merciful. You see, God is under no obligation to keep me around. It’s only by His mercies that I’ve not been consumed. Secondly,
because his compassions fail not ( Lam 3:22 ).
In 1Co 13:1-13, as Paul is describing agape, he said, “Love never fails.” God’s love never fails. God has never stopped loving you. God does not love you when you are good and hate you when you are bad. God’s love for you is unchanging. It doesn’t fail. God’s love is continually being poured out upon your life. God’s love is not contingent upon what you are, but upon what He is. “His compassions they fail not.”
Love is not love that alters when it alteration finds. “Oh, I love you. You’re my dream come true. I’d swim the Pacific to be by your side. I’d fly to the moon to be close to you. Yikes. You have bad breath. I change my mind.” That’s not true love. Love is not love that alters when it alteration finds. We have in our minds, again, an idealization, the perfect man, the perfect woman. And we meet someone and fall in love, not with them but with our idealization. And when it comes that they don’t meet up to the standards of our idealization, then we’re no longer in love. That’s ridiculous. You never were in love to begin with. Love is not love that alters when it alteration finds. Therefore, true love is hard to find among men. And that’s using it in a generic sense, talking of the Homo Sapien. True love can only really be found with God.
You see, He isn’t deceived by an idealization. You haven’t fooled Him with your smooth, suave manners: the opening of the doors, and the genteel, gallant ways. Hasn’t deceived Him at all. He knows what a rat you are from the beginning. But He loves you; that’s the amazing thing. “His compassions they fail not.” And God knowing me as well as He knows me, still loving me is one of the great miracles. God’s compassions fail not. He never stops loving you. You need to remember that.
Now Jeremiah was thinking that God had forsaken him completely. “God’s hedged me in. He’s not listening to my prayers.” But when he really adjusts his thinking, he knows that God’s love is unfailing. God continues, never stops His loving me.
They are new every morning ( Lam 3:23 ):
The mercy and the love of God, fresh every day.
oh great is thy faithfulness ( Lam 3:23 ).
God is so faithful. As Jeremiah was looking at this devastated city, that desolation was a testimony of God’s faithfulness. God had said to those people, “If you continue in your wickedness, if you continue in your idolatry, I am going to bring the Babylonian army against you, and they’re going to destroy you, and they’re going to break down the walls of this city. And those that aren’t killed by the famine will be killed by the sword. And those that aren’t killed by the sword will be killed by the pestilence. But I’m going to destroy you out of this holy mountain.”
And now God has kept His word and Jeremiah is looking at the faithfulness of God to His word. “Great is Thy faithfulness.” God, You said You would do it, and You did it.
Now the faithfulness of God can be a glorious thought and blessing, or it can be a horrendous thought. It all depends on what side you are. If you’re a child of God, then God’s faithfulness to His promises of that which He is going to do for His children, a believer in Jesus Christ, all that God has promised us. Oh, and we can rest and hope for God is faithful. He will do what He said. If you’re not a child of God, then the faithfulness of God is an awesome prospect, because you can be sure that God will do exactly what He said He is going to do to all of the sinners, those that reject Him. “Great is Thy faithfulness.” God is faithful in keeping His word.
The LORD is my portion ( Lam 3:24 ),
Now he’s thinking upon the faithfulness of God, the love of God, the mercies of God, and now, “The Lord is my portion.” Everything else has been taken away. My house is destroyed. All of my possessions are gone. I’ve been stripped, but I have the Lord. And if I have the Lord, that’s all I really need.
The LORD is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in him ( Lam 3:24 ).
Those who do not have the Lord as their portion have very little hope. But my hope is in Him.
The LORD is good unto them that wait for him, the soul that seeks him ( Lam 3:25 ).
If you’ll wait upon God, if you’ll seek God, God is good, so good to those that wait upon Him and seek Him.
It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the LORD ( Lam 3:26 ).
What else can I do?
It is good for a man that he bears the yoke of his youth. He sits alone and keeps silence, because he has borne it upon him. He puts 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 ( Lam 3:27-30 ).
A prophecy of Jesus Christ in the midst of this, even as Christ always is there in the time of suffering to bear the burdens and the reproach that we bear for Him.
The Lord will not cast off for ever ( Lam 3:31 ):
This judgment isn’t going to last forever. This forsaking of the people by God isn’t going to last forever.
But though he has caused grief, yet he’s going to have compassion according to the multitude of his mercies ( Lam 3:32 ).
God will change in His actions towards us.
For he does not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of men ( Lam 3:33 ).
In other words, it doesn’t really please God to have to deal in such stringent ways with his children. I’ve often said, you can make it easy on yourself or make it hard on yourself. And any time you fight God, you’re making it hard on yourself. That’s the lesson that Jonah learned. He fought God and ended up in the belly of a whale in a miserable condition. Three days and three nights in that hot mammal. Ninety eight degrees with high humidity. He talks about the waves rolling over his head and the seaweed twined around him. Probably stinky at that. And when he came out of that horribly miserable experience, he shared the lesson that he learned.
They that observe lying vanities, forsake their own mercies. If you think you can run from God or hide from God, you’re only making it hard on yourself. You’re heading for trouble. You’re heading for misery. He thought he could hide from God. He thought he could run from God, that he could escape the call of God. It’s a lie. There is no way. You’re just going to be miserable, friend. Try to fight God; you’re heading for misery. He doesn’t afflict willingly. He doesn’t want to lay the rod on you. He gets no delight in the chastising of His children, but because He loves us. He is faithful and will chastise.
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, the Lord approves not. Who is he that saith, and it cometh to pass, when the Lord commanded it not? Out of the mouth of the Most High proceeds not evil and good? ( Lam 3:34-38 )
God doesn’t talk out of both sides of His mouth. James speaks about the double minded man, unstable in all of his ways. Jesus speaks of how the same fountain cannot bring forth bitter and sweet waters. God doesn’t speak both good and evil.
Wherefore doth a living man complain, a man for the punishment of his sins? ( Lam 3:39 )
Rather than complain of the chastisement.
Let us search and try our ways, and turn again unto the LORD. Let us lift up our heart with our hands unto the God in the heavens. For we have transgressed and have rebelled: and you have not pardoned. You have covered with anger, and persecuted us: and you have slain, and you have not pitied ( Lam 3:40-43 ).
And now he goes back into the dirge. You see, he came out for a while into the light.
You have covered yourself with a cloud, that our prayers should not pass through ( Lam 3:44 ).
It seems like, you know, people say, “Well, it seems like, you know, the ceilings were of brass.” But Jeremiah sees the, you know, like the prayers are just being closed off by a cloud between God and me.
Thou has made us as the offscouring and refuse in the midst of the people. All of our enemies have opened their mouths against us. Fear and a snare is come upon us, desolation and destruction. My eye runs down with rivers of water for the destruction of the daughter of my people. My eye trickles down, and ceases not, without any intermission, Till the LORD looks down, and beholds from heaven. My eye affecteth my heart, because of all of the daughters of my city. My 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 my head; then I said, I’m cut off. And I called upon thy name, O LORD, out of the low dungeon. And you have heard my voice: hide not your ear at my breathing, at my cry. For you drew near in the day that I called upon thee: and you said, Fear not. O Lord, thou has pleaded the causes of my soul; thou hast redeemed my life. O Lord, thou has seen my wrong: judge thou my cause. For thou has seen all their vengeance and their imaginations against me. You heard their reproach, O LORD, and all of the imaginations against me; The lips of those that rose up against me, and the device against me all the day. Behold their sitting down, their rising up; I am their music. Render unto them a recompense, O LORD, according to the work of their hands. Give them sorrow of heart, thy curse unto them. Persecute and destroy them in the anger from under the heavens of the LORD ( Lam 3:45-66 ).
Here again is sort of a David type of a prayer against his enemies. Jeremiah doesn’t ask God to bless his enemies, but to really do them in. It is in the New Testament that Jesus taught us to bless those that curse you. Bless and curse not. “
Fuente: Through the Bible Commentary
I am about to read a portion of Holy Scripture which may seem very strange to some of you, but it belongs to a part of the congregation, and I hope it may be the means of giving them comfort. I read it as a picture of the suffering of a soul under a sense of sin. I think it is a most graphic portrait of a heart that is aroused and made to feel its lost estate. If there are any such here, they will be sure to see themselves in the picture.
Lam 3:1. I am the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of his wrath.
It is a mistake that most souls make when in trouble, to suppose that no others ever felt as they do. John Bunyan describes Christian as being very much comforted by hearing someone quoting Scripture as he went through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, for then he perceived that there were others in like case with his own. Do not think, poor troubled soul, that no one ever was so broken in pieces as you are; your path of sorrow is a well-trodden one.
Lam 3:2. He hath led me, and brought me into darkness, but not into light.
A Hebrew method of saying that it was a thick darkness without any light, either star-light or moon-light. You who have passed through this state of conviction know what it means;–no comfort from ordinances, no comfort from Gods Word, no comfort from your daily mercies. Every stream of comfort seems dried up to you, and sin lies heavily upon you.
Lam 3:3. Surely against me is he turned; he turneth his hand against me all the day.
As if, when a man is about to strike, he smites not with his open hand but turns his hand, so the prophet says God did with him. He felt that he was being smitten with the heaviest blows that God seemed able to give.
Lam 3:4. My flesh and my skin hath he made old; he hath broken my bones.
As men through excessive grief sometimes appear to grow prematurely aged, so the prophet says he had done through grief. He felt as if his bones were broken. The sore vexations of his spirit had dashed the solid pillars of the house of Manhood from their place.
Lam 3:5. He hath builded against me, and compassed me with gall and travail.
That is to say, as the besiegers erected a mound against a city, and threw up earthworks, so, the prophet says, God seemed to have thrown up earthworks from which he might fire off the great guns of the law against him.
Lam 3:6. He hath set me in dark places, as they that be dead of old.
As though he had to live in a tomb, where neither life nor light could come to him.
Lam 3:7. He hath hedged me about, that I cannot get out: he hath made my chain heavy.
My way seems blocked up, nothing prospers with me. As the convict sometimes drags about his chain, and has a ball at his foot, so the prophet felt as if God had clogged him with a heavy chain, so that he could not move because of its terrible weight.
Lam 3:8. Also when I cry and shout, he shutteth out my prayer,
Which was the worst trial of all.
Lam 3:9. He hath enclosed my ways with hewn stone; he hath made my paths crooked.
It was believed that hewn stones made the strongest wall as the joints would the more closely fit into one another. Jeremiah seems to speak as if God had taken care and trouble to build, not as men do, roughly with common stones, but with polished and well-shapen troubles built like strong barriers in his way.
Lam 3:10. He was unto me as a bear lying in wait, and as a lion in secret places.
He felt as if the justice of God was about to spring upon him. He was afraid to move, lest the couchant lion should leap upon him, and tear him in pieces. John Bunyan, in his Grace abounding to the Chief of Sinners, describes in his own experience precisely what the prophet here speaks of.
Lam 3:11-13. 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. He hath caused the arrows of his quiver to enter into my reins.
And all this while, to aggravate his grief, he found no comfort anywhere.
Lam 3:14. I was a derision to all my people; and their song all the day.
It is just so with a man who is under a sense of sin. His companions ask him why he is so melancholy; he has an attack of the mopes, they say. They do not want his society, they will chase him from their midst. I marvel not that they want not his company, for well do I know that he wants not theirs, but this adds much to his grief, to find that they make derision and laughter of his woe.
Lam 3:15. He hath filled me with bitterness, he hath made me drunken with wormwood.
What a strong expression the prophet uses! As a drunken man hath lost his wits, and staggereth he knoweth not where, even as is a sinner when he really begins to taste the bitterness of sin. He does not act as if he were endowed with reason; despair and sorrow have driven his senses away.
Lam 3:16. He hath also broken my teeth with gravel stones, he hath covered me with ashes.
The Easterns usually baked their cakes on the hearth, and very frequently there would be in the cakes pieces of grit, perhaps large lumps of cinder, and sometimes small gravel stones, which would break the teeth. So, the prophet seems to say, when I went to try to get some nourishment by the eating of bread, I was disappointed; my teeth were broken with gravel stones. I remember when I used to go up to the house of God to try to get comfort; but, instead thereof, I came away more wretched than I went, for sin, that great devouring dragon, still followed me everywhere.
Lam 3:17-21. And thou hast removed my soul far off from peace: I forgot prosperity. And I said, My strength and my hope is perished from the LORD: 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.
Notice the gracious change that has taken place, as if the sun had risen after the blackness and gloom of the night. Now the birds of joy begin to sing, and the flowers of hope begin to open their golden cups.
Lam 3:22. It is of the LORDS mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassion fail not.
Bad as our state is, we are not yet in hell; we are not yet beyond the reach of hope.
Lam 3:23. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.
We had new mercies this morning, and we have had fresh mercies this evening. God has not forgotten us. The very breath in our nostrils is a proof of his goodness to us; let us, therefore, dear friends, still hope for yet further favors from him.
Lam 3:24-25. The LORD is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in him. The LORD is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him.
Can you get a hold of this blessed truth, any of you troubled ones who are here? Broken-hearted sinner, can you get a grip of this comforting assurance? If so, there will soon be peace for you.
Lam 3:26-27. It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the LORD. It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth.
For this yoke, though it may seem to be very heavy for a time, when it has humbled us, and brought us to Christ, will bring us innumerable blessings.
Lam 3:28-33. 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. For the LORD will not cast of 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.
Unless he has some gracious motive for it, he never afflicts or grieves them, and when he doth act thus, it is as when a father smites his child. It is because it must be done and not because he loves to do it. See, then, the great mercy of God. May it lead the sinner to repentance, yea, and lead us all to put our trust in the Lord!
This exposition consisted of readings from Lam 3:1-33; and Jer 31:22-37.
Fuente: Spurgeon’s Verse Expositions of the Bible
Lam 3:1-18
Lamentation over grievous sufferings on
the part of the surviving people of Judah
(Lam 3:1-18)
I am the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of his wrath.He hath led me and caused me to walk in darkness, and not in light. Surely against me he turneth his hand again and again all the day. 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 travail. He hath made me to dwell in dark places, as those that have been long dead. He hath walled me about, that I cannot go forth; he hath made my chain heavy. Yea, when I cry, and call for help, he shutteth out my prayer (Lam 3:1-8).
Let us first examine the I that suffered so much at the hand of Jehovah God. Apparently, the I equates to the we and us of Lam 3:40-47. The identity of the author of this third poem is clearly the godly who had remained alive and witnessed all the gruesome wrath of Jehovah
Judah had suffered the rod of his wrath. The Lord is depicted as using His divine rod of correction in other parts of scripture as well as here. Job spoke of Gods rod of anger as did Isaiah (Job 21:9; Isa 10:5). The Babylonians were used as God s rod of chastisement against His people for their wickedness (Jer 25:8-9; Jer 51:20).
Judah walked in the darkness of gloom; there was no good news to give them cheer. They were besieged, starving, diseased, and dying by the sword. Jehovah smote them with His hand continuously (again and again). Such punishment gave way to ruin of the fleshly bodies of many.uponHis people.
The city of Jerusalem was besieged and there was no escape. Many had died and could not return to the land of the living. Judah was confined in the siege and could only await her destruction. Such a state of being was compared to having a heavy chain to bear about. To make matters all the worse, those who prayed to Jehovah for relief knew that He had shut His “ear to them and would not hear” (cf. Jer 7:16).
He hath walled up my ways with hewn stone; he hath made my paths crooked. He is unto me as a bear lying in wait, 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. He hath caused the shafts of his quiver to enter into my reins. I am become a derision to all my people, and their song all the day. He hath filled me with bitterness, he hath sated me with wormwood. 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 is perished, and mine expectation from Jehovah. Remember mine affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the gall (Lam 3:9-18).
The mind of Judah saw her circumstances as an imposable situation to escape or be delivered from. Each route of escape they took, a bear or lion awaited to shred them to pieces. Desolation, sorrow, and death had overcome Judah. The arrows of sorrow and despair had pierced Judah through. So wounded were they that they that others mocked them for their great distress.
Jehovah had given them stones to eat in the place of bread, and they had ground their teeth down yet received no sustenance. So long had Judah been in a state of mashing by the hand of God that they knew not what prosperity was like. Judah was so wearied by the mashing of God that they were without strength and without hope of being saved from their punishment.
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
In this central and longest poem, Jeremiah identified himself completely with the experiences of his people. In the first movement, in language which throbs with pain, he described his own sorrows, recognizing through all the action of Jehovah, as the almost monotonous repetition of the pronoun “He” reveals. Here he most evidently recognized the relation of sorrow to sin. All the intermediate instruments of punishment are out of sight. Every stroke falls from the hand of God, as the opening declaration suggests, “I am the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of His wrath.” This is indeed the recognition of the method of Jehovah in judgment. Such recognition compelled the ending of the dirge by an affirmation of hope. The remembered afflictions of God create assurance of deliverance.
The next movement is one wholly of assurance, in which the prophet, having in the previous section recognized Jehovah’s activity in judgment, now recognized His activity in mercy. The passage is full of beauty, as it deals with that tender compassion of God which had never been absent even in the work of punishment. This recognition of mercy ends with an expression of submission to judgment, and a consequent song of hope strong in its confidence.
The third movement of identification is one of appeal. Again the prophet first recognized the justice of the divine visitation, and then earnestly appealed to the people to turn to God in true penitence, ending with a declaration of his sense of the national sorrow and of his personal and immediate share in it.
The last movement of the song is again one wholly of assurance. The prophet celebrated the deliverances already wrought for him by Jehovah. From the lowest dungeons he had lifted his cry, and had been heard. Against all the devices of his enemies Jehovah had pleaded his cause. The reproaches that they had heaped on him Jehovah had heard. These past deliverances created his assurance that Jehovah would yet act on behalf of His people and destroy their enemies from under the heavens.
Fuente: An Exposition on the Whole Bible
Chapter 3 – LET US SEARCH AND TRY OUR WAYS
In the sixty-six verses of this chapter, arranged in a triple alphabetic acrostic, as before mentioned, Jeremiah speaks for the remnant, describing his and their affliction, but manifesting unfailing faith in the goodness of God and calling upon all to search and try their ways and return to Him. Bearing upon his own heart the bitter woes of his people, as did the Lord Jesus, he recites his sorrows in a way that plainly indicates the utterance of the Spirit of Christ, who, as remarked in our introduction to Chapter 1, was afflicted in all their griefs, passing through all in spirit with them. Jeremiah here may almost be looked upon as a type of that Blessed One; for to him also, as to no other prophet, could the title be applied, “A man of sorrows.”
“I am the man,” he says, “that hath seen affliction by the rod of His wrath” (v.1). And he goes on to tell how he has been brought into darkness, but not into light: how God is turned against him, His hand being upon him in judgment every day. Under the weight of the divine displeasure, vigour and elasticity departed, and his bones were as broken (v.2-4). It is the expression of one who, himself well-pleasing to God, entered to the full into the sorrows of his people.
Verses 5 to 17 continue his wail in view of the dire calamities which had fallen upon them. Compassed with gall and travail, set in dark places as in the tombs of the dead, hedged about and weighted with a heavy chain, he cried and shouted, only to feel that God shut out his prayer. Nothing could be more mournful than the gloomy estate thus pictured to the mind’s eye. The Lord had apparently forgotten, or was even become as an enemy. He had enclosed the ways of His servant, made his paths crooked, and been unto him as a bear or a lion waiting to take the prey. Made desolate and set as a mark for the arrow, Jehovah caused the darts of His quiver to enter into His servant’s reins.
Thus had he become a derision to all his people and their song all the day. In this how like Him who became the song of the drunkards! (Psa 69:12). Filled with bitterness and drunken with wormwood, his teeth were as broken with gravel-stones, and he himself rolled in ashes. His soul was removed far off from peace, so that prosperity had been forgotten. It is a doleful recital of a man entering into the sense of God’s displeasure because of sin.
But, though fallen, he was not completely cast down. True he said, ” My strength and my hope is perished from the Lord” (v.18). Yet, as he remembered the wormwood and the gall, his soul was humbled within him, and he could say, “This I recall to my mind; therefore have I hope” (v.19-21).
Accordingly, an entirely different note is struck in v.22, and an exalted strain of joyous confidence is sustained down to v.36. In place of complaining that his woes were greater than he had deserved, he justifies God, and gratefully acknowledges that justice has been tempered with grace. “It is of the Lord’s mercies,” he owns, “that we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is Thy faithfulness” (v.22-23). How precious the faith that, at such a time, could so speak! And what tried saint can truthfully say otherwise? Only when the soul is out of the presence of God does it seem as if His chastisements were too severe, and in part undeserved. No self-judged believer ever yet failed to own that he was far from receiving the full reward of his deeds. Rather, it seems as though God’s grace leads Him to overlook even serious failure, and to correct but in part. “His compassions fail not.” The rod is never directed by a cold, indifferent heart. He feels as no other can for the people of His choice, the children He loves. Every morning witnesses fresh evidences of His loving-kindness.
In contemplation of these precious truths the inspired seer can declare, “The Lord is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in Him” (v.24). All else might fail, but He will abide. It is the confidence of Habakkuk (Hab 3:17-18), and the abiding contentment of Paul (Php 4:11). Thus is one enabled to rejoice in the Lord , even when no other source of joy is left. He becomes the soul’s portion, as in Psa 16:5, where we read, “The Lord is the portion of my inheritance, and my cup.” Little wonder that Psa 23:5 asserts, “My cup runneth over.” How could it be otherwise, when He it is who fills it?
“The Lord is good unto them that wait for Him, to the soul that seeketh Him. It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord” (v.25-26). The reason the truths here taught are so little entered into is simply because waiting upon God is largely a “lost art” among Christians nowadays. The rush and hurry of the age; “the lust of other things;” in a word, the worldliness so characteristic of the present momentous period in the Church’s history, effectually shuts out all inclination to wait upon God, it is to be feared, for a large number of those who confess the name of Jesus as Saviour and Lord. Consequently, little or nothing is known, in a practical way, of His goodness in meeting felt need, and of His ability to satisfy the soul that seeks His face.
It is perhaps needless to say that when Jeremiah wrote, “It is good that a man both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord,” he was not referring to soul-salvation, but to deliverance from the troubles and perplexities of the way. Nowhere in Scripture is the eternal salvation of the soul put before us as something to be waited for in patience and quietness. Again and again the contrary is distinctly stated. The prophet is not speaking of salvation in that sense. For light as to the salvation of the soul, we turn to the New Testament, especially the Gospel of John and the epistles of Paul, John, and Peter. These two aspects of salvation must be clearly distinguished. The Lord has nowhere promised immediate relief from sorrow and suffering. When in His righteous government He permits His people to be the subjects of affliction, it is well that they at once seek His face, and wait upon Him. It may not be His will to extract every thorn in the flesh; but if not, He will give to the waiting soul grace to endure, and that with joyfulness.
There is a “ministry of suffering” which all believers have to learn in a greater or lesser degree. “It is good for a man,” we are told, “to bear the yoke in his youth” (v.27). The result, if he is before God about it, will be to sober and humble him, and thus work out ultimate blessing. He may be called upon to sit alone and keep silence, to put his mouth in the dust, and, like his Saviour, to give his cheek to the smiters, but he can be assured of this: “The Lord will not cast off forever” (v.28-31).
As in Judah ‘s case, God may cause grief – deep and heart-rending; but He will still “have compassion according to the multitude of His mercies. For He doth not afflict willingly (or, from His heart), nor grieve the children of men”(v.32, 33). Not for His own pleasure does He chasten, but that we may be partakers of His holiness. He is too loving to lay upon us one unnecessary burden: He is too holy to omit one needed stroke. Unrighteousness He cannot tolerate. “To crush under His feet all the princes 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, the Lord approveth not” (v.34-36). All His ways are equal. It is only man’s defective vision that makes it appear otherwise. When at last He takes us by the hand, and goes over all the path with us, letting the light of His own glory shine upon every step, we shall understand, as we cannot now, how just and true were all His ways as He led us through this scene.
Nothing can by any means assail His people apart from His permission, for “Who is he that saith, and it cometh to pass, when the Lord proveth not?” (v.37). It is a simple and elementary principle, yet which many are long years in comprehending. Once let it be clear before the soul that God is immediately concerned in every detail of life, and one is delivered from being engrossed with the instrumentalities acting. This comes out strikingly in the case of David when cursed by Shimei. He will not permit the ardent Abishai to touch the offender, for he realizes that “the Lord hath said unto him, Curse David,” and he can therefore leave all in His hands, trusting that He will change the curse into a blessing. Job too, in the early period of his testing, is a fine example of submission to the will of God: and, refusing to consider second causes, “Shall we receive good at the hand of the Lord,” he asks, “and shall we not also receive evil?” It is blessedly true, and most comforting to the soul to know, that, “Out of the mouth of the Most High proceedeth not evil and good” (v.38); but, on the other hand, He allows evil for our chastening; even, as in the case just cited, using Satan as an instrument to accomplish His gracious purposes.
In view of His holy and righteous government, “Wherefore doth a living man complain – a man, for the punishment of his sins?” Surely it is far more becoming to say from the heart, “Let us search and try our ways, and turn again to the Lord” (v.39-40). This indicates that the discipline is having its desired effect. “No chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless, afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness (not necessarily in the case of every saint, but) unto them which are exercised thereby” (Heb 12:11). It is this godly exercise that is so sadly lacking. Afflictions come, and souls faint under them; or else they are despised, and a stoical, self-confident air is assumed, that ill befits the state of one under God’s hand. With most of us, it is to be feared, the first object is to get out of the place of discipline in any way that we can, apart from that breaking down before God which leads to the searching and trying of our ways. It was here that Judah so lamentably failed. When God sent the king of Babylon against them because of their sins, they turned to the king of Egypt for help, and that in plain defiance of the word of the Lord. But they had to learn in a practical way the bitterness of departure from God.
Thus, humbled in His presence, every false hope gone, the remnant search and try their ways, and the end of the Lord is reached. In brokenness of spirit they cry, “Let us lift up our heart with our hands unto God in the heavens. We have transgressed and have rebelled: Thou hast not pardoned. 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” (v.41-44). There is an important lesson here. It is useless to pray while persisting in sin. The man who does not seek to walk with God has no right to expect anything from Him. “Delight thyself also in the Lord; and He shall give thee the desires of thy heart.” “If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you” (Psa 37:4; Joh 15:7). This is the key to answered prayer. Obedience gives confidence. It is impossible to ask in faith when clinging to something that is grieving the Holy Spirit and dishonouring the Lord Jesus Christ. If prayer is not answered, if the heavens seem as brass, it is a solemn indication of a wrong state of soul, and should lead to self-judgment and the forsaking of every evil way.
Because of the lack of this, Judah was brought very low. They were made “as the offscouring and refuse in the midst of the people, so that their enemies rejoiced over them. Fear and a snare had come upon them. Desolation and destruction were their portion” (v.45-47).
Hard indeed must have been the heart that could contemplate their sorrows without being deeply touched. Jeremiah says, ” Mine eye runneth down with rivers of water for the destruction of the daughter of my people. Mine eye trickleth down, and ceaseth not, without any intermission, till the Lord look down, and behold from heaven. Mine eye affecteth my heart, because of all the daughters of my city” (v.48-51). It was the manly grief of one who was not ashamed of tears when his people were under the chastening hand of the Lord. Censurable indeed would insensibility to it all have been.
Identifying himself with the erring ones, he continues to plead their cause, and invokes a recompense upon their persecutors. He was like a bird chased by the hunters without cause. He does not in this ignore the righteousness of God in visiting His people with judgment. On that side there was cause enough. But Babylon ‘s oppression of Judah was quite unwarrantable from the standpoint of human equity. Her wars were dictated by the greed of dominion and the lust of power. It often occurs that God permits sorrows to come upon His own by way of discipline, which, so far as the actual troubles are concerned, were not really deserved. For instance, a saint may be falsely accused, and thereby caused extreme mental grief, while all the time he frets under the knowledge that he is guiltless of the cruel charge, and feels that he is wickedly treated. But this, when rightly viewed, would be seen to be but an opportunity to be a partaker of Christ’s sufferings. For was not He hated “without a cause,” and did not false witnesses rise up against Him? Such circumstances, therefore, painful as they are to flesh and blood, are often a necessary part of the education of the soul. And if, at the time, we are conscious of failed in personal dealings with God, it is used as chastisement, that we may be partakers of His holiness.
As one cast into a pit and left to die, the remnant call upon Jehovah “out of the low dungeon,” and faith can say, “Thou hast heard my voice,” and “Thou drewest near in the day that I called upon Thee: Thou saidst, Fear not” (v.57). How comforting this is! God is quick to respond to the first cry of a troubled soul when there is integrity of heart before Him.
So the following verses celebrate His response in the hour of need. He has pleaded the cause of the soul of His afflicted one. He has redeemed his life. His eye has been upon all the wrong, and with confidence He is implored to judge the matter (v.58-59). Into His sympathetic ear the story of the enemy’s heartlessness is told out, and to Him the whole case is committed. Recompense upon the oppressor is also invoked, which, as we have already seen, is not the spirit of the Christian dispensation, but of the law, where the principle of “an eye for an eye” prevailed (v.60-66). To us who live in this dispensation of grace, our Lord’s instruction is to “pray for them that despitefully use us and persecute us,” even as He, the Lord of all, could pray, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”
Grace is reigning; and having been taken up in grace we are responsible to manifest that same grace to others. But what we have here was quite in keeping with the dispensation of law, and will yet be suited language in the lips of another remnant, in “the time of Jacob’s trouble,” whose earthly deliverance can only be through judgment upon their enemies.
Fuente: Commentaries on the New Testament and Prophets
Lam 3:22-23
This is one of those very bright thoughts which lie across this dark book like an April ray upon a retiring cloud. There is no book in the Bible which is more characterised by the illuminations of sorrow.
I. We are come, by God’s grace, to a new year. We may be very thankful that there are these periods and epochs in life-these foldings down of pages we have read and openings of the new leaves of another chapter. They equip us, they give point and definiteness to new intention, they offer fresh feelings, they take us out of grooves, they stir up in us our immortality.
II. But there are things newer than the year. They were before the year; they were before all years; they will outlive the year. The year will grow stale, but these will always sustain their vigour and elasticity. When we think of the future we always see it in a mass; but it will not come in a mass, but in multitudes of little bits. We see a mountain, it will come in grains of sand. Each day will have a duty, a trial, a temptation, a strength, a joy. And every morning, as we arise, we shall wake to meet new mercies, newer than the dawn. They will be new as God makes new-the old renovated; the happy associations of an old thing combined with the spring-like delight of a new thing. They are new: (1) because they were forfeited yesterday by our sins; (2) because new light is thrown upon them, and our hearts have been renewed to see them better; (3) because they can be dedicated anew, used for new services and new love; (4) because of the “night of heaviness,” which endureth but for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.
J. Vaughan, Sermons, 11th series, p. 13.
Taking the opening of the chapter along with the text, we seem to find a good deal of inconsistency-and, in fact, positive contradiction. Spiritual experience must be looked at as a whole. One side is very dark and full of sadness, sharply inclined towards despair; the other is brighter than the summer morning, tuneful, sunned with all the lustre of saintly hope. So we must take the night with the morning, if we would have the complete day. Taking Jeremiah’s experience as a whole, what do we find that sanctified sorrow had wrought in him?
I. In the first place, it gave him a true view of Divine government. Jeremiah was brought to understand two things about the government of God: (1) that it was tender; (2) that it was minute.
II. Jeremiah gives us two notions about human discipline as regulated by God the Judge and God the Father. (1) He tells us the goodness of waiting: it is good for a man to wait. A determination to go, yet a willingness to stand still-that is the mystery of true waiting. (2) It is good for a man to bear the yoke. Commend me to the man who has been through deep waters, through very dark places, through treacherous, serpent-haunted roads, and who has yet come out with a cheerful heart, mellow, chastened, subdued, and who speaks tenderly of the mercy of God through it all. That man I may trust with my heart’s life.
Parker, City Temple, 1871, p. 61; see also Pulpit Analyst, vol. i., p. 638.
I. There is no greater evil committed by any of us than a practical forgetfulness of the common mercies of life: mercies, which because of their commonness, cease to be regarded as mercies. The Psalmist calls upon us to “forget not all God’s benefits,” and he thus indicates our perpetual danger, a danger which he himself felt, and against which he had to guard his own soul. There are two great causes which may be said to account for our forgetfulness of the mercies of God, which are new every morning. The first is that the hand of the Giver is invisible; and the second is that they come to us with such marvellous regularity.
II. Notice a few of the common mercies which we are most prone to forget: (1) Take, as the first illustration, sleep. There are thousands who never kneel down and thank God for sleep. I do not think that any man who finds sleep an easy thing has ever calculated rightly its inestimable value. It is when pain or overwork chases sleep away, when he lies upon his bed and waits for its coming but it comes not, when he begins to dread the nights lest he should have the same wretched experiences again and again-a fear which prepares the way for its own fulfilment-it is then that he begins to learn what is meant by sleep, and what high rank it takes among the common mercies of life. It is a mercy which no money can buy, which no rank can command. (2) Our reason. When we consider how closely the reason is allied with the brain and with the whole nervous system, it is a surprising circumstance that insanity is not a more widespread evil than it is. The possession of reason should stir us up to daily thanksgiving to Him whose mercies are new to us every morning. (3) The power of motion and action, and speech, is another mercy which is new every morning. We live not upon old mercies, but upon new ones fresh from the Divine hand, fresh from the Divine heart.
E. Mellor, The Hem of Christ’s Garment, p. 138.
References: Lam 3:24.-Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. viii., No. 451; Ibid., Morning by Morning, p. 321.
Lam 3:25
Throughout the Scriptures the two terms, seeking and waiting, run parallel as describing prayer, earnest and effectual prayer, in all its acts and offices. The command to seek the Lord and the command to wait on the Lord have the same general meaning, and the same general promises are given to each. But in this passage they are for once combined; their combination suggesting a certain difference between them and the perfection of devotion which results from their union.
I. Generally in the combination of these two terms, each expresses the perfection of all prayer as it is either the active seeking of God or the passive waiting for Him; in other words, what man does and what he must expect God to do in the whole business of devotion. All communion with God requires this.
II. Again, the seeking stands here and everywhere for the pleading boldness of prayer, which requires to be qualified by its waiting humility.
III. The two terms signify the fervour and earnestness of prayer joined to persistency in that fervour; and the rare combination of these gives the highest character to the tone of cur devotion. The waiting habit is as constantly commended to us as the seeking: (1) as the test of real earnestness, and (2) as its stimulant.
IV. The two words may be applied to the confidence and submission of prayer as it has to do with the seeking and waiting for special blessings. (1) This union of confidence and submission will dispose us to pray for temporal good and earthly deliverances with entire submission to the will of God; confident that we are heard, but leaving the answer to His wisdom. (2) This is true also of spiritual requests. We must plead for them, and yet learn in waiting the reason why they are withheld. They are granted in an indirect manner, and in the discipline of graces more important than the gifts themselves.
V. The combination of seeking and waiting forms in its highest perfection the devotional state of the soul in which both the seeking and the waiting go beyond their former meanings, and blend into the habit rather than the act of communion with God.
W. B. Pope, Sermons, Addresses, and Charges, p. 155.
Lam 3:26
I. The first thing is to understand what is meant by “the salvation of the Lord.” The salvation of the Lord here is something else than the first view which a sinful man obtains of pardon and peace, through “the great God our Saviour.” It is the salvation which a man needs in any crisis of life, where he suffers under trial or is threatened with it. And, in those trials, hope and quiet waiting do not come at once into their fullest exercise. As long as human means can avail, it is a man’s duty, trusting to Divine help, to employ them. The salvation of the Lord is when all conceivable means have been employed and have failed.
II. The second thing is to consider what is meant by these exercises of the soul towards God’s salvation, “to hope and quietly to wait.” (1) Hope: (a) The foundation of hope may be said to lie in desire. It differs from desire in this, that desire pursues many things that can never be objects of hope to us. We can only hope for that which is felt to be possible and reasonable. This, then, is the first thing for us to do, if we would strengthen hope, to see that its objects are right and good-that is, accordant with the Divine will and beneficial for us; we may learn this by consulting God’s word and our own thoughtful experience. (b) The next element in Christian hope is faith. Hope differs from faith in this, that we believe in many things in regard to which we do not hope. Hope is faith with desire pointing out the objects. (c) There is a third element to be added to make our hope strong-that of imagination. (2) “Quiet waiting,” or patience. It is the part of hope to seek the future; it is the duty of patience to rest calmly in the present and not to fret. Patience is strengthened (a) by faith, (b) by contentment, (c) by calm attention to duties.
III. Consider the benefit of uniting these-“It is good both to hope and quietly to wait.” (1) The one is needful to save the other from sinking into sin. (2) The one is needful to raise the other to its full strength. We shall find increasingly, “how good it is.” (a) It is good now in the depth of the soul-in the conscious assurance that it is better to rest in the hardest of God’s ways than to wander at will in our own. (b) We shall find how good it is in the enhancement of every blessing for which we have to wait.
J. Ker, Sermons, p. 347.
Lam 3:27
I. It is good for a man to bear in his youth the yoke of subjection to authority. If he does not learn this lesson early, he will suffer for it by-and-by.
II. It is good for a man to bear in his youth the yoke of self-restraint. It is not enough to be under the rule of others. Let such authority be ever so great, there is still a sphere to which it cannot extend, and in which there is scope for a man’s own conscience to assert its command. There are, with all of us, desires and tendencies which we have sternly to resist, and the denying of which is part of the training by which we are fitted for a noble and useful life.
III. It is good for a man to bear in his youth the yoke of difficulty and toil. It is good for us all to have to work for our bread. Our Creator intended us for labour, not for indolence. Even before the fall, man had his physical work assigned to him. God placed him not in a “sleeping hollow” to fatten in idleness; but in a large garden, to dress it and to keep it.
IV. It is good for a man to bear in his youth the yoke of living godliness. It is to this that our blessed Saviour invites us when He says, “Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me.” It is good for a man to become a decided Christian in early life.
V. It is good for a man to bear in his youth the yoke of a public Christian profession. The first thing is to be a Christian; the next thing is to avow it.
VI. It is good for a man to bear in his youth the yoke of Christian service. It will help your own faith wonderfully to be engaged in some real labour for the Lord.
VII. It is good for a man to bear in his youth the yoke of personal affliction. There is a marked want about those Christians who have never suffered. You will rarely see piety of a rich and mellow tone in a man who has known nothing of sorrow.
J. Thain Davidson, Forewarned-Forearmed, p. 19.
I. There is, first, the yoke of home. Woe to that home which lays no yoke upon its inmates. That is the very office of the family toward its young and inexperienced members. To turn the current of the young life into a right channel-to make good habitual by use, and (to that end) to insist upon conformity to a good rule-to require, as the condition of maintenance, as the condition of protection, as the condition of life, that this and not that shall be the conduct and the speech and the temper, and (down to very minute particulars) the mode of living,-this is the duty of a home, in order that it may bring after it God’s assigned and certain blessing. It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth-the yoke of home.
II. But the home must at last send out its sons and its daughters into a rougher school of experience, and the half-way house on this journey is first the school with its discipline, and then the more special training for a particular profession or trade. Here too there is a yoke, and a yoke-bearing, or else a refusal of the yoke, with many sad consequences of sorrow and shame.
III. Many persons suffer seriously throughout their life by not having borne in their youth the yoke of a church.
IV. There is One who uses this very figure concerning His own Divine office. “Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me.”
C. J. Vaughan, Pulpit Analyst, vol. iv., p. 432.
References: Lam 3:27.-Preacher’s Monthly, vol. v., p. 205; Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxii., No. 1291. Lam 3:31-33.-J. Burton, Christian Life and Truth, p. 368.
Lam 3:39
This question suggests two considerations; each of which demonstrates the injustice of the complaint-Why should a living man complain? A living man! Life is still left thee; and of whatsoever thou hast been stripped, there is such a counterpoise in the continuance of life that complaint must be groundless. “A man for the punishment of his sins.” There hath nothing befallen thee save the just recompense of thy misdoing. How can a complaint against justice be itself just. Thus are these two arguments of the text demonstrative of the unfairness of human complaint when the dealings of the Most High pass under review. These two arguments we will apply (1) to God’s general dealings; (2) to His individual.
I. How easy and how common it is to discourse in a querulous and reproachful strain, on the fact of our being made to suffer for a forefather’s transgressions, and on the fact of our deriving a polluted nature from guilt in which personally we took not any share. We forget, that although we did not ourselves elect Adam to act as our representative, we should, almost beyond doubt, have elected him, had it been put to our choice. For there was an infinitely greater probability that Adam, with the fate of millions committed to his keeping, would have watched diligently against the assaults of temptation, than that any lonely individual of his descendants, left to obey for himself and disobey for himself, should have maintained his allegiance and preserved his fidelity. In appointing mankind to stand or fall in Adam, God dealt with them by a measure of the widest benevolence. If so, complaint is at once removed by the second consideration which our text suggests. If there was nothing unjust in God’s appointing Adam to act as our representative, then there is nothing inconsistent either with the strictest justice or the amplest benevolence in our being accounted to have sinned in Adam.
II. Consider the application of the text to the complaints called forth by individual affliction. (1) Our text represents affliction as a punishment, not of this sin, or of that sin, but generally for the punishment of man’s sins. Therefore the complaint is to be met not by any demonstration that by one particular line of conduct the complaining individual has brought down a particular judgment, but simply by the fact of general sinfulness. When you remember that man is a transgressor, not only by imputation, but by every positive and personal working of evil, surely the marvel must be, not that so much of wormwood should drug the cup of human life, but that so much of sweetness should still have been left. (2) We are living men. And whatever the woe and bitterness of our portion, wherefore should living men complain? Life, when regarded as the seedtime of eternity, must appear to be so enormous in value that its sternest and most aggravated sorrows dwindle away into comparative nothingness. While man has life, he may win Christ. If it be a life of sickness, a life of widowhood, a life of captivity, yet all this deserves no mention in opposition to the privilege of existence. Life protracted may be a season when the Saviour is won, and the Saviour won is the universe our own.
H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 2216.
Lam 3:40
The prophet calls his countrymen to a work to which they needed to be exhorted and pressed; and well he might do so, for the work of self-examination is not at all an agreeable work. Some religious works are agreeable; for example, the meditation on God’s goodness, and the benefits He has bestowed upon us. “A joyful and pleasant thing it is to be thankful.” But it is not a joyful and pleasant thing to consider closely our own way, and see how we have behaved ourselves towards our good and gracious Father who is on high.
I. The work of self-examination has this advantage, that it is a real, personal act; and in religion, as has been well-observed, what a man does for himself is of much more avail than what others do or can do for him. In self-examination each man is his own minister; and Christ, who is above, the only Priest.
II. Self-examination is a private work. What a man is in private, that he is; and it is in the personal interviews with our Maker that the critical transactions of our religious history are performed.
III. Self-examination is a rehearsing of the judgment day, for it is a having the soul up before conscience, and conscience is God’s voice in the heart. There we are before the throne of God by anticipation, that throne before which the man found without the wedding-garment, when questioned why he has it not, is speechless. Without repentance we shall perish, and repentance absolutely requires and supposes a careful review of the actions of our life, and that at stated and oft-recurring periods, so that the actions may be remembered and not slip through, from the length of time through which the review extends and the difficulty of recalling its performances.
IV. The practice of self-examination will more assuredly soften and humanise the character in regard of the social intercourses of life; making him who is diligent in such practice gentle and merciful toward his fellow-creatures.
V. The self-examiner is a profitable attendant in the services of the church. Having considered his ways, he knows what he has to confess when he comes into his Maker’s presence.
C. P. Eden, Oxford Lent Sermons, 1859, p. 241.
Reference: Lam 3:40.-Spurgeon, Evening by Evening, p. 90.
Lam 3:41
There are two things which often divert men from appealing to God. First, their own efforts on behalf of themselves; and secondly, the appeal to their fellows. But this appeal to God, this lifting up of our heart with our hands unto God in the heavens, may co-exist with effort, with activity, with diligence, with prudence, with the devout pursuit of an object, and with the right use of the strength, the talents, and the resources of our fellow-men and of our fellow-Christians. We owe an appeal to God on whatever concerns us.
I. The throne of God. It is the Lord who reigns in all circumstances, and He reigns over them. If we do not recognise this we are disloyal, we set up some false god, we are guilty of the sin of idolatry, we break the first and chief commandment in His holy law.
II. We owe an appeal on whatsoever concerns us to the personal providence of God, and the actual government of God. For the superintendence of our affairs is not committed by God to some deputy. He Himself provides, and He Himself rules.
III. We owe it, further, to the character of God. Think of His complete knowledge, His consummate wisdom, His eternal love. He gives you of Himself and of His resources as though you were His only son, and His heart is love towards you.
IV. An appeal to God is due to the paternity of God.
V. We owe this appeal to God’s provision for our full reconciliation to Himself.
VI. We owe it to the Divine precepts, invitations, and promises.
VII. We owe it to ourselves to make this appeal to God.
VIII. We owe it to each other. Supposing that you are ready thus to appeal, there are two evils to be guarded against: (1) That of lifting up the spirit without the hands-depending upon mental prayer without times for prayer, seasons for prayer, words of prayer-without an act of prayer. (2) That of lifting up the hands without the heart. Here is the danger of forms and modes. Do you not sometimes come from the place of prayer with the guilty consciousness that you have not prayed. Try to let the mode in which you speak to God be born of your present circumstances and of the state of your heart towards God. Get time, if it be only a few moments, for meditation before you speak to God, and you will find a freshness in your thought of Him which will certainly inspire and help your supplications.
S. Martin, Westminster Chapel Pulpit, 1st series, No. 15.
References: Lam 3:41.-J. E. Vaux, Sermon Notes, 4th series, p. 48; Spurgeon, Morning by Morning, p. 285. Lam 3:57.-Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxx., No. 1812. Lam 3:58.-Ibid.,vol. x., No. 579; Ibid., Morning by Morning, p. 325. Lam 4:1.-G. W. Conder, Christian World Pulpit, vol. vii., p. 380. Lam 4:2.-A. C. Price, Ibid., vol. vi., p. 141. Lam 4:22.-Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. viii., No. 480.
Fuente: The Sermon Bible
CHAPTER 3 The Prophets Suffering and Distress
This chapter is intensely personal. None but Jeremiah could have written these wonderful expressions of sorrow, the sorrows of the people of God into which he entered so fully, in such a way that they become his own. He shared all their afflictions, bore them himself and then was hated by them. It was the Spirit of Christ who created these feelings in the heart of the prophet. In reading these words of deep distress and the words of faith and waiting for Him, we must look beyond Jeremiah and see a picture of our Lord, the Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, His sorrow and His afflictions, the emotions of His holy soul, as well as the experiences and soul exercise of the believing remnant of Israel in days to come.
The prophet speaks of himself as one who is smitten by the rod of Gods wrath, the man that hath seen affliction. He had not deserved that wrath; the wrath and affliction have come upon a sinful people, but he identifies himself with them. What must have been the suffering and the affliction of our Lord when He, at the close of His blessed life, suffered and died the death of the cross! The rod of righteousness fell on Him. More than Jeremiah did, He tasted that wrath, when He who knew no sin was made sin for us. He (God) hath bent His bow, and set me as a mark for the arrow. 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 (Lam 3:12-14). He speaks of the wormwood and the gall (Lam 3:19); of the smitten cheek filled with reproach (Lam 3:30).
Through such suffering Jeremiah passed as well as the godly of all ages, as well as those in the future. Jeremiahs affliction but faintly foreshadows the afflictions of the Afflicted One. But while Jeremiah suffered with Jerusalem and for Jerusalem, he was not destitute of comfort. He knew the Lord and He sustained him in his affliction. How beautifully he speaks of the mercies of the Lord, of His compassions which never fail, of the greatness of His faithfulness (Lam 3:22-23). Such is the comfort still of all those who know the Lord; it is the song in the night: The LORD is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in Him. The LORD is good unto them that wait for Him, to the soul that seeketh Him. All His saints speak thus when they feel the chastening hand of the Lord. He has full confidence in the Lord and knows He doth not afflict willingly, and that the LORD will not cast off for ever. And again, though He cause grief, yet will He have compassion according to the multitude of His mercies.
Beginning with Lam 3:40, a real return is described. There is self-examination: Let us search and try our ways and turn again to the LORD. This is followed by prayer: Let us lift up our hearts with our hands unto God in the heavens. Then comes confession: We have transgressed and have rebelled; Thou hast not pardoned. It describes prophetically the repentance of a Jewish remnant when this present age ends and the Lord is about to be manifested in visible glory. Jeremiahs lament over Jerusalems condition and the nations state is once more recorded in Lam 3:45-47. Thou hast made us an offscouring and refuse in the midst of the people. All our enemies have opened their mouths against us. Fear and snare is come upon us, desolation and destruction. Such will also be the complaint of the suffering remnant. This chapter ends with an imprecatory prayer. Render unto them a recompense, O LORD, according to the works of their hands. Give them sorrow of heart, thy curse unto them. Persecute and destroy them in anger from under the heavens of the LORD. It is like the imprecatory prayers in the Psalms, prayers which will be prayed when the godly in Israel suffer under their enemies in the great tribulation.
Fuente: Gaebelein’s Annotated Bible (Commentary)
The literary form of Lamentations is necessarily obscured in the translation. It is an acrostic dirge, the line arranged in couplets or triplet, each of which begins with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet. In the third Lament, which consists of sixty-six stanzas instead of twenty-two, each line of each triplet begins with the same letter, so that the entire sixty six verses are required to give the twenty-two letters of the alphabet. Thus Lam 3:1-3 or our version form but three lines of the original, each line beginning with A, etc.
Fuente: Scofield Reference Bible Notes
the man: Lam 1:12-14, Job 19:21, Psa 71:20, Psa 88:7, Psa 88:15, Psa 88:16, Isa 53:3, Jer 15:17, Jer 15:18, Jer 20:14-18, Jer 38:6
his wrath: That is, the wrath of God.
Reciprocal: Rth 1:20 – dealt Job 30:28 – General Jer 20:18 – came Jer 43:6 – Jeremiah Jer 45:3 – added
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Lam 3:1. It will be well for us to keep in mind both the personal experiences of Jeremiah and those of his countrymen. The prophet suffered some unpleasantness that his people did not because he took it to heart” more than did they. Had they been as serious over the situation as he there would have been more genuine regret on their part over the state of affairs. Another thing that will assist us is the fact that Jeremiah had to feel the sting of divine chastisement on account of being a member of the nation and not as punishment for any personal wrongs of his. Bod of his wrath means the wrath of God against the sins of the people of Judah.
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
Lam 3:1-2. I am the man that hath seen affliction I myself have suffered affliction in this time of public calamity. He speaks, probably, with a particular regard to the ill treatment he had met with in the discharge of his prophetical office. Some indeed suppose that he speaks in this and the subsequent verses, to Lam 3:21, in the character of the people, but so many passages manifestly refer to his own personal troubles, that such an interpretation seems very improbable. He hath brought me into darkness, but not into light Light is often used in Scripture for happiness or comfort, and darkness for affliction and misery. The prophets meaning is, that God had been pleased to exercise him with calamity. Perhaps he refers especially to his being put into the dungeon and the stocks, and to the state of darkness and distress which his mind was in during these trials.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
The Metre changes here. The letters of the Hebrew alphabet, twenty two in number, begin three hemistichs, which make sixty six verses. It would look better, and read more poetically, if the hemistichs formed distinct lines, as in other poetry. The prophet commences with the idea of a prisoner, sitting in darkness, and bound with a chain. As Jeremiah intended this poem to be set to music, it was proper to preserve the rhythm and spirit of poetic composition.
Lam 3:1. I am the man that hath seen affliction. God had made him the first of prophets to Israel, and the adjacent nations; by consequence, as a shepherd, he had charge of the sheep. In him therefore the phrases are proper, My childrenmy virgins are gone into captivity. The strokes of his burning wrath have often been repeated, and Psalms 102. contains similar sentiments. Sanctius notes here, that Jeremiah was a type of Christ, which many of the fathers had noted before. But our unitarian philosophy cautions us against this imbecility, that Jeremiah in all his book never once refers to Christ. Why should he? If Jesus, as Dr. Priestley says, was the legitimate son of Joseph and Mary, such a Jesus could do nothing for him, neither for us. See Henry Scougals sermon on Lam 1:12; and the notes on Jer 23:6; Jer 31:22.
Lam 3:15. He hath made me drunk with wormwood. This is a frequent figure, but mostly applied to the wicked; as when the Moabites slaughtered one another to escape from Gideon. In the crisis of impetuous passions, the understanding is borne away with the torrent.
Lam 3:22-23. It is of the Lords mercies, that the remnant is not consumed. These are new every morning. As the return of day makes us a new present of creation, so after a dark cloud he lifts upon us the light of his countenance.
Lam 3:26. It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord. Our anchor is sure, the cable will never part by strong gales. Unto the upright there ariseth light in the darkness. Zion was rebuilt, a favour which Babylon could not boast. The Jews returned with all the vessels of gold and silver, which the Chaldeans had taken away.
Lam 3:31-32. The Lord will not cast off for ever. Here is the reason why the church should hope and quietly wait. Mens words are but breath, but the promises of God are realities. He will have compassion, according to the multitude of his mercies, and according to the fulness of his promises.
Lam 3:33. He doth not afflict willingly. He could not allow the Jews to go on in full revolt. Think of this, oh thou who canst prostitute all his mercies to satiate thy lusts. Thy day shall surely come.
Lam 3:39. Wherefore doth a living man complain. His punishment is always less than his sins. Perhaps his afflictions check him from other crimes, which might complete his ruin.
Lam 3:41. Let us lift up our hearts with unity to God. Let us quarrel no longer with his rod; then all heaven will be engaged in our defence; and like the soaring eagle, we leave all dangers far behind.
Lam 3:44. Thou hast covered thyself with a cloud, that our prayers should not pass through. The French refugees, weeping in exile for their martyrs, and for their demolished temples, often quote these words in their sermons; but after a lapse of years the cloud which brightened on Zion, has brightened on them also. Napolean gave them a college at Montauban, and a seat in the senate.
Lam 3:58. Oh Lord, thou hast pleaded the causes of my soul. Thus hope opened for Zion at last. No man cries to God in vain; for though the prophet could not then have the favour he asked, he got a new pledge of it in his heart.
Lam 3:61-66. Thou hast heard their reproach, oh Lord. The men that obstructed my ministry, cast me into prison, and sought my life. Requite them, oh Lord, according to their works. Though St. Paul cites these words against Alexander, who sought to destroy him; yet from Jesus, full of truth and grace, we hear the voice, bless and curse not.
REFLECTIONS.
Here we have another most beautiful and impressive poem. It discovers a wounded and pensive mind, highly impressed with the deep ways of providence. It opens with a general view of Jeremiahs persecution in the ministry, and with his prison-thoughts. I am the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of his wrath; which marks that he had been severely treated while bearing testimony against his country.
As the darkness presedes the breaking of the morning, so good men glean hope while others reap despair. It is, says he, of the Lords mercies that we are not consumed. His mercies and compassions are new every morning. Thus unto the upright there ariseth light in the darkness. Like the woman of Canaan, they gather an answer of peace, while others augur a flat denial.
Men who have experienced mercies are the best qualified to comfort others. It is good, says the prophet, that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of God. When praying for the comforts of the Holy Spirit we are to expect present blessings; but when praying for providential mercies, we must quietly wait the Lords time. Joseph waited two years in the prison, and David almost seven years in exile; then the Lord did wonders for them both. The vision is for an appointed time, till the wheels of providence bring all things round; then it shall surely speak, and shall not lie.
Numerous other observations seem suggested in this chapter, but we must hasten to say that he was resolved to weep on, and to pray on, till the Lord arose in vengeance to redeem his remnant from their long captivity. Thus joining his faith with an extended hand to the hand of the Messiah, he joined also, if I may so speak, his sorrows to those of the Saviours, that in due time the Lord might turn them all to joy. Thus afflictions, which consume the wicked, brighten the saints in the furnace; for by sadness the heart is made better. Thus faith anticipates salvation before it comes: it sees the dark clouds already clearing up: hence we often find the prophets composing songs of deliverance for the church, while in the preseding verses they have been foretelling her sorest afflictions. Confidence in God is more to be desired than a thousand worlds.
Fuente: Sutcliffe’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Lamentations 3. The Third Lament.Here it is the singer that comes chiefly to the front; whereas in Lam 3:1 it had been Zion, and in Lam 3:2 it was Yahweh. EV hardly puts Lam 3:1 forcibly enough: it should read, It is I, even I the strong man, who know now, alas, what abasement means. The chant is artistically more clever than Lam 3:1 and Lam 3:2, but its heart is not so great. In form it has a cunning device all its own; for the first stanza has three initial Alephs, the second has three Beths, and so on throughout the twenty-two stanzas. This is a skilful bit of scholastic development; scribal indeed, but not great. Editors have usually regarded each line as a separate verse, so that there result sixty-six verses in all. Similarities between Psalms 143 and our poem have led Lhr to think that the two are based on a common original (cf. Lam 3:6 with Psa 143:3). Certainly our poem seems closely related to late Jewish Pss., and it is impossible that a Jeremiah did or ever could invent such a fantasia on three As, three Bs, three Cs, and so on. Nevertheless the Lament has several good features.
Lam 3:1-16, a quarter of the whole, is a personal wail. Yahweh has beaten this strong man, has misled him, torn him, hemmed him in, and, as it were, actually buried him alive. Yahweh has torn the mans inmost soul, like a bear, like a lion that has crouched and leaped upon him. Worst of all, the sufferer has become a laughing-stock in his own city: this is bitterest wormwood. Evidently the people were not all so excited and troubled as was our poet: possibly his feelings arose largely amid the fancies of his private study, where he could have time to dream and calculate over his Alephs and Beths. In Lam 3:16 he has an apt figure of one who is mocked, He has made my teeth grind on sand. Then his extremity of vexation drives him to God. He feels he has been away from his best counsellor. He begins to pray (Lam 3:19-21), sure that Yahweh will remember him. As he thus remembers Yahweh, his meditation is at times so beautiful that many a sentence of it became a household word in the Christianity that soon was born, e.g. Yahwehs loving-kindness cannot cease. A Greek commentator in the LXX has added a fine remark here, We are not ended, because His care is not ended. The singer grows jubilant and rises to the threshold of all apocalyptic expectations, saying, It is good to wait. So he takes in the wide future as well as his present view of things and conditions and sufferings. All are only light afflictions. He is probably a priest, and therefore remembers Deu 18:2, quoting it as he sings, Yahweh is my portion. The eternally abiding God is enough. Three times we read, It is good: Yahweh is good, and a man must have twice goodness, first in hoping, and then in waiting. Like Paul long afterwards (cf. Rom 8:33 ff.) he seems to love the wonderful Servant-Song of Isa 50:4-9, for he probably alludes to it in Lam 3:30. In Lam 3:31-41 he pens a confession of faith worthy of any of the great confessors in all the ages. Every line here is precious and familiar: we need not quote any as the best.
Lam 3:42-66. After confession comes supplication; and here first (in Lam 3:42-53) the sorrows are rehearsed, but in submissive tones this time. He acknowledges that Yahweh has come near to him, has actually spoken to him, has repeated for him the great eternal watchword of Isaiah 41, Fear thou not. Truly he does touch the hem of the Fathers garment; or, as the Scotch saint would say, he gets far ben.
But now, after three stanzas of such exquisite beauty, what is it that he prays for eagerly? Pursue thou my enemies in anger: destroy them from under heaven! Alas that a curse should be the climax of communion for such a soul! How did they need to hear the death-cry of Jesus, that was soon to sound among them, Father forgive them. The Lament proves thus to be the utterance and the picture of a priest who, at moments, seemed to be the very Rutherford of Anwoth of his time; but who, nevertheless, needed sorely that there should be breathed upon him the Gospel of Forgiveness and Love for enemies. The Lament is surely another scene in the background of Christianity.
Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible
3:1 I [am] the man [that] hath seen {a} affliction by the rod of his wrath.
(a) The prophet complains of the punishments and afflictions that he endured by the false prophets and hypocrites when he declared the destruction of Jerusalem, as in Jer 20:1-2 .
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
A. Jeremiah’s sorrows 3:1-18
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
Jeremiah claimed to have seen much affliction because Yahweh had struck Jerusalem in His anger (cf. Job 9:34; Job 21:9; Psa 89:32; Isa 10:5).
"The two preceding poems ended with sorrowful complaint. This third poem begins with the complaint of a man over grievous personal suffering." [Note: Keil, 2:402-3.]
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
THE MAN THAT HATH SEEN AFFLICTION
Lam 3:1-21
WHETHER we regard it from a literary, a speculative, or a religious point of view, the third and central elegy cannot fail to strike us as by far the best of the five. The workmanship of this poem is most elaborate in conception and most finished in execution, the thought is most fresh and striking, and the spiritual tone most elevated, and, in the best sense of the word, evangelical. Like Tennyson, who is most poetic when he is most artistic, as in his lyrics, and like all the great sonneteers, the author of this exquisite Hebrew melody has not found his ideas to be cramped by the rigorous rules of composition. It would seem that to a master the elaborate regulations that fetter an inferior mind. are no hindrances, but rather instruments fitted to his hand, and all the more serviceable for their exactness. Possibly the artistic refinement of form stimulates thought and rouses the poet to exert his best powers: or perhaps-and this is more probable-he selects the richer robe for the purpose of clothing his choicer conceptions. Here we have the acrostics worked up into triplets, so that they now appear at the beginning of every line, each letter occurring three times successively as an initial, and the whole poem falling into sixty-six verses or twenty-two triplets. Yet none of the other four poems have any approach to the wealth of thought or the uplifting inspiration that we meet with in this highly finished product of literary art.
This elegy differs from its sister poems in another respect. It is composed, for the most part, in the first person singular, the writer either speaking of his own experience or dramatically personating another sufferer. Who is this “man that hath seen affliction”? On the understanding that Jeremiah is the author of the whole book, it is commonly assumed that the prophet is here revealing his own feelings under the multitude of troubles with which he has been overwhelmed. But if, as we have seen, this hypothesis is, to say the least, extremely dubious, of course the assumption that has been based upon it loses its warranty. No doubt there is much in the touching picture of the afflicted person that agrees with what we know of the experience of the great prophet. And yet, when we look into it, we do not find anything of so specific a character as to settle us in the conclusion that the words could have been spoken by no one else. There is just the possibility that the poet is not describing himself at all; he may be representing somebody well known to his contemporaries-perhaps even Jeremiah, or just a typical character, in the manner in Brownings “Dramatis Personae.”
While some mystery hangs over the personality of this man of sorrows the power and pathos of the poem are certainly heightened by the concentration of our attention upon one individual. Few persons are moved by general statements. Necessarily the comprehensive is all outline. It is by the supply of the particular that we fill up the details; and it is only when these details are present that we have a full-bodied picture. If an incident is typical it is illustrative of its kind. To know one such fact is to know all. Thus the science lecturer produces his specimen, and is satisfied to teach from it without adding a number of duplicates. The study of abstract reports is most important to those who are already interested in the subjects of these dreary documents; but it is useless as a means of exciting interest. Philanthropy must visit the office of the statistician if it would act with enlightened judgment, and not permit itself to become the victim of blind enthusiasm; but it was not born there, and the sympathy which is its parent can only be found among individual instances of distress.
In the present case the speaker who recounts his own misfortunes is more than a casual witness, more than a mere specimen picked out at random from the heap of misery accumulated in this age of national ruin. He is not simply a man who has seen affliction, one among many similar sufferers; he is the man, the well-known victim, one pre-eminent in distress even in the midst of a nation full of misery. Yet he is not isolated on a solitary peak of agony. As the supreme sufferer, he is also the representative sufferer. He is not selfishly absorbed in the morbid occupation of brooding over his private grievances. He has gathered into himself the vast and terrible woes of his people. Thus he foreshadows our Lord in His passion. We cannot but be struck by the aptness of much in this third elegy when it is read in the light of the last scenes of the gospel history. It would be a mistake to say that these outpourings from the heart of the Hebrew patriot were intended to convey a prophetic meaning with reference to another Sufferer in a far-distant future. Nevertheless the application of the poem to the Man of Sorrows is more than a case of literary illustration; for the idea of representative suffering which here emerges, and which becomes more definite in the picture of the servant of Jehovah in Isa 53:1-12, only finds its full realisation and perfection in Jesus Christ. It is repeated, however, with more or less distinctness wherever the Christ spirit is revealed. Thus in a noble interpretation of St. Paul, the Apostle is represented as experiencing-
“Desperate tides of the whole worlds anguish
Forced through the channel of a single heart.”
The portrait of himself drawn by the author of this elegy is the more graphic by reason of the fact that the present is linked to the past. The striking commencement, “I am the man,” etc., sets the speaker in imagination before our eyes. The addition “who has seen” (or rather, experienced) “affliction” connects him with his present sufferings. The unfathomable mystery of personal identity here confronts us. This is more than memory, more than the lingering scar of a previous experience; it is, in a sense, the continuance of that experience, its ghostly presence still haunting the soul that once knew it in the glow of life. Thus we are what we have thought and felt and done, and our present is the perpetuation of our past. The man who has seen affliction does not only keep the history of his distresses in the quiet chamber of memory. His own personality has slowly acquired a depth, a fulness, a ripeness that remove him far from the raw and superficial character he once was. We are silenced into awe before Job, Jeremiah, and Dante, because these men grew great by suffering. Is it not told even of our Lord Jesus Christ that He was made perfect by the things that He suffered? {Heb 5:8-9} Unhappily it cannot be said that every hero of tragedy climbs to perfection on the rugged steps of his terrible life-drama; some men are shattered by discipline which proves to be too severe for their strength. Christ rose to His highest glory by means of the cruelty of His enemies and the treason of one of His trusted disciples; but cruel wrongs drove Lear to madness, and a confidants treachery made a murderer of Othello. Still all who pass through the ordeal come out other than they enter, and the change is always a growth in some direction, even though in many cases we must admit with sorrow that this is a downward direction.
It is to be observed that here in his self-portraiture-just as elsewhere when describing the calamities that have befallen his people-the elegist attributes the whole series of disastrous events to God. This characteristic of the Book of Lamentations throughout is nowhere more apparent than in the third chapter. So close is the thought of God to the mind of the writer, he does not even think it necessary to mention the Divine name. He introduces his pronouns without any explanation of their objects, saying “His wrath” and “He hath led me,” and so on through the succeeding verses. This quiet assumption of a recognised reference of all that happens to one source, a source that is taken to be so well known that there is no occasion to name it, speaks volumes for the deep-seated faith of the writer. He is at the antipodes of the too common position of those people who habitually forget to mention the name of God because He is never in their thoughts. God is always in the thoughts of the elegist, and that is why He is not named. Like Brother Lawrence, this man has learnt to “practise the presence of God.”
In amplifying the account of his sufferings, after giving a general description of himself as the man who has experienced affliction, and adding a line in which this experience is connected with its cause-the rod of the wrath of Him who is unnamed, though ever in mind-the stricken patriot proceeds to illustrate and enforce his appeal to sympathy by means of a series of vivid metaphors. This is the most crisp and pointed writing in the book. It hurries us on with a breathless rush of imagery, scene after scene flashing out in bewildering speed like the whirl of objects we look at from the windows of an express train.
Let us first glance at the successive pictures in this rapidly moving panorama of similes, and then at the general import and drift of the whole.
The afflicted man was under the Divine guidance; he was not the victim of blind self-will; it was not when straying from the path of right that he fell into this pit of misery. The strange thing is that God led him straight into it – led him into darkness, not into light as might have been expected with such a Guide. {Lam 3:2} The first image, then, is that of a traveller misled. The perception of the first terrible truth that is here suggested prompts the writer at once to draw an inference as to the relation in which God stands to him, and the nature and character of the Divine treatment of him throughout. God, whom he has trusted implicitly, whom he has followed in the simplicity of ignorance, God proves to be his Opponent! He feels like one duped in the past, and at length undeceived as he makes the amazing discovery that his trusted Guide has been turning His hand against him repeatedly all the day of his woful wanderings. {Lam 3:3} For the moment he drops his metaphors, and reflects on the dreadful consequences of this fatal antagonism. His flesh and skin, his very body is wasted away; he is so crushed and shattered, it is as though God had broken his bones. {Lam 3:4} Now he can see that God has not only acted as an enemy in guiding him into the darkness; Gods dealings have shewn more overt antagonism. The helpless sufferer is like a besieged city, and God, who is conducting the assault, has thrown up a wall round him. With that daring mixture of metaphors, or, to be more precise, with that freedom of sudden transition from the symbol to the subject symbolised which we often meet with in this Book, the poet calls the rampart with which he has been girdled “gall and travail,” for he has felt himself beset with bitter grief and weary toil. {Lam 3:4}
Then the scene changes. The victim of Divine wrath is a captive languishing in a dungeon, which is as dark as the abodes of the dead, as the dwellings of those who have been long dead. {Lam 3:6} The horror of this metaphor is intensified by the idea of the antiquity of Hades. How dismal is the thought of being plunged into a darkness that is already aged-a stagnant darkness, the atmosphere of those who long since lost the last rays of the light of life! There the prisoner is bound by a heavy chain. {Lam 3:7} He cries for help; but he is shut down so low that his prayer cannot reach his Captor. {Lam 3:8}
Again we see him still hampered, though in altered circumstances. He appears as a traveller whose way is blocked, and that not by some accidental fall of rock, but of set purpose, for he finds the obstruction to be of carefully prepared masonry, “hewn stones.” {Lam 3:9} Therefore he has to turn aside, so that his paths become crooked. Yet more terrible does the Divine enmity grow. When the pilgrim is thus forced to leave the highroad and make his way through the adjoining thickets his Adversary avails Himself of the cover to assume a new form, that of a lion or a bear lying in ambush. {Lam 3:10} The consequence is that the hapless man is torn as by the claws and fangs of beasts of prey. {Lam 3:11} But now these wild regions in which the wretched traveller is wandering at the peril of his life suggests the idea of the chase. The image of the savage animals is defective in this respect, that man is their superior in intelligence, though not in strength. But in the present case the victim is in every way inferior to his Pursuer. So God appears as the Huntsman, and the unhappy sufferer as the poor hunted game. The bow is bent, and the arrow directed straight for its mark. {Lam 3:12} Nay, arrow after arrow has already been let fly, and the dreadful Huntsman, too skilful ever to miss His mark, has been shooting “the sons of His quiver into the very vitals of the object of His pursuit.” {Lam 3:13}
Here the poet breaks away from his imagery for a second time to tell us that he has become an object of derision to all his people, and the theme of their mocking songs. {Lam 3:14} This is a striking statement. It shews that the afflicted man is not simply one member of the smitten nation of Israel, sharing the common hardships of the race whose “badge is servitude.” He not merely experiences exceptional sufferings. He meets with no sympathy from his fellow-countrymen. On the contrary, these people so far dissociate themselves from his case that they can find amusement in his misery. Thus, while even a misguided Don Quixote is a noble character in the rare chivalry of his soul, and while his very delusions are profoundly pathetic, many people can only find material for laughter in them, and pride themselves in their superior sanity for so doing, although the truth is, their conduct proves them to be incapable of understanding the lofty ideals that inspire the object of their empty derision; thus Jeremiah was mocked by his unthinking contemporaries, when, whether in error, as they supposed, or wisely, as the event shewed, he preached an apparently absurd policy; and thus a greater than Jeremiah, One as supreme in reasonableness as in goodness, was jeered at by men who thought Him at best a Utopian dreamer, because they were grovelling in earthly thoughts far out of reach of the spiritual world in which He moved.
Returning to imagery, the poet pictures himself as a hardly used guest at a feast. He is fed, crammed, sated; but his food is bitterness, the cup has been forced to his lips, and he has been made drunk-not with pleasant wine, however, but with wormwood. {Lam 3:15} Gravel has been mixed with his bread, or perhaps the thought is that when he has asked for bread stones had been given him. He has been compelled to masticate this unnatural diet, so that his teeth have been broken by it. Even that result he ascribes to God, saying, “He hath broken my teeth.” {Lam 3:16} It is difficult to think of the interference with personal liberty being carried farther than this. Here we reach the extremity of crushed misery.
Reviewing the whole course of his wretched sufferings from the climax of misery, the man Who has seen all this affliction declares that God has cast him off from peace. {Lam 3:17} The Christian sufferer knows what a profound consolation there is in the possession of the peace of God, even when he is passing through the most acute agonies-a peace which can be maintained both amid the wildest tempests of external adversity and in the presence of the fiercest paroxysms of personal anguish. Is it not the acknowledged secret of the martyrs serenity? Happily many an obscure sufferer has discovered it for himself, and found it better than any balm of Gilead. This most precious gift of heaven to suffering souls is denied to the man who here bewails his dismal fate. So too it was denied to Jesus in the garden, and again on the cross. It is possible that the dark day will come when it will be denied to one or another of His people. Then the experience of the moment will be terrible indeed. But it will be brief. An angel ministered to the Sufferer in Gethsemane. The joy of the resurrection followed swiftly on the agonies of Calvary. In the elegy we are now studying a burst of praise and glad confidence breaks out almost immediately after the lowest depths of misery have been sounded, shewing that, as Keats declares in an exquisite line-
“There is a budding morrow in midnight.”
It is not surprising, however, that, for the time being, the exceeding blackness of the night keeps the hope of a new day quite out of sight. The elegist exclaims that he has lost the very idea of prosperity. Not only has his strength perished, his hope in God has perished also. {Lam 3:18} Happily God is far too good a Father to deal with His children according to the measure of their despair. He is found by those who are too despondent to seek Him, because He is always seeking His lost children; and not waiting for them to make the first move towards Him.
When we come to look at the series of pictures of affliction as a whole we shall notice that one general idea runs through them. This is that the victim is hindered, hampered, restrained. He is led into darkness, besieged, imprisoned, chained, driven out of his way, seized in ambuscade, hunted, even forced to eat unwelcome food. This must all point to a specific character of personal experience. The troubles of the sufferer have mainly assumed the form of a thwarting of his efforts. He has not been an indolent, weak, cowardly creature, succumbing at the first sign of opposition. To an active man with a strong will resistance is one of the greatest of troubles, although it will be accepted meekly, as a matter of course, by a person of servile habits. If the opposition comes from God, may it not be that the severity of the trouble is just caused by the obstinacy of self-will? Certainly it does not appear to be so here; but then we must remember the writer is stating his own case.
Two other characteristics of the whole passage may be mentioned. One is the persistence of the Divine antagonism. This is what makes the Case look so hard. The pursuer seems to be ruthless; He will not let His victim alone for a moment. One device follows sharply on another. There is no escape. The second of these characteristics of the passage is a gradual aggravation in the severity of the trials. At first God is only represented as a guide who misleads; then He appears as a besieging enemy; later like a destroyer. And correspondingly the troubles of the sufferer grow in severity, till at last he is flung into the ashes, crushed and helpless.
All this is peculiarly painful reading to us with our Christian thoughts of God. It seems so utterly contrary to the character of our Father revealed in Jesus Christ. But then it is not a part of the Christian revelation, nor was it uttered by a man who had received the benefits of that highest teaching. That, however, is not a complete explanation. The dreadful thoughts about God that are here recorded are almost without parallel even in the Old Testament. How contrary they are to such an idea as that of the pitiful Father in Psa 103:1-22! On the other hand, it should be remembered that if ever we have to make allowance for the personal equation we must be ready to do so most liberally when we are listening to the tale of his wrongs as this is recounted by the sufferer himself. The narrator may be perfectly honest and truthful, but it is not in human nature to be impartial under such circumstances. Even when, as in the present instance, we have reason to believe that the speaker is under the influence of a Divine inspiration, we have no right to conclude that this gift would enable him to take an all-round vision of truth. Still, can we deny that the elegist has presented to our minds but one facet of truth? If we do not accept it as intended for a complete picture of God, and if we confine it to an account of the Divine action under certain circumstances as this appears to one who is most painfully affected by it, without any assertion concerning the ultimate motives of God-and this is all we have any justification for doing-it may teach us important lessons which we are too ready to ignore in favour of less unpleasant notions. Finally it would be quite unfair to the elegist, and it would give us a totally false impression of his ideas, if we were to go no further than this. To understand him at all we must hear him out. The contrast between the first part of this poem and the second is startling in the extreme, and we must not forget that the two are set in the closest juxtaposition, for it is plain that the one is intended to balance the other. The harshness of the opening words could be permitted with the more daring, because a perfect corrective to any unsatisfactory inferences that might be drawn from it was about to be immediately supplied.
The triplet of Lam 3:19-21 serves as a transition to the picture of the other side of the Divine action. It begins with prayer. Thus a new note is struck. The sufferer knows that God is not at heart his enemy. So he ventures to beseech the very Being concerning whose treatment of him he has been complaining so bitterly, to remember his affliction and the misery it has brought on him, the wormwood, the gall of his hard lot. Hope now dawns on him out of his own recollections. What are these? The Authorised Version would lead us to think that when he uses the expression, “This I recall to my mind,” {Lam 3:21} the poet is referring to the encouraging ideas of the verses that immediately follow in the next section. But it is not probable that the last line of a triplet would thus point forward to another part of the poem. It is more consonant with the method of the composition to take this phrase in connection with what precedes it in the same triplet, and a perfectly permissible change in the translation of Lam 3:20 gives good sense in that connection. We may read this:
“Thou (O God) wilt surely remember, for my soul is bowed down within me.”
Thus the recollection that God too has a memory and that He will remember His suffering servant becomes the spring of a new hope.