Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Lamentations 5:7

Our fathers have sinned, [and are] not; and we have borne their iniquities.

7. we have borne their iniquities ] See on Jer 31:29. The children, who, however, it must be acknowledged (see Lam 5:16) shared the guilt of preceding generations, have to bear the penalty escaped by their forbears.

Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

And are not; and we … – Or, they are not; we have borne their iniquities. Our fathers who began this national apostasy died before the hour of punishment.

Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible

Lam 5:7

Our fathers have sinned, and are not, and we have borne their iniquities.

Zions sufferings

The terms unfolded, When in the depths of our distress the iniquities of our forefathers come to our remembrance, at once they aggravate our sins and augment our sorrows (2Ki 22:13; Dan 9:16; Jer 14:19-20). When God comes to find sin successive in generations, the last shall be sure to drink deep of the cup of Divine vengeance (Neh 9:34-35; Neh 9:38; Jer 4:24-25). When ancestors sins are not our cautions (Eze 18:14), it deeply aggravates the guilt of our souls (Neh 13:18; Ezr 9:7; Jer 16:11-13; Zec 1:4-6). The longer heavens patience is abused, the greater and more dreadful is the wrath of God that is deserved (Rom 2:4-5; Rom 1:18; Jer 49:9-11). If we promote sin by indulgence, or by example in our posterities, we shall be sure to entail judgment upon our issue (1Sa 2:29; 1Sa 2:34; 1Sa 2:36). Children are many times executors, they enter upon their fathers sins, and you know that in justice the executor may be sued, the debtor being dead. God may punish the sins of the parents upon the children, and yet the cause of the punishment may be in themselves (Hos 4:12-13). As if any being sick of the plague infect others, every one that dies, is said to die, not of others, but of his own plague. Had their parents been good, had they been pious and zealous for God, there would have been no ground, no cause for this complaint; they could not then have said, Our fathers iniquity is laid as a burden upon our shoulders. It is good to be good parents, parental holiness is advantageous to posterity (Psa 102:28; Psa 112:1-2; Pro 14:26; Jer 32:39).

1. Exemplary piety in the fathers makes an impression upon the childrens hearts (Zec 10:7).

2. Heavens benediction descends from the parents to the children (Act 2:39).

3. Wicked fathers infelicitate their posterity (Job 5:3-4). The Jews were very unhappy parents (Mat 27:25). Children, plead if you can your ancestors integrity before the Lord. The fathers piety is the childs privilege (Psa 116:16; Psa 86:16; 1Ki 8:23-25). Let us labour to be good ourselves, and to plant holiness in our families, that so we may have Gods blessings estated upon our children (Gen 18:19). (D. Swift.)

Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell

Verse 7. Our fathers have sinned, and are not] Nations, as such, cannot be punished in the other world; therefore national judgments are to be looked for only in this life. The punishment which the Jewish nation had been meriting for a series of years came now upon them, because they copied and increased the sins of their fathers, and the cup of their iniquity was full. Thus the children might be said to bear the sins of the fathers, that is, in temporal punishment, for in no other way does God visit these upon the children. See Eze 18:1, &c.

Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible

We must not understand this in the same sense as Eze 18:2, where God reflecteth upon them for using a proverb to this sense. It is the prophet who here speaketh, and in the name of the godly Jews, who would not excuse themselves as if they suffered merely for their forefathers sins. But the prophet confesseth and bewaileth that God had punished their iniquities and the iniquities of their forefathers together; and it was better with their forefathers who had sinned, and were dead and gone, than with them, upon whom the punishment of their iniquity did abide, and was like so to do a long time.

Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole

7. (Jer31:29).

borne their iniquitiesthatis, the punishment of them. The accumulated sins of our fathers fromage to age, as well as our own, are visited on us. They say this as aplea why God should pity them (compare Eze18:2, &c.).

Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible

Our fathers have sinned, [and are] not,…. In the world, as the Targum adds; they were in being, but not on earth; they were departed from hence, and gone into another world; and so were free from the miseries and calamities their children were attended with, and therefore more happy:

and we have borne their iniquities; the punishment of them, or chastisement for them: this is not said by way of complaint, much less as charging God with injustice, in punishing them for their fathers’ sins, or to excuse theirs; for they were ready to own that they had consented to them, and were guilty of the same; but to obtain mercy and pity at the hands of God.

Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible

The Prophet seems here to contend with God, and to utter that blasphemy mentioned by Ezekiel. For when God severely chastised the people, that proverb was commonly used by them,

“

Our fathers did eat a sour grape, and our teeth are blunted.” (Eze 18:2.)

Thus they intimated that they were unjustly and cruelly treated, because they suffered the punishment of others, when they themselves were innocent. So the Prophet seems to quarrel with God when he says that the fathers who sinned were no more; but as we shall presently see, the Prophet confesses also the sins of those who were yet alive. As, then, an ingenuous confession is made by the Prophet, he no doubt abstained here from that blasphemy which is so severely reproved by Ezekiel. Jeremiah had nothing farther from his purpose than to free the people from all blame, as though God had dealt cruelly with them, according to what is said by a heathen poet, —

“

For the sins of the fathers thou undeservedly sufferest, O Roman!” (226)

Another says, —

“

Enough already by our blood Have we suffered for the perjuries of Laomedonian Troy.” (227)

They mean that the people of their age were wholly innocent, and seek in Asia and beyond the sea the cause of evils, as though they never had a sin at Rome. But the meaning of Jeremiah was not this, but he simply intended to say that the people who had been long rebellious against God were already dead, and that it was therefore a suitable time for God to regard the miseries of their posterity. The faithful, then, do not allege here their own innocency before God, as though they were blameless; but only mention that their fathers underwent a just punishment, for that whole generation had perished. Daniel speaks more fully when he says,

“

We have sinned, and our fathers, and our kings.” (Dan 9:8.)

He involved in the same condemnation both the fathers and their children.

But our Prophet’s object was different, even to turn God to mercy, as it has been stated; and to attain this object he says, “O Lord, thou indeed hast hitherto executed just punishment, because our fathers had very long abused thy goodness and forbearance; but now the time is come for thee to try and prove whether we are like our fathers: as, then, they have perished as they deserved, receive us now into favor.” We hence see that thus no quarrel or contention is carried on with God, but only that the miserable exiles ask God to look on them, since their fathers who had provoked God and had experienced his dreadful vengeance, were already dead. (228)

And when he says that the sons bore the iniquity of the fathers, though it be a strong expression, yet its meaning is not as though God had without reason punished their children and not their fathers; for unalterable is that declaration,

“

The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, nor the father the iniquity of the son; but the soul that sinneth it shall die.” (Eze 18:20.)

It may yet be said that children are loaded with the sins of their fathers, because God, as he declares by Moses, extends his vengeance to the third and fourth generation. (Exo 20:5.) And he says also in another place,

“

I will return into the bosom of children the iniquity of their fathers.” (Jer 32:18.)

God then continued his vengeance to their posterity. But yet there is no doubt but that the children who had been so severely punished, bore also the punishment of their own iniquity, for they deserved a hundred deaths. But these two things well agree together, that God returns the iniquity of the fathers into the bosom of their children, and yet that the children are chastised for their own sins.

(226) Horace, Od. 6:1, —

“

Delicta majorum immeritus lues, Romane.”

(227) Virgil, Georg., lib. 1, —

“

Satis jampridem sanguine nostro Laomedonteae luimus perjuria Troiae.”

(228) The words may be thus rendered, —

Our fathers, they sinned and are not; We, their iniquities have we borne.

To bear iniquities, is here evidently to bear their penalty. So when Christ is said to bear our sins, the same thing is meant. — Ed.

Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary

(7) We have borne their iniquities.The words seem at first parallel to the proverb of the sour grapes in Jer. 31:29; Eze. 18:2. Here, however, it is followed in Lam. 5:16 by a confession of personal guilt, and the complaint is simply that the former generation of offenders had passed away without the punishment which now fell upon their descendants, who thus had to bear, as it were, a double penalty.

Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)

7. Our fathers we have borne their iniquities They sinned, but died before the times were ripe for the punishment of the nation, hence we suffer for their sins. Not that they themselves were innocent, but they suffer not only for their own sins but also for those of their progenitors.

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Our fathers sinned, and are not,

And we have borne their iniquities.

The prophet acknowledged that their fathers had sinned and were no longer alive. They had suffered the penalty of sin. And now their offspring themselves were ‘bearing their iniquities’. The sins of the fathers were being visited on the children. But this was not a matter of excusing themselves. It was an acknowledgement that YHWH had a right to be angry because sin had been continual, and a recognition that sins pass on from father to children as the children copy their father. Thus they had to bear God’s judgment on both their father’s sins and their own. They were not claiming to be innocent as Lam 5:16 makes clear. They were rather recognising the reality that sons tend to ape their fathers (see Jer 16:10-11; Jer 32:18), which the principle lying behind punishment to the third and fourth generation (Exo 20:5). When people fell into gross sin it affected not only themselves but their descendants. However, we must remember that such consequences were always avoidable by coming to God in true repentance. God was always ready to respond to such repentance, as the whole sacrificial system made clear.

Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett

Lam 5:7. Our fathers have sinned That is, “Though our fathers have been guilty of great sins, they have died without signal punishment and calamities; which are come upon us their children, who thus bear the punishment of theirs, as well as of our own iniquities.” See Dan 8:11; Dan 8:27. This seems to be the plain meaning of the present verse; and if so, it certainly gives no countenance to the interpretation in the note on chap. Lam 3:27. See Eze 2:3.

Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke

Lam 5:7 Our fathers have sinned, [and are] not; and we have borne their iniquities.

Ver. 7. Our fathers have sinned, and are not. ] They had their payment, but not comparable to ours, who have outsinned them, and do therefore justly bear the punishment of both their sins and our own too. Nobis foret iucundias semel emori, quam vitara invitara vivere.

Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)