Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Lamentations 2:10
The elders of the daughter of Zion sit upon the ground, [and] keep silence: they have cast up dust upon their heads; they have girded themselves with sackcloth: the virgins of Jerusalem hang down their heads to the ground.
10. In this and the two following vv. we have the picture of the state of things in Jerusalem after the king, etc. ( Lam 2:9) had been carried into exile. The half-starving people are left behind in their sufferings.
They have cast up dust upon their heads ] Cp. 2Sa 13:19; Job 2:12.
sackcloth ] Cp. Neh 9:1.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Lam 2:10
The elders . . . keep silence.
Overwhelming judgments
1. The wisest of Gods servants are at their wits end, or fall into despair, if they be deprived of their hope, in the promise of Gods assistance (Psa 119:92).
2. Bodily exercises do profit to further lamentations in the day of heaviness, but are no part of Gods service in themselves.
3. The extremity of Gods judgments do for the time overwhelm Gods dearest children in the greatest measure of grief that can be in this life (Psa 6:3; Psa 22:1).
4. The most dainty ones are made to stoop when Gods hand is heavy upon them for their sins. (J. Udall.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 10. Sit upon the ground] See Clarke on La 1:1.
Keep silence] No words can express their sorrows: small griefs are eloquent, great ones dumb.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Sitting upon the ground, keeping silence, throwing dust on their heads, girding themselves with sackcloth, hanging down the head, were all of them postures, and actions, and gestures of mourners. The meaning of this whole verse is, that the whole city of Jerusalem was in a very sad state and condition, and all persons in it in a mournful posture; not the common people only, but the gravest of their magistracy and ministry, those who were wont to sit in the chairs of magistracy and of teachers. Their young women also, which used to be most brisk and frolic, those whose condition was furthest off from sorrow, and who were least disposed to it, were now all of them drowned in floods of it.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
10. (Job 2:12;Job 2:13). The “elders,”by their example, would draw the others to violent grief.
the virginswho usuallyare so anxious to set off their personal appearances to advantage.
Caph.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
The elders of the daughter of Zion sit on the ground, [and] keep silence,…. Who used to sit in the gate on thrones of judgment, and passed sentence in causes tried before them; or were wont to give advice and counsel, and were regarded as oracles, now sit on the ground, and dumb, as mourners; see Job 2:13;
they have cast up dust upon their heads; on their white hairs and gray locks, which bespoke wisdom, and made them grave and venerable:
they have girded themselves with sackcloth: after the manner of mourners; who used to be clothed in scarlet and rich apparel, in robes suitable to their office as civil magistrates:
the virgins of Jerusalem hang down their heads to the ground: through shame and sorrow; who used to look brisk and gay, and walk with outstretched necks, and carried their heads high, but now low enough. Aben Ezra interprets it of the hair of their heads, which used to be tied up, but now loosed and dishevelled, and hung down as it were to the ground.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
The whole of the people have sunk into deep sorrow over this misfortune. The elders, as the counsellors of the city, sit on the ground in silence, from deep sorrow; cf. Job 2:8, Job 2:13, and regarding the tokens of sorrow, Job 2:12; Jer 4:8; Jer 6:26, etc. the virgins of Jerusalem have renounced their gaiety and bowed their head, sorrowing, to the ground; cf. Lam 1:4.
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
| Complicated Sorrows. | B. C. 588. |
10 The elders of the daughter of Zion sit upon the ground, and keep silence: they have cast up dust upon their heads; they have girded themselves with sackcloth: the virgins of Jerusalem hang down their heads to the ground. 11 Mine eyes do fail with tears, my bowels are troubled, my liver is poured upon the earth, for the destruction of the daughter of my people; because the children and the sucklings swoon in the streets of the city. 12 They say to their mothers, Where is corn and wine? when they swooned as the wounded in the streets of the city, when their soul was poured out into their mothers’ bosom. 13 What thing shall I take to witness for thee? what thing shall I liken to thee, O daughter of Jerusalem? what shall I equal to thee, that I may comfort thee, O virgin daughter of Zion? for thy breach is great like the sea: who can heal thee? 14 Thy prophets have seen vain and foolish things for thee: and they have not discovered thine iniquity, to turn away thy captivity; but have seen for thee false burdens and causes of banishment. 15 All that pass by clap their hands at thee; they hiss and wag their head at the daughter of Jerusalem, saying, Is this the city that men call The perfection of beauty, The joy of the whole earth? 16 All thine enemies have opened their mouth against thee: they hiss and gnash the teeth: they say, We have swallowed her up: certainly this is the day that we looked for; we have found, we have seen it. 17 The LORD hath done that which he had devised; he hath fulfilled his word that he had commanded in the days of old: he hath thrown down, and hath not pitied: and he hath caused thine enemy to rejoice over thee, he hath set up the horn of thine adversaries. 18 Their heart cried unto the Lord, O wall of the daughter of Zion, let tears run down like a river day and night: give thyself no rest; let not the apple of thine eye cease. 19 Arise, cry out in the night: in the beginning of the watches pour out thine heart like water before the face of the Lord: lift up thy hands toward him for the life of thy young children, that faint for hunger in the top of every street. 20 Behold, O LORD, and consider to whom thou hast done this. Shall the women eat their fruit, and children of a span long? shall the priest and the prophet be slain in the sanctuary of the Lord? 21 The young and the old lie on the ground in the streets: my virgins and my young men are fallen by the sword; thou hast slain them in the day of thine anger; thou hast killed, and not pitied. 22 Thou hast called as in a solemn day my terrors round about, so that in the day of the LORD‘s anger none escaped nor remained: those that I have swaddled and brought up hath mine enemy consumed.
Justly are these called Lamentations, and they are very pathetic ones, the expressions of grief in perfection, mourning and woe, and nothing else, like the contents of Ezekiel’s roll, Ezek. ii. 10.
I. Copies of lamentations are here presented and they are painted to the life. 1. The judges and magistrates, who used to appear in robes of state, have laid them aside, or rather are stripped of them, and put on the habit of mourners (v. 10); the elders now sit no longer in the judgment-seats, the thrones of the house of David, but they sit upon the ground, having no seat to repose themselves in, or in token of great grief, as Job’s friends sat with him upon the ground, Job ii. 13. They open not their mouth in the gate, as usual, to give their opinion, but they keep silence, overwhelmed with grief, and not knowing what to say. They have cast dust upon their heads, and girded themselves with sackcloth, as deep mourners used to do; they had lost their power and wealth, and that made the grieve thus. Ploratur lachrymis amissa pecunia veris–Genuine are the tears which we shed over lost property. 2. The young ladies, who used to dress themselves so richly, and walk with stretched-forth necks (Isa. iii. 16), now are humbled; The virgins of Jerusalem hang down their heads to the ground; those are made to know sorrow who seemed to bid defiance to it and were always disposed to be merry. 3. The prophet himself is a pattern to the mourners, v. 11. His eyes do fail with tears; he has wept till he can weep no more, has almost wept his eyes out, wept himself blind. Nor are the inward impressions of grief short of the outward expressions. His bowels are troubled, as they were when he saw these calamities coming (Jer 4:19; Jer 4:20), which, one would think, might have excused him now; but even he, to whom they were no surprise, felt them an insupportable grief, to such a degree that his liver is poured out on the earth; he felt himself a perfect colliquation; all his entrails were melted and dissolved, as Ps. xxii. 14. Jeremiah himself had better treatment than his neighbours, better than he had had before from his own countrymen, nay, their destruction was his deliverance, their captivity his enlargement; the same that made them prisoners made him a favourite; and yet his private interests are swallowed up in a concern for the public, and he bewails the destruction of the daughter of his people as sensibly as if he himself had been the greatest sufferer in that common calamity. Note, The judgments of God upon the land and nation are to be lamented by us, though we, for our parts, may escape pretty well.
II. Calls to lamentation are here given: The heart of the people cried unto the Lord, v. 18. Some fear it was a cry, not of true repentance, but of bitter complaint; their heart was as full of grief as it could hold, and they gave vent to it in doleful shrieks and outcries, in which they made use of God’s name; yet we will charitably suppose that many of them did in sincerity cry unto God for mercy in their distress; and the prophet bids them go on to do so: “O wall of the daughter of Zion! either you that stand upon the wall, you watchmen on the walls (Isa. lxii. 6), when you see the enemies encamped about the walls and making their approaches towards them, or because of the wall (that is the subject of the lamentation), because of the breaking down of the wall (which was not done till about a month after the city was taken), because of this further calamity, let the daughter of Zion lament still.” This was a thing which Nehemiah lamented long after, Neh 1:3; Neh 1:4. “Let tears run down like a river day and night, weep without intermission, give thyself no rest from weeping, let not the apple of thy eye cease.” This intimates, 1. That the calamities would be continuing, and the causes of grief would frequently recur, and fresh occasion would be given them every day and every night to bemoan themselves. 2. That they would be apt, by degrees, to grow insensible and stupid under the hand of God, and would need to be still called upon to afflict their souls yet more and more, till their proud and hard hearts were thoroughly humbled and softened.
III. Causes for lamentation are here assigned, and the calamities that are to be bewailed are very particularly and pathetically described.
1. Multitudes perish by famine, a very sore judgment, and piteous is the case of those that fall under it. God had corrected them by scarcity of provisions through want of rain some time before (Jer. xiv. 1), and they were not brought to repentance by that lower degree of this judgment, and therefore now by the straitness of the siege God brought it upon them in extremity; for, (1.) The children died for hunger in their mothers’ arms: The children and sucklings, whose innocent and helpless state entitles them to relief as soon as any, swoon in the streets (v. 11) as the wounded (v. 12), there being no food to be had for them; those that are starved die as surely as those that are stabbed. They lie a great while crying to their poor mothers for corn to feed them and wine to refresh them, for they are such as had been bred up to the use of wine and wanted it now; but there is none for them, so that at length their soul is poured into their mothers’ bosom, and there they breathe their last. This is mentioned again (v. 19): They faint for hunger in the top of every street. Yet this is not the worst, (2.) There were some little children that were slain by their mothers’ hands and eaten, v. 20. Such was the scarcity of provision that the women ate the fruit of their own bodies, even their children when they were but of a span long, according to the threatening, Deut. xxviii. 53. The like was done in the siege of Samaria, 2 Kings vi. 29. Such extremities, nay, such barbarities, were they brought to by the famine. Let us, in our abundance, thank God that we have food convenient, not only for ourselves, but for our children.
2. Multitudes fall by the sword, which devours one as well as another, especially when it is in the hand of such cruel enemies as the Chaldeans were. (1.) They spared no character, no, not the most distinguished; even the priest and the prophet, who of all men, one would think, might expect protection from heaven and veneration on earth, are slain, not abroad in the field of battle, where they are out of their place, as Hophni and Phinehas, but in the sanctuary of the Lord, the place of their business and which they hoped would be a refuge to them. (2.) They spared no age, no, not those who, by reason of their tender or their decrepit age, were exempted from taking up the sword; for even they perished by the sword. “The young, who have not yet come to bear arms, and the old, who have had their discharge, lie on the ground, slain in the streets, till some kind hand is found that will bury them.” (3.) They spared no sex: My virgins and my young men have fallen by the sword. In the most barbarous military executions that ever we read of the virgins were spared, and made part of the spoil (Num 31:18; Jdg 5:30), but here the virgins were put to the sword, as well as the young men. (4.) This was the Lord’s doing; he suffered the sword of the Chaldeans to devour thus without distinction: Thou has slain them in the day of thy anger, for it is God that kills and makes alive, and saves alive, as he pleases. But that which follows is very harsh: Thou has killed, and not pitied; for his soul is grieved for the misery of Israel. The enemies that used them thus cruelly were such as he had both mustered and summoned (v. 22): “Thou hast called in, as in a solemn day, my terrors round about, that is, the Chaldeans, who are such a terror to me;” enemies crowded into Jerusalem now as thickly as ever worshippers used to do on a solemn festival, so that they were quite overpowered with numbers, and none escaped nor remained; Jerusalem was made a perfect slaughter-house. Mothers are cut to the heart to see those whom they have taken such care of, and pains with, and whom they have been so tender of, thus inhumanly used, suddenly cut off, though not soon reared: Those that I have swaddled, and brought up, has my enemy consumed, as if they were brought forth for the murderer, like lambs for the butcher, Hosea ix. 13. Zion, who was a mother to them all, lamented to see those who were brought up in her courts, and under the tuition of her oracles, thus made a prey.
3. Their false prophets cheated them, v. 14. This was a thing which Jeremiah had lamented long before, and had observed with a great concern (Jer. xiv. 13): Ah! Lord God, the prophets say unto them, You shall not see the sword; and here he inserts it among his lamentations: Thy prophets have seen vain and foolish things for thee; they pretended to discover for thee, and then to discover to thee, the mind and will of God, to see the visions of the Almighty and then to speak his words; but they were all vain and foolish things; their visions were all their own fancies, and, if they thought they had any, it was only the product of a crazed head or a heated imagination, as appeared by what they delivered, which was all idle and impertinent: nay, it is most likely that they themselves knew that the visions they pretended were counterfeit, and all a sham, and made use of only to colour that which they designedly imposed upon the people with, that they might make an interest in them for themselves. They are thy prophets, not God’s prophets; he never sent them, nor were they pastors after his heart, but the people set them up, told them what they should say, so that they were prophets after their hearts. (1.) Prophets should tell people of their faults, should show them their sins, that they may bring them to repentance, and so prevent their ruin; but these prophets knew that would lose them the people’s affections and contributions, and knew they could not reprove their hearers without reproaching themselves at the same time, and therefore they have not discovered thy iniquity; they saw it not themselves, or, if they did, saw so little evil in it, or danger from it, that they would not tell them of it, though that might have been a means, by taking away their iniquity, to turn away their captivity. (2.) Prophets should warn people of the judgments of God coming upon them, but these saw for them false burdens; the messages they pretended to deliver to them from God they knew to be false, and falsely ascribed to God; so that, by soothing them up in carnal security, they caused that banishment which, by plain dealing, they might have prevented.
4. Their neighbours laughed at them (v. 15): All that pass by thee clap their hands at thee. Jerusalem had made a great figure, got a great name, and borne a great sway, among the nations; it was the envy and terror of all about; and, when the city was thus reduced; they all (as men are apt to do in such a case) triumphed in its fall; they hissed, and wagged the head, pleasing themselves to see how much it had fallen from its former pretensions. Is this the city (said they) that men called the perfection of beauty? Ps. l. 2. How is it now the perfection of deformity! Where is all its beauty now? Is this the city which was called the joy of the whole earth (Ps. xlviii. 2), which rejoiced in the gifts of God’s bounty and grace more than any other place, and which all the earth rejoiced in? Where is all its joy now and all its glorying? It is a great sin thus to make a jest of others’ miseries, and adds very much affliction to the afflicted.
5. Their enemies triumphed over them, v. 16. Those that wished ill to Jerusalem and her peace now vent their spite and malice, which before they concealed; they now open their mouths, nay, they widen them; they hiss and gnash their teeth in scorn and indignation; they triumph in their own success against her, and the rich prey they have got in making themselves masters of Jerusalem: “We have swallowed her up; it is our doing, and it is our gain; it is all our own now. Jerusalem shall never be either courted or feared as she has been. Certainly this is the day that we have long looked for; we have found it; we have seen it; aha! so would we have it.” Note, The enemies of the church are apt to take its shocks for its ruins, and to triumph in them accordingly; but they will find themselves deceived; for the gates of hell shall not prevail against the church.
6. Their God, in all this, appeared against them (v. 17): The Lord has done that which he had devised. The destroyers of Jerusalem could have no power against her unless it were given them from above. They are but the sword in God’s hand; it is he that has thrown down, and has not pitied. “In this controversy of his with us we have not had the usual instances of his compassion towards us.” He has caused they enemy to rejoice over thee (see Job xxx. 11); he has set up the horn of thy adversaries, has given them power and matter for pride. This is indeed the highest aggravation of the trouble, that God has become their enemy, and yet it is the strongest argument for patience under it; we are bound to submit to what God does, for, (1.) It is the performance of his purpose: The Lord has done that which he had devised; it is done with counsel and deliberation, not rashly, or upon a sudden resolve; it is the evil that he has framed (Jer. xviii. 11), and we may be sure it is framed so as exactly to answer the intention. What God devises against his people is designed for them, and so it will be found in the issue. (2.) It is the accomplishment of his predictions; it is the fulfilling of the scripture; he has now put in execution his word that he had commanded in the days of old. When he gave them his law by Moses he told them what judgments he would certainly inflict upon them if they transgressed that law; and now that they have been guilty of the transgression of this law he had executed the sentence of it, according to Lev 26:16; Deu 28:15. Note, In all the providences of God concerning his church it is good to take notice of the fulfilling of his word; for there is an exact agreement between the judgments of God’s hand and the judgments of his mouth, and when they are compared they will mutually explain and illustrate each other.
IV. Comforts for the cure of these lamentations are here sought for and prescribed.
1. They are sought for and enquired after, v. 13. The prophet seeks to find out some suitable acceptable words to say to her in this case: Wherewith shall I comfort thee, O virgin! daughter of Zion? Note, We should endeavour to comfort those whose calamities we lament, and, when our passions have made the worst of them, our wisdom should correct them and labour to make the best of them; we should study to make our sympathies with or afflicted friends turn to their consolation. Now the two most common topics of comfort, in case of affliction, are here tried, but are laid by because they would not hold. We commonly endeavour to comfort our friends by telling them, (1.) That their case is not singular, nor without precedent; there are many whose trouble is greater, and lies heavier upon them, than theirs does; but Jerusalem’s case will not admit this argument: “What thing shall I liken to thee, or what shall I equal to thee, that I may comfort thee? What city, what country, is there, whose case is parallel to thine? What witness shall I produce to prove an example that will reach thy present calamitous state? Alas! there is none, no sorrow like thine, because there is none whose honour was like thine.” (2.) We tell them that their case is not desperate, but that it may easily be remedied; but neither will that be admitted here, upon a view of human probabilities; for thy breach is great, like the sea, like the breach which the sea sometimes makes upon the land, which cannot be repaired, but still grows wider and wider. Thou art wounded, and who shall heal thee? No wisdom nor power of man can repair the desolations of such a broken shattered state. It is to no purpose therefore to administer any of these common cordials; therefore,
2. The method of cure prescribed is to address themselves to God, and by a penitent prayer to commit their case to him, and to be instant and constant in such prayers (v. 19): “Arise out of thy dust, out of thy despondency, cry out in the night, watch unto prayer; when others are asleep, be thou upon thy knees, importunate with God for mercy; in the beginning of the watches, of each of the four watches, of the night (let thy eyes prevent them, Ps. cxix. 148), then pour out thy heart like water before the Lord, be free and full in prayer, be sincere and serious in prayer, open thy mind, spread thy case before the Lord; lift up thy hands towards him in holy desire and expectation; beg for the life of thy young children. These poor lambs, what have they done? 2 Sam. xxiv. 17. Take with you words, take with you these words (v. 20), Behold, O Lord! and consider to whom thou hast done this, with whom thou hast dealt thus. Are they not thy own, the seed of Abraham thy friend and of Jacob thy chosen? Lord, take their case into thy compassionate consideration!” Note, Prayer is a salve for every sore, even the sorest, a remedy for every malady, even the most grievous. And our business in prayer is not to prescribe, but to subscribe to the wisdom and will of God; to refer our case to him, and then to leave it with him. Lord, behold and consider, and thy will be done.
Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary
Vs. 10-13: FAMINE, AND ITS CONSEQUENT SUFFERINGS
1. The “elders”, who held positions of great influence and responsibility in the land, are left without any civil duties because of the utter desolation of the land, (vs. 10).
a. Thus, they sit upon the ground in grief-stricken impotence, and dumb with grief, (comp. Job 2:13; Isa 3:26; Eze 3:15; Eze 27:30; Amo 8:3).
b. The placing of dust upon one’s head was a sign of mourning, (Jos 7:6; Job 2:12; Eze 27:30).
c. The clothing of one’s self in sackcloth (which was usually made of black goat hair) signified mourning for the dead (Gen 37:24), penitence for sin (1Ki 21:27-29), or the lamentation of some great calamity, (Ezr 4:1; Job 16:15; Jer 6:26).
d. In affliction and grief, her virgins hang their heads to the ground, (Lam 1:4).
2. In verses 11-12 Jeremiah pictures the deep emotional exhaustion of both himself and Jerusalem: failing eyes (Lam 1:16; Lam 3:48-51; Jer 9:1), troubled hearts (Lam 1:20; Jer 4:19), and the “liver” (viewed as the seat of emotions) poured out upon the ground (comp. Job 16:13); they cannot escape the horrors of destruction so permanently fixed upon the vision of memory!
a. They have seen young children and sucklings faint, for very hunger, in the open places of the city, (vs. 19; comp. Jer 44:7).
b. They cannot forget the pleadings of those little ones for “bread and wine” – the most staple articles of food, (Deu 11:14; Jer 5:17).
c. And they can still hear their pain-racked groans when, faint with starvation, they collapse, like wounded men – their lives ebbing away in the bosom of their helpless and grief-stricken mothers! (Lam 4:4).
d. What a stark contrast to the blessings promised when the nation is ultimately restored! (Zec 8:5).
3. Though mourners are sometimes consoled by the realization that they do not grieve alone, the prophet searches in vain for some word that will soothe the gaping wound of the daughter of Zion; her only hope for comfort is in the God whom she has so grievously offended by her willful wickedness, (vs. 13; comp. Psalms 42).
a. The tragic thing about the calamity that befalls those who rebel against the Most High is that the CONSEQUENCES OF SIN often fall upon the Innocent as well as the guilty -Jesus Christ being the supreme illustration of this principle, (1Pe 2:22).
b. The corporate nature of the covenant made on Mt Sinai carried with it a corporate responsibility; the callous indifference of Judean parents to the claims of Jehovah upon their lives, and those of their children; and the selling of their children in spiritual bondage to Baal, made the righteous judgment of God upon the whole A MORAL NECESSITY! (Exo 20:4-5).
c. And parents still have a tremendous responsibility for the physical, moral and spiritual well-being of their children, (Eph 6:1; Col 3:20; 1Ti 5:4).
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
The Prophet here strikingly represents the grievousness of the people’s calamity, when he says, that the elders, as in hopeless despair, were lying on the ground, that they cast dust on their heads, that they were clad in sackcloth, as it was usually done in very grievous sorrow, and that the virgins bent their heads down to the ground. The meaning is, that the elders knew not what to do, and led others. to join them in acts of fruitless and abject lamentation. We indeed know that young women are over-careful as to their form and beauty, and indulge themselves in pleasures; and that when they roll themselves with their face and hair on the ground, it is a token of extreme mourning. This is what the Prophet means.
They were wont indeed to put on sackcloth as a token of repentance, and to cast dust on their heads; but their minds were often so confused, that they only thus set forth their mourning and sorrow, and had no regard to God; and hypocrites, when they put on sackcloth, pretended to repent, but it was a false pretense. Now in this place the Prophet does not mean that the elders by adopting these rites professed to repent and humbly to solicit pardon; but refers to them only as tokens of sorrow; as though he had said, that the elders had no resources, and that the young women had no hope nor joy. For the elders did lie down on the ground, as it is usual with those who have no remedy. We now understand the meaning of the Prophet. (157) It follows, —
(157) The verse may be thus rendered, —
10. They sit on the ground, they are silent, the elders of the daughter of Sion; They have cast dust on their head, they have girded on sackcloth; They have bent to the ground their head, the daughters of Jerusalem.
—
Ed
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
EXEGETICAL NOTES.
() Lam. 2:10. Two classes, who were exponents of the intelligence and joy of the people, prostrated like the rest, are no longer capable of acting their parts. They sit on the ground, are silent, the elders of the daughter of Zion; they exhibit other profound tokens of overwhelming sufferings. Small griefs are eloquentgreat ones are dumb. Also among the ruins they hang down their heads to the ground, the virgins of Jerusalem; the song, the timbrel, the dance, have all been abandoned as vain things.
The retrospect of the poet, which had brought before him one sad scene after another in the destruction of the Jewish state, and the desperate lot of various classes of its people, produced a turmoil of emotions in himself, and appeals to men and God to join in his lamentations.
HOMILETICS
VOICELESS WOE
(Lam. 2:10)
I. Too deep for words. The elders of the daughter of Zion sit upon the ground and keep silence. A graphic description of sympathy and sorrow. The judges and magistrates, accustomed to occupy with dignity the judgment-seats, the thrones of the house of David, and to discourse eloquently on important points of law, now sit dejectedly upon the ground, without uttering a word. It was thus that the friends of the afflicted Job silently expressed their sympathy (Job. 2:13). There is a moment in the swing of a great sorrow when speech seems impossiblewhen words, if spoken, would grate upon the ear as a harsh intrusion. We prefer to be left alone and undisturbed till the pressure of the trial is relieved. We are distraught, stunned, and want time to come to ourselves. The most delicate and effectual way in which our kindest friends can help us is to be silent. No words can express our sorrow. Small griefs are eloquent enough, but great ones are dumb.
II. Expressed in abject humiliation. They have cast up dust upon their heads; they have girded themselves with sackcloth. They are stripped of their robes of state, and all their judicial dignities and prestige. They have lost their offices and their wealth. Greatness and prosperity are exchanged for sackcloth and ashes. The loss of worldly goods brings sorrow to many. An old Latin proverb says, Genuine are the tears shed over lost property. Those who have boasted most about their possessions, and carried their heads high in times of plenty, feel most keenly the humiliating straits of poverty. But how crushing is the humiliation when we realise we have lost allour wealth, our friends, our national status, our religion, our God! Such a woe is voiceless indeed.
III. Overwhelms the soul with conscious shame. The virgins of Jerusalem hang down their heads to the ground. Time was when the haughty daughters of Zion courted public admiration as they tripped mincingly along the streets of Jerusalem, decked in richest apparel, and their every movement musical with tinkling ornaments (Isa. 3:16); but now their pride is humbled, and they are bowed to the earth with conscious shame. And yet it is from this broken and dejected condition we trace the beginning of better things. It is on crushed grain that man is fed; it is by bruised plants that he is restored to health. It was by broken pitchers that Gideon triumphed; on broken pieces of the ship that Paul and his companions were saved. It was by the bruised and torn bodies of the saints that the truth was made to triumph. When we examine the process of moral reform in nations and individuals, we observe how effectually God has used many broken things in the rebuilding of a shattered characterbroken earthly hopes, broken bodily health, broken fortunes, broken hearts. A broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise (Psa. 51:17; Psa. 34:18).
LESSONS.
1. The greatest sorrow is speechless.
2. A sense of sin is a sense of personal helplessness.
3. The grace of God can change the greatest woe into hope and gladness.
ILLUSTRATIONS. The loneliness of woe. You are tried alone, alone you must pass into the desert, alone you must be sifted by the world; there are moments, known only to a mans own self, when he sits by the poisoned springs of existence, yearning for a morrow which shall free him from the strife. Let life be a life of faith; do not go timorously about inquiring what others think, what others believe, and what others say. God is near you. Throw yourself fearlessly on Him. Trembling mortal! there is an unknown might within your soul which will wake when you command it. Every son of man who would attain the true end of his being must be baptized with fire.F. W. Robertson.
Dejection and despair. The more sin and corruption grow, and the man becomes fully conscious of it, the more does dejection grow also, and this changes at last into despair, which is a state of entire hopelessness, where all possibilities have vanished, all gates and ways are closed to a man. There is a despair for a hard fate, and it not seldom happens that a man, in consequence of a single severe stroke, makes a sudden leap from his natural state of security into a state of despair, be it that he has lost a beloved human being or his means, or in any other misfortune. Against this form of despair even heathenism had a remedyresignation, submission to the inevitable. But the deepest despair is when a man gives up hope, not merely for this or that which he called his own, but for himself as a moral being. There is one sustaining and saving powerfaith in God. Despair may and should become the transition to salvation, if the man only despairs of himself, but does not give up his God. In the expression of entire inability, of deepest helplessnessO wretched man that I amthere is latent a hope of redemption, the hope that what is impossible with man is possible with God.Martensen.
The ravages of suffering. After the relief of the city of Paris, the strain and fatigue through which M.had gone told seriously upon his health. He could not forget the horrors he had witnessed. His face began to look worn. His hair became greyer. He looked depressed. His usual cheerful and buoyant energy disappeared, and he became listless, self-absorbed, and melancholy.
Depression. Just before George Moores entrance into his palatial house in Cumberland, his wife died. This brought an almost intolerable sense of loneliness. One day, going to see an intimate friend, he said, How blessed is he amidst his lovely family! I wonder whether he has a coffin in any cupboard.
Solitude oppressive. When Thomas, the missionary to India, reached Calcutta, he was oppressed with a sense of loneliness. He put an advertisement in the newspapers asking if there was another Christian in the country, and begging for an interview. But there was no answer!
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
(10) The elders of the daughter of Zion . . .The despondency of the people is indicated by the outward signs of woe. Instead of taking counsel for the emergency, the elders sit, like Jobs friends (Job. 2:11-13), as if the evil were inevitable. The maidens, who had once joined with timbrels and dances in festive processions, walk to and fro with downcast eyes.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
The Sad State Of The People Of Jerusalem ( Lam 2:10-12 ).
The prophet now describes in retrospect the sad state of the people of Jerusalem during and after the terrible siege. The elders were in mourning, the virgins hung their heads to the ground, the young children and babes collapsed with hunger crying out, ‘where is our food?’ Compare also Lam 2:19; Lam 4:4-5. (Later we will learn that some mothers were even eating their own children – Lam 2:20; Lam 4:10). It moved the prophet to anguish.
Lam 2:10
(Yod) The elders of the daughter of Zion,
Sit on the ground, they keep silence,
They have cast up dust on their heads,
They have girded themselves with sackcloth,
The virgins of Jerusalem,
Hang down their heads to the ground.
The elders were the leaders and the old men, those who were the most respected by society, and to whom the people looked for guidance. But now they had nothing to say or offer. They sat in silence, covered their heads with ashes and put on sackcloth (both signs of deep mourning).
The virgins are mentioned as being the most joyous of people, with their timbrels and dances, full of expectancy for the future. But now all that they could do was hang their heads to the ground. This may have been because they had been raped by the invaders, or simply due to the fact that they now had no expectations.
Alternately we may see the elders at the top and the virgins at the bottom as inclusive of all the people (elders, men, women, young men, virgins).
Lam 2:11
(Kaph) My eyes fail with tears,
My heart is troubled,
My liver is poured on the earth,
Because of the destruction of the daughter of my people,
Because the young children and the babes,
Swoon in the streets of the city.
What the prophet saw moved him to anguish. His eyes failed with tears, his heart (mind) was troubled, his liver (probably seen as the centre of pain or of emotion) was poured forth on the earth. And why? Because he was witnessing the destruction of ‘the daughter of my people’, in other words either Jerusalem (Jer 14:17), or the people of Jerusalem. And because he was seeing young children and babes fainting with hunger in the streets of the city.
The phrase ‘daughter of my people’ is Isaianic (Isa 22:4), and regularly repeated by Jeremiah (Jer 4:11; Jer 6:14 and often). Its meaning appears to vary between indicating the people as a whole and indicating Jerusalem.
Lam 2:12
(Lamed) They say to their mothers,
Where is grain and wine?
When they swoon as the wounded,
In the streets of the city,
When their soul is poured out,
Into their mothers’ bosom.
The prophet draws a sad picture of the children crying out to their mothers for food, puzzled as why she cannot feed them as they faint from hunger in the streets and cling tightly to their mothers’ breasts. The picture is a piteous one, the fruit of man’s inhumanity.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Lam 2:10 The elders of the daughter of Zion sit upon the ground, [and] keep silence: they have cast up dust upon their heads; they have girded themselves with sackcloth: the virgins of Jerusalem hang down their heads to the ground.
Ver. 10. The elders of the daughters of Zion. ] Who sat once aloft passing sentence, and held themselves, haply, too high to be told their duties by a poor prophet.
Sit upon the ground.
And keep silence.
They have cast dust upon their heads.
They have girded themselves with sackcloth.
The virgins of Jerusalem.
Hang down their heads to the ground.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
girded . . . with sackcloth. The outward symbol of mourning.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
elders: Lam 4:5, Lam 4:16, Lam 5:12, Lam 5:14, Job 2:13, Isa 3:26, Isa 47:1, Isa 47:5
sit: Sitting on the ground was a posture of mourning and deep distress. Hence the coin struck by Vespasian, on the capture of Jerusalem, has on the obverse side a palm tree, the emblem of Judea, and under it a woman, the emblem of Jerusalem, sitting down, with her elbow on her knee, and her head supported by her hand, with the legend Judea capta. Lam 1:1
and keep: Lam 3:28, Jer 8:14, Amo 5:13, Amo 8:3
cast up: Jos 7:6, 2Sa 13:19, Job 2:12, Rev 18:19
they have girded: Isa 15:3, Isa 36:22, Eze 7:18, Eze 27:31, Joe 1:8
the virgins: Lam 1:4, Amo 8:13
Reciprocal: Psa 137:1 – the rivers Isa 3:24 – a girding Jer 13:18 – sit Lam 1:8 – she sigheth Eze 26:16 – sit Eze 27:30 – cast Rev 11:3 – clothed
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Lam 2:10. This verse is a vivid picture of tile dejected state of the leading men of the nation who were at that time captives in the land of Babylon. Keep silence shows how completely they were depressed over the conditions, so much so that they were silenced. This very situation was predicted in the 137th Psalm.
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
Lam 2:10-13. The elders, &c., sit upon the ground, and keep silence
These and the other expressions of this and the two following verses betoken the deepest mourning and sorrow. Mine eyes do fail with tears My sight is become dim with weeping. My bowels are troubled As they were when he foresaw these calamities coming, Jer 4:19-20. My liver is poured upon the earth My vitals seem to be dissolved, and have lost all their strength. That the mental passions. says Blaney, have a considerable influence upon the habit of the body in various instances, is a fact not to be questioned. And experience daily shows, that a violent uneasiness of mind tends greatly to promote a redundance and overflowing of vitiated bile. The liver is the proper seat of the bile, where its secretions are carried on. Hence the prophets meaning in this place seems to be, that he felt as if his whole liver was dissolved and carried off in bile, on account of the copious discharge brought on by continual vexation and fretting. Job expresses the same thing, Job 16:13, where he says, He poureth out my gall upon the ground. Because the children and sucklings swoon in the streets For want of sustenance. As the wounded As those who are not presently despatched, but die a lingering death. What thing shall I take to witness for thee? What instance can I bring of any calamity like thine, that such an example may be some mitigation of thy complaints. For thy breach is great, like the sea, &c. The breach made in thee is like the breaking in of the sea that overflows a whole country, where no stop can be put to the inundation.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
The most respected leaders of the Israelites had suffered humiliation, and now sat on the ground with dust on their heads, signs of mourning. Girding with sackcloth and bowing to the ground also expressed grief over what the Lord had done. Thus the Lord broke down the leaders of the nation as well as its walls.
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN
Lam 2:10-17
PASSION and poetry, when they fire the imagination, do more than personify individual material things. By fusing the separate objects in the crucible of a common emotion which in some way appertains to them all, they personify this grand unity, and so lift their theme into the region of the sublime. Thus while in his second elegy the author of the Lamentations first dwells on the desolation of inanimate objects, -the temple, fortresses, country cottages, -these are all of interest to him only because they belong to Jerusalem, the city of his hearts devotion, and it is the city herself that moves his deepest feelings; and when in the second part of the poem he proceeds to describe the miserable condition of living persons-men, women, and children-profoundly pathetic as the picture he now paints appears to us in its piteous details, it is still regarded by its author as a whole, and the peoples sufferings are so very terrible in his eyes because they are the woes of Jerusalem.
Some attempt to sympathise with the large and lofty view of the elegist may be a wholesome corrective to the intense individualism of modern habits of thought. The difficulty for us is to see that this view is not merely ideal, that it represents a great, solid truth, the truth that the perfect human unit is not an individual, but a more or less extensive group of persons, mutually harmonised and organised in a common life, a society of some sort-the family, the city, the state, mankind. By bearing this in mind we shall be able to perceive that sufferings which in themselves might seem sordid and degrading can attain to something of epic dignity.
It is in this spirit that the poet deplores the exile of the king and the princes. He is not now concerned with the private troubles of these exalted persons. Judah was a limited monarchy, though not after the pattern of. government familiar to us, but rather in the style of the Plantagenet rule, according to which the soverign shared his authority with a number of powerful barons, each of whom was lord over his own territory. The men described as “the princes of Israel” were not, for the most part, members of the royal family; they were the heads of tribes and families. Therefore the banishment of these persons, together with the king, meant for the Jews who were left behind the loss of their ruling authorities. Then it seems most reasonable to connect the clause which follows the reference to the exile with the sufferings of Jerusalem rather than with the hardships of the captives, because the whole context is concerned with the former subject. This phrase read literally is, “The law is not.” {Lam 2:9} Our Revisers have followed the Authorised Version in connecting it with the previous expression, “among the nations,” which describes the place of exile, so as to lead us to read it as a statement that the king and the princes were enduring the hardship of residence in a land where their sacred Torah was not observed. If, however, we take the words in harmony with the surrounding thoughts, we are reminded by them that the removal of the national rulers involved to the Jews the cessation of the administration of their law. The residents still left in the land were reduced to a condition of anarchy; or, if the conquerors had begun to administer some sort of martial law, this was totally alien to the revered Torah of Israel. Josiah had based his reformation on the discovery of the sacred law-book. But the mere possession of this was little consolation if it was not administered, for the Jews had not fallen to the condition of the Samaritans of later times who came to worship the roll of the Pentateuch as an idol. They were not even like the scribes and Talmudists among their own descendants, to whom the law itself was a religion, though only read in the cloister of the student. The loss of good government was to them a very solid evil. In a civilised country, in times of peace and order, we breathe law as we breathe air, unconsciously, too familiar with it to appreciate the immeasurable benefits it confers upon us.
With the banishment of the custodians of law the poet associates the accompanying silence of the voice of prophecy. This, however, is so important and significant a fact, that it must be reserved for separate and fuller treatment. (See next chapter.)
Next to the princes come the elders, to whom was intrusted the administration of justice in the minor courts. These were not sent into captivity; for at first only the aristocracy was considered sufficiently important to be carried off to Babylon. But though the elders were left in the land, the country was too disorganised for them to be able to hold their local tribunals. Perhaps these were forbidden by the invaders; perhaps the elders had no heart to decide cases when they saw no means of getting their decisions executed. Accordingly, instead of appearing in dignity as the representatives of law and order among their neighbours, the most respected citizens sit in silence on the ground, girded in sackcloth, and casting dust over their heads, living pictures of national mourning. {Lam 2:10}
The virgins of Jerusalem are named immediately after the elders. Their position in the city is very different from that of the “grave and reverend signiors”; but we are to see that while the dignity of age and rank affords no immunity from trouble, the gladsomeness of youth and its comparative irresponsibility are equally ineffectual as safeguards. The elders and the virgins have one characteristic in common. They are both silent. These young girls are the choristers whose clear, sweet voices used to ring out in strains of joy at every festival. Now both the grave utterances of magistrates and the blithe singing of maidens are hushed into one gloomy silence. Formerly the girls would dance to the sound of song and cymbal. How changed must things be that the once gay dancers sit with their heads bowed to the ground, as still as the mourning elders!
But now, like Dante when introduced by his guide to some exceptionally agonising spectacle in the infernal regions, the poet bursts into tears, and seems to feel his very being melting away at the contemplation of the most heart-rending scene in the many mournful tableaux of the woes of Jerusalem. Breaking off from his recital of the facts to express his personal distress in view of the next item, he prepares us for some rare and dreadful exhibition of misery; and the tale that he has to tell is quite enough to account for the start of horror with which it is ushered in. The poet makes us listen to the cry of the children. There are babies at the breast fainting from hunger, and older children, able to speak, but not yet able to comprehend the helpless circumstances in which their miserable parents are placed, calling to their mothers for food and drink-a piercing appeal, enough to drive to the madness of grief and despair. Crying in vain for the first necessaries of life, these poor children, like the younger infants, faint in the streets, and cast themselves on their mothers bosoms to die. {Lam 2:11-12} This, then, is the picture in contemplation of which the poet completely breaks down-children swooning in sight of all the people, and dying of hunger in their mothers arms! He must be recalling scenes of the late siege. Then the fainting little ones, as they sank down pale and ill, resembled the wounded men who crept back from the fight by the walls to fall and die in the streets of the beleaguered city.
This is just the sharpest sting in the sufferings of the children. They share the fearful fate of their seniors, and yet they have had no part in the causes that led to it. We are naturally perplexed as well as distressed at this piteous spectacle of childhood. The beauty, the simplicity, the weakness, the tenderness, the sensitiveness, the helplessness of infancy appeal to our sympathies with peculiar force. But over and above these touching considerations there is a mystery attaching to the whole subject of the presence of pain and sorrow in young lives that baffles all reasoning. It is not only hard to understand why the bud should be blighted before it has had time to open to the sunshine: this haste in the march of misery to meet her victims on the threshold of life is to our minds a very amazing sight. And yet it is not the most perplexing part of the problem raised by the mystery of the suffering of children.
When we turn to the moral elements of the case we encounter its most serious difficulties. Children may not be accounted innocent in the absolute sense of the word. Even unconscious infants come into the world with hereditary tendencies to the evil habits of their ancestors; but then every principle of justice resists the attachment of guilt or responsibility to an unsought and undeserved inheritance. And although children soon commit offences on their own account, it is not the consequences of these youthful follies that here trouble us. The cruel wrongs of childhood that overshadow the worlds history with its darkest mystery have travelled on to their victims from quite other regions-regions of which the poor little sufferers are ignorant with the ignorance of perfect innocence. Why do children thus share in evils they had no hand in bringing upon the community?
It is perhaps well that we should acknowledge quite frankly that there are mysteries in life which no ingenuity of thought can fathom. The suffering of childhood is one of the greatest of these apparently insoluble riddles of the universe. We have to learn that in view of such a problem as is here raised we too are but infants crying in the night.
Still there is no occasion for us to aggravate the riddle by adding to it manufactured difficulties; we may even admit such mitigation of its severity as the facts of the case suggest. When little children suffer and die in their innocence they are free at least from those agonies of remorse for the irrecoverable past, and of apprehension concerning the doom of the future, that haunt the minds of guilty men, and frequently far exceed the physical pains endured. Beneath their hardest woes they have a peace of God that is the counterpart of the martyrs serenity.
Nevertheless, when we have said all that can be said in this direction, there remains the sickening fact that children do suffer and pine and die. Still, though this cannot be explained away, there are two truths that we should set beside it before we attempt to form any judgment on the whole subject. The first is that taught so emphatically by our Lord when He declared that the victims of an accident or the sufferers in an indiscriminate slaughter were not to be accounted exceptional sinners. {Luk 13:1-5} But if suffering is by no means a sign of sin in the victim we may go further, and deny that it is in all respects an evil. It may be impossible for us to accept the Stoic paradox in the case of little children whom even the greatest pedant would scarcely attempt to console with philosophic maxims. In the endurance of them, the pain and sorrow and death of the young cannot but seem to us most real evils, and it is our plain duty to do all in our power to check and stay everything of the kind, We must beware of the indolence that lays upon Providence the burden of troubles that are really due to our own inconsiderateness. In pursuing the policy that led to the disastrous siege of their city the Jews should have known how many innocent victims would be dragged into the vortex of misery if the course they had chosen were to fail. The blind obstinacy of the men who refused to listen to the warnings so emphatically pronounced by the great prophets of Jehovah, the desperate self-will of these men, pitted against the declared counsel of God, must bear the blame. It is monstrous to charge the providence of God with the consequences of actions that God has forbidden.
A second truth must be added, for there still remains the difficulty that children are placed, by no choice of their own, in circumstances that render them thus liable to the effects of other peoples sins and follies. We can never understand human life if we persist in considering each person by himself. That we are members one of another, so that if one member suffers all the members suffer, is the law of human experience as well as the principle of Christian churchmanship. Therefore we must regard the wrongs of children that so disturb us as part of the travail and woe of mankind. Bad as it is in itself that these innocents should be thus involved in the consequences of the misconduct of their elders, it would not be any improvement for them to be cut off from all connection with their predecessors in the great family of mankind. Taken on the whole, the solidarity of man certainly makes more for the welfare of childhood than for its disadvantage. And we must not think of childhood alone, deeply as we are moved at the sight of its unmerited sufferings. If children are part of the race, whatever children endure must be taken as but one element in the vast experience that goes to make up the life-history of mankind. All this is very vague, and if we offer it as a consolation to a mother whose heart is torn with anguish at the sight of her childs pain, it is likely she will think our balm no better than the wormwood of mockery. It would be vain for us to imagine that we have solved the riddle, and vainer to suppose that any views of life could be set against the unquestionable fact that innocent children suffer, as though they in the slightest degree lessened the amount of this pain or made it appreciably easier to endure. But then, on the other hand, the mere existence of all this terrible agony does not justify us in bursting out into tremendous denunciations of the universe. The thoughts that rise from a consideration of the wider relations of the facts should teach us lessons of humility in forming our judgment on so vast a subject. We cannot deny the existence of evils that cry aloud for notice; we cannot explain them away. But at least we can follow the example of the elders and virgins of Israel, and be silent.
The portrait of misery that the poet has drawn in describing the condition of Jerusalem during the siege is painful enough when viewed by itself; and yet he proceeds further, and seeks to deepen the impression he has already made by setting, the picture in a suitable frame. So he directs attention to the behaviour of surrounding peoples. Jerusalem is not permitted to hide her grief and shame. She is flung into an arena while a crowd of cruel spectators gloat over her agonies. These are to be divided into two classes, the unconcerned and the known enemies. There is not any great difference between them in their treatment of the miserable city. The unconcerned “hiss and wag their heads”; {Lam 2:15} the enemies “hiss and gnash their teeth.” {Lam 2:16} That is to say, both add to the misery of the Jews-the one class in mockery, the other in hatred. But what are these men at their worst? Behind them is the real Power that is the source of all the misery. If the enemy rejoices it is only because God has given him the occasion. The Lord has been carrying out His own deliberate intentions; nay, these events are but the execution of commands He issued in the days of old. {Lam 2:17} This reads like an anticipation of the Calvinistic decrees. But perhaps the poet is referring to the solemn threatening of Divine Judgment pronounced by a succession of prophets. Their message had been unheeded by their contemporaries. Now it has been verified by history. Remembering what that message was-how it predicted woes as the punishment of sins, how it pointed out a way of escape, how it threw all the responsibility upon those people who were so infatuated as to reject the warning-we cannot read into the poets lines any notion of absolute predestination.
In the midst of this description of the miseries of Jerusalem the elegist confesses his own inability to comfort her. He searches for an image large enough for a just comparison with such huge calamities as he has in view. His language resembles that of our Lord when He exclaims, “Whereunto shall I liken the kingdom of God?” {Luk 13:20} a similarity which may remind us that if the troubles of man are great beyond earthly analogy, so also are the mercies of God. Compare these two, and there can be no question as to which way the scale will turn. Where sin and misery abound grace much more abounds. But now the poet is concerned with the woes of Jerusalem, and he can only find one image with which these woes are at all comparable. Her breach, he says, “is great like the sea,” {Lam 2:12} meaning that her calamities are vast and terrible as the sea; or perhaps that the ruin of Jerusalem is like that produced by the breaking in of the sea-a striking image in its application to an inland mountain city; for no place was really safer from any such cataclysm than Jerusalem. The analogy is intentionally far-fetched. What might naturally happen to Tyre, but could not possibly reach Jerusalem, is nevertheless the only conceivable type of the events that have actually befallen this ill-fated city. The Jews were not a maritime people. To them the sea was no delight such as it is to us. They spoke of it with terror, and shuddered to hear from afar of its ravages. Now the deluge of their own troubles is compared to the great and terrible sea.
The poet can offer no comfort for such misery as this. His confession of helplessness agrees with what we must have perceived already, namely, that the Book of Lamentations is not a book of consolations. It is not always easy to see that the sympathy which mourns with the sufferer may be quite unable to relieve him. The too common mistake of the friend who comes to show sympathy is Bildads and his companions notion that he is called upon to offer advice. Why should one who is not in the school of affliction assume the function of pedagogue to a pupil of that school, who by reason of the mere fact of his presence there should rather be deemed fit to instruct the outsider?
If he cannot comfort Jerusalem, however, the elegist will pray with her. His latest reference to the Divine source of the troubles of the Jews leads him on to a cry to God for mercy on the miserable people. Though he may not yet see the gospel of grace which is the only thing greater than the sin and misery of man, he can point towards the direction in which that glorious gospel is to dawn on the eyes of weary sufferers. Here, if anywhere, is the solution of the mystery of misery.