Jerusalem hath grievously sinned; therefore she is removed: all that honoured her despise her, because they have seen her nakedness: yea, she sigheth, and turneth backward. Her filthiness is in her skirts; she remembereth not her last end; therefore she came down wonderfully: she had no comforter. O LORD, behold my affliction: for the enemy hath magnified himself. The adversary hath spread out his hand upon all her pleasant things: for she hath seen that the heathen entered into her sanctuary, whom thou didst command that they should not enter into thy congregation. All her people sigh, they seek bread; they have given their pleasant things for meat to relieve the soul: see, O LORD, and consider; for I am become vile. Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is done unto me, wherewith the LORD hath afflicted me in the day of his fierce anger.
I again make a pause at the close of this memorable verse, and beg the Reader to judge for himself, whether without violence to the verse, and indeed to the general scope of the whole book of Lamentations, which this verse seems to become a clue to, in explaining, we may. but behold a greater than the mournful Prophet Jeremiah here. When we consider that Christ and his Church are one, and that from
everlasting; and that in all the Church's affliction he was afflicted; surely we may look beyond the Prophet Jeremiah's days, and contemplate Christ as thus speaking, when he stood forth the Church's representative and surety in the days of his flesh. See in testimony to this opinion, Isaiah 53:1 throughout, and the Evangelists on the crucifixion.