EXEGETICAL NOTES.—
Lamentations 1:12-22. These verses form the second section of the poem. The city is represented as complaining of its harassed condition, 12–16, and then as acknowledging her persistent sin in sight of her righteous Lord, who will deal out justice to all transgressors, 17–22.
(צ) Lamentations 1:18. During her pause the weeper has received new thoughts. Like the younger son when feeding on husks, she has come to herself so far that she is ready to own the justice of Jehovah in her sufferings. He is righteous, Jehovah, for I have disobeyed his voice, rejected the words of His mouth. Yet she sorely wants human pity, and cries to them, Hear, I pray; all ye peoples, and see my sorrow; the flower of her youth has gone into captivity.
(ק) Lamentations 1:19. She addresses Jehovah, and tells how her appeals to the friends of her prosperous days have proved futile; I called to my lovers; they have deceived me, disappointed my hopes; and not only they have failed; my priests and my elders have expired in the city, where they had been high in position, the medium between God and His worshippers, and leaders in the state, when they sought food for themselves to restore their souls, they were starving, like the common people in the closely invested city, and made a strenuous quest for some means to keep themselves alive in famine.
(ר) Lamentations 1:20. Again she refers to Jehovah as to her forlornness and aggravated sin. See, O Jehovah, for I am in distress, and this distress is felt:
(1) Internally. My bowels are troubled, my heart is turned within me; agitation and anguish excite her, even her vital parts, as it were, change their position. The reason therefor is not ascribed to man’s neglect and inhumanity to her, but,
(2) to her disregard of God, for, she confesses, I have grievously disobeyed. The penalty she undergoes is calamitous indeed; abroad the sword bereaveth, she is rendered a mourner because of slaughter in the open country and in the streets; at home is like death, as if nothing but the dead were in the houses—so overpowering was the exhaustion from starvation and diseases. This somewhat halting explanation may be compared with the free rendering of the Septuagint translator—at least there is no extant authority in the Hebrew for an equivalent reading—Outside the sword made me childless as death in the house.
(שׁ) Lamentations 1:21. A transition is made from unfaithful friends to open enemies, and they too are denounced. The sounds of her grief have echoed far off among persons unnamed, they have heard that I sigh; again the refrain of this chapter is repeated, there is no comforter for me. The frequent allusions to a personal comforter, Lamentations 1:2; Lamentations 1:9; Lamentations 1:16-17; Lamentations 1:21, are worthy of consideration, as if there was a feeling after a higher gift not yet distinctly perceived. All my enemies have heard of my evil, and understand something of the unseen influences which produced it; they rejoice that thou hast done it. From Jeremiah 40:2-3, it appears that even foes recognised that the calamitous state of the Jews proceeded from their disobedience to Jehovah, though their joy may have been more because of her fall than for the confirmation given to the truth of the Lord. Nevertheless, vengeance for their misdeeds was coming on. The Lord has announced a day of judgment on the heathen as well as on Judah, and the cup of wrath shall be drunk from; thou bringest the day thou hast announced, and they shall become like me in suffering their penalties.
(ת) Lamentations 1:22. Jerusalem further formulates the wish that the retribution due to their guilty actions should not be put aside; Let all their evil come before thee, and do unto them as thou hast done unto me, for all my transgressions. The first natural cry of those that are punished is for justice all round. “If I suffer for every wrong, make every other wrongdoer suffer equally with me!” In this desire there appears the consciousness that Jehovah must pass judgment upon every form of sin, and rightly, for He is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity; and also a grim expectation of revenge, under which Edom, Moab, Babylon, &c., disappeared. We may say that confession of her own transgressions should have been accompanied with sympathy and pity for other sinners; but the time for that love of enemies did not arrive for many a day. Her own sad state again moves her, For my sighs are many, and my heart is faint. So Jeremiah felt (Jeremiah 8:18). “With these words the sound of this lamentation dies away.”
HOMILETICS
THE BITTER FRUITS OF REBELLION
I. That rebellion is the violation of the law of a righteous God. “The Lord is righteous, for I have rebelled against His commandment” (Lamentations 1:18). “I have grievously rebelled” (Lamentations 1:20). A man may fight against God’s will and exalt his own; but he cannot fight against the law by which obedience brings peace, harmony, and joy to the soul, and disobedience brings unrest, pain, and deadness. All things in God’s universe proclaim the folly of the man who thinks to oppose his will to the Infinite. He may to some extent succeed in thwarting the Divine will; but he cannot prosper. What may seem success will turn into shame and ruin. The violation of law puts us out of harmony with God, Nature, and man.
II. That rebellion is the occasion of great national disasters.
1. The young are enslaved. “My virgins and my young men are gone into captivity” (Lamentations 1:18). There is little hope for the future of a nation when its young people are in degrading bondage. Christianity has created a just appreciation of the worth of young life. A Japanese woman once came to a Christian lady in Japan with a girl-baby which had been thrown into a ditch by its father, as thousands were, because it was “only a girl.” In begging the Christian lady to take care of the naked child, covered with mud, the poor woman said, “Please do take little baby. Your God is the only God that teaches to be good to little children.”
2. Friendships are demoralised. “I called for my lovers, but they deceived me” (Lamentations 1:19). The confusion that springs out of rebellion is a severe strain on the fidelity of professed friends. Promises made with the utmost solemnity are little regarded. One brave and truthful action tells more than a million utterances of the mouth. Genuine friendship is ever frank and true. Simplicity is not the absence of intricacy, but its solution. The true friend, however much misunderstood in a time of disorder, comes out scatheless.
3. The nation is ravaged by war, famine, and death. “Abroad the sword bereaveth, at home there is as death” (Lamentations 1:20). “My priests and mine elders gave up the ghost in the city, while they sought their meat to relieve their souls” (Lamentations 1:19). Those who should have advised and comforted the people were disabled by starvation, or were lying dead among the slain.
4. The sufferings of the people are distressingly acute. “I am in distress; my bowels are troubled; mine heart is turned within me” (Lamentations 1:20). My heart is so violently agitated that it seems to have changed its position—to be overturned. It is difficult to conceive words that could more pathetically describe the extremity of grief. Much of our trouble is intensified by forebodings as to the future. God gives us strength to bear each day’s burden as it comes. When we stagger and fall because our burden has become too heavy, it is because we have added of our own accord something of the future’s weight to that of the present.
5. The enemies gloat over the national troubles. “They have heard that I sigh; there is none to comfort me. All mine enemies have heard of my trouble. They are glad that thou hast done it” (Lamentations 1:21). It is the acme of cruelty and obduracy of heart to chuckle over the miseries of the fallen. How different is the true Christian spirit. Lord Shaftesbury earned the title of “the good Earl” by his philanthropic endeavours to raise the most depraved. A costermonger who had been a most notorious sinner was once asked, “What did his Lordship say to you that made you a reformed man?” “Oh, he didn’t say much,” was the reply. “He just sat down by my side and said, ‘Jack, we will make a man of you yet.’ ” It was the upward gravitation of Christian manhood that helped Jack, and many like him.
III. That every nation that rebels against God will be certainly punished. “Thou wilt bring the day that Thou hast called, and they shall be like unto me. Do unto them as Thou hast done unto me,” &c. (Lamentations 1:21-22). The prophet, in terms that seem dictated by a spirit of retaliation, is but expressing in prophecy what actually happened in the capture of Babylon—the destruction of the Chaldean empire and of the neighbouring states by which the Jews had been ill-used. He also expressed the general truth, so often exemplified in history, that the nations that ignore God come to nought.
LESSONS.—
1. The greatest troubles of a nation are the result of rebellion.
2. God is not indifferent to the sufferings of a nation under punishment.
3. Obedience to God is the only guarantee of national prosperity.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
Lamentations 1:18. “The Lord is righteous, for I have rebelled against His commandment.” Divine justice:
1. Is publicly acknowledged.
2. Must punish rebellion.
3. Is ever mingled with mercy.
—“Hear, I pray you, all people, and behold my sorrow.” The voice of sorrow:
1. Has a lesson for all classes.
2. Cannot express all that is felt.
3. Excites sympathy among the most indifferent
4. Should lead to inquiry as to its cause.
—“My virgins and my young men are gone into captivity.” Young life:
1. The hope and strength of a nation.
2. Should be placed in the most favourable circumstances for development and culture.
3. Is crushed by the degradation of slavery.
Lamentations 1:19. “I called for my lovers, but they deceived me.” Human fickleness:
1. A bitter disappointment when shown by those we love, and who have professed to love us.
2. Cannot bear the strain of a great trial. Fails us when we most need help.
3. A pure, unselfish, faithful affection a rarity.
4. Should teach us to trust alone in God.
Lamentations 1:20. Sincere penitence: I. Shown in a frank and full confession of sin. “I have grievously sinned.” II. Experiences the most pungent sorrow for sin. “I am in distress: my bowels are troubled: mine heart is turned within me.” III. Appeals to God alone for mercy. “Behold, O Lord.”
Lamentations 1:21. A spirit of enmity: I. Is coldly indifferent to the troubles of others, though cognisant of them. “All mine enemies have heard of my trouble.” II. Exhibits a refinement of cruelty in rejoicing over the distresses of its victims. “They are glad thou hast done it.” III. Will meet with a day of retribution. “Thou wilt bring the day that Thou hast called, and they shall be like unto me.”
Lamentations 1:22. The punishment of Judah a type of the punishment of all unfaithful nations. I. Their sins are fully know to God. “Let all their wickedness come before Thee.” II. They will be punished according to their actual sins. “Do unto them as Thou hast done unto me for all my transgressions.” III. They shall know what it is to endure sorrow and exhaustion. “For my sighs are many, and my heart is faint.”
ILLUSTRATIONS.—Rebellion—Dead Sea fruit.—If Satan ever knows pleasure at all, it is of the foulest and most unsatisfactory kind. Dust is his meat. There is nothing satisfying in the pleasures of rebellion. He remains a disappointed, restless being. The most cunning error which he invents and sustains by philosophy is no more than dust. His whole cause, for which he has laboured these thousands of years with a horrible perseverance, will dissolve into dust, and be blown away as smoke. Still doth he feed himself on dust. Let those who are servants of Satan know assuredly that as they are living in sin they will have to eat at their father’s table and learn the emptiness of all the pleasures of sin, and the worthlessness of all the treasures of evil. Everything that sin can bring you is just so much dust—foul eating, insufficient, clogging, killing. Though you hoard up wealth, gold is nothing but dust to a dying man. Though you gain all earthly honour, it too dissolves into dust. This is the misery of that great spirit who is called the Prince of Darkness, that he must eat dust all his days. But what misery it must be to be only some poor subject in that unhallowed kingdom, and still to be doomed to the same loathsome fare! Dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life. Note that right well; and may God deliver you from such feeding!—Spurgeon.
Fomenting rebellion, a ruinous policy. The rebellion in the Netherlands had already been an expensive matter to the crown. The Spanish army numbered more than sixty-two thousand men. Forty millions of dollars had already been sunk, and it seemed probable that it would require nearly the whole annual produce of the American mines to sustain the war. The Transatlantic gold and silver, disinterred from the depths where they had been buried for ages, were employed not to expand the current of a healthy, life-giving commerce, but to be melted into blood. The sweat and tortures of the king’s pagan subjects in the primeval forests of the New World were made subsidiary to the extermination of his Netherland people and the destruction of an ancient civilisation. To this end had Columbus discovered a hemisphere for Castile and Aragon, and the new Indies revealed their hidden treasures. The military expenses alone of the Netherlands were more than seven million dollars yearly, and the mines of the New World produced an annual average of only eleven. There was not a stiver left in the exchequer, nor the means of raising one. Such was the condition to which the unrelenting tyranny and financial experiments of Alva had reduced the country.—Motley’s “Dutch Republic.”
Sorrow does not regenerate. On a May day in the French Revolution of 1848, a wretched-looking man was seen dragging himself along by the help of a stick, fleeing from the excited and rushing crowd, till he entered a hall in the Louvre, where was an exquisite piece of sculpture, the Venus of Milos. Before this statue the man broke down, and bitter tears streamed over his face. That man was Heinrich Heine, the scoffing Israelite. This one moment disclosed a whole world of heartache. “Deepest misery, thy name is Heine!” was the passionate cry that escaped his lips. The source of this misery was the pleasure of the world. The goddess before whom he lay prostrate entwined the poet with the glowing arms of sense. He had sacrificed all to her—body, soul, conscience, reason, heart, and harp. “Once,” he groaned, “I fancied, with Hegel, I was a god; now I know I am a sick, forgotten Jew.” Sixteen years, filled with unexampled pains, followed, but it was only a transitory glance of faith to which the poet attained. On the whole, affliction only excited him to new blasphemies.—Otto Funcke.
Justice and mercy. Terror is subservient to love. As a skilful painter fills the background of his picture with his darker colours, so God introduces the black thunder-clouds of Sinai to give brighter prominence to Jesus, the Cross of Calvary, and His love to the chief of sinners.—Guthrie.
Youth. Youth and white paper take any impression. The young are the divinely-appointed heirs of the great past, and the fathers of the sublime future.
—Perhaps as the Creator looks down on this world, whose wondrous beauty beams on us more and more in proportion as our science would take it from poetry into law, He beholds nothing so beautiful as the pure heart of a simple, loving child.—Lytton.
Human fickleness a disappointment. Astronomers toll us that temporary stars attain their maximum brightness only once and for all. They burst into brilliance suddenly, come to a point, continue at that point only for a short time, and then vanish, either by exploding or by coming into collision with another body. It is difficult to see the reason for their existence at all, except to show that the steady, dependable light of the permanent star is of more service in the heavens than the flashing brilliance that dazzles only to confuse and mislead. It is dangerous to be star of any kind, whether pulpit star, political star, or social star; but to be a temporary star is the most provoking and disappointing of all.—The Scottish Pulpit.
Human fickleness and its contrast. At a trial in Anglesey the heroic devotion of a wife and the base fickleness and savagery of a husband were painfully illustrated. The prisoner saved his neck through the self-forgetful devotion of his wife, who sat at his side, pale and suffering, through the trial. If it had been known that the third bullet fired from his pistol was even then lodging in the body of his faithful wife, nothing would have saved his life. It was only after the miserable man had been convicted of murder in a minor degree that did not involve hanging that she applied to a doctor, confessed that her husband had shot her, and that the bullet was still in her hip. Who can fathom a woman’s love and devotion? It is often strangely lavished on those who deserve it least.—Ibid.
Penitence involves confession of sin. Sometimes a prisoner is advised to plead not guilty because his advocate has discovered a flaw in the indictment, or a weak place in the chain of evidence, and he may get the benefit of the doubt. Not so in the case of the sinner; there can be no doubt. The evidence is cumulative. He is caught red-handed in the act of sin. His only hope for mercy is in a full and frank confession.
How enmity is manufactured. “Right must right remain,” says the farmer, and goes to law with his neighbour about a strip of pasture-land a quarter of a yard wide, and enmity and hatred exist between the two families for whole decades, while a thousand times the value of the disputed strip is lost over it. But no matter; “Right must right remain.” Nor is it only among farmers, but among all kinds of people that such foolish and unhappy litigation takes place, just because no one chooses to give way; nay, not even to submit to the judgment of an umpire. “Right must right remain,” says A, and passionately disputes in a large party with B as to whether the train which ran two years ago to H—— in the evening was an ordinary or an express train; and this wretched stubbornness in disputing about trifles destroys the sociability of men who ought to have brought light and salt to each other. “Right must right remain,” says this respectable man. He was offended by the harsh words of another, and has now passed him coldly by for years. “He must first apologise,” he says, instead of saying, “Don’t let us please the devil by hating one another; here is my hand; we are brethren and heirs of one heaven.” No! “Right must right remain.”—Otto Funcke.
Retribution. The certainty that unrepentant wickedness will be punished may be argued—
1. From the principle of moral causation. God has established such a connection between character and condition that misery must ever spring from sin, and blessedness from virtue. Our present grows out of the past, hence our sins must find us out. What we morally sowed yesterday we reap in experience to-day, and so on for ever.
2. From the operation of moral memory. Memory recalls sins, places them before the eye of conscience, and sets the soul aflame.
3. From the declarations of Scripture. “The wicked shall not go unpunished. The wicked shall be turned into hell, with all the nations that forget God.”
4. From the history of mankind. Nations are an example—the Antediluvians, the Sodomites, the Jews. Individuals are an example.—Moses, David, Judas.—D. Thomas, D.D.