EXEGETICAL NOTES.—
(א) Lamentations 2:1. The poet sees nature as if it were in commotion. A storm-cloud piles up over Jerusalem, shrouding with its gloom even the most commanding summit. But it is not the swirls of an inanimate force which he perceives, nor yet the rush of human passion in an army of cruel men, it is the Supreme Ruler who hath His way in the whirlwind, and the storm of anger and strife, and the clouds of disaster are the dust of His fect. How doth the Lord in His anger; anger is the acting quality which impresses its aspect on the writer’s mind, as is shown by his frequent references to it—twice here, and in Lamentations 2:3; Lamentations 2:6; Lamentations 2:21-22, cf. Lamentations 2:2: cover with a cloud the daughter of Zion. Under this expression, and the similar ones which follow, daughter of Judah, daughter of Jerusalem, is included inhabitants of all classes; no principle but that of poetic license apparently regulating the employment of either name. The storm-cloud has swept across the land which was called the glory of all lands, and He has cast down from heaven those arrow-like lightnings which have scathed, discomfited, and overthrown unto the earth the glory of Israel. The election of Israel to be the covenant people of the living God had given it a position as high above that of all other peoples as the heavens are higher than the earth, and this position was represented by a visible shrine—the Temple. It was the holy and beautiful house where our fathers praised Thee, and now it was burned up with fire. Nor did He recall any past manifestations of His presence to stay His hand from working: He has not remembered His footstool; the footstool of our God is closely associated with the ark of the covenant (1 Chronicles 28:2; Psalms 99:1; Psalms 99:5). The Cherubim stood over the cover of the ark, the mercy-seat, and as God sitteth between the Cherubim, His feet would be on the ark, yet He let this holiest of holy things be destroyed in the day of His anger—the day which broke amid the sounds of Divine justice going to punish evil—the great day of Jehovah, which Zephaniah predicted … a day of wrath … a day of wasteness and desolation … a day of clouds and thick darkness. The poet “could not have better expressed to the people the heinousness of their sins than by laying before them this fact, that God remembered not His footstool in the day of His anger” (Calvin).
(ב) Lamentations 2:2. Faint adumbrations of the concomitants of a storm still flit across the field of vision. As a sweeping torrent the Lord has swallowed up, and has not spared, all the habitations of Jacob, including all sorts of country residences, and pasture-lands where men like Jacob may dwell in tents and feed flocks; all unfortified and unprotected places, as distinguished from fortresses in following parallel line: He has thrown down in His wrath the strongholds of the daughter of Judah; the whole military power has gone under, also the governing power he has cast to the earth, thus making them lick the dust and be trod upon by passers-by; He has profaned the kingdom, the royal house, and its princes: similarly it is said (Psalms 89:39), Thou hast profaned His crown [casting it] to the ground—the crown of His anointed, whom he had cast off and rejected (Psalms 89:38). The tenor of Bible-teaching is to the effect that men by sin affect the materials which they use, and so not only the sinners themselves, but their dwellings, their goods, their plots of ground, their munitions, their governments, are scourged by the wrath of God, in order to purify them from the pollution which has been infiltrated into them by human guilt.
(נ) Lamentations 2:3. Three forms of disaster are specified. He has cut off in fierce anger every horn of Israel: the horn being used as a symbol of strength or power, then all that was regarded as a strength to the life of Israel, whether warlike men or arsenals of offensive and defensive weapons, has perished. Power of resistance is removed. He has drawn back His right hand from the face of the enemy; He does not pluck it out of His bosom to help His people, and to impede and rout the foes in their attacks. Aid is withheld. And He has burned in Jacob like a blazing fire, devouring round about: His anger, as it were, kindled a conflagration which has consumed all it touched. Consequent on strength gone and help refused, there is blank devastation.
(ד) Lamentations 2:4. If a human enemy has wreaked his vengeance on Israel, the Lord Himself has turned to be their enemy, and fought against them as an armed man. He has bent His bow as an enemy standing, [as to] His right hand, as an adversary. This ambiguous phrase seems to convey the idea that the Lord, like a man of war, had taken a hostile attitude and operation, so that He has slain all that was pleasant to the eye, everything esteemed was deprived of their qualities to please. On the tent of the daughter of Zion He has poured out as fire His fury. Jerusalem as the dwelling-place of its inhabitants has been searched and scorched with the spirit of justice and spirit of burning.
The preceding highly metaphorical expressions are suggestive; they show that the poet saw, what the men of his day, what the men of later days have failed to see aright, that the course of human life is aglow with the devouring fire of the holiness of God. The light of Israel is for a fire and his Holy One for a flame. Jews might have felt that the Chaldeans and others had made their land as a desolate wilderness; we might feel that, when we are worsted in “the struggle for life,” our “environment” has been unfavourable to us. Our eyes are holden, and we do not perceive that the righteousness of God is the grand factor in all defeats, all crashes, all panics, all losses; using bad things, as fuel is used, to produce a fierce heat which shall eat away all that is burnable. Not only on the other side of death is the unquenchable fire scorching sin; that fire is kindled and burning here and now. No screen can ward off the indignation of the just and holy Lord; the ashes of ruined fortunes, reputations, impurities, self-seekings, prove that the breath of the Lord has kindled a fire to run through human society as intense, as overwhelming as a stream of liquid lava. For our God is a consuming fire.
(ה) Lamentations 2:5. Hostilities were continued in other methods. The Lord has become as an enemy, has swallowed up Israel; the national is submerged. This is indicated by material evidence; He has swallowed up all her palaces, the great houses of the daughter of Zion; He has destroyed all His strongholds, the fortified places which had been garrisoned by the people, and He has multiplied in the daughter of Judah moaning and bemoaning. Two words, which are derived from the same Hebrew root, and similar in sound, express the manifold and intense sorrows which had been experienced.
HOMILETICS
THE FIERCENESS OF THE DIVINE ANGER
How weird and sad is the lonely wail of the night-wind! How depressing the monotony of the sobbing sea! How heart-rending the ceaseless moan of the helpless sufferer! All the varying cadences of melancholy seem gathered up and interpreted in the sorrowful monody of the tender-hearted prophet. It is still the voice of lamentation that we hear: the strain, like the theme, is the same. From his elevated rocky grotto Jeremiah overlooked the ruined city, and it seemed impossible for him to turn away his gaze from the scene of destruction that fascinated while it distressed him. In this chapter he describes, with vivid realism, the harrowing circumstances connected with the siege and taking of the city. By a lofty flight of prophetic imagination he descries the awful form of the Almighty hovering over Jerusalem, wreaking vengeance on the obstinate and rebellious citizens. In this paragraph we learn that the fierceness of the Divine anger—
I. Is a terrifying reality. “The Lord covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in his anger, and cast down the beauty of Israel” (Lamentations 2:1). The darkening cloud that portends the approaching storm fills the stoutest heart with alarm, and all nature cowers with fear under the crash of the dreadful thunder. The prophet sees the Divine anger settling upon Jerusalem like a dark thunder-cloud, and breaking in a tempest, by which the Temple is levelled to the ground. It is not the cloud that led the Israelites from bondage to freedom, but a cloud of wrath sent to punish for the aggravated abuse of that freedom. The cloud no longer guides and protects; it is now charged with the thunderbolt of retribution. The anger of God is all the more terrible when manifested towards those who once enjoyed His favour and compassion.
II. Is irresistible in its destructiveness (Lamentations 2:1-5). The beauty of Israel is deformed, her pride humbled, her strength paralysed, her city reduced to ashes, and her strongholds and inhabitants are remorselessly swept away. Nothing can withstand the Divine power, and when that power is exerted in anger, it makes short work of the most formidable opposition. Storm, earthquake, fire, war, and all the forces of the universe, obey the bidding of the Divine Word. The enemies of God will be completely overthrown by the fierceness of His anger (Exodus 15:7; Psalms 2:2-5; Psalms 21:8-10; Psalms 79:6; Isaiah 10:6; Jeremiah 10:25; Nahum 1:2; 1 Thessalonians 2:16).
III. Intensifies the misery of its victims. “He hath increased in the daughter of Judah mourning and lamentation” (Lamentations 2:5). When our miseries come upon us from our enemies, we are not surprised; it is what we expected. When we can trace them as the direct result of our own folly and sin, we know they are deserved, and we strengthen ourselves to endure them as philosophically as we can; but when the truth dawns upon us that God is against us, and it is His hand that smites us, we are startled at the discovery, and our distress is unspeakably increased. It is a bitter ingredient in the sufferings of the disobedient to know that he has provoked the anger of the God of love. The suffering Christ turns away for us the fierceness of the Divine anger.
LESSONS.—
1. Persistency in wrong-doing rouses the Divine anger.
2. When the Divine anger is manifested, it works terrible havoc.
3. Timely repentance averts the worst consequences of the Divine anger.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
Lamentations 2:1-2. The storm of the Divine wrath: I. Overshadows the city whose sins call for vengeance. “How hath the Lord covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in his anger” (Lamentations 2:1). II. Shatters the sanctuary where worship has been profaned. “Cast down from heaven unto the earth the beauty of Israel, and remembered not his footstool in the day of his anger” (Lamentations 2:1). III. Destroys the homesteads and fortresses of a rebellious people. “The Lord hath swallowed up all the habitations of Jacob. He hath thrown down in his wrath the strongholds of the daughter of Judah” (Lamentations 2:2). IV. Dishonours the government that ignores the claims of righteousness. “He hath polluted (profaned, made it common or unclean) the kingdom and the princes thereof” (Lamentations 2:2).
Lamentations 2:3. The defences of a nation: I. Exposed to the ravages of the enemy when the Divine protection is withdrawn. “He hath drawn back his right hand from before the enemy.” II. Deprived of their strength when assailed by the Divine anger. “He hath cut off in his fierce anger all the horn of Israel. III. Utterly destroyed by the wrath evoked by national sins. “He burned against Jacob like a flaming fire, which devoureth round about.”
Lamentations 2:4-5. Jehovah as an enemy: I. Formidable to all who obstinately resist him. “He hath bent his bow like an enemy. He stood with his right hand as an adversary” (Lamentations 2:4). II. Works terrible destruction. “Slew all that were pleasant to the eye. He poured out his fury like fire. He hath swallowed up Israel” (Lamentations 2:4-5). III. Means augmented distress to those he punishes. “He hath increased in the daughter of Judah mourning and lamentation” (Lamentations 2:5).
ILLUSTRATIONS.—Neglect incurs wrath. As the mariner takes the first wind to sail, the merchant the first opportunity of buying and selling, and the husbandman the first opportunity of sowing and reaping, so should young men take the present season, the present day, which is their day, to be good towards the Lord, to seek Him and serve Him, and not to put off the present season, for they know not what another day, another hour, another moment may bring forth. That door of grace that is open to-day may be shut to-morrow; that golden sceptre of mercy that is held forth in the Gospel this day may be taken in the next day; that love, that this hour is upon the bare knee, entreating and beseeching young men to break off their sins by repentance, to return to the Lord, to lay hold on His strength and be at peace with Him, may the next hour be turned into wrath.—Brooks.
—Plutarch writes of Hannibal, that when he could have taken Rome he would not, and when he would have taken Rome he could not. Many in their youthful days, when they might have mercy, Christ, pardon, peace, heaven, will not; and when old age comes on they cannot, they may not. God seems to say, as Theseus once said, “Go and tell Creon, Theseus offers thee a gracious offer. Yet I am pleased to be friends if thou wilt submit—this is my first message; but if this offer prevail not, look for me to be up in arms.”
—Whatever account you have to settle with God, settle it now. There are two “nows” in Scripture which should never be separated. One stands out in the brightest rays, the other retires into deep shadows. “Now is the accepted time.” “Now they are hid from Thine eyes.”—Vaughan.
Judgment a surprise. There are sometimes some sad awakenings from sleep in this world. It is very sad to dream by night of vanished joys, to revisit old scenes and dwell once more among the unforgotten forms of our loved and lost; to see in the dreamland the old familiar look, and to hear the well-remembered tones of a voice long hushed and still, and then to awake with the morning light to the aching sense of our loneliness again. It were very sad for the poor criminal to wake from sweet dreams of other and happier days—days of innocence, hope, and peace, when kind friends and a happy home and an honoured or unstained name were his; to wake in his cell on the morning of his execution to the horrible recollection that all is gone for ever, and that to-day he must die a felon’s death. But inconceivably more awful than any awakening which earthly daybreak has ever brought shall be the awakening of the self-deluded soul when it is roused in horror and surprise from the dream of life to meet Almighty God in judgment!—J. Caird.
Temporary storms. It is a dark and cloudy day for you. A storm has burst upon you; but you remember how, after the storm, the bow is set in the cloud for all who look above to the Hand that smites them. The storm has come, and now we must look up and wait and watch in prayer and faith for the rainbow of promise and comfort.—Ministering Children.
Prolonged misery. When water takes its first leap from the top, it is cool, collected, uninteresting, mathematical; but it is when it finds that it has got into a scrape, and has further to go than it thought for, that its character comes out; it is then that it begins to writhe and twist, and sweep out zone after zone in wilder stretchings as it falls, and to send down the rocket-like, lance-pointed, whizzing shafts at its sides, sounding for the bottom.—Ruskin.
There is mercy in every storm. Every stroke of the rod is but the muffled voice of love; every billow bears on its bosom, and every tempest on its wing, some new and rich blessing from the better land. If the Lord were to roll the Red Sea before us and marshal the Egyptians behind us, and thus, hemming us in on every side, should yet bid us advance, it would be the duty and the privilege of faith instantly to obey, believing that, ere our feet touched the water, God in our extremity would divide the sea and take us dryshod over it. If for a moment we leave the path, difficulties throng around us, troubles multiply, the smallest trials become heavy crosses, the heart will sicken at disappointment, the Spirit be grieved, and God disappointed.—Winslow.
Goodness a nation’s defence. Abijah’s goodness was towards the Lord; his goodness faced the Lord; it looked towards the glory of the Lord. It is recorded of the Catanenses that they made a stately monument to two sons who took their aged parents upon their backs and carried them through the fire when their father’s house was all in a flame. These young men were good towards their parents; but what is this to Abijah’s goodness towards the Lord? He was good in the house of Jeroboam, who made all Israel to sin; yet Abijah, as the fishes which live in the salt sea are fresh, so, though he lived in a sea of wickedness, he retained his goodness towards the Lord. They say roses grow the sweeter when planted by garlic. They are sweet and rare Christians indeed who hold their goodness and grow in goodness where wickedness sits on the throne. To be wheat among tares, corn among chaff, and roses among thorns, is excellent. To be a Jonathan in Saul’s court, an Obadiah in Ahab’s court, an Obedmelech in Zedekiah’s court, and an Abijah in Jeroboam’s court, is a wonder, a miracle. To be a Lot in Sodom, an Abraham in Chaldea, a Daniel in Babylon, a Nehemiah in Damascus, and a Job in the land of Uz, is to be a saint among devils. The poets affirm that Venus never appeared so beautiful as when she sat by black Vulcan’s side. Gracious souls shine most clear when they are set by black-conditioned people. Stephen’s face never shone so angelically, so gloriously in the church where all were virtuous, as before the council where all were very vicious and malicious. So Abijah was a bright star, a shining sun in Jeroboam’s court, which for profaneness and wickedness was a very hell.
—A substantial fence has been erected enclosing the relic of the Covenanter’s stone on the summit of Duns Law. On this historic spot the standard of the Covenanting army under General Leslie was planted, and on the stone a copy of the National League and Covenant signed by the resolute leaders on the 6th June 1639. At one time the stone was prominently seen, but it is now so much reduced by the chipping and hacking of Vandalic visitors as to be scarcely visible above the green sward. Scotland has good reason to be proud of the brave exploits of its ancestors, who, whatever their failings, were men of earnest purpose, and fought for those principles of right and justice which helped to make possible the national life of to-day. The records and memorials of their deeds should be a constant stimulus to imitate their noblest qualities. “Remove not the ancient landmarks which thy fathers have set.”—The Scottish Pulpit.
Satan an enemy: but what of Jehovah? Satan is the enemy of every saint, and he is an indefatigable enemy. He never tires in his temptations to ensnare souls to destroy them. He “walketh about seeking whom he may devour.” This denotes his main object is to ruin the souls of men, and that he does it in a deliberate, calm, systematic way. He walks about observing times, places, circumstances, characters—all with a view to devour. He does as a lion, to whom he is compared. Observe his gentle tread, his fiery, searching eye, his subtle plans, his secret ambushes, his hidden schemes, his concealed name, nature, and character; and when he spies one of whom he can take advantage, see how the lion-nature is developed in the rush, the pounce, the seizure, the tearing, the destruction. But what must it be to the sinner to find an enemy in Jehovah?