EXEGETICAL NOTES.—
(צ) Lamentations 2:18. Their heart cried unto the Lord. The cry is not to the God in covenant with Israel, but to the ruler over all nations and all matter. Yet the pronoun their cannot refer to the persons last spoken of. The adversaries were not likely to change their vaunts into profound sympathy. It is appropriate to suppose that there was a part, at any rate, of the downtrodden who would tell their heart-aches to the only Helper, and could not subdue the longing to see all things around them express the tokens of keenest sorrow. O wall of the daughter of Zion, let tears run down like a torrent day and night. Bold appeals to inanimate objects for signs of interest in human affairs are not strange to prophets of Israel, and the call upon the shattered wall of Jerusalem seems grounded on the idea that it was regarded as a mother embracing in its arms the city with its blighted hopes. It was not to be stemmed and have respite; let not the pupil [Heb. daughter] of the eye cease from shedding tears.
(ק) Lamentations 2:19. Sleep is to be interrupted in order to weep. Arise, cry loud in the night, and as its hours pass on, rouse up at the beginning of the watches into which the night is divided. Hearts that cried are to cast away all reserve before the Lord. They will have gone a long way towards receiving help when they recognise that He who “is strong to smite is also strong to save.” They will take the attitude of prayer, Lift up thy hands to Him, and the first matter to request will be the life of thy young children, whose sad case is again mentioned, faint for hunger at the top of every street. Dying and dead little ones at every turn. A sight for the Creator to consider.
HOMILETICS
A CALL TO PRAYER
I. Addressed to a city suffering the miseries of a desolating siege. “Their heart cried unto the Lord, O wall of the daughter of Zion!” (Lamentations 2:18). It sounds strange thus to appeal to the wall of Zion—to pray so passionately that tears may run down like a river. But this is quite after the manner of Jeremiah and other sacred writers (comp. Lamentations 2:8; Isaiah 14:31; Jeremiah 22:29; Habakkuk 2:11; Luke 19:40). Carried away with an outburst of sorrow, “the prophet suddenly addresses the wall, which had so long been their shelter and defence, and bids it, as the representative of the people who had dwelt secure under its protection, to shed floods of tears on their behalf. Broken up by the enemy, it could be their guardian no longer, but by its ruins it might still cry unto the Lord in their behalf.” However great may be our distress, it is always wise to promptly obey the summons to pray. Prayer brings moral strength and brightens the hope of rescue.
II. To be mingled with much weeping. “Let tears run down like a river day and night; give thyself no rest; let not the apple of thine eye cease” (Lamentations 2:18). Like a river, a brook, or torrent, rushing along furiously at one time and afterwards dried up. In the nature of things weeping cannot be incessant. Like a torrent, it gushes out in floods of tears, and, though ceasing at intervals, it is in this instance to be often repeated. Reasons for frequent weeping will be found in the prolonged continuance of the misery. Suffering is apt to stupify and harden, if the heart is not softened with tears. Prayer is the more genuine when accompanied with godly sorrow.
III. To be expressed with loud cries throughout the night-watches. “Arise, cry out in the night; in the beginning of the watches pour out thine heart like water before the face of the Lord” (Lamentations 2:19). At the beginning of each night-watch means all the night through. There are crises in life, times of trouble and peril, when the time usually devoted to sleep may be fitly employed in earnest, agonising prayer. Such a time had come in the history of Judah; such a time comes to most. There is a pathetic tenderness of sorrow in the night-moanings and cries of the soul, and it is then we are often conscious of the special nearness of Divine help.
“Hours spent with pain and Thee
Lost hours have never seemed;
No! those are lost which but might be
From earth for heaven redeemed.
For weeping, wakeful eyes
Instinctive look above,
And catch, through openings in the skies,
Thy beams, unslumbering Love!”
IV. To be offered especially on behalf of perishing children. “Lift up thy hands towards Him for the life of thy young children that faint for hunger at the top of every street” (Lamentations 2:19). Among the most heart-rending miseries of the siege was the spectacle of little children prostrate in the streets slowly dying of starvation. You cannot enter a street in any part of the city but this sad sight meets the eye. The lifting up of the hands is not only the attitude and symbol of prayer, but indicates earnestness in supplication. The sufferings of helpless children appeal to the hardest heart, and when it is impossible to render any other help, we are called upon to pray for them. When our children are in extremity, so are we. Prayer is the only refuge, apart from which there is nothing but wretchedness and despair.
LESSONS.—
1. Our daily necessities are a constant call to prayer.
2. Misery finds relief in prayer.
3. The young should ever be the subject of earnest prayer.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
Lamentations 2:19. A night of prayer:
1. Necessary in circumstances of special peril.
2. Often characterised by intense earnestness.
3. Familiar to many an anxious mother pleading for the salvation of her child.
—Watch-Night service. I. It is never too soon to pray. There is no reason why you should delay to the morning light. “In the beginning of the night-watches pour out thine heart like water before the face of the Lord.” How many young persons imagine that religion is a thing for age, or at least for maturity! They do not want their young shoulders galled with an early burden; they do not think it is true that “it is good for a man to bear the yoke in his youth;” and they forget that that “yoke is easy” and that “burden is light.” God hears children. He called Samuel when he was but a child. We have had our Josiahs, we have had our Timothys; we have seen those in early youth brought to the Saviour. Young man, it is not too soon. II. It is not too late to cry to the Lord. If the sun be set and the watches of the night have commenced their round, the mercy-seat is open. No shop is open so late as the House of Mercy. The devil has two tricks with men. Sometimes he puts their clock a little backward, and says, “Stop! there is time enough yet;” and when that does not answer, he turns the hands on, and cries out, “Too late! too late!” Within another fifteen minutes another year shall have come; but if the Spirit of God calls you this year, He will not call you too late in the year. If to the last second you should live, if God the Holy Ghost calls you then, He will not have called you too late. The darkness of night is gathering; it is coming on, and you are near death. Arise, sleeper, arise! Thou art now taking the last nap of death. III. We cannot pray too vehemently. “Cry out in the night.” God loves earnest prayers. He loves impetuous prayers, vehement prayers. Let a man preach, if he dare, coldly and slowly, but never let him pray so. Those who cry with weak voices, who do not cry aloud, must not expect to get a blessing. When you go to Mercy’s gate, do not give a gentle tap like a lady, do not give a single knock like a beggar, but take the knocker and rap hard till the very door seems to shake. Rap with all your might, and recollect that God loveth those who knock hard at Mercy’s gate. IV. We cannot pray too simply. “Pour out your hearts before Him.” Not pour out your fine words, not pour out your beautiful periods, but pour out your hearts. “I dare not,” says one; “there is black stuff in my heart.” Out with it, then; it is better out than in. “I cannot pray as I could wish,” says another; “my crying out is a feeble one.” When you pour out water, it does not make much noise. So you can “pour out your heart like water,” and it will run away, and you can scarcely know it. There is many a prayer uttered in a garret, down in a cellar or in some lonely place where the cobbler sits mending his shoes beneath a window, which the world does not hear, but the Lord hears it. Pour out your heart like water by confessing your sins, by begging the Lord to have mercy on you for Christ’s sake. And when it is all poured out, He will come and fill it again. Listen for one moment to the ticking of that clock. It is the beating of the pulse of eternity; it is the footstep of death pursuing you. Time is precious, and when we have little of it, it is more precious. You will soon enter another year. This year will have gone in a few seconds. Where will the next year be spent?—C. H. Spurgeon.
ILLUSTRATIONS.—A mute summons to prayer. Venice may well call upon us to note with reverence, that of all the towers which are still seen rising like a branchless forest from her islands, there is but one whose office was other than that of summoning to prayer, and that one was a watch-tower only.——Ruskin.
Tearful intercession irresistible. Miss Gratz—supposed to have been the original of Rebecca in “Ivanhoe”—was nursing her grandfather in his last illness. Calling her to him one day, he said, “What can I do for you, my dear child?” Turning upon him her beautiful eyes filled with tears, she said in a tone of earnest entreaty, “Grandfather, forgive Aunt Shinah.” This was a daughter who had been long estranged because of her marriage with a Gentile. The old man sought his grand-daughter’s hand, pressed it, and, after a silence, said in a broken voice, “Send for her.” In due course the lady came, received her father’s forgiveness and blessing, and when, a few days later, he breathed his last, the arms of his long-estranged child were about him, while Rebecca Gratz sat silently at his side.
Prayer necessary for service. Bees suffer sadly from famine during the dry years which occasionally occur in the southern and middle portions of California. If the rainfall amounts only to three or four inches, instead of from twelve to twenty, as in ordinary seasons, then sheep and cattle die in thousands, and so do these small winged cattle, unless they are carefully fed or removed to other pastures. No flowers, no honey; no rain, no food. They who teach others must themselves feed on the truths they declare. Failure to commune with God will give the poverty-stroke to our endeavours to bless man.
Sorrow drives men to prayer.
“ ‘There is no God,’ the foolish saith,
But none ‘There is no sorrow;’
And Nature oft the cry of faith
In bitter need will borrow:
Eyes which the preacher could not school,
By wayside graves are raised,
And lips say ‘God be pitiful,’
Who ne’er said ‘God be praised!’
Be pitiful, O God!”
—Mrs. Browning.
“Jesus, pitying Saviour, hear me;
Draw Thou near me;
Turn Thee, Lord, in grace to me;
For Thou knowest all my sorrow;
Night and morrow
Doth my cry go up to Thee.
Peace I cannot find: O take me,
Lord, and make me
From the yoke of evil free;
Calm this longing never-sleeping,
Still my weeping,
Grant me hope once more in Thee.”
—Tersteegen.
Sympathy with youth. George Moore, merchant and philanthropist, was the constant resort of young men wanting situations. If he could not provide for them in his own warehouse, he endeavoured to find situations for them amongst his friends. He took no end of trouble about this business. After his young friends had obtained employment, he continued to look after them. He took down their names and addresses in a special red book kept for the purpose, and repeatedly asked them to dine with him on Sunday afternoons. He usually requested that they should go to some church or chapel in the evening.
A mother’s prayer. After Augustine had lost faith in Manichæism, he found himself in the same situation as he was ten years before. There was the same longing after truth, but linked now with a feeling of desolation, a bitter sense of deception, and a large measure of scepticism. He was no longer at ease in Carthage, and resolved on a journey to Rome, where he ventured to hope for a more brilliant and profitable career as a rhetorician. His mother wished either to prevent his going, or to go with him. While she spent a night in the Church of the Martyr, praying and wrestling with God in tears to prevent the voyage, Augustine sailed for the coast of Italy, and his deceived mother found herself the next morning alone on the sea-shore. She had learned, however, the heavenly art of forgiving, and believing also where she could not see. In quiet resignation she returned to the city, and continued to pray for the salvation of her son. Though meaning well, she this time erred in her prayer, for the journey of Augustine was the means of his salvation. The denial of the prayer was, in fact, the answering of it. Instead of the husk, God granted rather the substance of her petition in the conversion of her son. “Therefore,” says he, “hadst Thou, O God, regard to the aim and essence of her desires, and didst not do what she then prayed for, that Thou mightest do for me what she continually implored.”—Schaff.