EXEGETICAL NOTES.—
(ר) Lamentations 2:20. The prayer is put into words correspondent with the circumstances. See, Jehovah, and behold to whom thou hast done this, to the city called thine, to the people whom thou hast chosen to be a name and praise to thee. How shocking are the consequences! See if women eat their fruit, the children whom they carried. The last word relates to that which is spread—as infants on the knees or arms. The Revised Version translates it dandled in the hands, which, if expressing the idea, is too special. The awful incident was a punishment threatened (Deuteronomy 28:56-57; Jeremiah 19:9). See if there are slain in the sanctuary of the Lord priest and prophet. His own holy place defiled with blood. If such spectacles were common, as they were, will God not stay His hand?
(ש) Lamentations 2:21. From the massacre in the Temple to the general slaughter of all ages and both sexes is another step in the dismal recital. The youth and the old man … my virgins and choice young men, were killed. It was clear that they had to bear the anger of Jehovah—that He was not only full of compassion, but in righteousness he doth judge and make war upon evil.
(ח) Lamentations 2:22. Thou hast called as in a day of solemn assembly, summoning, as by trumpet, all kinds of terrifying agencies—men, famine, fire, sword—my terrors on every side, and there was none that escaped or remained in the day of Jehovah’s anger. Then, in motherly anguish, she laments again over the children she had carried and brought up, whom the enemy had cruelly consumed. So “the poem concludes, like the first, with deep sorrow, regarding which all attempts at comfort are quite unavailing.”
HOMILETICS
A PRAYER FOR DIVINE COMPASSION
I. Reminding Jehovah of His former favour to the sufferers. “Behold, O Lord, and consider to whom Thou hast done this” (Lamentations 2:20). The prophet seems to feel that if God would only look and recall to mind who they were who were suffering, He would surely have pity. They are not the heathen, but His own people, the seed of Abraham, whom He raised from obscurity and endowed with unexampled blessings. Their present misery was all the more painful to endure when contrasted with their former affluence and power, and would surely move the compassion of Him who had so often interposed on their behalf. It is a great help in prayer to remind God of His former loving-kindness. Every blessing we receive from God increases His interest in our welfare. Every act of disobedience is a sin against Infinite Love.
II. Uttered from the midst of appalling distress (Lamentations 2:20-21). In these verses we have a vivid description of the suffering and desolation occasioned by the siege. In the extreme exigencies of famine the most horrible cannibalism was practised: the pangs of hunger devoured maternal affection, and mothers devoured their newly-born infants. Even this had been predicted as the fruit of disobedience (Deuteronomy 28:53). How little do we appreciate the great goodness of God in providing daily food for ourselves and our children! Everywhere in the city were visible the most ghastly scenes of indiscriminate massacre—“priest and prophet, young and old, virgins and young men,” lay in promiscuous heaps of the slain. If prayer can reach heaven, it must surely be when ascending from the midst of anguish like this. The greater the distress we are in, the more urgent and importunate should be our prayers.
III. Wrung from a people terrified with startling proofs of the Divine anger. “Thou hast called as in a solemn day my terrors round about, so that in the day of the Lord’s anger none escaped or remained” (Lamentations 2:22). Jeremiah had often threatened the terrors of God’s wrath in the destruction of the nation, if the people persisted in idolatry; but they heeded not. They made jests of his warnings, and their earnest repetition only increased their ridicule. But when they saw Jerusalem hemmed round by the victorious Chaldeans and the utter ruin that followed, they then saw the portentous meaning of “the terrors” that had been so often threatened and so recklessly despised. The anger of the Lord became to them a solemn reality, and, overwhelmed with confusion and fear, they cry for help. Whatever impels the soul to pray is a blessing. The beginning of prayer may rise from our fears; but as we persevere, it will be actuated by nobler motives. All that prayer can do is to bring our case before God. We must then leave it there with Him, and say, “Thy will be done.”
LESSONS.—
1. The final appeal of the helpless is to God.
2. When distress induces prayer, deliverance is at hand.
3. Jehovah is graciously moved to help by human entreaty.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
Lamentations 2:20. “Behold, O Lord, and consider to whom Thou hast done this.” The Divine pity:
1. Earnestly implored by a suffering people.
2. Invoked on the ground of former kindnesses, which, it is acknowledged, have been abused.
3. Is never appealed to in vain.
Lamentations 2:22. The tyranny of fear:
1. Realised when beset by a powerful enemy.
2. When the enemy is summoned and directed by One whom we have consciously offended.
3. When we are witnesses of cruelties we are powerless to prevent.
ILLUSTRATIONS.—Prayer. It is helplessness casting itself on power. It is infirmity leaning on strength, and misery wooing bliss. It is the flight of the soul to the bosom of God, and the spirit soaring upward and claiming nativity beyond the stars. It is the soaring eagle mounting upward in its flight, and with steady gaze pursuing the track till lost to all below. It is the roving wanderer looking towards his abiding-place, where are all his treasures and his gold. It is the prisoner pleading for release. It is the mariner of a dangerous sea, upon the reeling topmast, descrying the broad and quiet haven of repose. It is the soul, oppressed by earthly soarings, escaping to a broader and purer sphere, and bathing its plumes in the ethereal and eternal.—Wells.
Yearning for God.—When my blood flows like wine, when all is ease and prosperity, when the sky is blue and birds sing and flowers blossom, and my life is an anthem moving in time and tune, then this world’s joy and affection suffice. But when a change comes, when I am weary and disappointed, when the skies lower into a sombre night, when there is no song of bird, and the perfume of flowers is but their dying breath, when all is sun-setting and autumn, then I yearn for Him who sits with the summer of love in His soul, and feel that all earthly affection is but a glow-worm light compared to that which blazes with such effulgence in the heart of God.—Beecher.
Divine compassion. We often suffer more on account of other’s troubles than they themselves do in those troubles, for both love and sorrow take their measure as much from the capacity of the nature that experiences them as from the power of the externally exciting cause. How much one suffers with or for another does not depend altogether upon how much that other is suffering, but upon how much that nature which sympathises has with which to suffer. God feels with us, so that our experiences throw their waves upon the shore of His soul. He carries us so near to His heart that all our feelings which are of any moment produce their effects in some degree in His bosom. It seems very strange that the Maker of all the earth should permit Himself to be a participant in all the petty experiences that belong to any human life. No man would have dared to conceive such an idea of God, and to have believed any such thing as that, if it had not been revealed in unequivocal terms.
The compassion of Jesus. Luther said, “I would run into the arms of Christ if He stood with a drawn sword in His hands.” John Butterworth, reading this, resolved to do likewise, and found, as every venturing sinner does, no sword in the hands of Jesus, but open arms and a hearty welcome. Christ’s proclamation, for ever sounding forth to every burdened heart, is “Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” He demonstrated His marvellous compassion by dying for us. He will not now repulse the approach or disregard the cry of the needy.
The influence of fear. There is a virtuous fear, which is the effect of faith; and there is a vicious fear, which is the product of doubt. The former leads to hope, as relying on God, in whom we believe; the latter inclines to despair, as not relying on God, in whom we do not believe. Persons of the one character fear to lose God; persons of the other character fear to find Him.—Pascal.
Slavish and filial fear. There are two kinds of fear—one full of suspicious watchfulness, of anxious apprehension, of trepidation, terror, and dismay; the other such as can dwell in the same heart with confidence and love, and is but another form of reverence. Filial fear of God is a duty; slavish and servile dread of Him is a sin. Filial fear shrinks from sin; servile fear only from the smart of punishment. Filial fear keeps men from departing from the living God, servile fear drives them from Him. By filial fear men are made like the man Christ Jesus; by servile fear they may be scared from iniquity, as the wolf from the sheepfold by the shepherd’s gun; but it does no more to make them holy than the fright does to destroy the wolf’s ferocity. Filial fear animates us to avoid whatever would be offensive to our Heavenly Father, and, if the expression may be allowed, to consult His feelings and desires; but servile fear, as it springs from selfishness, causes us only to care for ourselves, and at best makes us not better, but only a little more prudent than the devil.—Bertram.
The greatest fear. When a city is compassed round about with a wall that is impregnable, it will be opened still towards heaven, and therefore cannot be out of danger if God be an enemy. For all their walls and bars, God could rain fire and brimstone upon the Sodomites out of heaven. Alexander asked the Scythians what they were most afraid of, thinking they would say of himself, who was so victorious everywhere. But they answered scoffingly they were most afraid lest heaven should fall upon them. We, indeed, need not fear anything but this only, lest the heaven should fall upon us, lest God should be our enemy.—J. Stoughton.