EXEGETICAL NOTES.—
(ו) Lamentations 2:6. The dwelling-place of Jehovah on Mount Zion, which He claims as His own possession, with all its appointed services, has shared in the tribulations. He has treated violently, as a garden, His booth. The references in Lamentations 2:6-7 being to the methods of Divine worship, the reference here will be to the Temple. He forsook the tabernacle of Shiloh, the tent which He placed among men, and instead of this, in Salem was His tabernacle=booth, but it also had come to be only a temporary habitation for the mighty God: that which He had sanctified had been profaned by the inroads of unsanctified men. As a booth in a vineyard is dismantled when the vintage is ingathered, so the stately Temple was contumeliously broken down. The Septuagint reading, He tore up His tabernacle as a vine, harmonises with the idea of the Hebrew phrase, viz., that the House of the Lord was laid waste. Consequent on this, He has destroyed his [place of] solemn assembly, where He met with His people and blessed them; following this came awful manifestations of indifference even to the helps to serving the Lord. The covenant God Jehovah has caused to be forgotten in Zion solemn assembly and sabbath; the annual and weekly services were no longer in the minds of His professed people. The old ritual was unavailable. Communion with one another and communion with God through established religious forms were altogether in abeyance. They had to be taught that that which decayeth and waxeth aged is to be replaced by a new covenant in which the service of men, and the service of God would not be by ordered rules, but by love in the spirit. The persons also who had been officially prominent in Temple-services were swept off the stage; He has despised, set no store by, in the vehemence of His anger, king and priest. The priesthood was indispensable to the Temple-worship till there ariseth another Priest, made not after the law of a carnal commandment, but after the power of an endless life. The connection of royalty with the Temple is thus explained by Oehler: “The Israelitish kingdom especially in David and Solomon, bears a certain sacerdotal character, inasmuch as the king at the head of the people and in their name, pays homage to God and brings back again to the people the blessings of God.” This, however, is defective in statement. What was done by the king was not done in any priestly capacity, but as being the chief member of the sacerdotal people. They were a kingdom of priests unto Jehovah. Besides, it was done as representative of the Davidic monarchy, with which the building and continuance of services in the house of the Lord were closely linked (Jeremiah 33:21). Viewed in this light, the lamentation is, that Jehovah has rejected both the royal family of David and the Levitical priesthood.
(ז) Lamentations 2:7. There has been entire desecration of the holy places. The Lord has cast off his altar, the appointed erection on which burnt-offerings and sacrifices were presented to Him, and which should come up with acceptance there. There was no standing for such action now. He had abandoned it—its fires were quenched and cold: he has abhorred his sanctuary, the whole enclosure of the holy places. But there all is not still; He has put into the hand of her enemy the walls of her palaces, the crowning buildings of Mount Zion have been delivered up to hostile people, and they have given voice in the house of the Lord; a victorious multitude made within the glory-hallowed precincts such a jubilant noise as [in] a day of a solemn assembly, but the clamour was the clamour of ruthless conquerors, not of rejoicing worshippers.
(ח) Lamentations 2:8. Jeremiah relates (Jeremiah 52:14) that all the army of the Chaldeans, that were with the captain of the guard, brake down all the walls of Jerusalem round about. This was from no mere chance of warfare, no shrewd decision of the commander of the invaders; it was from the predetermination of the God of Israel. Jehovah has purposed to destroy the wall of the daughter of Zion. It was carried out according as He incited or restrained the agents of its accomplishment; he has stretched out the [measuring] line, and until His limitations were reached he has not withdrawn his hand from overthrowing. Every division of the fortifications has suffered, and he has made the rampart and the wall to lament; they languish together. All calamities have their methods and boundaries fixed by the All-wise. They do not form a chaos, brought about by natural forces or human power. They are in an exact order, and proceed to a verge which He has appointed. They are pregnant with gigantic issues.
(ט) Lamentations 2:9. Traces of the best constructed part of the wall have disappeared, covered with debris. Her gates have sunk into the earth; the very means of fastening them are in fragments; he has destroyed and broken her bars. Like that had befallen the political and religious barriers which separated her from other peoples. Her king and princes are among the nations, swept away into exile. With the removal of civil authorities self-seeking and anarchy had supervened. God’s rule of life, which required Temple and altar for its material symbol, exists no more for the people; there is no law. Still more sad, the proofs of the Lord’s guidance had been withheld; even her prophets find no vision from Jehovah to bring help and comfort. There might be prophets, but they received no burden of the Lord. He will put aside for a time His means of grace, if they cease to answer Divine ends.
HOMILETICS
THE WRECK OF RELIGIOUS ORDINANCES
I. The Temple is completely demolished (Lamentations 2:6-8). In a city where there are many temples the destruction of one creates only a temporary inconvenience. Jerusalem, and indeed the Jewish nation, had but one temple, and it had the special distinction of being the only temple in the world dedicated to the worship of Jehovah. It was always in the past, and is to this day, reverently referred to as the Temple. It was idolised by the Jew, and was regarded as beyond the reach of possible injury. It was encircled with the rampart of Omnipotence. When menaced by the enemy, the people rallied round the sacred fane, prepared to sacrifice everything in its defence. Here they made their last stand, and fought with the fury of fanatics. But their zeal, bravery, and strategy were all in vain. In their blind infatuation they saw not that the only invincible defence, the presence of Jehovah, was withdrawn. The Temple was doomed, and was reduced to ruin with the same reckless indifference as a man would tear down a temporary shelter in his garden (Lamentations 2:6). The gates, walls, palaces, altar, sanctuary, were abandoned to utter destruction (Lamentations 2:7-9). The wreckage of such a temple was not only a metropolitan, but a national calamity. Everything was gone when the Temple was gone.
II. The religious services, formerly observed with uninterrupted regularity, are now utterly neglected. “The Lord hath caused the solemn feasts and Sabbaths to be forgotten in Zion” (Lamentations 2:6). The annual and the weekly festivals are no longer observed. “There is an intensive force in its being no longer Adonai, but Jehovah, who lets them pass into oblivion. He had once instituted them for His own honour, now He lets them lie forgotten.” When religion is neglected, all days are alike; there is nothing to mark off Sabbath-days from week-days, sacred days from common days. Life is reduced to the dead level of dull monotony, and the days drag on in the weary routine of comfortless and aimless labour.
“He liveth long who liveth well—
All else is being flung away;
He liveth longest who can tell
Of true things truly done each day.”
Intellectual pursuits and activity are a poor substitute for genuine religion. Education not founded on religion is only a varnish. Abolish the Sabbath and the decay of religion begins. A poet calls the Sabbath “Heaven once a week.” Day of rest, of days the best.
III. The principal worshippers are in exile. “Her king and her princes are among the Gentiles” (Lamentations 2:9). The prophet has been principally occupied with the buildings of the city and Temple. Now he turns to the people, and beginning with their temporary rulers, he laments the sad fate of the king and princes who, no longer seen taking their part in the Temple service, were, like many of their people, captives in the hands of the heathen. With the best external aids it is difficult to maintain the spirituality of worship; but that difficulty is increased when all external accessories are withdrawn, and man is placed in the midst of irreligious heathenism. If he does not strive to propagate what religion he has, he will lose it. To love and worship God we must know Him, and this we cannot do till He graciously reveals Himself. The astronomer seeking to observe a star, can do nothing till he directs his telescope towards the star. The dim light of evening is with him, and by it he sets the telescope and guides it to the proper point in the heavens. But when he has pointed it to the star, the light of the star streams into the telescope, lighting it up with a new and brighter illumination. The soul of man is a telescope by which he is seeking to see and know God. The general illumination of the heart is in the world. All pagans have it. But when man has adjusted the lenses of the soul, God flashes down it, and produces an image of Himself in the poor earthly tube.
IV. The Law and the Prophets are discredited. “The law is no more; her prophets also find no vision from the Lord” (Lamentations 2:9). The Jewish law, the Torah, came to an end when it had no longer a local habitation. Its enactments were essentially those, not of a catholic, but of a national religion, and the restoration of the nation with a material temple was indispensable to its continued existence. It was only when elevated to be a catholic religion by being made spiritual that it could do without ark, temple, and a separate people (Jeremiah 3:16; Jeremiah 31:31-34). With the Torah the special gift of prophecy also ceased, since both were peculiar to the theocracy; but it was not till the establishment of Christianity that they were finally withdrawn, or rather merged in higher developments of grace. Jeremiah now laments over the temporary removal of Judah’s special privileges before they had accomplished their office. At the return from exile they were for the time restored.—Speaker’s Comm.
It is a grave calamity to church or nation to be deprived of men of insight and inspiration. These men give direction and character to the best work we are capable of doing. Much of the work of the world is done in a perfunctory manner—done to get through with it, done to get it off one’s mind, done to secure the return which it promises. It is done without enthusiasm, originality, or contagious zeal. The men who give their work character, distinction, perfection, are the men whose spirit is behind their hands, giving them a new dexterity. There is no kind of work, from the merest routine to the highest creative activity, which does not receive all that gives it quality from the spirit in which it is done or fashioned. The highest and best work is done when the soul receives its “vision from the Lord” and is animated by His inspiration.
LESSONS.—
1. Religion seeks practical expression in worship and service.
2. The loss of religious ordinances is a national calamity.
3. The abuse of religious opportunities is punished by their withdrawal.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
Lamentations 2:6. “He hath violently taken away his tabernacle, as if it were of a garden; He hath destroyed His places of the assembly.” The earthly temple:
1. Is but a temporary structure, however elaborately built.
2. Is desecrated when a false worship is offered.
3. When defiled, is suddenly destroyed, as a man may tear down in a few moments a fragile hut erected for his temporary pleasure in a garden.
4. Its destruction suggests reflections on man’s unfaithfulness and God’s anger.
—Perverted worship: I. Involves the loss of stated privileges. “The Lord hath caused the solemn feasts and Sabbaths to be forgotten in Zion.” II. Rouses the Divine displeasure. “The indignation of His anger.” III. Entails regal and ecclesiastical dishonour. “And hath despised the king and the priest.”
Lamentations 2:7. A despised sanctuary: I. Its holiest places rejected with disdain by an offended Deity. “The Lord hath cut off his altar; he hath abhorred his sanctuary.” II. Completely abandoned to destruction. “He hath given up into the hand of the enemy the walls of her palaces.” III. The wild shouts of its destroyers a strange contrast to the exultant joy of former worshippers. “They have made a noise in the house of the Lord, as in the day of a solemn feast.”
Lamentations 2:8. The implacable destroyer: I. Works in harmony with a fixed determination. “The Lord hath purposed to destroy the wall of the daughter of Zion.” II. Carries out his purpose with systematic thoroughness. “He hath stretched out a line; he hath not withdrawn his hand from destroying.” III. Lays the strongest defences in lamentable ruin. “Therefore he hath made the rampart and the wall to lament; they languished together.”
Lamentations 2:9. National ruin complete: I. When all public buildings are destroyed. “Her gates are sunk into the ground; he hath destroyed and broken her bars.” II. When the rulers are in exile. “Her king and her princes are among the Gentiles.” III. When religious ordinances are suspended. “The law is no more.” IV. When religious teachers are deprived of Divine inspiration. “Her prophets also find no vision from the Lord.”
ILLUSTRATIONS.—Undercurrents cause wrecks. A ship was stranded on the island of Sanda, in the Orkneys. It was a mystery to the captain how the vessel got there. Being foggy at the time, he carefully consulted his chart, and both he and the mate worked up the position, their reckonings exactly agreeing as to latitude, but differing slightly in longitude. The captain had navigated the ship for ten years without any misfortune. He attributed the accident to the force of an undercurrent which carried him unknowingly out of his course, and learnt afterwards from fishermen in the locality that a current was frequently felt in that sea as far as sixty miles from land. The sea of life is intersected with dangerous undercurrents, and the watchful student will be careful to watch their tendency and strength. While on the fringe of the current, it is comparatively easy to escape, but if we drift into the midst of the irresistible swirl, we shall be hurried on to inevitable disaster. You have seen the tiny snowflakes flutter about the railway track, like lovely bits of down shook from angelic wings, and you have seen with what ease the proud locomotive scatters the fleecy morsels in the early stages of the storm; but the falling atoms increase with such persistent rapidity and accumulative force, that the panting engine is at length completely strangled, and, utterly exhausted, lies buried fathoms deep beneath the crystal mound.—The Scottish Pulpit.
Ordinances help religious life. Grace is like a spark in wet wood, that needs continual blowing. Would you have and keep up ardent desires? Do as they that would keep in the fire; cherish the sparks and blow them up to a flame. There is no man lives under the means of grace and under the discoveries of God and religion but has his good moods and lively motions. The waters are stirred many times; take hold of this advantage. Strengthen the things that remain and are ready to die, and blow up these sparks into a flame. God has left us enkindling means—prayer, meditation, and the Word. Observe where the bellows blow hardest, and ply that course. The more supernatural things are, there needs more diligence to preserve them. A strange plant needs more care than a native of the soil. Worldly desires, like a nettle, breed of their own accord, but spiritual desires need a great deal of cultivating.—Manton.
—The Christian is compared to a merchantman who trades for rich pearls; he is to go to ordinances as the merchant sails from port to port, not to see places, but to take in his lading, some here, some there. A Christian should be as much ashamed to return empty from his traffic with ordinances as the merchant to come home without his lading. But, alas! how little is this looked after by many that pass for great professors, who are like some idle persons, that come to the market not to buy provision and carry home what they want, but to gaze and look upon what is there to be sold, to no purpose! O my brethren, take heed of this!—Gurnall.
The earthly temple and perverted worship. There is a great difference between religiousness and religion. Man is a religious animal, he must and will worship something. But the religion which the Bible teaches is a total change of the heart, and of the aim and purpose of life.—Calthrop.
—Believers are in danger of seduction into the sin and falsehood of the world. The world threatens believers not only with its enmity, but evermore with its temptations. Believers must be warned to shun the idols the world worships, and they are warned against love to the world, because love in that way very easily gets associated with sinful lusts, which are common in the world. In false prophecy it is shown that the devil, who was a murderer and liar from the beginning, threatens the Church, not only with the deadly enmity of the world, but also with its soul-destroying lies. We cannot show brotherly love to false teachers without running the risk of making ourselves partakers in their sins.—Weiss.
—Means—the table of the Lord, the pulpit, the pages of the Bible, the family altar, the closet oratory—are of no value unless as putting us in communication with the Spirit of God, and used as the kite which the philosopher sends up to draw down the lightnings of the skies, or the bucket which the cottager sends down to draw up water from the well. Then, powerless as they are in themselves, they become the blessed and mighty instrument of spiritual good; the sails that catch the wind and impel the vessel on; the concave mirror that, placed before the Sun of Righteousness, gathers His beams into its burning focus to warm the coldest and melt the hardest heart; eagle-wings to raise our souls to heaven; conduits, like the pipes that bring water to our city from these Pentland Hills, to convey streams of grace, peace, and purity from their fountain in heaven to our souls on earth.—Guthrie.
A despised sanctuary. Those that turn their backs on God’s ordinances and, in rebellion to His commandments, live in sins against conscience, can they wonder that He hides His face from them when they turn their backs on Him? When we sin, we turn our backs upon God and our face to the devil, the world, and pleasure; and can men wonder that God suffers them to melt and pine away? Let us do as the flowers do, turn themselves to the sun. Let us turn ourselves to God in meditation and prayer, striving and wrestling with Him. Look to Him, eye Him in His ordinances and promises, and have communion with Him all the ways we can. Let our souls open and shut with Him. When He hides His face, let us droop as the flowers do till the sun comes again. So, when we have not daily comfort of the Spirit in peace of conscience, let us never rest seeking God’s face in His ordinances and by prayer, and that will cheer a drooping soul as the sunbeams do the flagging flowers.—Sibbes.
Retribution implacable. Fatalism and Atheism are preached constantly amidst the plaudits of ignorant Englishmen. How many politicians deem the matter a thing of the slightest consequence! Hume would never have set cities on fire, beheaded or hacked to pieces human beings, least of all the refined, the noble, the educated; but he must be reckoned among those who sneeringly scattered smouldering embers and bequeathed to others death by the inevitable conflagration. Seldom has the logic of events been more complete than in the great French Revolution.—Bampton Lecture.
—What a diabolical invention was the “Virgin’s Kiss,” once used by the fathers of the Inquisition! The victim was pushed forward to kiss the image, when, lo! its arms embraced him in a deadly embrace, piercing his body with a hundred hidden knives. The tempting pleasures of sin offer to the unwary just such a virgin’s kiss. The sinful joys of the flesh lead, even in this world, to results most terrible, while in the world to come the daggers of remorse and despair will cut and wound beyond all remedy.—Spurgeon.
—Crime and punishment grow out of one stem. Punishment is a fruit that unsuspected ripens within the flower of the pleasure that concealed it.—Emerson.
National ruin. The whole history of Christianity shows that she is in far greater danger of being corrupted by the alliance of power than of being crushed by its opposition. Those who thrust temporal sovereignty upon her treat her as her prototypes treated her Author. They bow the knee, and spit upon her; they cry, “Hail!” and smite her on the cheek; they put a sceptre in her hand, but it is a fragile reed; they crown her, but it is with thorns; they cover with purple the wounds which their own hands have inflicted, and inscribe magnificent letters over the cross on which they have fixed her, to perish in ignominy and pain.—Macaulay.
—Human society reposes on religion. Civilisation without it would be like the lights that play in the northern sky—a momentary flash on the face of darkness ere it again settled into eternal night. Wit and wisdom, sublime poetry and lofty philosophy, cannot save a nation, else ancient Greece had never perished. Valour, law, ambition, cannot preserve a people, else Rome had still been mistress of the world. The nation that loses faith in God and man loses not only its most precious jewel, but its most unifying and conserving force; has before it a
“Stygian cave forlorn
Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings,
And the night-raven sings.”
—Fairbairn.