EXEGETICAL NOTES.—
(ב) Lamentations 3:4. Details as to how the writer suffered. My flesh and my skin he has worn out, he has broken my bones. Bodily exhaustion and racking pains consume the vital forces.
Lamentations 3:5. Obstruction is placed so that I may not find a change. He has builded against me, shut me in as if He was besieging me behind and before with hurting and wearying obstacles, gall and travail.
Lamentations 3:6. Darkness was added. He has made me to dwell in dark places, dismal and without hope, as those in which lay the for ever dead, those who had gone into Sheol, and for whom there is no way of return.
(נ) Lamentations 3:7. Freedom is taken away by close confinement and a heavy chain.
Lamentations 3:8. Prisoner though I am, I can make entreaties for relief. I cry and call for help, but no response is given; he shutteth out my prayer; he had used means to prevent the petitions reaching him, as if the barriers were not fabricated by the sins of the petitioner!
Lamentations 3:9. As a traveller, I am brought to a standstill. He has fenced up my ways with hewn stone, and there is a necessity to turn aside to crooked paths, which lead to and fro without purpose.
HOMILETICS
THE BEWILDERMENT OF GRIEF
I. Is accompanied with intense physical suffering. “My flesh and my skin hath He made old; He hath broken my bones” (Lamentations 3:4). The skin is wrinkled and worn, in this case not with age, but with excessive grief; and the suffering which in the preceding verses was represented as a slow wasting of strength, has now reached the stage of acute pain, such as is caused by the breaking of bones. It is a pitiable sight to see a nation or an individual growing prematurely old. This is not done by hard, honest, healthy work, but by sorrow and suffering. The strongest and most beautiful physical form rapidly shrinks and withers under the stroke of a great and overwhelming grief. A sudden calamity has been known to turn the hair grey in a single night, and to impose the wreck of years on the bewildered and moaning sufferer.
II. Is as of one immured in prison, from which all efforts to escape are futile (Lamentations 3:5; Lamentations 3:7; Lamentations 3:9). The prisoner is enclosed and fenced in with a solid wall as of hewn stone, but it is a wall of bitterness and weariness. There are paths, dark and tortuous, and as he gropes along them with the dim hope of finding an outlet, he finds himself in a maze which brings him back, after long and weary wandering, to the place whence he started. Like Byron’s Prisoner of Chillon—
“It was liberty to stride
Along my cell from side to side,
And up and down, and then athwart,
And tread it over every part;
And round the pillars one by one,
Returning where my walk begun.”
Grief fetters the soul as with a heavy chain. It may chafe and fret and tug to very weariness in the effort to obtain release; but in vain: the bondage remains. If we walk in the crooked paths of sin, we shall ultimately find ourselves enclosed within the crooked paths of sorrow, from which we shall be powerless to escape.
III. Is as of one buried in a dismal sepulchre. “He hath set me in dark places, as they that be dead of old” (Lamentations 3:6). Grief has worn down the sufferer to the semblance of a skeleton, and he regards himself as a corpse laid in the dark chambers of the grave—dead, buried, and forgotten.
“For all was blank and bleak and gray,
It was not night, it was not day,
It was not even the dungeon-light,
So hateful to my heavy sight,
But vacancy absorbing space,
And fixedness without a place;
There were no stars, no earth, no time,
No check, no change, no good, no crime;
But silence and a stirless breath,
Which neither was of life nor death;
A sea of stagnant idleness,
Blind, boundless, mute, and motionless!”—Byron.
Excessive grief darkens and dulls every faculty, and robs life of all its charm. There are some sorrows from which death is a merciful release.
IV. The loudest calls for help are disregarded. “Also when I cry and shout, he shutteth out my prayer” (Lamentations 3:8). The walls of his prison are so thick that the loudest cries cannot pierce them; they are unheard and unheeded. It intensifies the bewilderment of grief when the most earnest cries for help bring no relief. A short time ago the dead body of a stalwart Scotch shepherd was found buried in the snow on the Ayrshire hills, within a short distance of his own home. Two days before, when walking homewards, he was overtaken with a snowstorm, and it is supposed must have been dazed by the fury of the tempest, and lost his way. It is distressing to think of his desperate struggles for life and his exhausting shouts for help, but all in vain. It is a painful phase in the mystery of suffering when God seems so indifferent to our prayers, and so slow to help. But even in this we are led by-and-bye to recognise the Divine justice and mercy.
LESSONS.—
1. The body sympathises with the sufferings of the soul.
2. Much of the suffering of life must be borne alone.
3. It is the bitterest ingredient in suffering when there is no prospect of relief.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
Lamentations 3:4-6. The ravages of sorrow: I. Destroy the freshness and bloom of youth. “My flesh and my skin hath He made old.” II. Inflict acutest pain. “He hath broken my bones” (Lamentations 3:4). III. Oppress the soul with bitterness and toil. “He hath builded against me, and compassed me with gall and travel” (Lamentations 3:5). IV. Overshadow the individual life with the gloom of the grave. “He hath set me in dark places, as they that be dead of old” (Lamentations 3:6).
Lamentations 3:7-9. A baffled sufferer: I. He is enclosed and fettered. “He hath hedged me about that I cannot get out; He hath made my chain heavy” (Lamentations 3:7). II. His cries for help are unavailing. “Also when I cry and shout, He shutteth out my prayer” (Lamentations 3:8). III. He is in a maze of tortuous paths, from which there is no outlet. “He hath in-closed my ways with hewn stone, He hath made my paths crooked” (Lamentations 3:9).
ILLUSTRATIONS.—Causes of grief. We fancy that all our afflictions are sent us directly from above; sometimes we think it in piety and contrition, but oftener in moroseness and discontent. It would be well, however, if we attempted to trace the causes of them; we should probably find their origin in some region of the heart which we never had well explored, or in which we had secretly deposited our worst indulgences. The clouds that intercept the heavens from us come not from the heavens, but from the earth.—Landor.
A great sorrow. Henry I., on his return from Normandy, was accompanied by a crowd of nobles and his son William. The White Ship, in which the prince embarked, lingered behind the rest of the royal fleet, while the young nobles, excited with wine, hung over the ship’s side taunting the priest who came to give the customary benediction. At last the guards of the king’s treasure pressed the vessel’s departure, and, driven by the arms of fifty rowers, it swept swiftly out to sea. All at once the ship’s side struck on a rock at the mouth of the harbour, and in an instant it sank beneath the waves. One terrible cry, ringing through the stillness of the night, was heard by the royal fleet, but it was not till the morning that the fatal news reached the king. He fell unconscious to the ground, and rose never to smile again!
Secret grief. If the internal griefs of every man could be read, written on his forehead, how many who now excite envy would appear to be objects of pity!—Metastasio.
Grief irksome, but needful. A friend was asked concerning a beautiful horse feeding on the pasture with a clog on its foot, “Why do you clog such a noble animal?” The reply was, “I would a great deal sooner clog him than lose him; he is given to leap hedges.” That is why God clogs His people. He would rather clog them than lose them; for if He did not, they would leap and be gone.—Spurgeon.
The sufferer baffled by temptation. A time of affliction is a time of temptation. Satan will not be wanting in any opportunity or advantage of setting upon the soul. When Pharaoh heard that the people were entangled in the wilderness, he pursued them; and when Satan sees a soul entangled with its distresses and troubles, he thinks it his time and hour to assault it. He seeks to winnow, and comes when the corn is under the flail. Reckon, therefore, that, when trouble cometh, the prince of this world cometh also. Then is the time to take the shield of faith, that we may be able to quench his fiery darts. If they be neglected, they will inflame the soul.—John Owen.
Grief, its uses. What! would you choose that you alone may fare better than all God’s saints? that God should strew carpets for your nice feet only, to walk into your heaven, and make that way smooth for you which all patriarchs, prophets, evangelists, confessors, Christ Himself, have found rugged and bloody! Away with this self-love, and come down, you ambitious sons of Zebedee, and, ere you think of sitting near the throne, be content to be called unto the cross. Now is your trial. Let your Saviour see how much of His bitter portion you can pledge. Then shall you see how much of His glory He can afford you. Be content to drink of His vinegar and gall, and yon shall drink new wine with Him in His kingdom.—Bishop Hall.
—As snow is of itself cold, yet warms and refreshes the earth, so afflictions, though in themselves grievous, yet keep the soul of the Christian warm and make it fruitful Let the most afflicted know and remember that it is better to be preserved in brine than to rot in honey.—Salter.
—After a forest fire, has raged furiously, it has been found that many pine cones have had their seeds released by the heat, which ordinarily would have remained unsown. The future forest sprang from the ashes of the former. Some Christian graces, such as humility, patience, sympathy, have been evolved from the sufferings of the saints. The furnace has been used to fructify.