EXEGETICAL NOTES.—
(ס) Lamentations 3:43. Thou hast covered with anger, whether Himself or us is not clear, but as the next clause, and pursued us, mentions the latter, it may be preferable to regard the people as wrapped round with a garment woven in the loom of wrath, and which marked them out as the objects to be chased for punishment.
Lamentations 3:44. There had been cries for relief (Lamentations 3:41), but unavailing, for Thou hast covered Thyself with a cloud; clouds and darkness are round about Him when He displays His royal righteousness and judgment in burning up His adversaries (Psalms 97:2-3). That cloud is a barrier [preventing] prayer from passing through to His mercy-seat.
Lamentations 3:45. Troubles are accumulated upon the nation. Rejected prayers signify condemnation of their religiousness. It is not the act, but the motive and purpose which determine the relation of the worshipper to the Worshipped. Ritual may be punctiliously carried out, and hide God instead of helping to reveal Him. When He hides His face, they are troubled, and, as if He would exhibit a striking illustration before the world of what will result from disobedience to His will, Thou hast made us the offscouring and refuse in the midst of the peoples. Treated as worthless, like Paul and his brethren in Christ (1 Corinthians 4:13), but these were more than conquerors through Him who loved them.
(פ) Lamentations 3:46-48 present significant intimations of their base condition. Enemies making sport of them fear and pitfalls surrounding them, and the oft-recurring feeling of utter destruction instigating tears shed as copiously as rivers of water.
HOMILETICS
THE TENSION OF PROLONGED SUFFERING
I. Fosters exaggerated views of God’s unpitying anger. “Thou hast covered with anger and persecuted us; Thou hast slain, Thou hast not pitied” (Lamentations 3:43). The people had acknowledged their sin and repented; but no relief came. Not only were they not pardoned, but it seemed as if the Divine wrath was more relentless than ever. The Chaldeans are still wrecking the holy city, and the citizens are being ignominiously dragged into captivity. The cloud of the Divine anger, instead of vanishing, thickens into darker threatenings of vengeance. This is one of the unvarying phases of continued suffering—every affliction is magnified into disproportionate dimensions.
II. Induces the hasty conclusion that prayer is useless. “Thou hast covered Thyself with a cloud, that our prayer should not pass through” (Lamentations 3:44). A deity so densely veiled is unapproachable. The veil is a cloud of wrath, and the suffering suppliant is stricken with terror and dismay. Prayer can never pierce so dense a cloud, and it is useless to try. The tension of prolonged suffering is apt to shake one’s confidence in the utility of prayer, and suggest the doubt whether God is after all a prayer-hearing God. It is a great calamity when the soul restrains prayer.
III. Creates the impression that the sufferer is utterly despised and scorned. “Thou hast made us as the off-scouring and refuse in the midst of the people. All our enemies have opened their mouths against us” (Lamentations 3:45-46). There is nothing so depressing as suffering, and the sufferer is often the prey of self-depreciation and false imaginings, haunted with the idea that he is the sport and laughing-stock of others. It is the effect of sin to lower us in our own estimation, and it is a part of its punishment that we sink in the estimation of others.
IV. Intensifles the feeling of hopeless rain. “Fear and a snare is come upon us, desolation and destruction” (Lamentations 3:47). The light of hope, that flickered for a moment (Lamentations 3:21), is extinguished, and the sufferer relapses into dull, dead hopelessness (Lamentations 3:11). The enemy has completely hemmed in the city with his forces; his grip tightens, strategy and bravery succeed, the city falls, and is abandoned to riot and destruction. The protection of Jehovah is withdrawn, and, what is the most disheartening revelation of all, He now appears as an angry foe. Hope perishes when we discover that God is against us.
LESSONS.—
1. Excessive suffering is apt to impair the moral vision.
2. It is a calamity to lose faith in prayer when we most need its solace.
3. The outlook it not always so desperate as it appears to the despondent sufferer.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
Lamentations 3:43-47. The pitilessness of the Divine anger: I. As it appears to the abject sufferer (Lamentations 3:47). II. Seen in its relentless persecution (Lamentations 3:43). III. In its apparent indifference to human entreaty (Lamentations 3:44). IV. In abandoning its victims to the contempt and derision of others (Lamentations 3:45-46).
ILLUSTRATIONS.—Anger restrained more terrible. Writing upon the symbolical carvings of the ducal palace at Venice, Mr. Ruskin remarks that there is a figure of Anger represented by a woman tearing open her dress at her breast. Giotto represents this vice under the same symbol, but it is the weakest of all the figures in the Arena Chapel. The Wrath of Spencer rides upon a lion, brandishing a firebrand, his garments stained with blood. Rage, or Furor, occurs subordinately in other places. It occurs to me very strange that neither Giotto nor Spencer should have given any representation of the restrained anger which is infinitely the most terrible; both of them make him violent. God’s forbearance of sin is restrained anger—not therefore less, but more terrible. The future retribution is not less, but more awful, since it is the wrath of the Lamb. Anger now restrained will be direr when once revealed. Long-suffering is a sign of suppressed indignation.
Perverted views of suffering. That extraordinary sufferings indicated extraordinary sins was contradicted by the Book of Job. So also consistent Pharisaism saw in the lowliness of Jesus His unworthiness, in His defencelessness His guilt, and after having crucified Him, in His cross His curse; whilst Jesus recognises therein His own glorification and the salvation of the world. The clouds that are the precursors of a storm do not appear so black to us when they hang immediately over our heads as when we see them rising up at the edge of the horizon. It is easier to know the worst than to dread the worst. All misfortunes appear more formidable at a distance than when we actually come to grapple with them.
Unjustifiable depression. In a fit of dejection Dean Hook once wrote—“My life has been a failure. I have done many things tolerably, but nothing well. As a parish priest, as a preacher, and now as a writer, I am quite aware that I have failed, and the more so because my friends contradict the assertion.”
God does hear prayer. There is no such thing in the long history of God’s kingdom as an unanswered prayer. Every true desire from a child’s heart finds some true answer in the heart of God. Most certain it is that the prayer of the Church of God since creation has not been the cry of orphans in an empty home without a Father to hear or answer. Jesus Christ did not pray in vain or to an unknown God, nor has He spoken in ignorance of God or of His brethren when He says, “Ask and receive, that your joy may be full.”—Norman Macleod.