EXEGETICAL NOTES.—
(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.
(ע) Lamentations 3:49. The excessive weeping is continuous. Mine eye poureth down tears, and that without interruption. Nor will the sound of weeping be stanched, except when his undercurrent of hope reaches its terminus.
Lamentations 3:50. Till Jehovah looks down and beholds from heaven. When He sees the bearing and result of afflictions on His Name’s glory, then He hears the sighing of the prisoner. For He will not contend for ever, neither will He be always wroth.
Lamentations 3:51. Beyond what the eye shows externally it exerts influence upon the inward part. Mine eye hurts my soul: not in the rather jejune sense that the flood of tears had made the eye painful, and that pain was felt in the soul; but the soul was pained because of the eye beholding the sad lot of the more delicate and defenceless part of the population, the daughters of my city.
HOMILETICS
A SYMPATHETIC NATURE
I. Is pained by the evidences of national distress everywhere visible. “Mine eye affecteth mine heart because of all the daughters of my city” (Lamentations 3:51). What I see I feel. I see nothing but misery, and I feel nothing but pain. Amid the general suffering, the tender heart of the prophet mourned over the cruel fate of the Jewish maidens. This is a subject to which he often refers (ch. Lamentations 1:4; Lamentations 1:18; Lamentations 2:10; Lamentations 2:21; Lamentations 5:11). “Jeremiah suffered not in his own person, being under the protection of the Divine Being; but though he dwelt securely from the hand of mortality, yet he was filled with the bowels of sympathy. Though he wrote of the Jews’ desolations, yet he named them Jeremiah’s Lamentations.”
II. Is aggravated in its grief because God, who sees the calamity, does not at once remove it. “Till the Lord look down and behold from heaven” (Lamentations 3:50). While the Lord looks down. He sees all this suffering; every feature of it is fully known to Him. Why does He not interfere? How can He be so indifferent to the agonies of His people? The prophet’s heart is breaking, and it is a mystery and an addition to his pain that Jehovah does nothaste to the rescue. Sympathy is not always wise. Our emotions are apt to swamp our judgment. God knows infallibly how much suffering is necessary, and when the right moment is come for Him to interpose.
III. Expresses its sorrow in a copious outflow of tears. “Mine eye runneth down with rivers of water, without any intermission” (Lamentations 3:48-49). The measure of our being is our capacity for sorrow or joy. A certain traveller states that the shadow cast by Mount Hermon at some periods is as much as seventy miles long. A sensitive nature is susceptible of great sorrow, and has manifold ways of expressing the same. While the cause of sorrow remains, the sympathetic heart will mourn.
LESSONS.—
1. Callons indeed is the heart that can witness suffering without emotion.
2. The heart that loves intensely suffers intensely.
3. A sympathetic nature finds a merciful relief in tears.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
Lamentations 3:51. Sin the cause of suffering: I. To the patriot, as he sees its effect upon the nation. II. To the philanthropist, as he observes the mischief it works in the world. III. To the individual believer, as he is conscious of its presence in his own heart.
ILLUSTRATIONS.—The power of sympathy. Happy is the man who has that in his soul which acts upon the dejected as April airs upon violet roots. Gifts from the hand are silver and gold; but the heart gives that which neither silver nor gold can buy. To be full of goodness, full of cheerfulness, full of sympathy, full of helpful hope, causes a man to carry blessings of which he is himself as unconscious as a lamp of its own shining. Such an one moves on human life as stars move on dark seas to bewildered mariners; as the sun wheels, bringing all the seasons with him from the south.—Beecher.
Grief leaves its mark. Sir Walter Scott says of himself after a sore bereavement, “I was broken-hearted for two years; and though handsomely pieced again, the crack will remain to my dying day”
Practical sympathy. When St. Remy was preaching before King Clovis of France, telling with passionate pathos the story of Christ’s suffering and death, the monarch suddenly sprang from his throne, and, grasping his spear, cried, “Had I been there with my brave Franks, I would have avenged His wrongs.”
The relief of tears. A maniac while listening to a thrilling recital was moved to tears Lifting her withered finger she exclaimed, “Do you see that tear? It is the first tear that I have shed for seven years, and it will relieve my poor burning head. I have often wished that I could weep, but I could not.”