EXEGETICAL NOTES.—
(מ) Lamentations 4:13. It is needful to connect this verse with the last by words like, This incredible thing came to pass, because of the sins of her prophets, the iniquities of her priests—the position which these two classes assumed in the polity of Jerusalem is indicated in various strong terms by Jeremiah, the prophet of this period, and especially in his references to the treatment which he himself received at their hands (chap. 26)—who shed in her midst the blood of the righteous. They are branded as instigators and leaders of the evil, and, like other occupiers of usurped power, their jealousy and anger at those who crossed them in any way urge them to the extreme measure of dooming to death the faithful witnesses for God. In thus declaring the causes of the calamity to Judah, there is once more uplifted the moral standard which has made the Bible to be the impulse to all ethical revivals, the rebuker of wrong by whomsoever committed, the unswerving asserter of the rights of God in the face of man’s injury to man.
(ם נ) Lamentations 4:14-15 seem applicable to the condition of prophets and priests after the city had been taken. They were panicstricken. They staggered [as] blind men in the streets; an effect accounted for in other parts of Scripture as a punishment of sin. They make haste to shed innocent blood … therefore we grope for the wall like the blind, yea, we grope at they that have no eyes (Isaiah 59:7; Isaiah 59:10). Their sin found them out; its marks were palpable; they were defiled with blood when the command to go into exile arrested them. So they were avoided; [men] could not touch their garments. In their blood-stained aspect they were met with the shout which was enjoined upon leprous persons. That it was the leper who was to cry unclean is of little consequence where “poetical license” is exercised. Away unclean one [men], cried to them, away, away; and so such as had, in spiritual pride, said, Come not near me, I am holier titan thou, are abhorred by the people they contemned. The just judgment of God was manifest, so that, as proscribed offenders, When they fled away and staggered blindly as before in the city, they found that, even in other places where they sought ease and rest for the soles of their feet, the natives would not allow them to stay; [men] said among the nations, They shall no longer sojourn [among us]. These references, in all probability, are made to real occurrences.
(פ) Lamentations 4:16. The circumstances of those fugitives are ascribable to Jehovah. Wherever they went, the face of Jehovah had not disappeared; in anger, not in grace, lifted up upon them, it has scattered them, and will no more regard them. This fact was verified on their treatment by tile peoples to whom they had gone. There no respect was paid, no favour shown, on account of office, occupation, or age.
HOMILETICS
UNFAITHFUL RELIGIOUS LEADERS
I. Ignore the sacred duties of their high office. “The sins of her prophets and the iniquities of her priests” (Lamentations 4:13). The leaders, whose first duty it was to explain and enforce the Word of God, were the prime movers in the attempt to silence that Word. Their utter dereliction of duty, and the bitter rancour with which they were actuated, were evident in their repeated efforts to put Jeremiah to death, the only man who had the courage to lift up his voice for Jehovah amid the general defection. Had they rallied round the faithful prophet and round their king, who was more weak than vicious, they might have saved the city and the nation from ruin. When the servants of the Lord and the religious guides of the people are false to their sacred vows, the nation is grievously misled, and disaster will follow.
II. Become intoxicated with slaughter. “That have shed the blood of the just in the midst of her; they have wandered (reeled) as blind men in the streets; they have polluted themselves with blood” (Lamentations 4:13-14). They have lost the art of persuasion, even to do wrong, and, like all baffled tyrants, adopt the bloody policy of the sword. The people are coerced into rebellion against God and their beat interests by brute force. Having once tasted blood, they revel in it, and reel through the city blinded by their insatiable lust of slaughter. They who ought to be holy, as God’s ministers consecrated to His service, are defiled with blood, and that the blood not of enemies, but of their own countrymen. There is no fury so maddening and ungovernable as the thirst for blood.
III. Are shunned and abhorred by God and man (Lamentations 4:15-16). They are denounced by the people they had oppressed, and hounded out of the city only to find themselves abhorred by the heathen to whom they fled for shelter. They were hated at home and abroad. “The anger of the Lord divided them,” scattered them, and wherever they wandered, the people despised and shunned them. They were outcasts of God and men. They had sown to the wind, and they reaped the whirlwind. Such is the fate of the faithless and cruel There is no punishment too severe for unfaithful ministers of God’s Word.
LESSONS.—
1. False teachers are the curse of any community.
2. They are utterly reckless both as to what they say and do.
3. They involve the people in much suffering.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
Lamentations 4:13-16. False ministers of God.
1. Are the authors of the vilest sins (Lamentations 4:13).
2. Are capable of the most revolting cruelty in accomplishing their wicked ends (Lamentations 4:13-14).
3. Are the execration of the people they oppress (Lamentations 4:15).
4. Are divinely punished (Lamentations 4:16).
Lamentations 4:15-16. The tactics of the wicked.
1. Recoil upon themselves.
2. Render them the abhorrence of all classes
3. Are defeated and punished by the vengeance of Heaven.
ILLUSTRATIONS.—Unqualified ministers. It is the great wide-spread evil of the Church that it has unrenewed and inexperienced pastors; that so many become preachers before they become Christians, and are consecrated as priests at the altar of God before they are made holy to Christ by the offering of the heart to Him; and thus they worship an unknown God and proclaim an unknown Christ, and pray through an unknown Spirit, and preach a state of holiness and fellowship with Christ, and a glory and a blessedness which are wholly unknown to them, and perhaps will remain unknown through all eternity. He must indeed be a heartless preacher who has not himself in his own heart the Christ and the grace that he declares. Alas! that all scholars in our universities might well ponder this.—Baxter.
Unbelief and ministerial inefficiency. There are dangerous signs at the present day of a relaxation of moral tone in the literature of free-thinking. There is a tendency to palliate the offences of vicious characters and to treat every sin as atoned for by intellectual brilliancy. But it would be in the highest degree unjust to throw the whole blame of his error upon every individual who may happen to be the victim of unbelief. We are all bound up together in this matter; and the sins, the unfaithfulness, the lack of moral energy among Christians themselves contribute, to a great extent, to weaken the testimony to our faith. The ministers of God’s Word must bear their share in this responsibility. So far as they fail to exhibit the moral truth and spiritual force of that Word, so far as they harden it, or obscure it, or misrepresent it, they contribute to weaken its appeal to the hearts and consciences of their fellows, and the result is seen in many an indirect and distant injury to faith. It is the mission of the Church and its ministers to carry on the work of the Apostles by bearing witness to certain truths and revelations; and if that witness be in any instance unworthily delivered, the force with which the truth appeals to the soul of man is proportionately weakened. Wace: Bampton Lectures.
Priestcraft. The whole system is one of Church instead of Christ; priest instead of Gospel; concealment of truth instead of manifestation of truth; ignorant superstition instead of enlightened faith; bondage where we are promised liberty—all tending to load us with whatever is odious in the worst meaning of priestcraft, instead of the free, affectionate, enlarging, elevating, and cheerful liberty of the children of God. Bishop M’Ilwaine.
Penalty of murder. Thales Milesius, one of the wise men of Greece, being asked what was the most difficult thing in life, answered, “For a tyrant to live to old age.” The application may be extended to the cruel, bloodthirsty, and murderers.
The triumph of the wicked. The triumph of the wicked is always short. When they feel themselves secure from evil and begin to boast of their triumph, then judgment overwhelms them. So it was with Belshazzar, Herod, and the fool of the Gospel. How soon Abel’s blood called for vengeance of Cain! We cannot sin so quickly but God seeth us as quickly. How many have been stricken while the oath had been in their mouths, as Jeroboam was stricken while he spoke, that they might see they were stricken. Though a man sin often, and steal his sins as it were without punishment, yet at last he is taken napping, even while the wickedness is in his hand, and his day is set when he shall pay for all, whether it be twelve months or twelve years. “When it cometh, it will be soon.”