There is none to comfort me— Grief is timorous and suspicious, fertile in inventing torments for itself, scarcely brooking the least neglect, but entirely impatient of the least mockery or contempt. The prophet has beautifully expressed this circumstance in the passage before us. See Lamentations 1:7. The day, spoken of in the latter part of this verse, means that appointed for the execution of God's judgments upon the Babylonians and other enemies of the Jews, according to the predictions of Jeremiah in the 46th and following Chapter s of his prophesy. The next verse might be rendered, All their wickedness shall come before thee, and thou wilt do unto them as, &c. See Bishop Lowth's 23rd Prelection, and Calmet. Instead of, Do unto them, &c. Schultens reads, Exhaust thou them, as thou hast exhausted me.
REFLECTIONS.—1st, With plaintive notes of woe the prophet's mournful muse begins, and bids each reader drop the sympathetic tear.
1. He bewails the desolations of Jerusalem: how changed from all her former glory, into what an abyss of wretchedness fallen: he is amazed at what he beheld, and, commiserating her afflicted case, breaks forth, How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people! Silence reigns in the once thronged streets; and brooding over the ruins, with anguish too big for utterance, in melancholy solitude, Jerusalem, as a disconsolate widow, sits on the ground, deserted of God, her king a captive, her inhabitants dead with famine, pestilence, or the sword, or kept under the yoke of servitude in a strange land: a princess once among the nations, courted, respected, and obeyed; now bound with captive bands, an ignominious tributary to a heathen lord. No marvel that tears incessant furrow her cheeks; and as if too short the day for sorrow such as her's, all night they flow, without a comforter, without a friend to pity her, and, by partaking, to alleviate her anguish. Her lovers, who in the days of her prosperity with warm professions testified their regard, desert her in the day of her calamity; and her treacherous friends throw off the mask, and act as open enemies. Her children groan in servitude; subject to the caprice and tyranny of heathen masters, and finding no rest, no end of toil, no peace of mind, no settled abode. Hemmed in like a beast in the toils, her persecutors have seized her, without the possibility of escape. Her adversaries are the chief; her enemies prosper: and no wonder, since the Lord hath afflicted her, whose wrath, on account of her manifold iniquities, is the cause of all her sufferings. Like harts famished for want of pasture, and weak as those timorous animals, her princes are unable to fight or fly, and fall an easy prey, despised now by those who honoured her; stripped of all her wealth and ornaments, her nakedness appears; and, confounded, she sighs and turns backward, as if to hide her shame. Pining with famine, and sunk in despondence, her people seek bread, and gladly part with all their jewels and pleasant things to procure the smallest refreshment; so low are they reduced, from that plenty wherein they once rioted, and which they so grievously abused. Note; (1.) They who wilfully depart from God, the soul's true rest, may not hope to find rest in any thing beside. (2.) All afflictions are doubly heavy when we see them as coming from God, not in mercy, but in wrath. (3.) Men's sins will surely bring them into straits, when too late they will bewail their folly. (4.) Affluence abused is the ready way to pining want.
2. Great were these miseries under which the state groaned; yet greater anguish to the gracious soul it was, to behold the sacred service of the temple interrupted. Unfrequented now, the ways of Zion mourn: her gates, no longer thronged by those who hasted to her solemn feasts, are deserted, desolate. Her priest sigh; no sacrifice bleeds, no incense smokes upon the altar; destitute of their portion, famishing through want: her virgins are afflicted; their songs of joy sunk into mourning and woe; and she is in bitterness, overwhelmed with anguish and distress. Her beauty is departed; not only her king and nobles captives, and her country wasted, but, above all, the beautiful house of her sanctuary in ruins. With sacrilegious hands her enemies have seized all her pleasant things, her ark, her altars; and those, who might not even enter the congregation, now riot in the very sanctuary, plunder and spoil its sacred treasures, and, adding insult to their ravages, mocked at their sabbaths; or, as some think, in derision laid upon them on that day heavier burdens. And, what aggravated all, was, the remembrance of the happy days of old, fled, to appearance for ever fled, and nothing now remaining but affliction and misery. Note; (1.) Nothing affects a good man's heart so deeply as the decay of vital godliness. (2.) To hear God dishonoured, his worship and ordinances despised and ridiculed, is bitter to the pious soul. (3.) The remembrance of the communion that we have enjoyed with God, and the comforts that we have tasted, serve but to aggravate our griefs, when by our unfaithfulness we have provoked God to withdraw, and leave us to our misery.
3. He laments over their sins, the cause of these desolations; for God is righteous in these his judgments. Her transgressions are multiplied, and very grievous, numberless, and aggravated. Her filthiness is in her skirts, open and avowed: careless and secure, she remembereth not her last end, nor considers in what misery her iniquities will issue: and having been most oppressive herself, the rich afflicting their poor brethren, and making their servitude heavy, justly therefore she is devoted to the yoke, and her fall wonderful, as her provocations were excessive. Note; (1.) Sin and ruin are inseparable. (2.) No sins are so aggravated as those of God's professing people.
4. Zion is introduced, breaking forth into an earnest cry to God under her sufferings. O Lord, behold my affliction, with an eye of pity and compassion, since every other comforter is no more: see, O Lord, and consider; for I am become vile, reduced to the most abject misery, and ready to sink into despair, if thou dost not interpose. Note; (1.) The only relief for the miserable is earnest application to the merciful God. When all other compassions fail, his fail not. (2.) If God afflicts his believing people, it is in order to excite their more fervent applications to him, and make them know more of the wonders of his grace.
2nd, The same complaints are continued.
1. She demands some compassion from the spectators of her misery, in the view of the heavy hand of God upon her, whom she acknowledges to be the author of her troubles. Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? can you unconcerned behold these desolations, and not drop a tear over these ruins? see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow; so bitter and overwhelming. How ready are we all in distress to think our own burden peculiarly heavy, when in fact we only share the calamities common to men: yet it must be owned, that her case was deplorable indeed. In anger, in fierce anger, the Lord had afflicted her; a sense of this added bitterness to every burden; his fire is kindled in her palaces, or burns with fiercer flames within her guilty conscience. Entangled in his net, she could not flee away, but falls backward, faint, and unable to oppose the desolations of her Chaldean foe. Under complicated judgments, her yoke was made heavy, and her foul transgressions the cause of all; she was delivered into her enemies' hands, without the possibility of escaping. Her warriors, her valiant youth, and all her inhabitants, like grapes in the wine-press, are trodden under foot by the Babylonish army, and their blood shed on every side. Note; Whatever judgments weigh us down, we may be assured that our transgressions have wreathed the yoke, and bound on the burden.
2. She bewails with floods of tears her bitter anguish; and surely there is a cause for them. For these things I weep; both for her sin and her suffering; and particularly, [1.] Because the comforter that should relieve my soul is far from me. When God departs, our misery must needs be great: all other afflictions are made light by the sense of his presence and love; but when the comforter, the only comforter of the sinful soul, is far from us, and nothing appears but wrath and despair, then is our wretchedness as complete as it can be out of hell. [2.] Because her children are desolate, in captivity, or destroyed by the sword of the merciless enemy; unable to comfort her; yea, their sad fate is the cause of her torment. [3.] Because she could not find a friend. In vain she spread forth her hands, entreating help, and pleading for compassion: her lovers, who promised once so fair, deceived her, yea, shunned her, as if her touch communicated defilement, and none either cared or dared to interpose, when the destruction was by the divine decree, and her adversaries acted under his commission. Note; (1.) When God is our friend, we shall never want a comforter; if he be our enemy, none can comfort us. (2.) Creature-confidences are sure to fail us in the day of calamity. (3.) Because of the terrible famine. My priests and mine elders gave up the ghost in the city, while they sought their meat to relieve their souls; and if these were perishing for want, how much more the people in general? (4.) Because of the desolations that she beheld. Abroad the sword bereaveth, at home there is as death, inevitable from the famine and the pestilence. (5.) Because of her insulting enemies. They heard of her trouble, and with malicious pleasure rejoiced in it, and for these things her tears run down without intermission.
3. She justifies God in these his judgments. The Lord is righteous; however faithless her friends, or inhuman her foes, her sufferings were no more than she deserved: for I have rebelled, grievously rebelled, against his commandment. Note; True penitents ever acknowledge the justice of God in punishing them; and never desire to excuse themselves, but speak of their sins with every aggravation.
4. She presents her miserable case to the God of all mercy. Behold, O Lord, for I am in distress; deeply afflicted, not only with her sufferings, but from a sense of her sins: my bowels are troubled, mine heart is turned within me; distracted and torn, uneasy and restless; and when the soul thus broken and contrite approaches God, he will not despise our prayer.
5. She expects and intreats that God would visit her enemies. Thou wilt bring the day that thou hast called; the time fixed in God's counsels for their punishment; and they shall be like unto me, in suffering; and as she believes this will come, she prays that it may. Let all their wickedness come before thee; be remembered and avenged: and do unto them as thou hast done unto me for all my transgressions; as equally guilty, let them meet the same scourge, and heavy indeed that had been, as her anguish testified; for my sighs are many, and my heart is faint. Note; (1.) They who are alike guilty, may expect to be alike miserable. (2.) Though all private resentment is forbidden, we may pray to see God glorified in the ruin of his own and his people's enemies, that are obstinately, incorrigibly impenitent.