The LORD is righteous; for I have rebelled against his commandment: hear, I pray you, all people, and behold my sorrow: my virgins and my young men are gone into captivity.
Ver. 18. The Lord is righteous.] Whatever I suffer, or say haply in my passion, that may seem to sound to the contrary. Righteous art thou, O Lord, and just are thy judgments, said David; Psa 119:137 and after him Mauricius the emperor, when deposed by the traitor Phocas; and the noble Duplessis, when he heard of the death of his only son, slain in the Low Countries.
For I have rebelled against his commandments.] Heb., Against his mouth, and have therefore deserved thus to feel the weight of his hand; to hear the rod, and who hath appointed it, because I would not hear the Word and who preached it. I have imbittered his mouth, as some render the Hebrew text, and therefore am worthily imbittered by him.
Hear, I pray you, all people.] See Lamentations 1:12. But how agreeth this with that of David in 2 Samuel 1:20, "Tell it not in Gath?" It is answered that David there would not have that slaughter in Gilboa to be reported as the hand of the Philistines, but of God.
My virgins and my young men are gone into captivity.] Are carried out of this land, the sign of God's favour, and of heaven itself. And here lay the pinch of their grief. Let young ones and maids - quibus hodie fraena laxari solent - obey God, unless they had rather perish.