Let all their wickedness come before thee; and do unto them, as thou hast done unto me for all my transgressions: for my sighs are many, and my heart is faint.
Let all their wickedness come before thee. Such prayers against foes are lawful, if the foe be an enemy of God, and if our concern be not for our own personal feeling, but for the glory of God and the welfare of His people.
Come before thee - so Revelation 16:19, "Babylon came in remembrance before God, to give unto her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of his wrath" (cf. Psalms 109:15).
Remarks:
(1) Judah's overwhelming sorrow was the bitter fruit of her grievous sin. She who had been once the special object of God's favour, was now, as a "widow," forlorn and without a "comforter" (Lamentations 1:9), severed from her Almighty Husband and her Lord. She who had sat on a throne as a princess among tributary provinces was now "sitting" on the bare earth, forced to be a "tributary" herself (Lamentations 1:1). Not only so; but her people were exiled captives in strange lands, wherein they could find "no rest" (Lamentations 1:9.). Worst of all, her "solemn feasts" (Lamentations 1:4), which formerly had been her glory and "her beauty" (Lamentations 1:6), were now forsaken, while her "priests and virgins sighed" with bitter but unavailing regrets. Behold the awful consequences of sin, even in this world! How much more awful must this be in the world to come, where sin is left to its unrestricted working!
(2) Yet her very afflictions were the means of bringing her to a better frame of mind. Heretofore she had not been spiritually wise, so as to "consider her latter end" (Lamentations 1:9; Deuteronomy 32:29). Therefore she had been "removed" as unclean (Lamentations 1:8), and had been "brought down wonderfully." But now her affliction led her to cry to the Lord, and commit her cause to Him! It is good for us to have been afflicted, when our sorrows have led us to cast ourselves wholly on the Lord.
(3) Her plea before God is two-fold: first, the severity of her suffering, "O Lord, behold my affliction;" secondly, the haughtiness of her triumphant enemy, who "did mock at her Sabbaths," telling her tauntingly that now she might keep perpetual Sabbath, "The enemy hath magnified himself." So when Satan sorely buffets the believer, the latter may use the same pleas before his God, reminding his gracious Father of the severity of his temptations, and the proud malignity of his adversary.
(4) Jerusalem in her present dejection appeals to all Christians not to "pass by," as the priest and Levite passed by the robbed and wounded traveler, without sympathy or help, "Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by?" Her example speaks loudly to us, and warns us, that if we allow sin, our worst enemy, to have dominion over us, then all our other adversaries will be allowed to rule us. Great as were her outward calamities, her inward sufferings, through the reproaches of conscience, were harder to bear. Sin sends a consuming "fire into the bones," and spreads "a net" for the feet (Lamentations 1:13). It "wreathes" a galling "yoke" round "the neck," and makes "the strength" of the most powerful "to fall," just as when Delilah had robbed Samson of the Nazarite locks of his consecration to God, "the Lord departed from him," and so "his strength went from him" (Judges 16:19-20). Sin it is which has caused all the sorrows, sicknesses, lamentations, and deaths which prevail on every side throughout the earth.
(5) But Jerusalem not only gives us warning to avoid her sin, lest we incur her punishment, but also she invites our commiseration and our active sympathy. Let it not be regarded as something not at all concerning us Gentile Christians that the Lord has so sorely and so long afflicted His elect nation, the people of His everlasting covenant. Let us rather look forward, with assured anticipation, to the fulfillment of the promises concerning her in "her last end" (Lamentations 1:9). Glorious things are spoken of the city of God. Let us therefore "pray," labour, and freely give, "for the peace of Jerusalem," and so obtain the promise, "They shall prosper that love thee" (Psalms 122:6).
(6) The sure token of Judah's and Israel's repentance shall be when, accepting the punishment of their iniquity as their just due, they shall justify God. It is the most hopeful sign in any sinner, when the Holy Spirit, applying inwardly the lesson taught by outward distresses, teaches him to cry, "The Lord is righteous; for I have rebelled against His commandment" (Lamentations 1:18).
(7) This lesson, however, is to be learned, not so much in gazing at Israel's sorrow, as in gazing at the awful and unparalleled agonies of the Man of Sorrows, the Antitype to afflicted Israel (Lamentations 1:12). Let us not "pass by," as unconcerned spectators, the scene which presents itself to the soul in the Crucified One of Calvary. It was not His sins, but ours, which caused His bitter sufferings. There are depths of sorrow and love to be witnessed there by the eye of faith, such as human conception cannot fathom. Let sin thereby be embittered to us. Let God's love in Christ become more and more precious to us the longer we stand and gaze at that wonderful manifestation of justice and mercy harmonized! Lot us adore and love, while we see that the Lord was indeed declared therein "righteous," our sin was condemned, and at the same time a free channel was opened whereby the streams of divine mercy could flow down upon us sinners.