How the city sits solitary, that was full of people! She has become as a widow, who was great among the nations! She who was a princess among the provinces has become a slave!
She weeps bitterly in the night. Her tears are on her cheeks. Among all her lovers she has no one to comfort her. All her friends have dealt treacherously with her. They have become her enemies.
Judah has gone into captivity because of affliction, and because of great servitude. She dwells among the nations. She finds no rest. All her persecutors overtook her within the straits.
The roads to Zion mourn, because no one comes to the solemn assembly. All her gates are desolate. Her priests sigh. Her virgins are afflicted, and she herself is in bitterness.
Her adversaries have become the head. Her enemies prosper; for Yahweh has afflicted her for the multitude of her transgressions. Her young children have gone into captivity before the adversary.
All majesty has departed from the daughter of Zion. Her princes have become like deer that find no pasture. They have gone without strength before the pursuer.
Jerusalem remembers in the days of her affliction and of her miseries all her pleasant things that were from the days of old; when her people fell into the hand of the adversary, and no one helped her. The adversaries saw her. They mocked at her desolations.
Jerusalem has grievously sinned. Therefore she has become unclean. All who honored her despise her, because they have seen her nakedness. Yes, she sighs, and turns backward.
Her filthiness was in her skirts. She didn’t remember her latter end. Therefore she has come down astoundingly. She has no comforter. “See, Yahweh, my affliction; for the enemy has magnified himself.”
The adversary has spread out his hand on all her pleasant things; for she has seen that the nations have entered into her sanctuary, concerning whom you commanded that they should not enter into your assembly.
All her people sigh. They seek bread. They have given their pleasant things for food to refresh their soul. “Look, Yahweh, and see; for I have become despised.”
“Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? Look, and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow, which is brought on me, with which Yahweh has afflicted me in the day of his fierce anger.
“From on high has he sent fire into my bones, and it prevails against them. He has spread a net for my feet. He has turned me back. He has made me desolate and I faint all day long.
“The yoke of my transgressions is bound by his hand. They are knit together. They have come up on my neck. He made my strength fail. The Lord has delivered me into their hands, against whom I am not able to stand.
“The Lord has set at nothing all my mighty men within me. He has called a solemn assembly against me to crush my young men. The Lord has trodden the virgin daughter of Judah as in a wine press.
“For these things I weep. My eye, my eye runs down with water, because the comforter who should refresh my soul is far from me. My children are desolate, because the enemy has prevailed.”
Zion spreads out her hands. There is no one to comfort her. Yahweh has commanded concerning Jacob, that those who are around him should be his adversaries. Jerusalem is among them as an unclean thing.
“Yahweh is righteous; for I have rebelled against his commandment. Please hear all you peoples, and see my sorrow. My virgins and my young men have gone into captivity.
“I called for my lovers, but they deceived me. My priests and my elders gave up the spirit in the city, while they sought food for themselves to refresh their souls.
“Look, Yahweh; for I am in distress. My heart is troubled. My heart turns over within me, for I have grievously rebelled. Abroad, the sword bereaves. At home, it is like death.
“They have heard that I sigh. There is no one to comfort me. All my enemies have heard of my trouble. They are glad that you have done it. You will bring the day that you have proclaimed, and they will be like me.
“Let all their wickedness come before you. Do to them as you have done to me for all my transgressions. For my sighs are many, and my heart is faint.
John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv1–22 I undertake now to explain The Lamentations of Jeremiah.…
I undertake now to explain The Lamentations of Jeremiah. We must inquire when the Book was composed by the Prophet, and also what was the object of the author. Grossly mistaken was Jerome, who thought that it is the Elegy which Jeremiah composed on the death of Josiah; for we see nothing here that is suitable to that event. There is indeed mention made in one place of a king, but what is said there cannot be applied to Josiah; for he was never driven into exile, but was buried at Jerusalem with his fathers. From the whole contents of the Book we may justly conclude, that it was written after the city was destroyed, and the people led into exile.
Some think that Jeremiah, before this calamity happened, historically described it, and that he thus prophesied of what was future and yet unknown. But this is by no means probable; for Jeremiah here sets before the eyes of all, those things which they knew as facts; and we shall easily discover that his manner of stating things is wholly different from that used in prophetic writings. There is, then, no doubt but that Jeremiah, after the city was destroyed and the Temple burnt, bewailed the miserable state of his own nation, not after the manner of heathens, but that he might shew that even in so disastrous a state of things some benefit might be derived from what he says. And this is what ought to be especially noticed; for except we bear this in mind, the Book will lose its peculiar interest, but if we direct our minds to that desolation, which wholly dejected not only the people in general, but also the Prophet himself, so that he lost all hope, we may surely hence derive no small benefit. It is an easy thing to extol in high terms the favor of God in prosperity, and also to exhort those who have reasons to hope well to entertain confidence, and to bring forward God’s promises, that the minds of the godly may recumb on them; but when things are in a state of despair, and God seems to have forsaken his Church, since prophecy still remains in its force, and God appears as stretching forth his hand to the miserable, and to such as are almost in a hopeless state, we hence derive much benefit, and this is the chief use of what is taught here. But. we see that Jeremiah, when the kingdom had fallen, when the king with all his children was exposed to extreme disgrace, when in short the covenant of God seemed wholly abolished, still continued to discharge his office, which he certainly did not do in vain.
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When, therefore, he understood that his teaching would not be without fruit, he was thus induced to speak first of God’s judgments; secondly, to exhort the people to repentance; thirdly, to encourage them to hope; and lastly, to open the door for prayer to God, so that the people in their extremities might venture to flee to God’s mercy; which could not have been done without faith.
We now in a measure understand for what purpose this Book was written by Jeremiah: his object was to shew that though nothing in the land appeared but desolation, and the Temple being destroyed, the Covenant of God appeared as made void, and thus all hope of salvation had been cut off, yet hope still remained, provided the people sought God in true repentance and faith; and he thus proceeded in the course of his calling, and made it evident that his doctrine would not be without benefit.
He indeed bewails, as I have said, the extreme calamity of his people; but he mingles with his lamentations the doctrine of repentance and faith’ For, on the one hand, he shews that the people suffered a just punishment for the many iniquities, of which they could not have been healed; and then, on the other hand, he gives them some intimations of God’s mercy, that in death itself the Jews might seek life, nay, that in the lowest depths they might know that God would be propitious to them. He at length by his own example stimulates them to pray; but prayer is founded on faith. It then follows, that Jeremiah, when the people had become wholly alienated from the worship of God, yet spent his labor in collecting together the remnant. Though, then, the whole Church was not only in the greatest disorder, but also reduced as it were almost to nothing, yet Jeremiah constructed some sort of building out of the ruins. This is the substance of this Book.
The Greek Translators call this Book Θρήνους, Lamentations, and very properly, as also the Hebrews call it קינוה, kinut; though the common name or title is אכה, aike, from the first word in it. But when they wish to express what the Book contains, they call it קינות, kinut, Lamentations.
Let us now proceed to the words; for what I have now briefly touched upon, can be more fully explained as we go on.
The Prophet could not sufficiently express the greatness of the calamity, except by expressing his astonishment. He then assumes the person of one who on seeing something new and unexpected is filled with amazement. It was indeed a thing incredible; for as it was a place chosen for God to dwell in, and as the city Jerusalem was not only the royal throne of God, but also as it were his earthly sanctuary, the city might have been thought exempted from all danger. Since it had been said,
“Here is my rest for ever, here will I dwell,” (Psalm 132:14,)
God seemed to have raised that city above the clouds, and to have rendered it free from all earthly changes. We indeed know that there is nothing fixed and certain in the world, and that the greatest empires have been reduced to nothing; but, the state of Jerusalem did not depend on human protection, nor on the extent of its dominion, nor on the abundance of men, nor on any other defenses whatever, but it was founded by a celestial decree, by the promise of God, which is not subject to any mutations. When, therefore, the city fell, uprooted from its foundations, so that nothing remained, when the Temple was disgracefully plundered and then burnt by enemies, and further, when the king was driven into exile, his children slain in his presence, and also the princes, and when the people were scattered here and there, exposed to every contumely and reproach, was it not, a horrible and monstrous thing?
It was not, then, without reason that the Prophet exclaimed, How! for no one could have ever thought that such a thing would have happened; and then, after the event, no one with a calm mind could have looked on such a spectacle, for innumerable temptations must have come to their minds; and this thought especially must have upset the faith of all — “What does God mean? How is it that, he has promised that this city would be perpetual? and now there is no appearance of a city, and no hope of restoration in future.” As, then, this so sad a spectacle might not only disturb pious minds, but also upset them and sink them in the depths of despair, the Prophet exclaims, How! and then says, How sits the city solitary, which had much people! Here, by a comparison, he amplifies the indignity of the fact; for, on the one hand, he refers to the flourishing state of Jerusalem before the calamity, and, on the other hand, he shews how the place had in a manner been turned into darkness. For this change, as I have said, was as though the sun had fallen from heaven; for the sun has no firmer standing in heaven than Jerusalem had on earth, since its preservation was connected with the eternal truth of God. He then says that this city had many people, but that now it was sitting solitary. The verb to sit, is taken in Hebrew in a good and in a bad sense. Kings are said to sit on their thrones; but to sit means sometimes to lie prostrate, as we have before seen in many places. Then he says that Jerusalem was lying solitary, because it was desolate and forsaken, though it had before a vast number of people.
He adds, How is she become, etc.; for the word how, אכה, aike, ought to be repeated, and applied to both clauses. How, then, is she become as a widow, who was great among the nations! He says that Jerusalem had not only been full of citizens, but had also extended its power through many nations; for it is well known that many contiguous nations were tributary to it under David and Solomon. And to the same purpose is what follows, She who ruled among provinces is become tributary! that is, is become subject to a tribute. This phrase is taken from Deuteronomy 28, for the prophets were wont freely to borrow expressions from Moses, that chief teacher and prophet, as we shall presently see again.
We now then see the meaning of the Prophet. He wonders at the destruction of the city Jerusalem, and regarded it as a prodigy, which not only disturbed the minds of men, but in a manner confounded them. And by this mode of speaking he shews something of human infirmity; for they must be void of all feeling who are not seized with amazement at such a mournful sight. The Prophet then spoke not only according to his own feelings, but also according to those of all others; and he deplored that calamity as it were in the person of all. But he will hereafter apply a remedy to this astonishment For when we thus exaggerate evils, we at the same time sharpen our grief; and thus it happens that we at length become overwhelmed with despair; and despair kindles rage, so that men clamor against God. But the Prophet so mourned, and was in such a way amazed, that he did not yet indulge his grief nor cherish his amazement; but as we shall see, he restrained himself, lest the excess of his feelings should carry him beyond due bounds. It then follows, —
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 22 The Prophet wondereth at the great judgment of God,…
The Prophet wondereth at the great judgment of God, seeing Jerusalem, which was so strong and so full of people, to be now destroyed and desolate.
Which had chief rule over many provinces and countries.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv1–22 Lam 1:1 How doth the city sit solitary, [that…
Lam 1:1 How doth the city sit solitary, [that was] full of people! [how] is she become as a widow! she [that was] great among the nations, [and] princess among the provinces, [how] is she become tributary!
Ver. 1. How doth the city sit solitary.] Some {a} tell us of Jeremiah’s cave, near to Aceldama, where he sat in sight of the city now destroyed, and made her this epitaph - not altogether unlike that which David once made for his dear Jonathan. {2Sa 1:17} There he hath his Echa admirantis et commiserantis, his wondering and condoling. How once, and again, and a third time. {2Sa 1:19; 2Sa 1:25; 2Sa 1:27} And our prophet hath the self-same, in sense at least, three different times in this one verse; whence the Hebrews call the whole book by the name of Echa (How), which is the first word in it, and beginneth with the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet. For it must be observed here that, for memory’s sake especially, this piece of Holy Writ is most of it made up in order of alphabet, viz., the four first chapters, and all of it with singular artifice in a poetic strain. Take that one passage for a taste, Lam 5:16 : Oi na lanu, chi chattanu, which soundeth rhythmically, i.e., woe to us that we have sinned. And whereas other poetry is the luxury of such learning as is in words restrained, in matter usually loose, here it is altogether otherwise; for the prophet or poet, whether id sibi negotii credidit solum dari, maketh it his whole business to set forth his people’s misery in the cause thereof, their sins and excesses, pressing therefore to patience, to repentance, to earnest prayer, and to a confident expectation of a gracious issue, together with a sanctified use of all their sufferings. He had himself been a man of many sorrows all along; and now had his share as deep as any in the common calamity. Besides which he could truly say with Cyprian, Cum singulis pectus meum copulo, maeroris et funeris pondera luctuosa participo: cum plangentibus plango, cum deflentibus defleo, i.e., in St Paul’s words, "Who is weak, and I am not weak? grieved, and I grieve not? offended, and I burn not?" {2Co 11:29} And this he expresseth in a stately style and figurative terms, full of passion and compassion, as to show his love to his country, so to work upon his hard hearted countrymen, and to excite them to repentance and better obedience.
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How doth the city.] Lately a city, yea, the city, the most famous of all the cities of the East, saith Pliny; but now, alas! of a city become a heap. So true is that of Seneca, speaking of a great city burned to ashes, Una dies interest inter magnam civitatem et nullam, There was but one day between a city and no city.
Sit solitary.] Sit on the ground in a mourning posture, as Job did among the ashes, and as Vespasian, after the last destruction of Jerusalem by his son Titus, caused money to be coined, whereon was stamped the picture of Judea in form of a captive woman, sitting sorrowfully under a palm tree.
“How sits this city, late most populous,
Thus solitary! like a widow thus!
Empress of nations, queen of provinces
She was, that now thus tributary is.”
That was full of people.] Full indeed, at the three solemn anniversary feasts especially. Josephus testifieth that at the last destruction of this city by the Romans there were more than eleven hundred thousand people in it. And although Judea was not over two hundred miles long and fifty miles broad, nothing nearly as large as England, yet what huge armies brought they into the field in the days of David, Asa, Jehoshaphat, &c.! Augustine saith there were three million present at that passover, whereof one million one hundred thousand perished by the sword and famine, one hundred thousand were led to Rome in triumph. {b}
How is she become as a widow] Having lost her king, if not her God. Happy if in this last respect she be but quasi vidua, as a widow only, and no more. See 2Co 6:8. {See Trapp on "2Co 6:8"} If God at any time should say unto her, as Zec 10:6, "She shall be as if I had not cast her off, and I will hear her." Or if she could say of herself as that good widow in the story did, Sola relicta solum Deum sequor, Being left alone, I will follow after God alone.
She that was great among the nations.] So was Athens, once the glory of Greece, for both arts and arms, now a dog hole in comparison. Sparta also, that other eye of Greece, is now a small burrow called Misithra, having nothing to boast of but the fame and thoughts of its former greatness.
And princess among the provinces.] In David’s and Solomon’s days especially, when that state was in the flourish - i.e., the praise of the whole earth, and terror to all nations.
How is she become tributary!] And by that means melted and exhausted, as the Hebrew word importeth. So was England once, when the Pope’s ass. Oh the huge sums that he sucked hence, to the wasting and impoverishing of the land! Of one of his agents here it is recorded, that at his departure he left not so much money in the whole kingdom as he either carried with him or sent to Rome before him. Some of them derive their mass from the Hebrew word mas in the text, signifying tribute; and in some respects well they may - Per eam scilicet pietas omnis liquefacta est et dissoluta, saith Rivet - for it is the bane of men’s souls, and a purge to their purses
{a} Adrichom. ex Niceph.
{b} Serm. de Tempore, 204.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv1–22 The interrogative particle
The interrogative particle
how, once expressed and twice more understood in this verse, doth not so much inquire the cause or reason of the effect, as express admiration or lamentation. The prophet admires the miserable state of the city, which was full of people beyond the proportion of other cities, and now was solitary, so thin of people that scarce any could be seen in her streets. She that had a king, or rather a god, that was a husband to her, now was forsaken of God, her king taken from her, and she like a poor widow. She that was like a princess amongst the nations, that sometimes (as in David's time) had the Moabites, Ammonites, &c. tributaries to her, was now a tributary herself.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On vv1, 12 Those that have any disposition to weep with those…
Those that have any disposition to weep with those that weep, one would think, should scarcely be able to refrain from tears at the reading of these verses, so very pathetic are the lamentations here.
I. The miseries of Jerusalem are here complained of as very pressing and by many circumstances very much aggravated. Let us take a view of these miseries.
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1. As to their civil state. (1.) A city that was populous is now depopulated, Lam 1:1. It is spoken of by way of wonder - Who would have thought that ever it should come to this! Or by way of enquiry - What is it that has brought it to this? Or by way of lamentation - Alas! alas! (as Rev 18:10, Rev 18:16, Rev 18:19) how doth the city sit solitary that was full of people! She was full of her own people that replenished her, and full of the people of other nations that resorted to her, with whom she had both profitable commerce and pleasant converse; but now her own people are carried into captivity, and strangers make no court to her: she sits solitary. The chief places of the city are not now, as they used to be, place of concourse, where wisdom cried (Pro 1:20, Pro 1:21); and justly are they left unfrequented, because wisdom's cry there was not heard. Note, Those that are ever so much increased God can soon diminish. How has she become as a widow! Her king that was, or should have been, as a husband to her, is cut off, and gone; her God has departed from her, and has given her a bill of divorce; she is emptied of her children, is solitary and sorrowful as a widow. Let no family, no state, not Jerusalem, no, nor Babylon herself, be secure, and say, I sit as a queen, and shall never sit as a widow, Isa 47:8; Rev 18:7. (2.) A city that had dominion is now in subjection. She had been great among the nations, greatly loved by some and greatly feared by others, and greatly observed and obeyed by both; some made her presents, and others padi her taxes; so that she was really princess among the provinces, and every sheaf bowed to hers; even the princes of the people entreated her favour. But now the tables are turned; she has not only lost her friends and sits solitary, but has lost her freedom too and sits tributary; she paid tribute to Egypt first and then to Babylon. Note, Sin brings a people not only into solitude, but into slavery. (3.) A city that used to be full of mirth has now become melancholy and upon all accounts full of grief. Jerusalem had been a joyous city, whither the tribes went up on purpose to rejoice before the Lord; she was the joy of the whole earth, but now she weeps sorely, her laughter if turned into mourning, her solemn feasts are all gone; she weeps in the night, as true mourners do who weep in secret, in silence and solitude; in the night, when others compose themselves to rest, her thoughts are most intent upon her troubles, and grief then plays the tyrant. What the prophet's head was for her, when she regarded it not, now her head is - as waters, and her eyes fountains of tears, so that she weeps day and night (Jer 9:1); her tears are continually on her cheeks. Though nothing dries away sooner than a tear, yet fresh griefs extort fresh tears, so that her cheeks are never free from them. Note, There is nothing more commonly seen under the sun than the tears of the oppressed, with whom the clouds return after the rain, Ecc 4:1. (4.) Those that were separated from the heathen now dwell among the heathen; those that were a peculiar people are now a mingled people (Lam 1:3): Judah has gone into captivity, out of her own land into the land of her enemies, and there she abides, and is likely to abide, among those that are aliens to God and the covenants of promise, with whom she finds no rest, no satisfaction of mind, nor any settlement of abode, but is continually hurried from place to place at the will of the victorious imperious tyrants. And again (Lam 1:5): "Her children have gone into captivity before the enemy; those that were to have been the seed of the next generation are carried off; so that the land that is now desolate is likely to be still desolate and lost for want of heirs." Those that dwell among their own people, and that a free people, and in their own land, would be more thankful for the mercies they thereby enjoy if they would but consider the miseries of those that are forced into strange countries. (5.) Those that used in their wars to conquer are now conquered and triumphed over: All her persecutors overlook her between the straits (Lam 1:3); they gained all possible advantages against her, sot hat her people unavoidably fell into the hand of the enemy, for there was no way to escape (Lam 1:7); they were hemmed in on every side, and, which way soever they attempted to flee, they found themselves embarrassed. When they made the best of their way they could make nothing of it, but were overtaken and overcome; so that every where her adversaries are the chief and her enemies prosper (Lam 1:5); which way soever their sword turns they get the better. Such straits do men bring themselves into by sin. If we allow that which is our greatest adversary and enemy to have dominion over us, and to be chief in us, justly will our other enemies be suffered to have dominion over us. (6.) Those that had been not only a distinguished by a dignified people, on whom God had put honour, and to whom all their neighbours had paid respect, are now brought into contempt (Lam 1:8): All that honoured her before despise her; those that courted an alliance with her now value it not; those that caressed her when she was in pomp and prosperity slight her now that she is in distress, because they have seen her nakedness. By the prevalency of the enemies against her they perceive her weakness, and that she is not so strong a people as they thought she had been; and by the prevalency of God's judgments against her they perceive her wickedness, which now comes to light and is every where talked of. Now it appears how they have vilified themselves by their sins: The enemies magnify themselves against them (Lam 1:9); they trample upon them, and insult over them, and in their eyes they have become vile, the tail of the nations, though once they were the head. Note, Sin is the reproach of any people. (7.) Those that lived in a fruitful land were ready to perish, and many of them did perish, for want of necessary food (Lam 1:11): All her people sigh in despondency and despair; they are ready to faint away; their spirits fail, and therefore they sigh, for they seek bread and seek it in vain. They were brought at last to that extremity that there was no bread for the people of the land (Jer 52:6), and in their captivity they had much ado to get break, Lam 5:6. They have given their pleasant things, their jewels and pictures, and all the furniture of their closets and cabinets, which they used to please themselves with looking upon, they have sold these to buy bread for themselves and their families, have parted with them for meat to relieve the soul, or (as the margin is) to make the soul come again, when they were ready to faint away. They desired no other cordial than meat. All that a man has will he give for life, and for break, which is the staff of life. Let those that abound in pleasant things not be proud of them, nor fond of them; for the time may come when they may be glad to let them go for necessary things. And let those that have competent food to relieve their soul be content with it, and thankful for it, though they have not pleasant things.
2. We have here an account of their miseries in their ecclesiastical state, the ruin of their sacred interest, which was much more to be lamented than that of their secular concerns. (1.) Their religious feasts were no more observed, no more frequented (Lam 1:4): The ways of Zion do mourn; they look melancholy, overgrown with grass and weeds. It used to be a pleasant diversion to see people continually passing and repassing in the highway that led to the temple, but now you may stand there long enough, and see nobody stir; for none come to the solemn feasts; a full end is put to them by the destruction of that which was the city of our solemnities, Isa 33:20. The solemn feasts had been neglected and profaned (Isa 1:11, Isa 1:12), and therefore justly is an end now put to them. But, when thus the ways of Zion are made to mourn, all the sons of Zion cannot but mourn with them. It is very grievous to good men to see religious assemblies broken up and scattered, and those restrained from them that would gladly attend them. And, as the ways of Zion mourned, so the gates of Zion, in which the faithful worshippers used to meet, are desolate; for there is none to meet in them. Time was when the Lord loved the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob, but now he has forsaken them, and is provoked to withdraw from them, and therefore it cannot but fare with them as it did with the temple when Christ quitted it. Behold, you house is left unto you desolate, Mat 23:38. (2.) Their religious persons were quite disabled from performing their wonted services, were quite dispirited: Her priests sigh for the desolations of the temple; their songs are turned into sighs; they sigh, for they have nothing to do, and therefore there is nothing to be had; they sigh, as the people (Lam 1:11), for want of bread, because the offerings of the Lord, which were their livelihood, failed. It is time to sigh when the priests, the Lord's ministers, sigh. Her virgins also, that used, with their music and dancing, to grace the solemnities of their feasts, are afflicted and in heaviness. Notice is taken of their service in the day of Zion's prosperity (Psa 68:25, Among them were the damsels playing with timbrels), and therefore notice is taken of the failing of it now. Her virgins are afflicted, and therefore she is in bitterness; that is, all the inhabitants of Zion are so, whose character it is that they are sorrowful for the solemn assembly, and that to them the reproach of it is a burden, Zep 3:18. (3.) Their religious places were profaned (Lam 1:10): The heathen entered into her sanctuary, into the temple itself, into which no Israelite was permitted to enter, though ever so reverently and devoutly, but the priests only. The stranger that comes nigh, even to worship there, shall be put to death. Thither the heathen now crows rudely in, not to worship, but to plunder. God had commanded that the heathen should not so much as enter into the congregation, nor be incorporated with the people of the Jews (Deu 23:3); yet now they enter into the sanctuary without control. Note, Nothing is more grievous to those who have a true concern for the glory of God, nor is more lamented, than the violation of God's laws, and the contempt they see put upon sacred things. What the enemy did wickedly in the sanctuary was complained of, Psa 74:3, Psa 74:4. (4.) Their religious utensils, and all the rich things with which the temple was adorned and beautified, and which were made use of in the worship of God, were made a prey to the enemy (Lam 1:10): The adversary has spread out his hand upon all her pleasant things, has grasped them all, seized them all, for himself. What these pleasant things are we may learn from Isa 64:11, where, to the complaint of the burning of the temple, it is added, All our pleasant things are laid waste; the ark and the altar, and all the other tokens of God's presence with them, these were their pleasant things above any other things, and these were now broken to pieces and carried away. Thus from the daughter of Zion all her beauty has departed, Lam 1:6. The beauty of holiness was the beauty of the daughter of Zion; when the temple, that holy and beautiful house, was destroyed, her beauty was gone; that was the breaking of the staff of beauty, the taking away of the pledges and seals of the covenant, Zac 11:10. (5.) Their religious days were made a jest of (Lam 1:7): The adversaries saw her, and did mock at her sabbaths. They laughed at them for observing one day in seven as a day of rest from worldly business. Juvenal, a heathen poet, ridicules the Jews in his time for losing a seventh part of their time: -
- cui septima quaeque fuit lux
Ignava et vitae partem non attigit ullam -
They keep their sabbaths to their cost,
For thus one day in sev'n is lost;
whereas sabbaths, if they be sanctified as they ought to be, will turn to a better account than all the days of the week besides. And whereas the Jews professed that they did it in obedience to their God, and to his honour, their adversaries asked them, "What do you get by it now? What profit have you in keeping the ordinances of your God, who now deserts you in your distress?" Note, it is a very great trouble to all that love God to hear his ordinances mocked at, and particularly his sabbaths. Zion calls them her sabbaths, for the sabbath was made for men; they are his institutions, but they are her privileges; and the contempt put upon sabbaths all the sons of Zion take to themselves and lay to heart accordingly; nor will they look upon sabbaths, or any other divine ordinances, as less honourable, nor value them less, for their being mocked at. (6.) That which greatly aggravated all these grievances was that her state at present was just the revers of what it had been formerly, Lam 1:7. Now, in the days of affliction and misery, when every thing was black and dismal, she remembers all her pleasant things that she had in the days of old, and now knows how to value them better than formerly, when she had the full enjoyment of them. God often makes us know the worth of mercies by the want of them; and adversity is borne with the greatest difficulty by those that have fallen into it from the height of prosperity. This cut David to the heart, when he was banished from God's ordinances, that he could remember when he went with the multitude to the house of God, Psa 42:4.
II. The sins of Jerusalem are here complained of as the procuring provoking cause of all these calamities. Whoever are the instruments, God is the author of all these troubles; it is the Lord that has afflicted her (Lam 1:5) and he has done it as a righteous Judge, for she has sinned. 1. Her sins are for number numberless. Are her troubles many? Her sins are many more. it is for the multitude of her transgressions that the Lord has afflicted her. See Jer 30:14. When the transgressions of a people are multiplied we cannot say, as Job does in his own case, that wounds are multiplied without cause, Job 9:17. 2. They are for nature exceedingly heinous (Lam 1:8): Jerusalem has grievously sinned, has sinned sin (so the word is), sinned wilfully, deliberately, has sinned that sin which of all others is the abominable things that the Lord hates, the sin of idolatry. The sins of Jerusalem, that makes such a profession and enjoys such privileges, are of all others the most grievous sins. She has sinned grievously (Lam 1:8), and therefore (Lam 1:9) she came down wonderfully. note, Grievous sins bring wondrous ruin; there are some workers of iniquity to whom there is a strange punishment, Job 31:3. They are such sins as may plainly be read in the punishment. (1.) They have been very oppressive and therefore are justly oppressed (Lam 1:3): Judah has gone into captivity, and it is because of affliction and great servitude, because the rich among them afflicted the poor and made them serve with rigour, and particularly (as the Chaldee paraphrases it) because they had oppressed their Hebrew servants, which is charged upon them, Jer 34:11. Oppression was one of their crying sins (Jer 6:6, Jer 6:7) and it is a sin that cries aloud. (2.) They have made themselves vile, and therefore are justly vilified. They all despise her (Lam 1:8), for her filthiness is in her skirts; it appears upon her garments that she has rolled them in the mire of sin. None could stain our glory if we did not stain it ourselves. (3.) They have been very secure and therefore are justly surprised with this ruin (Lam 1:9): She remembers not her last end; she did not take the warning that was given her to consider her latter end, to consider what would be the end of such wicked courses as she took, and therefore she came down wonderfully, in an astonishing manner, that she might be made to feel what she would not fear; therefore God shall make their plagues wonderful.
III. Jerusalem's friends are here complained of as false and faint-hearted, and very unkind: They have all dealt treacherously with her (Lam 1:2), so that, in effect, they have become here enemies. Her deceivers have created her as much vexation as her destroyers. The staff that breaks under us may do us as great a mischief as the staff that beats us, Eze 29:6, Eze 29:7. Her princes, that should have protected her, have not courage enough to make head against the enemy for their own preservation; they are like harts, that, upon the first alarm, betake themselves to flight and make no resistance; nay, they are like harts that are famished for want of pasture, and therefore are gone without strength before the pursuer, and, having no strength for flight, are soon run down and made a prey of. her neighbours are unneighbourly, for, 1. There is none to help her (Lam 1:7); either they could not or they would not; nay, 2. She has not comforter, none to sympathize with her, or suggest any thing to alleviate her griefs, Lam 1:7, Lam 1:9. Like Job's friends, they saw it was to no purpose, her grief was so great; and miserable comforters were they all in such a case.
IV. Jerusalem's God is here complained to concerning all these things, and all is referred to his compassionate consideration (Lam 1:9): "O Lord! behold my affliction, and take cognizance of it;" and (Lam 1:11), "See, O Lord! and consider, take order about it." Note, The only way to make ourselves easy under our burdens is to cast them upon God first, and leave it to him to do with us as seemeth him good.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv1–22 How doth the city sit solitary, that was full…
How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people!.... These are the words of Jeremiah; so the Targum introduces them,
"Jeremiah the prophet and high priest said;''
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and began thus, "how"; not inquiring the reasons of this distress and ruin; but as amazed and astonished at it; and commiserating the sad case of the city of Jerusalem, which a little time ago was exceeding populous; had thousands of inhabitants in it; besides those that came from other parts to see it, or trade with it: and especially when the king of Babylon had invaded the land, which drove vast numbers to Jerusalem for safety; and which was the case afterwards when besieged by the Romans; at which time, as Josephus (f) relates, there were eleven hundred thousand persons; and very probably a like number was in it before the destruction of it by the Chaldeans, who all perished through famine, pestilence, and the sword; or were carried captive; or made their escape; so that the city, as was foretold it should, came to be without any inhabitant; and therefore is represented as "sitting", which is the posture of mourners; and as "solitary", or "alone" (g), like a menstruous woman in her separation, to which it is compared, Lam 1:17; or as a leper removed from the society of men; so the Targum,
"as a man that has the plague of leprosy on his flesh, that dwells alone;''
or rather as a woman deprived of her husband and children; as follows:
how is she become as a widow! her king, that was her head and husband, being taken from her, and carried captive; and God, who was the husband also of the Jewish people, having departed from them, and so left in a state of widowhood. Jarchi (h) observes, that it is not said a widow simply, but as a widow, because her husband would return again; and therefore only during this state of captivity she was like one; but Broughton takes the "caph" not to be a note of similitude, but of reality; and renders it, "she is become a very widow". Vespasian, when he had conquered Judea, struck a medal, on one side of which was a woman sitting under a palm tree in a plaintive and pensive posture, with this inscription, "Judea Capta", as Grotius observes:
she that was great among the nations, and princess among the provinces, how is she become tributary! that ruled over many nations, having subdued them, and to whom they paid tribute, as the Philistines, Moabites, Syrians, and Edomites, in the times of David and Solomon; but since obliged to pay tribute herself, first to Pharaohnecho, king of Egypt; then to the king of Babylon in the times of Jehoiakim; and last of all in the times of Zedekiah; so the Targum,
"she that was great among the people, and ruled over the provinces that paid tribute to her, returns to be depressed; and after this to give tribute to them.''
(f) De Bello Jud. l. 6. c. 9. sect. 3. (g) "sola", V. L. Montanus. (h) E Talmud Bab. Sanhedrin. fol. 104. 1. & Taanith, fol. 20. 1.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 4, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 21 Jeremiah laments the former excellency and present misery of…
Jeremiah laments the former excellency and present misery of Jerusalem for her sin, ver. 1-11. She complains of her grief, ver. 12-17. Confesses God's judgments to be righteous: and prays to him, ver. 18-22.
A widow - She that had a king, or rather a God, that was an husband to her, now was forsaken of God, and her king taken from her.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11, 12, 14, 15, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22 Chronological notes relative to the Book of the Lamentations
THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEREMIAH
Chronological notes relative to the Book of the Lamentations
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- Year from the Creation, according to Archbishop Usher, 3416.
- Year of the Jewish era of the world, 3173.
- Year from the Deluge, 1760.
- First year of the forty-eighth Olympiad.
- Year from the building of Rome, according to the Varronian account, 166.
- Year before the birth of Christ, 584.
- Year before the vulgar era of Christ's nativity, 588.
- Year of the Julian Period, 4126.
- Year of the era of Nabonassar, 160.
- Cycle of the Sun, 10.
- Cycle of the Moon, 3.
- Second year after the fourth Sabbatic year after the seventeenth Jewish jubilee, according to Helvicus.
- Twenty-ninth year of Tarquinius Priscus, the fifth king of the Romans: this was the seventy-ninth year before the commencement of the consular government.
- Thirty-eighth year of Cyaxares or Cyaraxes, the fourth king of Media.
- Eighteenth year of Agasicles, king of Lacedaemon, of the family of the Proclidae.
- Twentieth year of Leon, king of Lacedaemon, of the family of the Eurysthenidae.
- Thirty-second year of Alyattes II., king of Lydia. This was the father of the celebrated Croesus.
- Fifteenth year of AEropas, the seventh king of Macedon.
- Nineteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon.
- Eleventh year of Zedekiah, the last king of Judah.
CHAPTER I
The prophet begins with lamenting the dismal reverse of fortune
that befell his country, confessing at the same time that her
calamities were the just consequence of her sins, 1-6.
Jerusalem herself is then personified and brought forward to
continue the sad complaint, and to solicit the mercy of God,
7-22.
In all copies of the Septuagint, whether of the Roman or Alexandrian editions, the following words are found as a part of the text: Και εγενετο μετα το αιχμαλωτισθηναι τον Ισραηλ, και Ιερουσαλημ ερημωθηναι, εκαθισεν Ιερεμιας κλαιων, και εθρηνησεν τον θρηνον τουτον επι Ιερουσαλημ, και ειπεν· - "And it came to pass after Israel had been carried away captive, and Jerusalem was become desolate, that Jeremiah sat weeping: and he lamented with this lamentation over Jerusalem; and he said."
The Vulgate has the same, with some variations: - "Et factum est, postquam in captivitatem redactus est Israel, et Jerusalem deserta est, sedit Jeremias propheta fiens, et planxit lamentations hac in Jerusalem, et amaro animo suspirans et ejulans, digit." The translation of this, as given in the first translation of the Bible into English, may be found at the end of Jeremiah, taken from an ancient MS. in my own possession.
I subjoin another taken from the first PRINTED edition of the English Bible, that by Coverdale, 1535. "And it came to passe, (after Israel was brought into captyvitie, and Jerusalem destroyed;) that Jeremy the prophet sat weeping, mournynge, and makinge his mone in Jerusalem; so that with an hevy herte he sighed and sobbed, sayenge."
Matthew's Bible, printed in 1549, refines upon this: "It happened after Israell was brought into captyvite, and Jerusalem destroyed, that Jeremy the prophet sate wepyng, and sorrowfully bewayled Jerusalem; and syghynge and hewlynge with an hevy and wooful hert, sayde."
Becke's Bible of the same date, and Cardmarden's of 1566, have the same, with a trifling change in the orthography.
On this Becke and others have the following note: - "These words are read in the LXX. interpreters: but not in the Hebrue."
All these show that it was the ancient opinion that the Book of Lamentations was composed, not over the death of Josiah, but on account of the desolations of Israel and Jerusalem.
The Arabic copies the Septuagint. The Syriac does not acknowledge it; and the Chaldee has these words only: "Jeremiah the great priest and prophet said."
NOTES ON CHAP. I
Verse 1. How doth the city sit solitary] Sitting down, with the elbow on the knee, and the head supported by the hand, without any company, unless an oppressor near, - all these were signs of mourning and distress. The coin struck by Vespasian on the capture of Jerusalem, on the obverse of which there is a palm-tree, the emblem of Judea, and under it a woman, the emblem of Jerusalem, sitting, leaning as before described, with the legend Judea capta, illustrates this expression as well as that in Isa 47:1. See Clarke on Isa 3:26, where the subject is farther explained.
Become as a widow] Having lost her king. Cities are commonly described as the mothers of their inhabitants, the kings as husbands, and the princes as children. When therefore they are bereaved of these, they are represented as widows, and childless.
The Hindoo widow, as well as the Jewish, is considered the most destitute and wretched of all human beings. She has her hair cut short, throws off all ornaments, eats the coarsest food, fasts often, and is all but an outcast in the family of her late husband.
Is she become tributary!] Having no longer the political form of a nation; and the remnant that is left paying tribute to a foreign and heathen conqueror.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 10, 12, 13, 17, 18, 20, 21 Lam 1:1. How doth the city sit solitary —…
Lam 1:1. How doth the city sit solitary — The short history of the desolations of the Jewish nation, contained in the fifty-second chapter of Jeremiah, formerly stood as a preface to the Lamentations; but, instead of it, the Greek and Latin copies have a short introduction, which may be thus translated: “And it came to pass after that Israel had been carried away captive, and Jerusalem was become desolate, that Jeremiah sat weeping, and lamented with this lamentation over Jerusalem, and said,” How, &c. The book being undoubtedly poetical, as a specimen of the kind of poetry which it contains, the reader is here presented with Blaney’s translation of the first stanza.
“How does she sit solitary, the city that was full of people! She is become as a widow, that was great among the nations! She that was sovereign over provinces, is become tributary!”
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Jerusalem is here represented as a weeping female, sitting solitary on the ground without any attendant or comforter, the multitude of her inhabitants being dispersed or destroyed. It is remarkable, that in times similar to this, that is, in the reign of the Emperor Vespasian, a coin was struck, on which Judea is represented under the image of a woman sitting in tears beneath a palm-tree. How is she become as a widow! &c. — Cities are commonly described as the mothers of their inhabitants, and their kings and princes as their husbands: so, when they are bereaved of these, they are said to be widows and childless. Thus Jerusalem, having lost her king and people, and being forsaken of her God, who was in a peculiar sense a husband to her, is here represented as sitting alone in that pensive melancholy condition. She that was great among the nations, &c. — The kings of Judah, in their flourishing state, extended their conquests over the Philistines, Edomites, and other neighbouring countries; and by thus enlarging their dominions, greatly advanced the power of the metropolis of their kingdom. But now, being under subjection to the king of Babylon, and forced to pay tribute to him, she was made no more account of than any other city under the same yoke: see Calmet and Lowth.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21 In these two verses is the same sad image…
In these two verses is the same sad image as appears in the well-known medal of Titus, struck to celebrate his triumph over Jerusalem. A woman sits weeping beneath a palm-tree, and below is the legend “Judaea capta.”
Translate Lam 1:1 :
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How sitteth solitary the city that was full of people:
She is become as a widow that was great among the nations:
A princess among provinces she is become a vassal.
Tributary - In the sense of personal labor Jos 16:10.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22 City. David had conquered many. Jerusalem was long considered…
City. David had conquered many. Jerusalem was long considered as the finest city in those parts. --- Tributary. It had been so to the Assyrians, Egyptians, and Chaldeans, 4 Kings xxiv. 1. From this and similar passages, it would seem that the city was still existing: yet in others it appears to have been demolished. Here then the prophet declares what it had been: (Calmet) unless he wrote part after the death of Josias. (Haydock) --- The beholders are astonished at the change and misery of the city. (Worthington)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On v1 Lamentation Of The Daughter Of Zion Over The Ruin…
Lamentation Of The Daughter Of Zion Over The Ruin Of Jerusalem And Judah [or Rather, The Lamentation Of The Daughter Of Jerusalem Over The Destruction Of The City, The Nation And The Temple.—W. H. H.].
[The song is naturally divided into two parts of equal length. Lam_1:1-11 describe the wretched condition of the city. Lam_1:12-22 are, more strictly, the lamentation over this condition. In both sections the speaker is the ideal person of the genius or daughter of the city, who twice, Lam_1:9; Lam_1:11, interrupts the description of the first section, which is given in the third person, with an outcry of pain uttered in the first person.—W. H. H.]
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Part I
I. Lam_1:1-11
א Lam_1:1. How sitteth solitary
The city that was full of people!
She is become as a widow!
She that was great among the nations,
A Princess over the Provinces,—
Is become tributary.
ב Lam_1:2. Bitterly she weepeth in the night,
And her tears are [constantly] upon her cheeks.
She hath no comforter
From among all her lovers:
All her friends have dealt treacherously with her,
They have become her enemies.
ג Lam_1:3. Judah is gone into exile,
From oppression and from heavy bondage.
She dwelleth among the heathen:
She hath not found rest:
All her pursuers have overtaken her
Amidst her straits.
ד Lam_1:4. The ways to Zion are mournful
Because none come to her appointed services.
All her gates are destroyed.
Her priests sigh:
Her virgins are sorrowful:
And she, herself,—is in bitterness!
ה Lam_1:5. Her adversaries are exalted,
Her enemies prosper.
For Jehovah hath afflicted her
For the greatness of her sins.
Her young children are gone captives
Before the adversary.
ו Lam_1:6. And departed from the daughter of Zion
Is all her beauty.
Her princes have become like harts
That find no pasture,
And go, without strength,
Before the pursuer.
ן Lam_1:7. Jerusalem remembers, in the days of her tribulation and of her wanderings,
All her pleasant things that she had in the days of old.
When her people fall by the hand of the adversary
And there is no helper for her,—
Her adversaries behold her—
They mock at her Sabbaths!
ח Lam_1:8. Jerusalem has grievously sinned;
Therefore is she become vile.
All, who honoured her, despise her,
For they see her nakedness.
Yea, she herself sigheth
And turneth backward.
ט Lam_1:9. Her filthiness is on her skirts.
She considered not her end,
Therefore she came down wonderfully
She has no comforter.
Behold, O Jehovah, my affliction,
For the enemy magnifieth himself.
י Lam_1:10. His hand has the oppressor stretched out
Over all her precious things:
For she saw heathen
Come into her sanctuary:
Of whom Thou didst command
‘That they come not into Thy congregation.’
כ Lam_1:11. All her people sigh,
Seeking for bread;
They give their precious things for food
To sustain life.
See, Jehovah, and consider
How wretched I am become!
ANALYSIS
The logical construction is preserved, although rendered difficult by the constraint of the alphabetical arrangement of the verses. From Lam_1:1 to the last clause of Lam_1:11, the poet speaks. [Rather the poet puts this language into the mouth of a third person, who is revealed to us in Lam_1:9; Lam_1:11, and still more plainly in the whole of the second part, Lam_1:12-22, as the ideal representative of the ruined city.—W. H. H.] Lam_1:1-2 present to us the ideal person of Jerusalem, sharply defining the contrast between what she was and what she is now. Lam_1:3 personifies in like manner the tribe of Judah. Lam_1:4-6 depict the present condition of Jerusalem in ruins, in the midst of which description the ideal person in her grief is introduced; and also, by way of contrast, her successful foe: the forsaken roads of the city, the broken gates, the mourning priests and virgins, the exiled people, and especially the nobles plunged from splendor into the deepest misery, are the separate features which compose this picture. [The especial subject of this description is not the city, strictly speaking, but Zion, the crown and glory of the city. Around the ideal daughter of Zion all the accessories of the picture are drawn. Jerusalem, herself, is the immediate subject of the following verses.—W. H. H.] Lam_1:7 relates again to the ideal Jerusalem and informs us how she remembers with pain her former estate, whilst now suffering bitter mockery from her foes. Lam_1:8-9 declare the cause of the judgment, already indicated in Lam_1:5, namely, the heinous sin of Israel: in consequence of which sin heathen, Lam_1:10, had intruded into the sanctuary of Zion, which was forbidden in the law. Finally, Lam_1:11, to the last clause, describes the distressing famine of the besieged people. From the last clause of Lam_1:11 to the end of the chapter, the Poet lets Zion herself speak, as she had already done parenthetically in Lam_1:9.
Lam_1:1-2
1How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people! how is she become as a widow! She that was great among the nations, and princess among the provinces, 2how is she become tributary! She weepeth sore in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks; among all her lovers she hath none to comfort her: all her friends have dealt treacherously with her, they are become her enemies.
TEXTUAL AND GRAMMATICAL
Lam_1:1.—בָדָד, subst., solitariness, is to be regarded as in the accusative. See Lam_3:28; Lev_13:46; Jer_15:17; Jer_49:31, לְבָדָד, Num_23:9; Mic_7:14.—רַבָּתִי. The ־ִי is archaic. See Olsh., § 123, d. [In שָׂרָתִי also. The paragogic ־ִי was, originally, perhaps, a mark of the genitive, as the corresponding letter in Arabic. Occurs in poetry and in compound names, as מַלְכִי־צֶדֶק ,אֲדֹנִי־בֶזֶק. Henderson.] The archaic ־ִי, not infrequent in Jer_10:17 (K’tib); Jer_22:23; Jer_49:16; Jer_51:13. Yet this particular word occurs only here.—רַב, great, in the qualitative sense, not merely multus, but also magnus, potens, great, powerful, occurs often; Psa_48:3; Isa_63:1; Isa_53:12; Jer_41:1. See רַב טַבָּחִים, et sim., and רַבָּה, the metropolis of the Ammonites. The phrase רב בַגֹויִם occurs only here. [See Intr., Add. Rem. (1). p. 20.]—The בְּ after שָׂרָתִי indicates the object over which the Princess rules. See Fuerst. [Blayney, Boothroyd, translate over, instead of among.]—שָׂרָה is synonymous with רַבָּה, e. g., שַׂר טַבָּחָים, Gen_37:36; Gen_39:1, et al., and שַׂר סָריִסִים, Dan_1:7; Dan_1:9, et al. are synonymous with רַב ט׳ and רַב ס׳. The sing. שָׂרָה excepting as the proper name Sarah, occurs only here. Plural in Jdg_5:29; Isa_49:23; 1Ki_11:3; Est_1:18, shows that it is an old word and in earlier times peculiar to poetry. [See Intr., Add. Rem. (2). p. 29.]—מְדִיגָה, province, satrapy, in sing. occurs only in books of Ezra (Ezr_2:1), Nehemiah (Neh_1:3; Neh_7:6; Neh_11:3), Ecclesiastes (Ecc_5:7), Daniel (Dan_8:2; Dan_11:24), and especially Esther (Est_1:1; Est_1:22; Est_3:12; Est_3:14, etc): in plu in Est_1:3; Est_8:9; Est_9:3-4; Est_9:16; Eze_19:8; 1Ki_20:14-15; 1Ki_20:17; 1Ki_20:19 [not 2Ki_20:19, a mistake of Fuerst copied by Naegelsb.], Ecc_2:8. Its use in Ezekiel and Kings shows that it was not unknown in the time of Jeremiah. [See Intr. Add. Rem. (2). p. 30.]—[מַם. W. Robertson, Key to Heb. Bib., derives from מָסַם, to melt, dissolve, “a consuming of strength, virium dissolutio et confectio.” Fuerst from same verb taken in a secondary signification, to split, divide, separate, sunder hence metuph. to number, measure, distribute. The only evidence of such a secondary signification of the verb is in the derivatives themselves, מַם and מִסָּה. The old quaint idea seems better. “מַם from מִסָּה, because it doth melt and dissolve, as it were, the substance of those who are forced to be tributaries.” Gesenius says this is not “tolerable,” and derives from כָסַם to number. But there is a word already from that root, מֶכֶם, meaning tribute in the strict sense, while מַם means any sort of tribute-service or bond-service (see crit. notes below), having a sense that cannot be extracted from a verb, signifying to number.—W. H. H.]
Lam_1:2.—[בָּכוֹ תִבְכֶה. The infinitive construct before a finite verb expresses intensity, after it continuity. She weepeth sore or sorely, Broughton, E. V., Blayney, Boothroyd, Henderson, or bitterly, Noyes, not continually, as old Eng. vers., Digdati, French vers., Wordsworth, and Naegelsbach.—W. H. H.]—לְחִי never occurs in Jeremiah. [See Intr., Add. Rem. (2). p. 30.]—Jeremiah uses the Piel נִחַם, Jer_16:7; Jer_31:13; but not the phrase אֵין מְנַחֵם, occurring in this chapter four times, and elsewhere only in Ecc_4:1. [See Intr., Add. Rem. (3). p. 30.] Jeremiah uses, אֹהֲבֶיהָ Jer_20:4; Jer_20:6; רֵעַ Jer_29:23; Jer_5:8; Jer_7:5. etc.; בָגַד Jer_3:8; Jer_3:11; Jer_3:20; Jer_5:11; Jer_12:6, etc.; אֹיֵב, frequently, Jer_6:25; Jer_15:11; Jer_18:17, etc.—הָיוּ לְאֹיְבִים occurs elsewhere only in Psa_139:22.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
Lam_1:1. How, אֵיכָה. The second and fourth chapters also begin with this word. It is used by Jeremiah (Jer_8:8; Jer_48:17), and not seldom in Deuteronomy (Deu_1:12; Deu_7:17; Deu_12:30; Deu_18:21). In Isaiah it occurs once, Isa_1:21, a passage which seems to have been in our Poet’s mind. There, as here, the ideal person of Jerusalem, i. e., of the city of Jerusalem (in distinction from the tribe of Judah, to which Lam_1:3 relates), is the subject. The personification is apparent: 1. From the expression, sits solitary. 2. From the words, as a widow. The comparison with a person shows that the subject of comparison is regarded as a person. 3. The singular forms in Lam_1:2, she weeps, her tears, her cheeks, etc., as certainly indicate a personification, as the plural forms would prove a reference to the concrete multitude of the exiles. The Poet then has in his eye, not, perhaps, the collective person of the exiled people, but the ideal person of the city of Jerusalem, now ruined. This person he sees in the spirit, sitting solitary amidst the devastated holy places.—Doth the city sit solitary. Solitary, because she has lost her inhabitants, her children. This is evident from the antithesis,—the city that was full of people. [Noyes: “There are several Roman coins extant, representing on the one side the emperor Vespasian, and on the other a woman (the daughter of Zion) sitting upon the ground under a palm tree, in a mournful attitude, and having around her a heap, of arms, shields, etc. The legend is Judæa Capta—Judea taken.”]—That was full of people! In regard to sense and construction, see Jer_51:13; 1Sa_2:5. [Henderson: “It is impossible to determine what was the extent of the population of ancient Jerusalem. Before the revolt under Rehoboam it must have been very great, especially during the celebration of the three annual festivals, when the males congregated there from all parts of the country: and even after that event, there is reason to believe that, as the metropolis of the southern kingdom, the number of inhabitants was considerable. It not only continued to be the resort of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, but was one of the principal mercantile cities of the East.”]—How. [The repetition of the How in the second and the last clauses of the verse, as in our English version, is not only unnecessary, but mars the rhythmical construction and interrupts the consecutive flow of thought. There is no more propriety in its repetition in Lam_1:1, than there would be in Lam_1:2, which in form and matter is a continuation of Lam_1:1. The particle, as used in the beginning of the verse, is ejaculatory, not interrogative. It rouses and directs attention, with fine poetical effect, to the image of the ideal Jerusalem, once representing a city full of people, now seen as a dejected woman, sitting solitary, as in the deepest grief. The attention thus gained, the description goes on to the end of Lam_1:2, adding feature to feature, and circumstance to circumstance, with admirable art and graphic power, till the picture is complete.—W. H. H.]—Is she—she isbecome as a widow! In Isa_1:21, the faithful city has become a harlot. Here, where we have a poem not of invective and denunciation, but of lamentation, the populous city has become as a widow. For she is no longer (בְּעֻלָה) a married one, since she no longer enjoys communion with Jehovah, her Husband (בַּעַל. See Delitzsch on Isa_54:1 sqq.). She is a woman forsaken (Isa_54:6), and the reproach of widowhood (Isa_54:6) rests upon her. The expression as a widow [כְּאַלְמָנָה, as one forsaken, widowed] implies that Jerusalem has not lost her husband utterly and forever, but she is only separated from him for a period. There is in the particle as a foreshadowing of reunion. See the expression as widows in Lam_5:3.—She that was great among the nations. [Dr. Naegelsbach’s punctuation, which is the punctuation also of the Sept., Vulg., and some more modern versions, requires us to connect these words with the preceding declaration. She is become as a widow, the great one (Die Grosse) among the nations. This is, however, in violation of the masoretic punctuation, and does not seem to strengthen the meaning that Dr. N. derives from the expression as a widow. See critical notes below. Nor is there a necessary antithesis between being as a widow and having been great among the nations. If we adopt the punctuation of the Sept. and Vulg., we should adopt the translation in full of one or the other of those versions, both of which do preserve an antithesis. The Sept. reads She is become as a widow, i. e., a lone, forsaken woman, who was filled with nations. The Vulg. reads, She the lady of nations became as a widow. The punctuation in our present Hebrew Bibles, which is retained by our English version, Broughton, Gattaker, Noyes, and Gerlach, certainly makes the sense clearer and the thoughts more copious. The city sits solitary that was full of people! She is become as a widow! She that was great among the nations. … is become tributary.—W. H. H.]—And princess among the provinces. That not only Israelitish, but foreign provinces also, were at times governed by Jerusalem, is sufficiently established in history. [See David’s conquests and sovereignty over the neighboring states, 2Sa_8:1-4; 2Sa_10:6-19; the extent of Solomon’s dominions, 1Ki_4:21; 1Ki_4:24; 2Ch_9:23-24; the power of Judah in the reign of Jehoshaphat, 2Ch_17:10-11, and in that of Uzziah, 2Ch_26:6-8. See also Ezr_4:20, “There have been mighty kings also over Jerusalem, which have ruled over all countries beyond the river; and toll, tribute, and custom, was paid unto them.”—W. H. H.]—How is she become—is become. [See remarks on How above.]—Tributary. [“Obliged to pay tribute-service. This is the common meaning of the word.” Noyes.]
יָֽשְׁבָה בָדָד, sitteth solitary. This cannot mean dwelleth alone. For the isolated location of the city could be no misfortune, since contact with heathen neighbors was forbidden as injurious. (See Num_23:9; Lev_20:24; Lev_20:26; Deu_33:28; Exo_23:31-33; Judges 2, 3.) Nor can יָֽשְׁבָה have the sense of situation, place of location, for יָשַׁב never has that sense in the Hebrew. See Gesen.,Thes. In Psa_122:5; Psa_125:1; Zec_2:8; Zec_12:6; Zec_14:10 it has either the active signification of inhabiting, or the passive of being inhabited (see Jer_17:6; Jer_17:25; Jer_30:18; Jer_50:13; Jer_50:39, et al). That this last named passive signification does not suit here is evident from the contradiction involved by the words solitary and as a widow. We can only translate How sits solitary the city. [Fuerst,Lex., “יָשָׁב, to sit, as an expression of being bowed down, struck down and forsaken, with לָאָרֶץ, Isa_3:26; Job_2:13; עַל־עָפָר, Isa_47:1; בָדָד, Lam_1:1; Lam_3:28; מְשׁוֹמֵם, Ezr_9:3; אַלְמָגָה, Gen_38:11; Isa_47:8.”] רִבָּתִי. It is probable that the form מְּלֵאֲתִי, in the kindred passage, Isa_1:21, influenced the choice of the form of the word here.—כְּאַלְמָנָה, as a widow. In antithesis to רַבָּתִי עָם, full of people, שְׁכּוּלָה, bereaved of children, childless, would be first suggested: but this word occurs only once, Isa_49:21. שַׁכֻּלָה, also, occurs once only (in connection with אַלְמָנָה), Jer_18:21. עֲקָרָה is the barren woman, מְשַׁכֵּלָה or מְשַׁכֶּלֶת is abortum faciens, Exo_23:26; 2Ki_2:19; 2Ki_2:21, or infanticida, Eze_36:13. אַלְמָנָה suits admirably, in that it involves the impossibility of bearing children in the future. And that is what the Poet would say. Jerusalem is placed in a condition in which it is impossible for her to become a mother of children, Psa_113:9. The other feature, that she is also a widow robbed of the children already born to her, is further brought out in what follows. I do not believe, therefore, that Jerusalem is here called a widow, because she is bereaved “of king and princes, and the protection and guidance of rulers,” as Vitringa and others after him (lately Engelhardt), appealing to Isa_47:8, have been inclined to think. Besides that, כְּאַלְמָנָה is not synonymous with לְא׳, Raschi has already remarked. Compare לָמַם at the close of this verse, and לְזוֹנָה, Isa_1:21. The word אַלְמָנָה is often found in Jer_7:6; Jer_15:8; Jer_18:21; Jer_22:3. [Henderson is too positive when he says, “The כּ in כְּאַלְמָנָה is simply that of comparison, and is not intended to express any hope that she would be restored from her widowed state, as Jarchi fancifully supposes.” Comparison is not assertion: a thing is not what it is compared with. If כְּ then does simply indicate a comparison, yet it leaves a possibility, and hence a hope of restoration from a widowed state; and there is certainly more than a ‘fanciful’ distinction between being a widow, לְאַלְמָנָה, and being like one,כְּאַלְמָנָה.—W. H. H.]—הֲיְתָה לָמַם, has become tributary. The expression is found in Genesis (Gen_49:15) and in Deuteronomy (Deu_20:11); and is especially frequent in 1 Kings (1 Kings 5:27, 28; 1Ki_9:15; 1Ki_9:21) and in Judges (Jdg_1:28; Jdg_1:30; Jdg_1:33; Jdg_1:35). It is also found in Isaiah (Isa_31:8). The etymology and fundamental meaning are not quite certain. At all the places cited the word indicates bond-service, or rather, collectively, services (see מַם עֹבֵד, Gen_49:15; Jos_16:10; 1Ki_9:21). It first occurs in the sense of tributum, a money tax, very late, Est_10:1. It is, however, unimportant whether we take the word in our text in the one sense or the other. Nor can we from this word determine the exact period of time, as J. D. Michaelis would do, when he says: “Therefore she is still standing, but has become tributary. This first happened under the Egyptians” (he has here in mind evidently 2Ki_23:33). “To what time then is this to be referred,—to that of the elegy on Josiah, or to that of a later period?” If Jerusalem was no longer standing, and not a human soul dwelt there, yet the place on which the ruins of Jerusalem remained had become, with the whole land, a part of the territory subjected to the Chaldeans.
Lam_1:2. She weepeth sore in the night.—She weeps and weeps the night throughout. [This translation is beautiful and expository, but for grammatical reasons the E. V. is to be preferred. See the Gramm. Notes.—W. H. H.] The sorrowing widow weeps in the night. Not in the night-time only, in distinction from day-time,—nor, as Ewald prefers, ‘until the night.’ For why should she not weep during the night also? Precisely this is the meaning of the poet. She weeps in the night, but not only a part of the night, for that were nothing wonderful, but so that her weeping fills up the time which is usually spent otherwise. So is בַּלַּילָה to be understood in Num_14:1, “and the people wept that night.” See Jer_6:5; Jer_36:30, et al. [Henderson: “To express the more aggravated character of the weeping, it is represented as indulged even during the night—the period of rest and quiet.”]—And her tears are on her cheeks. ‘Tears,’ Jer. 8:23; 9:17, et al. The absence of a predicate index, which renders the supplement of the copula ‘are’ necessary, gives the idea evidently that the tears on her cheeks are constantly there, have fixed there, as it were, their permanent place. [Henry: “Nothing dries away sooner than a tear, yet fresh griefs extort fresh tears, so that her cheeks are never free from them.”]—Among all her lovers she hath none to comfort her.—She has no comforter.—[That this phrase has an important meaning is to be inferred by its recurrence four times in this chapter (Lam_2:9; see also Lam_1:16), and from its being an unusual form, occurring elsewhere only in Ecc_4:1. It can have no common-place meaning. It refers indirectly to the loss of the Comforter—their God.—W. H. H.]—All her friends have dealt treacherously with her, they are become her enemies. The words lovers and friends indicate the human supports on which Jerusalem foolishly and presumptuously believed she could rely, especially all those nations whose friendship she had so often preferred, instead of trusting in Jehovah. See Lam_1:19; Jer_2:13; Jer_2:18; Jer_2:33; Jer_2:36-37; Jer_22:20; Jer_22:22; Hos_2:7 sqq.; Ezekiel 23. These places show, in harmony with history, that the nations toward which Israel felt itself drawn in amorous love, but by which at last they were not only deserted, but treated with even positive hostility, were especially Assyria, Babylon and Egypt. With reference to Egypt, see particularly Eze_29:6-7; Eze_29:16. See Ewaldin loc. [Henderson: “The lovers and friends were those neighboring states which were allies of the Hebrews,—and their idol-gods, which they worshipped, and in which they trusted. Egypt especially was the object of their confidence, but not even she durst venture to come to their help against the Chaldeans. Those in the more immediate vicinity actually joined the northern enemy on his irruption into the country. 2Ki_24:2.”]
Lam_1:3
3Judah is gone into captivity, because of affliction, and because of great servitude; she dwelleth among the heathen, she findeth no rest: all her persecutors overtook her between the straits.
TEXTUAL AND GRAMMATICAL
Lam_1:3.—גָּֽלְתָה, see Jer_1:3.—עֳנִי, found in Lam_1:3; Lam_1:7; Lam_1:9; Lam_3:1; Lam_3:19, does not occur in Jeremiah; yet Isaiah uses it Isa_48:10 : occurs also in Pentateuch; Gen_16:11; Gen_29:32; Gen_31:42; Exo_3:7; Deu_16:3; Deu_26:7, etc.; in Psa_9:14; Psa_25:18; Psa_31:8, and in other writings of earlier origin than Lam.—מֵרֹב is found in Isa_7:22; Isa_24:22; Nah_3:4, et al.: Jeremiah says אַלרֹב, Jer_30:14-15, or בְּרֹב, Jer_13:22.—עֲבֹדָה does not occur in Jeremiah, yet frequently in Pentateuch, and in Isa_14:3; Isa_32:17; Isa_28:21.—מָנוֹחָ occurs Gen_8:9; Deu_28:65; Isa_34:14, is not used by Jeremiah; he uses מנוּחָה, Jer_45:3. [See Intr. Add. R. (4). p. 30. (6). p. 31.]—נָשַג occurs in Jer_42:16 (see also Jer_39:5; Jer_52:8 ).]
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
Lam_1:3. The tribe of Judah is the subject here, as the city of Jerusalem was in Lam_1:1-2, and is conceived of similarly as an ideal person.—Judah is gone into captivity, because of affliction and because of great servitude.Into exile is Judah gone from oppression and severe servitude. It has been correctly remarked that from oppression and from hard servitude cannot refer to the involuntary exile of Judah, since it is added she findeth no rest. For who may expect rest for a people carried into captivity? But voluntary fugitives might hope to find rest. Of such voluntary exiles, Jeremiah speaks in Jer_40:11-12, and from Jer_43:4-7 we learn that all these finally agreed together to seek rest in Egypt. That they found no rest there exactly agrees with what the prophet had declared, Jer_42:13-22, to the people stubbornly persisting in the flight to Egypt. When the Poet speaks here of Judah as a fugitive, seeking rest and finding none, the reason for his doing so may be surmised from the fact that he himself belonged to that part of the people that were living in exile. We may suppose, also, that he regarded this part of the nation as a representative of the whole nation, because they consisted of people who were at least free. It is much like saying,—Judah is no longer with those who have become mixed with a foreign people as slaves. If it yet survive, it survives in a voluntary exile, where, notwithstanding its distressed state and reduced numbers, it still retains at least its personal liberty. [Blayney: “Our translators, who have rendered, Judah is gone into captivity because of affliction and because of great servitude, seem to have adopted the notion of the Chaldee Paraphrast, who represents the Jews to have been carried into captivity in retaliation of their having oppressed the widow and the fatherless among them, and prolonged illegally the bondage of their brethren who had been sold them for slaves.” Henderson adopts this view, that Judah is here represented as suffering captivity on account of, or because of her oppressing and cruelly enslaving her own people, see Jeremiah 34. But the other view, that Judah sought by voluntary exile to escape the oppression and enslavement of the Chaldeans, is recommended by the reasons given above, and is adopted by Blayney, C. B. and J. D. Michaelis, Boothroyd and Noyes. Houbigant, quoted approvingly by Boothroyd in his Heb. Bib., connects the words “from oppression and hard servitude” with the words “she findeth no rest,” an obvious and awkward attempt to escape the difficulty of the supposed causal sense of מִתנ. Hugh Broughton translates Judah leaveth country after affliction and much bondage.—W. H. H.]—[She dwelleth among the heathen, lit., nations, i.e., the heathen nations. The word dwell conveys an idea of a settled permanent abode, not required by the Hebrew, יָֽשְׁבָה. The German, sitzet, which Naegelsbach uses, is better (see Lam_1:1). The fugitive, fleeing before her pursuers, finds at last a place among the heathen, where she sits down in hoped-for security: but in vain; her pursuers overtake her, as the hart is found by the hunter, in the straits or defiles of the mountain, from which there is no escape. See Lam_1:6, they flee like harts before the pursuer.—W. H. H.]—She findeth no rest: all her persecutors, pursuers, in antithesis to all her lovers and all her friends in Lam_1:2 (see Lam_1:6; Lam_4:19; Jer_15:15; Jer_17:18; Jer_20:11) overtook her between the straits.מְצָרִים (Sing. מֵצַר) occurs, besides here, only Psa_116:3; Psa_118:5. It can mean neither θλίβοντες (so Sept., which erroneously takes it for a participle), nor termini,ὁρισμοί (so Chald., Venitian Greek, et al.). It means angustiæ, narrow defiles from which there is no outlet. The figure is taken from the cbase. See the German phrase, “in die Engen treiben,” “to drive one into straits.” [W. Robertson: “מְצָר, a streight, or a streighting distress.” Fuerst: “to take one in the straits, i.e., to get one at last into our power, a proverbial phrase.” The present use of the English word straits (as ‘reduced to straits,’ ‘in great straits’) explains the sense here, but does not justify the translation, overtook her between the straits.—W. H. H.] The fugitive Judah sits indeed in the midst of a heathenish people, but has found there no rest. She would flee still further, were it possible. But whither could the Jews, with their wives, their children, and all their goods, have fled beyond the desert-surrounded Egypt? They dwelt there, it is true, but they dwelt amidst straits. All their pursuers (and that there were enough of them in Egypt, old and new, is evident from Jer_44:12; Jer_44:18; Jer_44:26 sqq.) could reach them there.
Lam_1:4-6
4The ways of Zion do mourn, because none come to the solemn feasts: all her gates are desolate; her priests sigh, her virgins are afflicted, and she is in bitterness. 5Her adversaries are the chief, her enemies prosper; for the Lord hath afflicted her for the multitude of her transgressions: her children are gone into captivity 6before the enemy. And from the daughter of Zion all her beauty is departed: her princes are become like harts that find no pasture; and they are gone without strength before the pursuer.
TEXTUAL AND GRAMMATICAL
Lam_1:4.—אָבֵל, adj. mournful [not desert, waste, devastated, as Fuerst says, which destroys the beautiful personification—W. H. H.], occurs Gen_37:35; Isa_57:18, et al., never in Jeremiah. The verb אָבַל he uses, in the same sense as the adjective here (Jer_4:28; Jer_12:4; Jer_12:11; Jer_14:2; Jer_23:10) [and also the noun אֵבֶל, Jer_6:26, et al.—W. H. H.] Isaiah uses the adjective, Isa_57:18; Isa 61:23.—מִבְּלִי, see Jer_2:15; Jer_9:10-11.—The expression בָּאֵי (see Gen_23:10; Gen_23:18) is not found in Jeremiah.—מוֹעֵד is found in Jeremiah twice, Jer_8:7; Jer_46:17, both times in the sense of tempus fixum. In the Lamentations the word occurs six times, and always in the sense of a time of feast, a festival, Lam_1:4; Lam_1:15; Lam_2:6-7; Lam_2:22, or the place of a feast, Lam_2:6. [It may have here the sense of an appointed time. Ordinary services in the Temple are neglected. None flock to Zion at the usual times of service.—W. H. H.]—The part. שׁוֹמֵם is not in Jeremiah: he uses the part. Niph., Jer_33:10, and שָׁמֵם, Jer_12:11. The plur. ending ין—(see Lam_4:3, K’tib), is not found in Jeremiah.—The root אָנַח Jeremiah does not use, either in a verbal or a substantive form (see Lam_1:8; Lam_1:11; Lam_1:21).—נוּגוֹת, see הוֹנָהּ below.—מַר Jeremiah does use, Lam_2:19; Lam_4:18.
Lam_1:5.—As shown above, הָיוּ לְרֹאשׁ is a Deuteronomic, שָׁלוּ a Jeremiac expression. For grammatical form of latter, see Olsh., § 233, b. הוֹגָהּ never occurs in Jeremiah, but frequently in Lam_1:4; Lam_1:12; Lam_3:32-33 : elsewhere, Isa_51:23; Zep_3:18. [Vulgate derives it from הָגָה, which sometimes means to speak; quia Dominus locutus est super eam; Douay, because the Lord hath spoken against her. But Sept., Syr. and Versions generally derive it from יָנָה.—W. H. H.]—עַל־רֹב is entirely Jeremiac (see on מֵרֹב, Lam_1:3).—פֶשַׁע in Jeremiah only once, Lam_5:6.—עוֹלֵל, Jer_44:7; עוֹלָל, Jer_6:11; Jer_9:20.—הָלַךְ שְׁבִי is peculiar to this place. שְׁבִי cannot well be an accusative, since to go into exile is always elsewhere expressed by הָלַךְ בַּשְּׁבִי, see Lam_1:18. [Henderson: her children are gone captives before the enemy.]—The sing. צָר, which is frequent in Lam. (Lam_1:7; Lam_1:10; Lam_2:4; Lam_4:12), never occurs in Jeremiah: he uses only the plural (Jer_30:16; Jer_46:10) and צָרָה (Jer_4:31; Jer_6:24, et al.).
Lam_1:6.—יָצָא מִן, for forsaken, lost, is peculiar. [Henderson: “Forמִן־בַּת the K’ri and some MSS. read more correctly מִבַּת. The phrase is also thus quoted in the Rabboth.” This best suits the rhythm.—W. H. H.]—הָדָר is never found in Jeremiah; nor אַיִּל (yet see אַיָלָה, Jer_14:5); nor מִרְעֶה (Jeremiah always says מַרְעִית, Jer_10:21; Jer_23:1; Jer_25:36). We find expressions in Jeremiah analogous toבְּלֹא כֹחַ, Lam_2:11, בְּלֹא יוֹעִיל, Lam_5:7, בְּלֹא אֱלחִֹים ּ—רֹרֶף is found in Jeremiah, but only with suffixes, Jer_15:15; Jer_17:18; Jer_20:11.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
These verses contain a description of the present condition of the city and people of Jerusalem [or, a new aspect of their condition is presented.—We have here another of those changes which impart to these poems a highly dramatic character. A third personage is introduced,—“the daughter of Zion.” The ideal person here is not that of the city of Jerusalem, formerly in outward splendor and estate a queen among the nations, now fallen and humbled (Lam_1:1-2), nor yet that of the tribe of Judah, or of the theocratic people, now a fugitive among the heathen (Lam_1:3),—but of Zion, formerly the seat of the theocracy, the abode of God, the Temple where Judah and Jerusalem worshipped, now forsaken and despoiled. No longer do the people gather to her appointed solemnities. Silence reigns on Zion, broken only by the sobs of her priests and the moaning of her virgins, a higher evidence than either the ruined city or the exiled people, that the glory was departed from Israel.—W. H. H.]
Lam_1:4. The ways of Zion,The way to Zion, those ways which lead to Zion: not the streets of the city, as Rosenmueller thinks, for the latter are called חוּצוֹת (see Hos_7:1 with Hos_6:9), do mourn,are mournful (Prosopopœia, as, e. g.,Lam_2:19; Jer_14:2; Jer_23:10; Amo_1:2), because none come to the solemn feasts,forsaken by those who used to come to her feasts [because there are none coming to her appointed services. Appointed assemblies, including all occasions of stated worship, whether daily sacrifices or annual festivals, would more correctly interpret the sense than either “feasts,” “solemn feasts,” or “festivals.”—W. H. H.]—All her gates are desolate,destroyed. Concerning the city itself, its gates are destroyed. But ruined gates are the sign of a ruined city. [“Destroyed,” so Naegelsbach,zerstört, Sept. ἠφανισμέμαι= rezed to the ground, Vulg. destructæ. E. V. and modern Versions generally read desolate. It is the gates of Zion, not the gates of the city of Jerusalem, that are here referred to. Those sacred barriers are removed. The holy place has lost its sanctity. It is open now to the intrusion of any who please to enter. See Lam_1:10 : “She hath seen that the heathen entered into her sanctuary whom Thou didst command that they should not enter into Thy congregation.” What could more forcibly express, in accordance with Jewish ideas, the idea that the theocratic glory had departed from Israel?—W. H. H.]—Her priests sigh: her virgins are afflicted,sorrowful. Two classes of the inhabitants are named,—the priests and the virgins: the former the nobility, the latter the flower and ornament of the nation. The former sigh under heavy oppression; the latter, who formerly rendered every festival attractive, with dances and pastimes (see Jer_31:13; Herz.Real. Encyc., XV., pp. 414, 415), are now sorrowful. It is thus intimated that every possibility of making a joyous festival is gone. See Jer_7:34; Jer_16:9; Jer_25:10; Jer_33:11; comp. Jer_30:19. The Sept. reads, instead of sorrowful,ἀγόμεναι=led away; the translation evidently of נְהוּגוֹת, which either really stood in the text, or was erroneously substituted by the Alexandrian for the rare word נוּגוֹת. Ewald follows the Sept. Incorrectly, it seems to me. נוּגוֹת is sufficiently expressive, if it be taken as an indication of the prevailing grief and in antithesis to the indications of the public rejoicings that existed in former times. [The mention of “the priests” particularly shows that the sacred precincts of Zion, where they ministered, and where “the virgins” went up to the solemn feasts with joy and gladness, are before the Poet’s eye. To say that the priests are mentioned because they constituted “the nobility” of the inhabitants of the city, is not only awkward, but untrue. Noyes translates the last clause Her virgins wail: a meaning of the original word not licensed by authority.—W. H. H.]—And she is in bitterness. In these words the whole is summed up. [It is, perhaps, impossible to give in English the exquisite force of the original. Naegelsbach nearly reproduces it in German, “Und ihr—ist wehe.”—W. H. H.] Here it is evident that the ideal person of Zion is the embodiment of all the particular members and ranks of the community (des volkslebens). [If this were indisputably evident, it would not militate with the fact that Zion represented the religious life as Judah did the political life of the people.—W. H. H.]—This relative conclusion shows that the Poet proposes to pass to something new. In fact, Lam_1:4 describes the positive sorrows and afflictions of the people: Lam_1:5, a. b., the good fortune of her enemies as the natural reciprocal effect of the misfortunes of Judah; Lam_1:5, c.,6, the negative side of the painful experience of the people, namely, the losses they sustained.
Lam_1:5. Her adversaries are the chief, lit., have become the head [i. e., her superiors.Blayney and Noyes: or, the head over her.Boothroyd.] In Deu_28:13 a promise is made to Israel, if obedient, ‘and the Lord shall make thee the head and not the tail,” and in same chapter, Lam 1:44, the reverse is threatened, if disobedient. The Poet, without doubt, had these passages in his mind.—Her enemies prosper. The darkness of Israel’s sorrows is deepened by the brilliant prosperity of her enemies. The expression occurs in same sense, Jer_12:1. See Psa_122:6; Job_12:6.—For the LORD hath afflicted her for the multitude of her transgressions. This advantage on the part of their enemies had not happened by chance, nor by mere arbitrariness or unrighteousness on the side of God, but by an act of Divine rectitude in the punishment of Israel for their sins. What is professedly made conspicuous in Lam_1:8 is here anticipated. [Observe, in connection with Zion, as the representative of the religious element of the theocratic idea, in distinction from the national, the name Jehovah is first introduced, and the calamities suffered by the people are first distinctly ascribed to their sins;—the sins especially of priests and ministers of religion, and of hypocrisy, formalism and idolatry on the part of the people.:—W. H. H.]—Her children are gone into captivity,her young children are gone captives. From here to end of Lam_1:6 the Poet describes what Judah has lost. And first, her children.עוֹלָלִים are little children (see Lam_2:20; Lam_4:4; Jer_6:11; Jer_9:20). These are compelled as captives to go forth before the oppressor into foreign lands. See Joel 4:2, 3.—Before the enemy. [The word adversary (so Broughton) is preferred to enemy, E. V., because the word in Hebrew is the same as that rendered “adversaries” in the first clause. Oppressor and oppressors might be well substituted.—W. H. H.] What renders this more dreadful is the idea that the little children are torn away from parents and brothers and sisters, to be driven as merchandise by their purchasers, some to one place and some to another. [Henderson: “In the representations which we find on ancient sculptures nothing is more affecting than to observe females and young children driven as captives before their conquerors.” Observe, young children are mentioned in connection with Zion because they, in a peculiar sense, are the care of the church, of the religious rather than the political rulers, the lambs of the flock entrusted to the spiritual shepherds of Israel. Nothing could more forcibly express, in accordance with Jewish ideas, the fact that God had forsaken His people, than that the heathen were suffered, without Divine hindrance, to carry away these young children, the children of the covenant, into captivity and slavery. It is this thought that constitutes the poetic climax, showing how severely Jehovah afflicted Zion for her sins.—W. H. H.]
Lam_1:6. And from the daughter of Zion all her beauty is departed. Zion has lost, not only her dearest and most precious ones, her children, but also her beauty, her glory. This last feature is represented by the princes, with whom, and before them all, the king is to be classed. [What then was the beauty of Zion—the King and the Princes, or God Himself? The beauty of Zion was the presence of Jehovah and the maintenance of His worship on the Holy Mount. See Lam_2:1; Lam_2:6; 1Sa_4:21-22; Eze_7:20-22; Psa_1:2, “Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God hath shined,” Psa_96:9, “Oh, worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness,” בְּהַדְרַת־קֹדֶשּׁ. Psa_132:13-14. The beauty of Zion departed when God forsook His people, suffered the Temple to be destroyed, Jer_52:13, and the ordinances of worship to be discontinued. The condition of her princes, like hunted harts, pursued and overtaken, is the consequence of the destruction of Zion, whence they are driven forth, deprived of all spiritual nourishment. God is no longer with them. No more are they fed with the bread of Heaven; and therefore, like starved and parched harts, they fall an easy prey to their pursuers.—W. H. H.]—Her princes are become like harts that find no pasture; and they are gone without strength before the enemy. These noble and fleet-footed animals lose, by hunger, their strength and the power of flight. They are caught and driven at pleasure. So the princes of Zion, formerly her pride and strength, are driven forth by the pursuer. The Sept. and Jerome have κριοί, arietes,=rams. They read or understood אֵלִים. But evidently אַיִל is the stag or hart (see Deu_12:15; Deu_14:5; Deu_15:22): rams would not suit in this connection, since rams do not belong to those animals of the chase, which only suffer themselves to be taken by men, when hunger deprives them of power to escape.
Lam_1:7
7Jerusalem remembered in the days of her affliction, and of her miseries, all her pleasant things that she had in the days of old, when her people fell into the hand of the enemy, and none did help her: the adversaries saw her, and did mock at her sabbaths.
TEXTUAL AND GRAMMATICAL
Lam_1:7.—יְמֶי עָנְיָהּ ו׳ is not the object of זָֽכְרָה, but indicates the time, as is evident from the absence of ו before כֹל. The accusative יְמֵי answers, as frequently, the question, When? See my Gr., § 70, d. [Blayney: “Houbigant supposes that we ought to read בימי for ימי: but I am inclined to think that it is not the ב, but the מ, which has been sunk before ימי, by means of the preceding word having been terminated with the same letter,—a mistake of which we find numberless instances originating from the same cause. מימי signifies during the days, or since they began, asמימי קדם does presently after, in or during former days,” Boothroyd quotes this note with approval in his Hebrew Bible. Henderson says, “in יְמֵי there is an ellipsis of בְּ, of which there are numerous examples.” But nouns may be “used absolutely to express the relations of time,” see Green’s Gr., § 274, 2.—W. H. H.]—מְרוּדִים, not from מָרַד, but from ררּד, dissipari, vagari (Hos_12:1; Jer_2:31), is vagatio, erratio, vita extorris et erratica (Fuerst). The word is found, besides here and Lam_3:19. only at Isa_58:7. [Dr J. A. Alexander translates וְַעֲנִיִים מְרוּדים, the afflicted, the homeless, and remarks, “Lowth’s version—the wandering poor—is now commonly regarded as substantially correct. מְרוּדִים is properly an abstract, meaning wandering (from רוּד), here used for the concrete wanderers.” Accepting the opinion of Lowth and Alexander, I have put “wanderings” in the text. Fuerst, in his concordance, derives the word from רוּד, as above, but, in his Lexicon, from מָרַד, and translates it expulsion, persecution, misery. W. Robertson says, מְרוּדֶיהָ, her mournings, her lamentations, her miseries or calamities, or her rebellions, for the word may be referred to the root רוּד, in Hiph., to mourn, to lament; or to the root מָרַד, to rebel.” Blayney says it “comes from יָרַד, to descend from a higher to a lower condition,” and so translates it abatement. The variety of meanings put upon the word is indicated in the following English Versions: Broughton, vexation; Blayney, abasement; Boothroyd, misery; Henderson, persecution; Noyes. oppression. But wanderings is evidently best supported by its use and most natural derivation, and suits the meaning here, but in Lam_3:19 it seems to denote simply a condition of wretchedness.—W. H. H.]—מַֽחֲמֻדֶּיהָ, only here and Lam_1:11, K’tib. Neither מַחְמָד, nor מַחֲמֹד, found in Jeremiah. He uses only חֶמְדָּה (Jer_3:19; Jer_12:10; Jer_25:34).—מִימֵי קֶדֶם, in Jeremiah we have כִימֵי־קֶדֶם, Jer_46:26.—בְּיַד could be into the hand [E. V., Blayney, Boothroyd, Henderson, Noyes] instead of by [Broughton]; the difference is not important.—[Blayney: “Instead of רָאוּהָ צָרִים I propose to read רָאוּ חַֽצָרִיִם.” An ingenious, but unnecessary, unauthorized change.—W. H. H.]
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
Lam_1:7. Jerusalem. [Here occurs another of those sudden changes which give to this poem its highly dramatic character. In the preceding verses, which may be properly regarded as introductory to all that follows, the city, the nation, and the church have been successively introduced. Now Jerusalem is named for the first time. Jerusalem, here, must be regarded as generic and comprehensive; the representative of the theocratic idea; the head of all the cities of Israel, the type of its nationality, the seat of its worship, where God dwelt in its consecrated Zion. The ideal persons who have already appeared,—the ruined city, pictured as a sorrowing widow and dethroned and conquered queen, of Lam_1:1-2,—the exile, fleeing from misery and bondage, seeking a home among heathen, but finding no rest, no escape from trouble and persecution, of Lam_1:3,—the daughter of Zion, despoiled of her beauty, bewailing the absence of worshippers, the invasion of her sacred courts by heathen, the captivity of her infant children and the humiliation of her proud leaders and princes, of Lam_1:4-6,—all now are embraced under the generic name of Jerusalem, which from this verse to the end of the chapter is personified as the representative of the theocratic idea.—W. H. H.]—remembered,remembers. The unfortunate cannot forbear recalling their former prosperity, the remembrance of which serves both to comport them and to increase their sorrow. Zion follows this propensity of nature.—in the days of her affliction and of her miseries, all her pleasant things.—All the glorious things, of a spiritual and of a temporal nature, which had fallen to the lot of the chosen people from the beginning of their history, are now the subject of painful remembrance.—that she had in the days of old. See Lam_2:17; Isa_23:7; Isa_37:26; Mic_7:20. [Broughton: “in the old time.” Henderson: “from ancient days.”] Ewald regards the words, all the pleasant things she had from the days of old, as erroneously transplanted here out of Lam_1:10. His principal reason seems to be that they spoil the rhythm. Vaihinger supposes that this verse, as well as Lam_2:19, contains four members. I see no necessity for this. We are only to regard the two members of the first part of the verse as of greater length. There is apparently no exact measure for the number of syllables of the several members. The thought that Jerusalem in her misery remembers her present misery [which would be the sense according to Ewald’s emendation] is unnatural; for זָכַר [to call to mind, to remember] always suggests something distant, remote, in reference to space or time, and, in the latter relation, either past or future. Besides, the words, “that she had in the days of old,” so appropriate in Lam_1:7, would be altogether superfluous and confusing in Lam_1:10.—when her people fell into the hand of the enemy,when her people fall by the hand of the oppressor.This is a more particular description of “the days of her affliction.” They were the days when her people fell by the hand of their enemies.—and none did help her,and she has no helper. [So all the Eng. Versions, except E. V.]—the adversaries saw her,her oppressors behold her. The construction is determined by what precedes, according to acknowledged usage. See. my Gr., § 99.—[רָאָה = to see, has here the sense of looking at in the way of inspection, beholding (Broughton), perhaps in the sense of ‘looking at a person with satisfaction or joy,’ to ‘feast the eyes upon one with malicious joy’ (see Fuerst’sLex.). The remark of Dr. J. A. Alexander on Isa_53:2, that רָאָה “means to view with pleasure only when followed by the preposition ב,” needs qualification.—W. H. H.]—and did mock—they mock—at her Sabbaths.מִשְׁכָּת is an ἅπ. λεγ. The sense of the word itself is clear. It can only mean cessationes, excidia [cessations, destructions]. But the choice of a word else unused, seems to indicate that the scorn of their enemies was of an equivocal character; namely, they scoffed not only because Zion had come to its end, but likewise because now a general Sabbath, a day of rest for the land in a bad sense, had begun. We have then a proof that the Sabbath was to the heathen, even before the days of Rome (see Juv. Sat. XIV. 96–106; Pers. V. 179–184; Mart. IV. 4, 7), an occasion for mockery. [Hugh Broughton: “This prophesieth how in Babel they will mourn for desire unto their feasts, which in their Land they would not keep aright. And the Chaldeans will scoff at their Sabbatisms, as did long after Horace, Ovid, and other Poets,—and Tully, too, deserving to have his head cut off and his tongue pricked, as he had. The Psalms 137 commenteth upon this verse.”]. This early mockery of the Jewish Sabbath would be more likely to happen, since it would naturally come to the ears of those who destroyed Jerusalem, that the commandment itself predicted to the disobedient people a time of desolation, as an involuntary Sabbath rest of the land. See Lev_26:34; Lev_26:43; 2Ch_36:21. I believe, therefore, that the old explanation of Vulg., Arab., Luther, L. Capelle, translating מִשְׁבַּתִּים by Sabbaths, is right, so far as it allows an equivocal sense of this word. [This word has given the translators and commentators much trouble. The Sept. translates it by μετοικεσία, “and mocked at her captivity,” deriving the noun from שָׁבָה, captivum ducere. The other Versions vary. Blayney:“discontinuance;” “Houbigant justly observes that שבה is nowhere used for Sabbath, etc. But without taking the liberty which he does of substituting another word, משברה, the use of the verb שבת will justify giving to משבתה a sense well suited to the exigence of the passage, namely, ‘her discontinuance,’ that is, the ceasing, or causing to cease, of her, or of her former prosperity.” Boothroyd and Noyes: “destruction.” Henderson: “they laughed at her ruin,” “מִשְׁבַּתֶּיה, lit., her ruined circumstances; the state of the complete cessation of all the active businesses of life. Root, שָׁבַתto cease; Hiph., to put an end to, cause to cease.”Broughton: “Sabbatisms;” (which, as preserving the equivocal sense, is to be preferred).—Blayney: “Some critics have been willing to discard this line, Her oppressors behold her—they mock at her Sabbaths—as well as the fourth in Lam_2:19, but for no better reason than because all the other periods in the two chapters consist, of three lines only. But I think this not a sufficient ground, in opposition to the authority of all the Hebrew copies and ancient Versions.” Henderson, who makes four lines of this verse, and only three of the others, remarks, “there is no reason to believe that Jeremiah considered himself so rigidly bound to adhere to his triple arrangement, as on no occasion to break through it in order to give utterance to a thought forcibly bearing on the statement which he had just made.” Why then adopt an artificial style at all? But there is no necessity for making four members instead of three of this verse. Each member consists of two distinctly marked clauses; and in this verse the first member has two clauses of more than usual length. Naegelsbach’s arrangement of the lines in sixes, instead of triplets, plainly disposes of this difficulty, and its correctness is vindicated by the accents.—W. H. H.]
Lam_1:8-11.
8Jerusalem hath grievously sinned; therefore she is removed: all that honored her, despise her, because they have seen her nakedness; yea, she sigheth, and9 turneth backward. Her filthiness is in her skirts; she remembereth not her last end; therefore she came down wonderfully: she had no comforter. O Lord, behold10my afflictions; for the enemy hath magnified himself. The adversary hath spread out his hand upon all her pleasant things: for she hath seen that the heathen entered into her sanctuary, whom thou didst command that they should not enter 11into thy congregation. All her people sigh, they seek bread: they have given their pleasant things for meat to relieve the soul: see, O Lord, and consider; for I am become vile.
TEXTUAL AND GRAMMATICAL
Lam_1:8.—חֵטְא חָֽטְאָה. See my Gr., § 93, d, note. The form חֵטְא (frequent in Deu_15:9; Deu_21:22, etc., comp. Isa_31:7; Isa_53:12; Hos_12:9) is never found in Jeremiah, and in Lam. only here and Lam_3:39. Jeremiah uses only the form חַטָּאת Jer_16:10; Jer_16:18; Jer_17:1; Jer_17:3; Jer_18:23, et al. The verb חָטָא is frequent with him, Jer_2:35; Jer_3:25; Jer_8:14.—[Blayney: “For לְנִידָה, which occurs nowhere else, nineteen MSS., and the first edition of the Hagiographa, read לְנִדָּה, as at Jer_1:17 and various other places.”]—מְכַבֵּד, not found in Jeremiah; 1Sa_2:30; 2Sa_10:3; Pro_14:31.—The Hiphil form, הִזִּיל (not to be confounded with הִזִּיר from נָזַּל, Isa_48:21), occurs only here. See Olsh., § 255, h, note. In Jer_15:19 we find זוֹלֵל, abjectum, vile. [The word is from זָלַל, Chaldaic inflexion. See Benjamin Davidson; Analyt. Lex., § 18,14; or from זוּל, see Fuerst, Lex.—W. H. H.]—עֶרְוָה, not found in Jeremiah. See Isa_47:3; Eze_16:37. [Cranmer, Bishops’ B., filthiness; Broughton, Boothroyd, Noyes, shame.]—אָהוֹר is found in Jeremiah only with הָלַךְ, Jer_15:6, and נָסוֹג, Jer_38:22; Jer_46:5.
Lam_1:9.—טֻמְאָתָהּ. Ewald, wholly unnecessarily, would read טָֽמְאַֽתָה, she polluted (§ 194, b). The word is not found in Jeremiah.—פְלָאִים, acc. adverbial. See נִפְלָאוֹת, Job_37:5; נוֹרָאוֹת, Psa_65:6; מֵישָׁרִים, Psa_75:3; my Gr., § 70, k.—הִנְדִיל requires neither נַפְשׁוֹ nor פִּיו to complete the sense. The object lies in the verb itself. The direct causative is needed (see my Gr., § 18, 3). It also means, to play the part of or to affect greatness; see Jer_48:26; Jer_48:42; comp. 1Sa_20:41. [Fuerst gives this verb an inchoative sense, to grow violent. This sense of the word seems to have induced the inaccurate translation of Blayney, Behold how an enemy hath aggravated mine affliction. Boothroyd gives same sense.—W. H. H.]
Lam_1:10.—פָרַשׂ (see Lam_1:13; Lam_1:17; Lam_4:4) is not strange to the vocabulary of Jer_4:31; Jer_16:7; Jer_48:40; Jer_49:22.—Before בָּאוּ supply אֲשֶׁר.—[Henderson: “The ה in צִוִּיתָה is merely the fuller form of the pronominal fragment for צִוִּיתָ, the common form. It is omitted in some MSS.”]
Lam_1:11.—מַֽחֲמַודֵּיהֶם, see Lam_1:7; Lam_1:10. [Henderson: the form is “quite irregular. It is corrected in the K’ri, which rejects the ו. The word is thus exhibited in a great number of MSS. and in eight printed editions.”]—בְּ .בְּאֹכֶל indicates something given in the way of price or wages; see Gen_29:18; Gen_30:26; Isa_7:23; my Gr., § 112, 5, a. אֹכֶל is not found in Jeremiah. He says אָכְלָה, Jer_12:12; or מַֽאֲכָל, Jer_7:33; Jer_16:4; Jer_19:7; Jer_34:20.—לְהָשִׁיב נָפֶשׁ occurs Lam_1:16; Lam_1:19; Rth_4:15; Psa_19:8; Pro_25:13, never in Jeremiah.—רְאֵה וְהַבִּיטָה. These two imperatives are found together, only in the reverse order, in Job_35:5; Isa_63:15; Psa_80:15; Psa_142:5. In the Lamentations we also have הַבִּיטוּ וּרְאוּ, Lam_1:12; וּרְאֵה הַבִּיטּ, Lam_1:1, and הַבִּיטָה alone Lam_3:63. Jeremiah never uses the verb נָבַט, which Isaiah uses constantly, Isa_5:12; Isa_5:30; Isa_8:22; Isa_18:4; Isa_42:18; Isa_63:15; Isa_20:5-6, etc.—זוֹלֵלָה occurs once in Jer_15:19. See הִזִּילוּהָ Lam_1:8. The word is used in a contemptuous sense; Zion [Jerusalem] has become a עֶצֶב נִבְזֶה (Jer_22:28) when she ought to be נַֽחֲלַת צְבִי צִבְאוֹת גוֹיִם (Jer_3:19). [זוֹלֵל is properly the participle of זָלַל, to shake to and fro, to totter, hence figuratively to be low, bad, contemptible, abject, mean, and then again figuratively to be miserable, unhappy, in which last sense it is used here. See Fuerst, Lex.—W. H. H.]
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
Lam_1:8. It is sin that has made Jerusalem an object of abhorrence. Her uncleanness has become notorious: therefore those who might comfort her keep far from her, while her heathen oppressors, who, according to the law, should keep away from her, have free access to her.—Jerusalem hath grievously sinned. [Lit., hath sinned a sin. This Hebraism suggests the idea, not only of a sin of a grievous character, but of sin persevered in, and its guilt aggravated by constant repetition. So Cranmer translates: “Jerusalem hath sinned ever more and more.” Naegelsbach, poetically, if not accurately: Gesündigt, gesündigt hat Jerusalem.Calvin: “Here the Prophet expresses more clearly and strongly what he had briefly referred to, even that all the evils which the Jews suffered proceeded from God’s vengeance, and that they were worthy of such a punishment, because they had not lightly offended, but had heaped up for themselves a dreadful judgment, since they had in all manner of ways abandoned themselves to impiety. This is the substance of what is said.”—W. H. H.]—Therefore she is removed. [Correctly, therefore she is become vile.Westminster Annotations: “She is become as a woman separated for her uncleanness,” Lev_15:19; Eze_22:10; Eze_36:17; or, an abominable thing, for so also is the word used in an abstract notion, Lev_20:21; 2Ch_29:5; Ezr_9:11. So Lam_1:17.—W. H. H.]—All that honoured her despise her. Those who formerly honored Jerusalem, her friends and allies, now despise her. [Calvin: “This also did not a little increase the grievousness of her calamity; she had been repudiated by her friends, by whom she had before been valued and honored. The reason is mentioned.”]—Because they have seen her nakedness. By the discovery of her nakedness we are to understand, not merely that after the removal of all protecting covering (i. e., of all means of defence), men could see and even enter into the precincts of her innermost recesses, but especially that in this way the nakedness of Jerusalem, in a moral sense, has become notorious. In reference to her nakedness in this moral sense, Nebuzaradan said (Jer_40:3), “because ye have sinned against Jehovah, and have not obeyed His voice, therefore this thing is come upon you.” See Delitzsch on Isa_47:3 : “The nakedness of Babylon is her shameful deeds, which are become manifest as such.” The same figure of speech is found in Hos_2:10; Nah_3:5; Ezek. 13:37.—Yea, she sigheth. [Yea, she herself, or, as for herself she sigheth, etc.—W. H. H.]—And turneth backward. The shame of Jerusalem is so manifest that she herself cannot deny it. There remains nothing for her to do, but groaning to hide herself. See Lam_1:13; Lam_2:3; Psa_9:4; Psa_44:11; Psa_56:10. [The sense seems to be that she herself is so self-convicted and stricken with grief and mortification, that she can only sigh and turn her back upon the spectators in the vain endeavor to hide her shame. This would be very natural in the case of a naked woman, and such is the disagreeable image employed by the poet. Naegelsbach:und wendete sich züruck, lit., and turned herself round. The only other sense that can be put upon the phrase is to regard it as expressive of despair. So Calvin, “to turn backward means the same as to be deprived of all hope of restoration.” But the correctness of such an interpretation is far from obvious. The other is more natural and probable. West. Annotations:“Yea, she sigheth and turneth backward for shame; as those in such case would do, that have any shamefacedness, or spark of ingenuity at all in them, see Isa_47:5 : for they seem to swerve here from the genuine sense, who understand the term turning back as intimating a want of power to stand to it, or to rise and recover again, as Jer_46:5.”—W. H. H.]
לְנִידָה, vile. The old translators derive the word from נוּד, vagari, errare, in the sense of agitatio, jactatio facta,i. e.,agitata jactata est. Others take it in the sense of מָנוֹד (Psa_44:15), that at which men shake the head [as an expression of contemptuous pity.—W. H. H.]. But the connection requires that the word be used in the sense of that which excites abhorrence: for, according to the following clause, Jerusalem is despised because men now see her nakedness and her uncleanness. Since the lengthening of a syllable, to compensate for the doubling of the following consonant, is not infrequent [see הִזִּילוּהָ for הִזִלּוּהָ, next clause, and Green’sGr., § 141, 3.—W. H. H.], we may take נִידּהָ as another form of נִדָּה (Lam_1:17). See Olsh., § 82, c. But נִדָּח is that which one avoids, flings away from him as vile, abominates, that which is unclean, an object of abhorrence, and then the condition [or state, in the abstract] of uncleanness. It is especially used of the uncleanness of women (Lev_12:2; Lev_15:19, etc.). Here it would denote the person afflicted with such uncleanness, and become, on that account, an object of abhorrence, as Eze_18:6 speaks of a אשָּׁה נִדָּה. Neither נִידָה nor נִדָּה occur in Jeremiah. [The authorities for the translation of this word are about equally divided. Those that agree with our author are: the Syr., horror; Ital., a laughing-stock; Ger., ein unreines Weib;Blayney,one set apart for unclean;Henderson,unclean;Noyes,vile. On the other hand we have: Sept., fluctuation; Vulg., instable; Targ., vagrant;Cranmer and Bishops‘ B., therefore she is come in decay; E. V. and Boothroyd,therefore she is removed.Calvin,therefore she is become a wanderer; “the word ought properly to be applied to their exile, when the Jews became unfixed and vagrants:” to which his English Editor, Rev. John Owen, adds this note, “the reference here is evidently to banishment, and not to uncleanness, as some take it, because the noun is sometimes so taken, persons being removed from society on account, of uncleanness.” Hugh Broughton,therefore came she into dispersion, “such uncertainty of place as Cain had, Gen. iv., wandering from place to place.” The argument derived from the connection seems to be decisive in favor of the first opinion, therefore is she become vile, or abominable,Naegelsbach,zum Abscheu.—W. H. H.]
Lam_1:9. Her filthiness is in her skirts.—Zion [Jerusalem] for a long time trifled with sin. She believed the evil she did would not become manifest to her injury. Now it is all become manifest. Her uncleanness has come to the surface: it is no longer hidden within her, but it is on her skirts (see Jer_13:22; Jer_13:26; Nah_3:5). [Wordsworth: “It is visible to all; she cannot deny her uncleanness.” Calvin refers this to the punishment, rather than the guilt of their sin; as Lowth remarks: “she carries the marks of her sins in the greatness of her punishment.” The idea of personal uncleanness, however, is stated with such revolting plainness that we cannot fail to see that the very punishment consists in the exposure of her moral pollution. See Jer_2:19; Jer_2:22; Jer_2:34.—W. H. H.]—She remembereth not her last end. She considered not what the end would be. She did not in the beginning reflect what the consequences of her sin must be. [Assem.Annot.: “She remembered not. She considered not, when time was, what the issue of her wicked courses would be, what they would bring her to at last; see Deu_32:29. So was it with Babel, Isa_47:7, and with this people, though forewarned of it, Jer_2:25.” Calvin understands this to mean, “that the Jews were so overwhelmed with despair, that they did not raise up their thoughts to God’s promises;—they were so demented by their sorrow, that they became stupified, and entertained no hope as to the future.” This interpretation grows out of the view that the first clause refers to the punishment of sin and not to sin itself; and is inconsistent with the apparent sense, with the context and with the ordinary use of the phrase “remembering the latter end.”—W. H. H.]—Therefore she came down wonderfully.—Lit. She considered not her latter end, and came down wonderfully. In consequence of her want of consideration she has fallen and is degraded from her high estate. See Deu_28:43; Jer_48:18.—She had—has—no comforter. See ver.2.—O Lord, behold my affliction, for the enemy hath magnified,—doth magnify—himself.—A pious ejaculation, which is put in the mouth of Zion [Jerusalem] herself. Jehovah is implored to observe how proudly the enemy, to whom Zion [Jerusalem] is no match, exalts himself. [Henderson: “After ascribing the fall of Jerusalem to heedless indulgence in sin, by a striking prosopopeia, he introduces her as imploring the compassionate regard of Jehovah.” See, for a strikingly similar rhetorical construction, Gen_49:18.—The idea in the last clause, for the enemy magnifies himself, is that the enemy increases his insolence and violence (see gram. note above), he is growing more and more vindictive. This may be considered, not only as a reason why Jerusalem utters a cry to God, but as an argument addressed to God for His interposition. So Calvin represents it: “The Prophet, in order to obtain favor, says, that enemies had greatly exalted themselves. And this deserves a special notice; for what seems to occasion despair to us, ought, on the contrary, to encourage us to entertain good hope, that is, when enemies are insolent and carry themselves with great arrogance and insult us. The greater and the less tolerable their pride is, with more confidence may we call on God, for the Holy Spirit has not in vain taught us this truth, that God will be propitious to us when enemies thus greatly exalt themselves, that is, when they become beyond measure proud, and immoderately indulge themselves in every kind of contempt.”—W. H. H.]
Lam_1:10. Since Zion [Jerusalem] has not preserved the sanctuary of her heart from pollution by the enemy of her soul, but has suffered that enemy to rob her of her spiritual treasures, she must not wonder if her earthly enemies desecrate by their presence her earthly sanctuary, and stretch out the hand towards its precious things.—The adversary hath spread out his hand [or rather, stretched it out, (so Fuerst, Naegelsbach, and Assem.Annot.), as about to seize and appropriate them.—W. H. H.], upon all her pleasant things. Precious, or glorious things. The vessels and treasures of the Temple are intended (see 2Ch_36:10; Jer_52:17 ff.), as is evident from the explanatory conjunction for with which the next clause begins: for she hath seen that the heathen entered into her sanctuary, whom Thou didst command that they should not enter into Thy congregation. In Deu_23:2-3, we find the command never to allow Ammonites and Moabites to come into the congregation of the Lord. This special command was afterwards applied to all the heathen: Eze_44:7; Eze_44:9; Neh_13:3. We are reminded also of the Porch of the heathen, violation of which, according to Josephus (Jewish Wars, VI., 2, 4; comp. Act_21:28), was forbidden on pain of death. [Observe the antithesis between sanctuary and congregation.Boothroyd expresses this in his translation, in which he says “the sense is given and not the idiom:” Surely she hath seen nations enter into her sanctuary, whom Thou didst forbid to enter even into Thy congregation. Those who were forbidden even to worship with the people, had intruded into the holy place—only priests might enter. “If even their entering to perform an act of worship would have been construed as a violation of the precept, how much more when it had for its object destruction and spoliation” (Henderson).—W. H. H.]
[Naegelsbach translates: For she saw heathen who came into her sanctuary. It would be better to translate, For she hath seen how heathen came, etc. I have tried to preserve the same form of the verb כָאוּ in both clauses by making heathen the object of one verb and subject of the other. If this is a fault, I share it in company with old Hugh Broughton and. with Blayney. The Cranmer and Bishops’ Bibles give the sense excellently: “Yea, even before her eyes came the heathen in and out of the sanctuary; whom Thou (nevertheless) hast forbidden to come within Thy congregation.”—It is difficult to preserve the force of the final word לָךְ, without putting the clause in quotation marks. The possessive pronoun in the English version “thy congregation” must refer to the people, not to God.—W. H. H.]
Lam_1:11. To dreadful spiritual distress is added the greatest bodily want, hunger. The Israelites must part with their jewels in order to procure necessary food. See Lam_1:19. [All her people sigh. The distress is real and universal. In Lam_1:4 the priests sigh; in Lam_1:8 the ideal person, Jerusalem, sigheth: but here we have, not a poetical image, but the actual groaning of the people, suffering with hunger and searching for food.—They seek bread, or rather seeking for bread. This expresses the reason for their sighing.—They have given (they give) their pleasant things (precious things,Broughton, Cranmer, Bishops’ Bible, Henderson, Noyes;jewels,Naegelsbach, Wordsworth); for meat (food). By precious things are, doubtless, meant those ornaments which oriental women value so highly. “A striking illustration of this is given by Mr. Roberts:—‘the people of the East retain their little valuables, such as jewels and rich robes, to the last extremity. To part with that, which has perhaps been a kind of heirloom in the family, is like parting with life. Have they sold the last wreck of their other property; are they on the verge of death?—the emaciated members of the family are called together, and some one undertakes the heartrending task of proposing such a bracelet, or armlet, or ear-ring, or the pendant of the forehead, to be sold. For a moment all are silent, till the mother or daughters burst into tears, and then the contending feelings of hunger, and love for their ‘pleasant things’ alternately prevail. In general, the conclusion is to pledge, and not to sell their much-loved ornaments; but such is the rapacity of those who have money, and such the extreme penury of those who have once fallen, that they seldom regain them” (Oriental Illustrations, p. 483). “Under such circumstances, and particularly in times of public calamity, it often happens that jewels and other property of most valuable description, are disposed of for the merest trifle, that a little bread may be obtained to relieve the soul” (Pictorial Bible, Lon. See also Comp. Comm.).—W. H. H.]—To relieve the soul [marg. E. V., to make the soul to come again]. The meaning is evident from 1Ki_17:21-22; 1Sa_30:12; Jdg_15:19. [To sustain life: lit., to cause the breath, or life to return. “This mode of expression is founded on the idea, that when one is faint, the breath or life is as it were gone” (Henderson). See Job_2:4, “all that a man hath will he give for his life.”—W. H. H.] See, O Lord, and consider. See Lam_1:9; Lam_1:20; Lam_2:20; Lam_5:1; comp. Lam_3:63; Lam_4:16.—[For I am become vile.How wretched I am become. There is certainly, as Henderson remarks, “something incongruous in assigning her vileness as a reason why God should regard’ Jerusalem;” what is here meant is, as Henderson acknowledges while he retains the word “vile,” “not her moral pollution, but her abject and despised condition, which was exposed to all around her.”—Naegelsbach with the last clause of this verse begins an entirely new section. In all that follows, he says, down to Lam_1:16 Zion herself speaks. She entreats first Jehovah, then all passers-by to regard her misery. In fact, however, the address of Jerusalem to Jehovah begins with the last clause of Lam_1:9, and is continued down to end of this verse. The appeal to God in the last clause of Lam_1:10, which Thou commandest, etc., and again this prayer to God at the close Lam_1:11, shows that the whole is addressed to Him: the use of the third person instead of the first in the first two clauses both of Lam_1:10 and Lam_1:11, does not refute this, as the change from the first to the third person is so frequent in Hebrew descriptive poetry.—W. H. H.]
PART II
Lam_1:12-22
ל Lam_1:12. Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by?
Behold and see
If there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow,
Which is inflicted on me,
Wherewith Jehovah hath afflicted me
In the day of His fierce anger!
מ Lam_1:13. From on high hath He sent fire into my bones,
And it subdued them.
He hath spread a net for my feet,
He hath turned me back.
He hath made me desolate—
All the day long sorrowful!
נ Lam_1:14. The yoke of my sins is bound fast to His hand.
They are twined together,
They rise up above my neck.
He hath caused my strength to fail.
The Lord hath delivered me into the hands of those
Whom I cannot resist.
ם Lam_1:15. The Lord hath made despicable all my mighty men
In the midst of me.
He hath proclaimed a set-time against me
To crush my young men.
The Lord hath trodden the wine-press
As to the virgin, Judah’s daughter.
ע Lam_1:16. For these things I weep.
Mine eye, mine eye—runneth down with water,
Because the Comforter—Restorer of my soul—
Is far from me.
My children are perishing
Because the enemy prevails.
פ Lam_1:17. Zion stretches out her hands,
But there is no Comforter for her.
Jehovah has given charge concerning Jacob
That his neighbors be his enemies.
Jerusalem has become
An abomination in the midst of them.
צ Lam_1:18. Jehovah—He is righteous:
For I have disobeyed His commandment.
Hear, I pray you, all ye peoples,
And behold my sorrow.
My virgins and my young men
Are gone into captivity.
ק Lam_1:19. I called to my lovers:
They deceived me.
My priests and my elders
Expired in the city,
For they sought food for themselves
To revive their souls.
ר Lam_1:20. Behold, O Jehovah, how I am distressed!
My bowels are greatly troubled.
My heart is turned within me,
For I have grievously rebelled;
Abroad the sword bereaveth,
At home—Death!
שֹׁ Lam_1:21. They heard that I sigh,
That I have no Comforter.
All my enemies heard of my trouble.
They rejoiced that Thou hadst done it,
That Thou hast brought the day Thou hadst proclaimed.
But they shall be like me!
ת Lam_1:22. 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.
ANALYSIS
From the last clause of verse 11, the Poet lets Zion [Jerusalem] herself speak, as she had done already, parenthetically, in Lam_1:9. This method of recital continues to the end of the chapter, with a single interruption, Lam_1:17, where the Poet himself throws in a word. [There is no necessity for supposing a change of speaker in Lam_1:17.—W. H. H.] Zion [Jerusalem] invites all who pass by, Lam_1:12, to convince themselves by their own observation, that there is no sorrow like unto her sorrow; it streamed as fire through her bones, whilst at the same time a net had caught her feet, Lam_1:13. She was the victim of sins of her own sowing, in consequence of which she had been helplessly given up to mighty enemies, Lam_1:14; her heroes had proved themselves powerless, for her enemies had been called together against Judah as to a feast at the wine-press, Lam_1:15. It is most natural that Zion’s [Jerusalem’s] tears should flow without ceasing for such calamities, and all the more natural since after the catastrophe all hope failed her, Lam_1:16. By way of confirmation the Poet repeats, in his own words, the thoughts expressed by Zion [Jerusalem] in the preceding context, Lam_1:17 : that she stretches forth her hands for help in vain, that the Lord had called together all her foes against her, so that she now stood in the midst of them as an object of abhorrence. Lam_1:18-22, Zion [Jerusalem] speaks again. Once more she repeats, Lam_1:18-19, in the way of recapitulation, the acknowledgment of her sin, the invitation to consider her great distress, the description of the principal items of the same, the banishment of her efficient youth, the defection of human allies, the pitiable death by starvation of her venerable priests and elders. The last three verses are a prayer. May the Lord regard her misery; the hopeful heart is broken by the blows of the angel of death, Lam_1:20. May the Lord bring upon her malignant enemies such a day of vengeance as He had brought upon Zion [Jerusalem], Lam_1:21-22. The last two lines of Lam_1:22 are a final exclamation of pain, from which it is evident that the petitions offered to the Lord had not availed to allay the deeply-seated agony of mind.
Lam_1:12
12Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is done unto me, wherewith the Lord hath afflicted me in the day of his fierce anger.
TEXTUAL AND GRAMMATICAL
Lam_1:12.—כָל־עֹבְרֵי דֶרֶךְ. This phrase is found in Lam_2:15; Job_21:29; Psa_80:13; Psa_89:42; Pro_9:15.—אִם־יֵשׁ, comp. Lam_1:18. These words, by brevity and simplicity, are highly poetical.—עוֹלַל. The Pual. conj. occurs only here; the active in Lam_1:22; Lam_2:20; Lam_3:51; Jer_6:9 in the sense of racemari [to glean; so Jerome renders it in our text, Who has gleaned me.—W. H. H.], comp. Jer_38:19.—הוֹגָה, see נוּגוֹת, Lam_1:4.—בְּיוֹם ח׳. This expression is found only here and Isa_13:13. חֲרוֹן אַפּוֹ is an expression common with Jer_4:8; Jer_4:26; Jer_25:37-38; Jer_30:24; Jer_49:37.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
Lam_1:12. Zion [Jerusalem] addresses herself now to men, especially to all “passers by,” in order to gain their attention and stir up their sympathy for her sufferings. [This address, according to Naegelsbach, extends to Lam_1:16, but in fact, to the end of Lam_1:19, when Jerusalem again addresses herself to Jehovah.—W. H. H.]—Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? The Hebrew is very difficult and hardly capable of a satisfactory explanation. It seems to me that the only allowable explanation is this: not on yourselves (look), but look and see whether any sorrow is as my sorrow. [See crit. note below. There is a difficulty first in deciding whether the first word in the Hebrew is a mere particle of wishing: oh if, oh that, utinam, would that! Or whether it is the particle of negation. If the former, then we may adopt Blayney’s translation, “O that among you, all ye that pass by, ye would look and see, if there be a sorrow like unto my sorrow,” etc. Thus our text is a call for sympathy. But there is little in favor of this interpretation. But if the word referred to is a particle of negation, then there are other difficulties: is it a simple negative, or a negative of interrogation? In either case, what is the meaning? If it is a simple negative, we may explain it in several ways. 1. We may, as Naegelsbach does, connect the negative with the following verbs, Look not on yourselves, but look and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow. Or, 2. We may translate literally, it is not to you, and then we may explain it in two ways: either as an enunciation of the fact that what had befallen her had not befallen them; so Hugh Broughton,This hath not befallen you, O all that pass by the way. Consider ye and see if, etc; or it may be taken as a complaint that her sorrows were so slighted—and then the sense is, It is nothing to you, i. e., you have no concern in it or care for it. Or, 3. We may translate it in the form of a wish or prayer, ‘let not that befall you that hath befallen me.’ If we take the word interrogatively, then we may suppose a word omitted, ‘Whether or no shall I call upon you,’ etc.; or we may render it as the English version has it, and in favor of which we have the weight of authority on the part of translators and commentators: Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by?West. Annot.: “Do ye make light of mine afflictions? or, do ye not regard them, and lay them to heart? as complaining that, her calamities were so slighted by others, and endeavoring to move them to some commiseration of her. See somewhat the like form of speech in the prayer of those holy men to God, Neh_9:32.”—Behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is done unto me. West. Annot.: “The manner of persons that sit weeping and wailing, as wandering outcasts, by the wayside, is wont to be no other than is here deciphered, in a proneness to acquaint others with their calamitous condition (so Lam_1:18), and to aggravate them in relation of them, as being such as had never the like been known or heard of before. See Lam_3:1; Lam_4:6.”—Wherewith the Lord (Jehovah) hath afflicted me in the day of His fierce anger. See Lam_1:5. “By the transcendent greatness of mine affliction ye may easily perceive that there is a special hand and work of God in it. See Isa_10:5.” West. Annot.—W. H. H.]
לוֹא אֲלֵיכֶם. The Sept. reads οἱ πρὸς ν̔μᾶς, where without doubt we should read οἴ πρ. ὑ. Vulgate: O vos omnes. Chald.: Adjuro vos omnes. Syr., very literally: Nihilne ad vos omnes viatores? Arab.: O quotquot viam transitis! That the Sept. read לוֹא as לוּא is very probable. There is nothing that should prevent our pointing it so today, if any thing were to be gained by it. But לוּ (for which we have לוּא, 1Sa_14:30; Isa_48:18; Isa_63:19) never stands as a simple interjection, but is a conjunction, and always requires a verb after it. We could indeed supply such a verb (Oh, that my call might compel your attention, or the like); but it is difficult to supply the right word, and we cannot conceive why the Poet should leave the reader to supply it. If we read לֹוא (which, according to the Masora, stands 35 times for לֹא, see Fuerst), then there are two ways of explaining it. Either it may be understood interrogatively: nonne ad vos? Then אֻקְרָא must be supplied, as Pro_8:4 reads, אֲלֵיכֻם אִישִׁים אֻקְרָא. But there אֶקְרָא is expressed. To supply it here, seems to me, were equally as difficult as the supply of a word after לוּא would necessarily be. Or, לוֹא may be understood as a negation. In this sense Aben Ezra and Rosenmueller take it, whilst they supply the wordsהִגִיעֵ אֲשֶׁר קָרָה לִי, i. e., hucusque non tetigit vos, quod mihi accidit; vos tanta mala, quanta nos opprimunt, nondum estis experti. But this explanation is evidently very arbitrary. אֲלִיכֶם is to be regarded as dependent on הָבִּיטוּ, which is often construed with אֵל, Num_21:9; Psa_34:6; Psa_102:20; Isa_22:11, etc. This explanation is not, it is true, entirely satisfactory. But may not the forced construction arise from the constraint of the alphabetical arrangement of the text? [See remark above לוא here is the same as הֲלְֹא, see Fuerst and 1Sa_14:30. The omission of the interrogation הֲ is accounted for by the desire to employ ל as the initial letter. Henderson: “לוֹא is a strong mode of expressing the negation לֹא, which has here all the force of a substantive put interrogatively, as it is in the common version: Is it nothing?”—W. H. H.]
Lam_1:13-16
13From above hath he sent fire into my bones, and it prevaileth against them: he hath spread a net for my feet; he hath turned me back; he hath made me desolate 14and faint all the day. The yoke of my transgressions is bound by his hand; they are wreathed, and come up upon my neck; he hath made my strength to fall; the Lord hath delivered me into their hands, from whom I am not able to rise up. 15The Lord hath trodden under foot all my mighty men in the midst of me: he hath called an assembly against me to crush my young men: the Lord hath trodden 16the virgin, the daughter of Judah, as in a wine-press. For these things I weep; mine eye, mine eye runneth down with water, because the comforter that should relieve my soul is far from me; my children are desolate, because the enemy prevailed.
TEXTUAL AND GRAMMATICAL
Lam_1:13.—מָרוֹם occurs often in Jer_17:12, etc.; מִמָּרוֹם, Jer_25:30.—עֲצָמוֹת, Jer_8:1, and elsewhere.—וַיִרְדֶּנָּה. The word is obscure. It is the Imp. Kal. of רָדָה. But רָדָה signifies to tread upon, govern. The subject can be אֵשׁ, since this word is also used as a masculine (אֵשׁ לֹהֵט, Psa_104:4). The singular suffix —ֶנָּה refers to עַצְמוֹתַי, since the bones are regarded as constituting one body. See Naegelsb. Gr., § 105, 7, rem. 2. We translate, thererefore, and it subdued them. [Fuerst: וַיִּרְ׳ for וַיַרְ׳, and he caused it (the fire) to become master. Blayney, translates, and hath caused it to penetrate into my bones, and says. “This is obviously the right construction, and it is that which is approved by the LXX.” But the Sept. uses the verb κατήγαγεν,—and obviously neither that verb nor the Hebrew means to penetrate. All the other versions use the word ‘prevail,’ ‘subdue,’ or ‘govern,’ except Boothroyd, who blindly follows Blayney.—W. H. H.] רָדָה, Jer_5:31. Comp. Lev_25:43; Lev_25:46; Lev_25:53.—פָּרַשׂ. See Lam_1:10. רֶשֶׁת occurs not again in Lamentations and not at all in Jeremiah.—[הֱשִׁיבַנִי. The Hiphil form, caused me to turn. This favors the idea of the net as the instrument of preventing escape; see below.—W. H. H.]—שׁוֹמֵמָה. See שׁוֹמֵמִין, Lam_1:4.—דָּוָה. This word does not occur in Jeremiah. It is found, besides here, Lam_5:17; Lev_15:33; Lev_20:18; Isa_30:22.
Lam_1:14.—נִשְׁקַד is ἁπ. λεγ. The root קַד, which reappears in אָ־קַד, ligare (Gen_22:9),אָ־גַד ,אָ־כַד, Aram. אֲגַד, ligavit (see אֲגֻדָּה, nodus, Is. Iviii. 6) cat-ena, kettle (observe the change of the aspirate to the sibilant, comp. ὗς and sus, ὕλη and silva, ὕπερ and super, ἅλς and sal, שָׂרַג and אָרַג, Ges. Thes., p. 1318), seems to have the signification of binding, tieing. Ewald conjectures that שָׂקד may have been the common technical term for harnessing.—עֹל, frequent in Jer_2:20; Jer_5:5; Jer_28:2; Jer_28:4; Jer_28:11; Jer_28:14; Jer_30:8. In עֹל and עָלוּ the Poet seems to aim at a play upon words.—פֶּשׁע occurs only Lam_1:5; Lam_1:14; Lam_1:22; Jer_5:6.—The Hithpahel הִשְׂתָּרַג only here; elsewhere only the Pual, Job_40:7. [Boothroyd, translating עָלוּ as if it were עֻלוֹ, is compelled to translate יִשְׂתָּֽרְגוּ in the sing., His yoke Be hath twisted on my neck.—For a similar use of עָלוּ with עַל, in the sense of rising above the object indicated, see Deu_28:43.—W. H. H.]—הִכְשִיּל. Kal frequent in Jeremiah; Hiph., labare fecit, Jer_18:15; Hoph. Jer_18:23.—בִּידֵי. Construction as in Jer_2:8. See my Gr., § 65, 2, f. [“A noun is sometimes put in the construct before a succeeding clause with which it is already connected,”—“particularly when the relation is itself omitted, בְּיד־תִּשְׁלָּה, by the hand of him whom thou wilt send” (Green’s Gr.). This construction renders it necessary to take קוּם in a transitive sense; or else to introduce a word besides the relative; so E. V.: from whom I am not able to rise up. Noyes: against whom I cannot stand up. Whom I cannot withstand or resist. This seems to be the sense, and is not foreign to the use of קדּם.—W. H. H.]
Lam_1:15.—סִלָּה. Piel only here: Kal, Psa_119:118 : Pual, Job_28:16-17.—אַבִּיר, often in Jer_8:16; Jer_46:15; Jer_47:3; Jer_50:11. In Lam. only here.—קָרָא מוֹעֵד, Lev_23:4. See Lam_1:4. Jeremiah generally uses the noun in the sense of tempus finum [and that is its meaning here. Owen: He hath brought on me the fixed time to destroy my young men.—W. H. H.]—לִשְׁבֹּר בַּחוּוַי. A peculiar expression, yet see Jer_51:22.—דָרַךְ גַּת לְ. A peculiar use of לְ [it seems to mean with relation to, as to, quoad.—W. H. H.]. גַּת, not in Jeremiah, yet he uses דָרַךְ of the treaders of the wine-press, Jer_25:30; Jer_48:33; Jer_51:33.—בְּתוּלַת כַּת, in Jeremiah once, of the Egyptians, Jer_46:11, and once in the connectionבְּתוּלַת בַּת עַמִּי, Jer_14:17; comp. Jer_18:13; Jer_31:4; Jer_31:21. In Lam., besides here, only in Lam_2:13, comp. Lam_2:10.
Lam_1:16.—בּוֹכִיָּה (see פֹּרִיָּה, Isa_17:6 and elsewhere; Olsh., § 177, 6) occurs only here. Yet Jeremiah uses כֹּכֶה, Jer_41:6, and מְבַכָּה, Jer_31:15 : in the last place in connection with עַל, as here: elsewhere בָּכָה is constructed with ace. Jer 8:23, לְ, Jer_22:10, or מִפְּנֵי, Jer_13:17. [ Green, Gr., § 209, 1, and Pauli, Anal., p. 264, attribute the form to the fact that יwas originally the last radical of the verb. Pauli, in his Key, p. 63, n, informs ns that “the Prophet uses the feminine gender for the purpose of expressing meekness and the intensity of his grief.” A rather remarkable instance of a rule made to meet a supposed case. Fortunately we are not obliged to allow the Prophet to unsex himself, since not the Prophet himself, but the ideal and feminine Jerusalem is the speaker.—The verb, properly intransitive, is used in a transitive sense: my eye runs damn water. A peculiar Hebrew idiom to express abundance, Joel 4:18, תְּלַכִנָה חָלָב, the hills shall run milk. See Green’s Gr.—W. H. H.]—The part. מְנַחֵם Jeremiah does not use.—שׁוֹמִמִים, see Lam_1:4.—גָּכֵר is found Jer_9:2.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
Lam_1:13-16 contain a particular account of the various sufferings endured, together with their efficient causes.
Lam_1:13. The sufferings [of the city] appear under two images. The first image is derived from the fire that falls from Heaven (Gen_19:24; Deu_29:23; Psa_11:6). Heavenly fire burns more fiercely than earthly; it cannot be quenched. [The image of fire is suggested by the last words of the preceding verse, “in the day of his fierce anger,” which may be rendered in the day of His glowing or burning anger. So Calvin,in die excandescentiæ iræ suæ.—From above, lit., from on high. Calvin: “the expression is emphatical, for the Prophet means that it was no common or human burning; because what is ascribed to God exceeds what is human or earthly.”—Hath he sent fire into my bones. Calvin: “They who interpret bones of fortified places, weaken the meaning of the Prophet. I take bones in their proper sense, as though it were said, that God’s fire had penetrated into the inmost parts. This way of speaking often occurs in Scripture.—David deplored that his bones were vexed or troubled, Psa_6:2. And Hezekiah said in his song, “As a lion he hath broken my bones,” Isa_38:13.”—W. H. H.]—And it prevaileth against them. And it hath subdued them, or got the better of them. [Calvin: “The Prophet says that fire had been sent by God, which ruled in his bones,—that is, which not only burnt the skin and the flesh, but also consumed the bones.” The Cranmer and Bishops’ Bibles translate very freely, but preserve the sense, “From above hath He sent down fire into my bones, and it burneth them cruelly.”—W. H. H.]—The second image is derived from the hunter, who lays nets for the wild beast.—He hath spread a net for my feet. [Calvin: “There is another similitude added, that God had spread a net before her feet,—and thus He had taken away every means of escape. She had been ensnared by God’s judgments, so that she was bound over to ruin, as though she had fallen into toils or snares.”]—He hath turned me back. See Lam_1:8. This and the two following clauses contain ideas by means of which the poet seems to pass over from the image to the reality. [But is not this clause to be explained by the metaphor of the net, by which, when she sought to escape, she was turned back? So Calvin understands it: “She had been turned back by the nets of God.” Or we may explain it consistently with the metaphor, as the’ Westminster Annotations do: “Cast me down backward; thrown me down and laid me on my back.”—He hath made me desolate, and faint all the day: or, better, sorrowful all the day: so Naegelsbach and Calvin. Cranmer’s B. and Bishops’ B. both render it, “He hath made me desolate, so that I must ever be mourning.” Calvin: “It is stated in the third place, that she was desolate all the day, so that she sorrowed perpetually.”—W. H. H.]
Lam_1:14. A third metaphor, which indicates the cause of the ruin which has befallen Zion [Jerusalem].—The yoke of my transgressions is bound by His hand, to His hand. Zion [Jerusalem] may not be relieved from her guilt, but rather it is tied fast upon her as a yoke. And truly this is done by God’s hand. But what God binds, that He holds fast; no mortal power can loosen it. [Henderson: “The next metaphor is taken from agricultural life. As the hand of the ploughman firmly binds the yoke on the neck of the ox, so inseparably had the punishment of the iniquities of Jerusalem been connected with her rebellious conduct towards Jehovah.”—There is some uncertainty as to the verb in this clause. In the Keri or Masoretic reading and in several MSS. and printed editions of the Bible, the verb used means to be watched: and the verb is taken in the sense of watching in the Sept., Syr. and Vulgate, and the old versions generally. It is singular that Naegelsbach does not refer to this reading, since it is the one adopted in the text of the German Bible. Dr. Blayney and the Rev. John Owen, insist that this is the correct reading. All the versions and translators adopting this reading, except the Vulgate, take the word rendered yoke not as a noun, but as a preposition. Mr. Owen translates thus: He hath watched over my transgressions, by His hand they are twined. This gives a good sense. “To ‘watch over transgressions,’ is similar to ‘watch upon (or over) the evil’ in Dan_9:14; it is to watch over them in order to punish them” (J. Owen). But the grammatical objections to this rendering are nearly insuperable. See Crit. Note below.—Another point of interest is whether we should translate by His Hand, or in, or to His hand. The former is adopted by Naegelsbach, Henderson and Boothroyd, and has the sanction of the English Version. The latter in His hand, is supported by Sept., Vulg., Bishops’ Bible, Calvin, Blayney, and Noyes, and is recommended by the sense, and also best expresses the primitive sense of the preposition. The Bishops’ Bible reads, the yoke of my transgressions is bound fast to His hand; and appends this note, “The bondage through sin is most grievous, which therefore is called the yoke of sins, fastened in or to God’s hand because by no means it can be shaken off or remitted, but only of God’s grace and mercy.” Noyes: “The yoke of my transgressions is fastened in His hand. A metaphor drawn from the practice of a husbandman, who, after fastening the yoke upon the cattle, keeps the cords wound round his hand. So she says the yoke of her transgressions, i. e., the consequences of them, is fastened upon her neck, and the cords connected with it wound round the hand of God, so that she could not throw it off.” Calvin has a long note to the same effect.—W. H. H.].—They are wreathed and, or, [leaving out the conjunction which is not in the original] theycome up—rise up above—upon my neck. Comp. Psa_38:5. As if the yoke were fastened by many cords, interwoven together, and forming, as it were, a heap or elevation upon the neck. The verbs being in the plural must have for their subject the word “transgressions,” hence it is evident that he regarded the sins themselves as the cords which fastened the yoke on the neck. And very certainly sins constitute the bond between the guilty one and his guilt. [Wordsworth: “My sins are twined together, so as to fasten the yoke upon my neck. Comp. Deu_28:48. The reason of this comparison is that sins become punishments (peccati pœna peccatum), and are a sore burden, too heavy for the sinner to bear (Psa_38:4).” Henderson: “To express more forcibly the complicated character of the iniquities of the Jews as entailing punishment upon them, they are said to entwine or interweave themselves, the idea being probably borrowed from the intertwining of withes for the purpose of binding the yoke with them.” The expression, they come up upon my neck (variously rendered, they go over my neck (Broughton), come up about my neck (Bish. Bible), rise up on my neck (Henderson), are laid upon my neck (Noyes), may express the idea of a burden in addition to that of a yoke, that the sins wreathe themselves into a yoke that is heavy and burdensome on the neck, “a yoke which is insupportable” (Wordsworth, Noyes),—or the idea may be, that the yoke is so wreathed together and knotted as it were upon the neck, that the head cannot be withdrawn from it. The last seems to be Naegelsbach’s idea. So Calvin, “we ought to bear in mind the two clauses—that God’s hand held the yoke tied, and also that the yoke was bound around the neck of Jerusalem, * * * it is tied, and so fastened, that it cannot be shaken off.” So also Broughton, who translates, they plat themselves; they go over my neck, and in a treatise on “Jeremie’s Lamentations” explains this passage thus: “The yoke of their sin was platted over their head. The state in Jeremie’s time was so entangled with the idolatry of the Egyptians and their other friends, that they could not get their head out of it.”—W. H. H.] In what follows the Poet as in Lam_1:13, drops the metaphorical style for the literal.—He hath made my strength to fall. He has broken my strength. [The primitive meaning of the Hebrew verb suggests the idea of one tottering to and fro, staggering from weakness (see Isa_5:27), as, in the present instance, under a heavy yoke. Our E. V. vainly strives to preserve this idea in a phrase that is awkward and needs explanation, “He has made my strength to fall.” Blayney comes nearer the primitive meaning of the verb by using the word “stumble” instead of “fall,” hath caused my strength to stumble. But it is doubtful if the verb, in the form in which it is used, expresses more than the idea of weakening or exhausting the strength. Owen: “He hath weakened my strength.” Calvin:corruere fecit (vel, debilitavit) robur meum. Bishops’ Bible and Henderson: “He hath caused my strength to fail.”—W. H. H.]—The Lord hath delivered me into their hands, from whom I am not able to rise up, whom I cannot resist.—The Lord, Adonai. This name, Adonai, never occurs alone in the prophecies of Jeremiah, but is always followed by Jehovah (and that, too, according to the Masoretic punctuation אֲדנָי הֱוִֹה), Jer_1:6; Jer_2:19; Jer_2:22; Jer_4:10; Jer_7:20; Jer_14:13 : Jer_44:26, Jer_49:5; Jer_50:31. But in the Lamentations, Adonai is never followed by Jehovah, and stands alone in fourteen places, Lam_1:14-15 twice; Lam_2:1-2; Lam_2:5; Lam_2:7; Lam_2:18-20; Lam_3:31; Lam_3:36-37; Lam_3:58 [see Introduction, Add. Rem., p. 32. If Adonai is the correct reading, its significance is thus explained by Wordsworth: “The prophet appears thus to intimate in the Lamentations, that now, in her captivity and humiliation, Jerusalem felt the lordship of Jehovah, the God of Israel; but by reason of her sins, no longer felt that lordship to be exercised by Him as Jehovah,i. e., as the God of His covenanted people, to protect them. A similar feeling made Solomon abstain in Ecclesiastes from the use of the name Jehovah altogether.”]
[The argument of Owen for reading נִשְׁקַד instead of נִשְׂקַד, that where all the versions agree, there is a strong presumption that they are right, is offset by the difficulty of construction, in that case and the necessity it involves of changing עֹלyoke into עַלupon in the first clause, and the verb עָלוּthey rise up into the noun and pronoun עֻלֹהhis yoke in the third clause. The difficulties of construction are evident in the translations of Blayney and Owen, the two advocates for this reading; Blayney gives the verb in the singular a plural noun for its subject, my transgressions have been closely watched; and Owen renders the verb, which is confessedly a passive verb and so rendered by the Sept. and all the old versions except the Vulgate, which Owen himself says “hardly gives any meaning,” in an active sense, He hath watched over my transgressions. A reading involving three changes in the Masoretic points, and even then incapable of correct grammatical construction, surely ought to be rejected.—W. H. H.]
Lam_1:15. The Lord hath trodden under foot.—Hath cast away, or rejected [despised or made despicable—W. H. H.]. This verse begins in the literal style of speaking, and ends in the metaphorical. [If our English version is to be retained, trodden under foot, then the metaphor is begun in the first clause, and beautifully developed as the verse proceeds. But the E. V. cannot be sustained, see Critical Note below.—W. H. H.] All my mighty men,—Heroes, Ger. Helden [Fuerst:great men].—In the midst of me;in meiner Mitte. [Calvin. “She says, in the midst of me. And this ought to be observed, for if they had fallen on the field of battle, if they had been taken in the fields by their enemies, such a thing would not have been so grievous; but that they had thus been laid prostrate”—or rather, deprived of strength to resist and thus rendered contemptible,—“in the very bosom of the city, was indeed a token of vengeance from above.”—He hath called an assembly against me—He has proclaimed a solemn feast [a set time.—W. H. H.] against me.—to crush my young men,—to break in pieces my young men. As to a festive gathering the Lord calls her enemies to Jerusalem. The purpose of this festive gathering is indicated in a general way by the words against me; but is more clearly indicated by the words to crush or break in pieces my young men. In this expression is already shadowed forth the following metaphor; for the wine-press breaks to pieces, crushes the berries. [Wordsworth: “An oxymoron; the term to call an assembly signifies the gathering of a holy convocation for festal rejoicing, or other religious purposes. But now the religious festival of Jerusalem hath ceased (see Lam_1:4), and God has called an assembly of enemies to crush her. Compare the expression to sanctify war, or consecrate an army against a city. See on Isa_13:3; Jer_6:4; Jer_51:27-28; Joe_3:9.”—Though it may impair a beautiful figure, it seems better to take מוֹעֵד in its usual meaning of a set time. God appointed the time, as for a great solemnity, and it came according to His appointment the time to crush the young men.—W. H. H.]——The Lord hath trodden the virgin, the daughter of Judah, as in a wine-press.—The Lord trod the winepress of the virgin Judah’s daughter. We find substantially the same image used, Joel 4:13; Isa_63:2-3; Rev_14:18-20; Rev_19:15. [Owen:The wine-press has the Lord trodden as to the virgin, the daughter of Judah.]
סִלָּה. The meaning is tollere, lüpfen [to lift up, to remove a thing from its place, to cast it away, and thus to treat it with contempt, or to destroy it, as the case may be. The old lexicographers, tracing a remote analogy between this verb and סָלַל, gave to it the sense of treading down, or treading under foot, which is adopted here by E. V., Broughton, Calvin, Blayney, Boothroyd and Noyes; but has not the sanction of the ancient versions. Cranmer and Bishops’ Bible translate it hath destroyed. Henderson:hath east away. So Naegelsbach:verworfen hat: so also the Sept., ἕξηρεν, and the Vulg., abstulit. So also Noyes in Psa_119:118, “Thou castest off all who depart from Thy laws;” which Alexander translates, “Thou despisest all those straying from Thy statutes,” in which he agrees with the Sept., ἐξονδενωσας, and with the Vulg., sprevisti. This sense, “Thou hast despised,” is very suitable to our text. It is still better to give the Piel the force of Hiphil, Thou hast caused to be despised, or rendered despicable, “my mighty men in the midst of me.” See Calvin’s note above on the words “in the midst of me,” and observe how admirably then the first clause of this verse follows the last clause of the preceding verse: She is given up into the hands of those she cannot resist, and thus her mighty men in the midst of her are made objects of contempt. On the other hand, to translate as Naegelsbach, Fuerst and Henderson, “The Lord has rejected, or cast away, all my mighty men in the midst of me,” is awkward and not very intelligible.—W. H. H.]
Lam_1:16. For these things I weep.—This refers back to Lam_1:12. Zion [Jerusalem] asserted in Lam_1:12 that no sorrow was like her sorrow. The correctness of this assertion is established, Lam_1:13-15, by matters of fact. Zion [Jerusalem] then, in Lam_1:16, refers in the words for these things I weep, back to the foregoing assertion, whilst she repeats the same with emphasis though in other words.—Mine eye, mine eye. The emphatic repetition of the same word is not intrequent with Jer_4:19; Jer_6:14; Jer_8:11; Jer_23:25.—Runneth down with water. See Lam_3:48; Jer_9:17; Jer_13:17; Jer_14:17.—Because the comforter. See Lam_1:2.—that should relieve (marg., bring back) my soul,—the Reviver of my soul: see at. Lam_1:11 [the Restorer of my soul, more nearly expresses the original, which is purposely generic and pregnant.—W. H. H.].—Is far from me. [Five times in this poem we have an allusion to an absent comforter; Lam_1:2; Lam_1:9; Lam_1:16-17; Lam_1:21. That there is an allusion to God the Holy Ghost seems evident. The addition of the words “Restorer of my soul,” reminding us of Psa_23:3, makes this plain. Diodati: “The comforter, namely, God by His Holy Spirit.” It was the absence of God who comforts His people by His word and Spirit, that Jerusalem deplored, and she might have expressed her grief in the words of the Psalmist, “Why standest Thou afar off, O Jehovah? Why hidest Thou Thyself in times of trouble (Psa_10:1)?” Noyes betrays the theologicum odium in his version, violating the grammar and changing the text, to destroy any possible reference to a Divine personality, “Far from me are they that should comfort me, that should restore my strength.” We may translate מְנַחֵםthe comforter, or a comforter, the one comforting, one that comforts, but cannot make plurals of it and מֵשִׁיב, or get the idea of “strength” out of נֶפֶשִׁ.—W. H. H.]—My children are become desolate,—perished, lit., have become perishing; same word as is used in Lam_1:4, “her gates are desolate” = destroyed—W. H. H.]—Because the enemy prevailed—prevails [or has become more powerful. Some take this as if an explanation of the preceding,—that Jerusalem is comfortless because the children, who should comfort her, are themselves helpless. But this is too broad a distinction between Jerusalem and her children, and destroys the unity of the ideal image of the mourning daughter of Jerusalem. We are to take the last words as stating a result, rather than a cause of the helpless Jerusalem, forsaken of her comforter, who could restore her life, and therefore unable to prevent her children from perishing under the superior power of the enemy.—W. H. H.]
[עֵינִי עֵינִי. Mine eye, mine eye. Blayney, Boothroyd and Noyes omit the repetition on the authority of the ancient versions and some Hebrew MSS. All the other modern versions retain it; even the Douay departs from the Vulgate so far as to read “my eyes.” We cannot agree with Blayney that the repetition incumbers the metre. It is more difficult to account for the repetition in so many MSS. than for its omission in a very few. Blayney feels this, when he taxes his ingenuity by suggesting that “perhaps אַנִי may originally have followed בוֹכִיָה, and have been thus the ground of the transcriber’s mistake.” Owen, the editor of Calvin, says: “Though the Sept. and Vulg. do not repeat the ‘eye,’ yet the Targ. has ‘my two eyes’ ” [so the German, meine beiden Augen] “and the Syr. ‘mine eyes.’ ” All the ancient versions, therefore, do not omit the second עֵינִי, as has been asserted. Most of the Heb. MSS. contain it: and it is very emphatic, highly poetical, and “quite in the style of Jeremiah.”—W. H. H.]
Lam_1:17
17Zion spreadeth forth her hands, and there is none to comfort her: the Lord hath commanded concerning Jacob, that his adversaries should be round about him: Jerusalem is as a menstruous woman among them.
TEXTUAL AND GRAMMATICAL
Lam_1:17.—פֵּֽרְשָׂה. The construction of Piel with בְ follows the analogy of the Hiphil, then too Piel may have a direct causative signification. See my Gr., § 18 , III., 2, 3; § 69, 1, rem. 2. The Hiphil is found so construed in Jer_18:16. See Psa_22:8; Job_16:10. [“As the object of an action may, in certain cases, be regarded as the instrument with which it is performed, some transitive verbs admit a construction with בְּ, with” (Green’s Gr., § 272, 2, b). See Jdg_3:27, בְּיָדֶיהָ–.וַיִּתְקַע בַּשּׁוֹפָר. Blayney: “Five MSS. read בידה, and the Roman edition of the LXX. represents χειρα αυτης in the singular; but the Alexand and Complut. editions read χειρας.”—W. H. H.]—לְ ·לֲיֽעֲקֹב here is not a sign of the dative, but a preposition of place. [Chaldæus explains, as quoted by Rosenmueller, ‘Jehovah imposed on the house of Jacob the commandments and law, that they should keep them; but they themselves transgressed the decree of his word. It is impossible to crowd so much meaning into three words. The לְ obviously does not indicate a commandment given to Jacob, but a commandment given concerning Jacob. See לִבְתוּלַת, Lam_1:15.—The ancient versions which give נִידָה, Lam_1:8, the idea of wandering, all agree that נִדָה in this verse has the sense of uncleanness. Yet Owen would insist on translating it here “a wanderer” or fugitive.—W. H. H.]
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
Lam_1:17. The excited speech, begun with last clause of Lam_1:11, ends with Lam_1:16, as if from sheer exhaustion. We get the impression from Lam_1:16, that Zion [Jerusalem] can speak no more on account of pain and tears. Therefore the Poet allows her a pause. He speaks again himself, in order partly to corroborate what has been said, and partly to adduce new matter. [There is no necessity for assuming a change of speakers. See remarks on Lam_1:11-12.—The three ideal persons successively introduced in Lam_1:1-6, representing the city, the nation, and the Temple,—Jerusalem, Judah, and Zion,—appear again, grouped together, in Lam_1:17, but in a reverse order,—Zion, Jacob, and Jerusalem.—The poetical effect of this separate stanza, following and preceding several connected stanzas, is very fine.—W. H. H.]
Zion spreadeth forth—stretches out—her hands, and there is none to comfort her,—but there is no Comforter for her. See Lam_1:2. The underlying thought is evidently this: Zion imploringly stretched out her hands for help, but finds none, neither from men nor from God, for Jehovah Himself commanded her neighbors, from whom first of all help was to be expected, to behave in an unfriendly way towards her. [Henderson: “Spreading out the hands is a token of the greatest distress.” The commentators generally agree in regarding this as a gesture indicating pain; some even regard it in the sense of wringing the hands; so Chaldæus, quoted by Rosenmureller,expandit Zion manus suas præ angustia, sicut expandit mulier, qui sedet ad pariendum.” (See Jer_4:31.) But holding up or stretching out the hands is a natural gesture of entreaty, and is constantly used in the Bible in connection with prayer to God. See especially Exo_9:29; Exo_9:33; 1Ki_8:38; Isa_1:15; Psa_44:21; Psa_143:6, where the same Hebrew verb is used as here. Naegelsbach, Adam Clark and Assembly’s Annotations give it this sense in our text. And it is exceedingly appropriate as an act of Zion, the ideal representative of the religious element of the theocracy and the seat of worship. Zion stretches out her hands in prayer, seeking the Divine Comforter (see Lam_1:16), but finds Him not: while Jacob, the representative of the theocratic people, is surrounded with enemies, and the queenly city, the seat of the theocratic government, is become an object of abhorrence.—The unusual occurrence in the Hebrew of the preposition with before the word hands led some of the Jews to adopt a singular translation, which Diodati adopted in the Italian version: “Sion distributed bread to herself with her own hands. A description of the want of comfort, because that amongst the Jews, the kinsfolks and neighbors did use to bring food to them that mourned for the death of their nearest friends, inviting them to take food and to comfort themselves: see Deu_26:14; Jer_16:7; Eze_24:17; Hos_9:4.” Diodati’sAnnotations.—W. H. H.]—The Lord [Jehovah] hath commanded—given a charge, see Num_27:19—concerning Jacob, that his adversaries should be round about him,—that his neighbors should be his enemies. The word translated in E. V. round about him does not indicate the place where his enemies were assembled, but is to be understood personally, as Jer_48:17; Jer_48:39 : Jehovah so ordered it that his neighbors became his oppressors. [The use of the masculine pronoun his, instead of the feminine her, shows that there is a distinction between the ideal persons described. When the same person is introduced in Lam_1:3, under the tribal name of Judah, the feminine particles are used: but the substitution of the name “Jacob” suggests with propriety the idea of a man, rather than of a woman.—The use of masculine or feminine forms in Hebrew indicate often delicate shades of feeling or depths of thought. See Pauli’sAnalecta, Lect. 30.—W. H. H.]—Jerusalem is as a menstruous woman among them—Jerusalem has become an object of abhor rence in the midst of them. The consequence is that Zion [Jerusalem] at last stands in the midst of her oppressors as a woman denied with blood and become an object of horror.
Lam_1:18-19
18The 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 19into captivity. I called for my lovers, but they deceived me; my priests and mine elders gave up the ghost in the city, while they sought their meat to relieve their souls.
TEXTUAL AND GRAMMATICAL
Lam_1:18.—כִּי־פִּיהוּ מָרִיתִי. This phrase in full does not occur in Jeremiah. He uses מָרָה alone, with an accusative following, Jer_4:7, comp. Jer_5:23.—[Henderson: “For עַמִּים read with the Keri הַעַמִּים in the vocative.” All ye peoples; Broughton, Cranmer, Calvin, Blayney, Boothroyd, Henderson, Noyes.—W. H. H.]
Lam_1:19.—The Part. מְאַהֵב is found in Jer_22:20; Jer_22:22; Jer_30:14.—He also uses רָמָה, Jer_4:29, but not in Piel.—גָּוַע is not found in Jeremiah.—[The וְ prefixed to יָשִׁבוּ has the force of in order that, as in Job_10:20, and the phrase is fully translated by our infinitive.—The Sept and Syr add the words—and found none.—W. H. H.]
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
Lam_1:18. Lam_1:18-19 contain nothing new. They only recapitulate. But it is noteworthy that Zion [Jerusalem], who is now again in a condition to speak [see remarks on preceding verse], begins with an acknowledgment of the righteousness of God and of her own unrighteousness.—The Lord is righteous—Righteous is He, Jehovah. [Owen: “Righteous He Jehovah: the pronoun is used instead of the verb is—a common thing in Hebrew.”] This acknowledgment, that the Lord is righteous, is found in Jer_12:1. See Deu_32:4; 2Ch_12:6; Psa_119:137; Psa_129:4; Psa_145:17.—For I have rebelled against His commandment. Better, disobeyed His commandment, lit., resisted His mouth. The same expression occurs in Num_20:24; Num_27:14; 1Ki_13:21; 1Ki_13:26.—Hear, I pray you [the Heb. particle of entreaty, נָא], all people [lit., all peoples], and behold my sorrow. Although willing to confess her guilt, yet Zion [Jerusalem] feels the need of human sympathy. She summons, therefore, as in Lam_1:12, all peoples to observe her sorrow. [Since men of the acknowledged taste of Henderson and Noyes sanction the use of the reduplicated plural peoples, we may be allowed to retain it; especially since no other word in English is its exact equivalent.—W. H. H.]—Then she recounts, as in Lam_1:13-15. the principal causes of her sorrow. The first is the captivity of her young women and young men, who are her pride and strength.—My virgins and my young men are gone into captivity. See Lam_1:4-5; Lam_1:15.
Lam_1:19. The second particular feature of her sorrow is, that her friends and allies had deserted her.—I called for my lovers, but they deceived me—I called to my lovers, they deceived me. See Lam_1:2.—The last and crowning cause of her sorrow is, that those who represented the dignity and honor of Zion [Jerusalem] are reduced to miserable extremities in order to preserve their lives.—My priests and mine elders gave up the ghost = expired or perished—in the city. [Henderson: “Elders, occurring as it here does in immediate connection with priests, is to be understood in an official sense, and not as simply indicative of old age. Both, without respect to dignity of office, were under the necessity of going in quest of food.” They died in the city—not from the sword of the enemy on the battle field, but while hemmed in by surrounding enemies, and seeking food in vain within the walls; they perished from sheer starvation.—W. H. H.]—While they sought their meat to relieve their souls—for they sought food for themselves in order to revive their souls. See Lam_1:6-11. [Words worth: “for they (even the priests and elders) sought for meat (and sought in vain) to recover their fainting souls.” For themselves, לָמו; Rosenmueller explains the pronoun as used in a reflexive or reciprocal sense. It is certainly emphatic, and suggests the severity of the famine, when the nobility are forced to go themselves in search of food to preserve their own lives.—W. H. H.]
Lam_1:20-22
20Behold, O Lord, for I am in distress; my bowels are troubled; mine heart is turned within me: for I have grievously rebelled: abroad the sword bereaveth, at home there 21is as death. They have heard that I sigh; there is none to comfort me: all mine enemies have heard of my trouble; they are glad that thou hast done it: thou wilt bring 22the day that thou hast called, and they shall be like unto me. 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.
TEXTUAL AND GRAMMATICAL
Lam_1:20.—The sing. צַר never occurs in Jeremiah. See Lam_1:5. [Naegelsbach here, inadvertently (or else he would have cited this ver. at Lam_1:5), mistakes the noun צָר or צַר, used at Lam_1:5, for this צַר, which Isaiah 3 d sing. perf. of צָרַר, and is so given by Gesenius, Fuerst and Davidson, and is translated as a verb by nearly all the versions.—W. H. H.]—מֵעַי in Jer_4:19; Jer_31:20.—חֳמַרְמָרוּ, to boil, move in an undulating manner; except here and Lam_2:11, only in Job_16:16.—See Olsh., § 252, b.—The pause accent Aathenah belongs under קִרְבִי. [An unnecessary change of punctuation.—W. H. H.]—מָרָה, See Lam_1:18. The Inf. מָרוֹ is found only here.—The Piel שָׁכֹל, in Jer_15:7. Comp. Lam_1:9; Lev_26:22; 1Sa_15:33.—מִחוּץ, foris, Jer_21:4.
Lam_1:21.—[שָׁמְעוּ. The Sept and Syr. improperly render it in the Imperative.—W. H. H.]—נֶאֱנָח, see Lam_1:4,—רָעָה, a very current word with Jeremiah.—שׂוּשׂ, Jer_32:41.—עָשִׂיתָ as the antithesis of speaking, as Jer_3:5. [If we take doing here as the antithesis of speaking, the absence of the affix is emphatical. Thou hast done, acted, as well as spoken. This verb often occurs without an object expressed. See Fuerst, Lex.—W. H. H.]—הֵבֵאתָ, as Jer_6:19; Jer_11:11, and elsewhere.—קָרָא, of prophetical proclamation, Jer_2:2; Jer_7:2; Jer_19:2.
Lam_1:22.—תָבֹא. On account of the Imperative עוֹלֵל, we must understand this as stronger than a wish: let it come, which is grammatically allowable. See my Gr., § 89, 3 c.—The phrase בָּאָה רָעָה לִפְּנֵי is not found in Jeremiah.—וְעוֹלֵל. See Lam_1:12. [Wordsworth says, “the primary notion” of this word “seems to be that of plucking,” and refers to Gesen., 633. So Cranmer’s B.: Thou shalt pluck them away even as thou hast plucked me. The Sept. gives it the sense of racemandi, gleaning; and substitutes 3d person plur. for 2d sing., and does not translate לִי at all. Καὶ ἐπιφν́λλισον αν̓τοῖς, ὅν τρόπον ἐποίηοίηεαν ἐπιφνλλίδα. The Vulg. takes it in the sense of gathering the vintage, and preserves the grammatical construction of the original: vindemia eos sicut vindemiasti me. Instead of the ἐπιφύλλισον of the Codex Vaticanus, the Codex Alexaudrinus has ἐπιφαύλισον, which seems to mean reject them as vile. That our version is correct would appear from the use of מַעְלָלִים for actions, doings, or deeds. See Jer_17:10; Pro_20:11. See Rosenmueller.—W. H. H.]—עַל כָּל־פְּשָׁעָי. See Lam_1:5; Lam_1:14.—אַנְחֹתַי, Lam_1:6.—לִבִּי דַּוַּי is found in Jer_8:18, comp. Isa_1:5.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
The Poet closes with a prayer, which is composed of an exordium, Lam_1:20 a; two principal parts: 1. Lam_1:20 b, to Lam_1:21 c. 2. Lam_1:21 c, to Lam_1:22 c; and a conclusion, Lam_1:22 c.
Lam_1:20. Behold, O Lord; for I am in distress,—Behold, O Jehovah, how I am distressed! With these words, Behold, O Jehovah, how badly it fares with me, first of all, the attention of Jehovah is directed to Zion. and her misfortune is in general terms commended to His consideration.—The words Behold, O Jehovah, are the same as See, O Jehovah, of Lam_1:11.—Then follows the first part of the prayer, which extends to Lam_1:21 c, in which are successively detailed the causes of her distress, proceeding from those of an internal to those of an external character. 1. We have her sufferings subjectively considered, in two particulars—(a). My bowels are troubled. [Henderson:My bowels are made to boil. Naegelsbach:Meine Eingewide wallen siedend auf. The Hebrew word “is strongly expressive of that violently excited state of the intestines which is occasioned by excessive grief” (Henderson), or rather, which was employed as an image of mental perturbations and distress.—W. H. H.] (b).—Mine heart is turned within me. The expression is found in this sense, of the turning of the heart as a symptom of the most painful affection, only elsewhere in Hos_11:8. In another sense, Exo_14:5-12. We have a statement of the reason which has occasioned her chastisement.—For I have grievously rebelled. Since I rebelliously have rebelled. These words belong evidently to what follows, and accordingly the particle at the beginning is not for, but since, or because. For the first and immediate result of disobedience was the punishment described in what follows, rather than the suffering caused by that punishment. Besides if this clause belongs to what precedes it, then the first half of the verse has four members, and the last only two. [The sense is not affected, whether we connect this with what precedes, or with what follows. The irregular division of the verses is too common to authorize here a change in the Masoretic punctuation, such as Naegelsbach proposes (see Gram. note above), merely for the sake of an equal division of this verse.—W. H. H.]—3. We have the punishment itself in declarations of concentrated meaning.—Abroad the sword bereaveth, at home there is as death,—Rages without the sword, as within Death. For the sense according to kindred places, we have Jer_14:18; Eze_7:15. By death in antithesis to the sword it is natural to understand, death wrought by hunger, or pestilence. See Jer_15:2; Jer_18:21. [Boothroyd: “Death as it were acting in propria persona, and not by the instrumentality of another, as when a person is slain by the sword” (Biblia Hebraica). See Jer_9:21; Hab_2:5. Adam Clark gives examples from the poets of similar personification of death.—W. H. H.]
[צַר לִי, impers. lit., it is strait to me, that is, I am in a strait, I am, distressed, I grieve. כִּי־צַר־לִי seems itself a cry of distress, the sharpness of which is lost in the E. V., for I am in distress.—My bowels, etc. It seems impossible to reproduce this in an English form; at least our ideas of the commotions of the bowels have no association, with agitations of the mind. To say with Henderson, “my bowels are made to boil,” though it seems to be sanctioned by the meaning of the verb, yet does not really express the idea of violent motion, as witnessed in boiling water, or the surging of the ocean, which is the idea intended. To say with Noyes,My bowels boil, is worse yet, as the verb is strictly passive. If we might be allowed to ignore the figure, and say simply, my mind is greatly agitated, we would more correctly interpret the words to English ears, than by a figurative use of the word bowels, that never was ingrafted into English thoughts and feelings. If we could accept the opinion that in ancient usage the word bowels denoted the upper viscera and was not restricted as by modern usage to the lower viscera (see Alexander on Isa_16:11), we might substitute the word bosom with advantage. But accepting the usual signification of מֵעַי, we can give to חֳמַרְמָרוּ no other English form than we have done, greatly troubled. Owen: “Troubled, or disquieted, is the rendering of all the versions, and also of the Targ. As it is a reduplicate, the verb means greatly troubled or greatly disturbed, or violently agitated.”—נֶהְפַך לִבִּי. Rosenmueller refers to a similar phrase in Psa_38:11; לִבִּי סְחַרְחַר, cor meum circumit, circumagitur:Alexander explains it of “the palpitation of the heart, denoting violent agitation.”—W. H. H.]—The reading כַּמָּוֶת, whatever may be urged against it, is very old, for the Sept. has ὥσπερ θάνατος. But it is impossible to attach to this כְּ (if it be understood here as a particle of comparison, or as a so-called Kaph veritatis), a pertinent sense. For בַּכַּיִת stands here in antithesis to שִׁכְּלָה ;מִחוּץ is their common predicate; and to fill out the sense there should be a subject indicated corresponding to חֶרֶב, To supply חֶרֶב again, or with Ewald the idea “something similar” before כַּמָּוֶת, would give us a construction in the highest degree forced and unnatural. Unless we suppose a mistake of the transcriber and read simply הַמָּוֶת, as the Syriac has it, there is nothing left, but to transpose the words, and to read כַּמָּוֶת כַּכַּיִת, which the text of the Sept. seems to sanction, for since the Sept. translates ὡς θάνατος ἐν οἴκῳ, its authors apparently read the Hebrew words in the order indicated. [Rosenmueller: “Pareau regards the בַ, placed before מַזֶת in this place, not is the particle of similitude, but what the Grammarians call the כveritatis, which not seldom is used for the name of the thing or person referred to. But I prefer to suppose, with Lœwe and Wolfssohn, that the words are to be transposed, as may be done; מִחוּץ שִׁכְּלָה חֶרֶב כְּמָוֶת בַּכַּיִת, without the sword bereaves, even as death within.”—Henderson has a curiously unsatisfactory remark, which his translation does not clear up, “the Caph is the Caph veritatis expressing the reality of the thing.” What “thing?” Famine or pestilence? We must either adopt Naegelsbach’s opinion, with which Sept., Syr. and Arab, agree, and transpose the words, Abroad the sword has bereaved me, as death at home; or suppose an awkward prosopopœia in the substitution of the word death for famine or pestilence, in which case the כ is strictly the כveritatis; or we must translate as Henderson (though his translation is at variance with his explanation), Abroad the sword bereaveth, in the house, It isas death, and accept the suggestion of Calvin, that the כ is the כ of similitude, at homeit isas death, as if he would say, nothing met them at home but that which was like death itself. There is as little, if not less, difficulty in the first of these explanations, as in either of the others.—W. H. H.]
Lam_1:21. 4. We have the rejoicing of her enemies at her misfortunes. This subject, now first alluded to, the Poet dwells upon at some length, whilst he only briefly indicated the matters that have been mentioned.—They have heard that I sigh, there is none to comfort me,—that I have no comforter.—All mine enemies have heard of my trouble. What the enemies heard is described as if it came to them borne on successive waves of rumor, proceeding by degrees from the circumference to the very centre of their grief. At first they heard how Zion [Jerusalem] bitterly mourned, because left alone, without Comforter and Helper (see Lam_1:2), she was exposed to the violence of her enemies. Then they [her enemies] began to comprehend the nature and extent of her misfortune. But they rejoiced that Jehovah had done it, that is to say, He had actually brought about the day which He had before predicted.—They are glad that Thou hast done it, Thou wilt bring the day that Thou hast called (Marg., proclaimed). They rejoiced because Thou hast done it, that Thou hast brought the day Thou hadst proclaimed. It will be observed that I take the last clause as epexegetical. This seems to me necessary. For, 1. To give a precatory sense to the last clause [as Luther,let the day come;Henderson:Bring the day which Thou hast announced;Notes:O bring the day which Thou hast appointed.—W. H. H.] is very forced. 2. These words are a very suitable explanation of the preceding clause: the Lord has done it by bringing about in fact the day He had predicted or proclaimed, that is to say, He had not merely spoken, but acted [not merely threatened, but carried His threat into execution, by doing what He had said He would do]. Least of all can we say, Thou bringest, Thou proclaimest the day, for this would require a change in the order of the words in the Hebrew, and the text should read קָרָאתָ יֹום. Ewald, following the Sept. [Ἐπήγαγες ἡμεραν, ἐκάλεσας καιρόν], supplies עֵת [an appointed time] after קָרָאתָ. This is unnecessary and arbitrary. [Calvin explains this clause as Naegelsbach does: and his English translator, Owen, remarks: “Our version is wrong in rendering this clause in the future tense. The reference is not to the day of vengeance to the Babylonians, but to the day of vengeance which God had brought on His own people. The versions, except the Syr., give the verb in the past tense.” So Wordsworth: “They are glad that Thou hast done it; that Thou hast brought (upon me) the day (of sorrow) which Thou hadst proclaimed (by Thy prophets, who warned me of my impending destruction).”—W. H. H.]. That the Lord had threatened the people of Israel with eventual destruction, was well known to the heathen. See Jer_40:2-3.—And they shall be like unto me. The second principal part of the prayer begins with this petition, that the Lord would visit her enemies with the same fate which had befallen her. [Wordsworth: “The Edomites, Moabites and Ammonites, who exulted over the destruction of Jerusalem, will share the same fate, at the hand of the same enemy. See Lam_4:21; Jer_12:14; Jer_25:21; and Babylon herself also will be punished for her cruelty to Zion (Jer_1:9-10; Jer_51:35; Isa_47:6)].”
It cannot be objected to the above interpretation, that then the adversative sentence should begin with וְחֵם, for the subject of the adversative sentence is the same as that of the preceding one, only viewed in a different light. Whilst what precedes shows what the enemies hitherto had done (שָׂשׂוּ ,שָֽׁמְעוּ ,שָֽׁמְעוּ), the adversative sentence shows what in the future will be done to them: therefore, from שָֽׁמְעוּ to קָרָאתָ, the perfect, only is used, from וְיִהְיוּ the imperfect only. If the sentence began with הֵבֵאתָ, the proper grammatical construction would be תָֹּבִיא תִקְרָא יוֹם וְהָיוּ כָמֹנִי—[שָׁמְעוּ. Rosenmueller: “In the repetition of this word there is emphasis, as below, Lam_3:43-44; Psa_124:1-2. The introduction of this verb, at first, without a subject expressed, was doubtless an expedient suggested by the alphabetical arrangement of the verses which required an initial שׁ; but its introduction in the next clause, with the subject expressed, and that in an intensified form,—“heard (have they) that I sigh,” etc.—“Allmy enemies heard of my trouble,”—is one of those triumphs of the art of the true poet, by which he makes even the artificial and arbitrary laws of poetry contribute to the force and beauty of his sentiments.—כִּי. Owen: “There are here two instances of בי being carried on to the next clause,—
Heard have they that I sigh, that I have no comforter:
All mine enemies have heard of my evil; they have rejoiced
That Thou hast done it, that Thou hast brought the day Thou hast announced.”
It is better, however, to consider each כִּי as uniting the two clauses that follow it as in close apposition, in each case the latter clause being explanatory of the preceding one: They heard that I sigh, I have no comforter, i. e., I sigh because I have no comforter. They rejoiced that Thou hast done it, Thou hast brought the day, i. e., Thou hast done it by bringing the day.—Thou hast done it. The gloss of the famous Jew, Jarchi, quoted by Rosenmueller, is singular, and shows what far-fetched interpretations of Scripture have been allowed: “Thou hast afforded the occasion why my enemies have hated me and rejoiced in my misfortune, because Thou hast given us commandment not to eat and drink what they do, nor to enter into marriages with them. If only I had joined myself in
marriage with them, they would have been disposed to pity me and the children of their own daughters.”—W. H. H.]
Lam_1:22. Let all their wickedness come before Thee. The expression come before Thee is to be understood in the sense of becoming acquainted with. See Gen_37:2.—And do unto them as thou hast done unto me for all my transgressions [see gram, notes above]. For my sighs are many and my heart is faint. The conclusion of the prayer contains a declaration of fact. It is impossible to refer this to the thoughts immediately before expressed: for neither confession of sin (“for all my transgressions”), nor prayer for the retribution of the injustice done by her enemies (“do unto them as they have done unto me”), could suggest this concluding sentence. Rather, it relates generally to the prayer for help, which is contained as well under the second head, as in the first part of the prayer. This last clause, containing the evidence of her need of help, naturally recalls the prayer for help.
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. Lam_1:1-3. This change of fortune, befallen the holy city and holy people, may well clain our sympathy in the highest degree. But at the same time we should let it be to us a solemn warning. For if this was done to the green tree, what shall be done to the dry (Luk_23:31)? If God rejected the people whom He called the apple of His eye (Deu_32:10), if He exposed to destruction the city, in reference to which He said, that “His fire is in Zion, and His furnace in Jerusalem” (Isa_31:9), what claim can the people, kingdoms and dynasties of the Gentiles have?—what claim can the particular Christian churches even have?—what claim can Rome, Geneva and Wirtemberg have to the privilege of eternal existence? Truly, since the Lord could destroy Jerusalem and entirely lay waste Canaan, without being unfaithful to His promise given to the Fathers, even so He can remove the candlestick of every particular Christian church, without breaking the promise given to the church at large, that the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it (Mat_16:18).
2. Lam_1:1-11. “From Jeremiah’s passionate lamentation over the wretched condition of the Jewish land and people, we derive a lesson in reference to the manner in which one in great affliction and misery may be allowed to behave. There have been found, among the heathen, persons reputed for wisdom, some of whom have held the opinion, that a wise, intelligent man should be altogether emotionless, neither rejoicing in good fortune, nor cast down by bad fortune, but willing to let things be as they are. But we see the very opposite of this in pious, holy persons, especially here in Jeremiah, where he bitterly laments the misery of his people and fatherland. Could he have hoped for deliverance from that, misery, or any mitigation of it, how heartily would he have rejoiced! And such emotions, if properly controlled, are not obnoxious to God, since He Himself has implanted them in our human nature. As it would displease a faithful father, should his children laugh when he punished them, so it cannot please God when His people show no sign of grief on account of His chastisements. If we should, in the ordinary affairs of life, rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep (Rom_12:15), and as the elect of God, holy and beloved, should manifest hearty commiseration towards the suffering (Col_3:12), much more should we, in times of general and national calamities, not then be joyful, but heartily mourn and lament on account of the losses and evils suffered by the public generally. Those who do not so, the Lord God reproves; because they eat and drink joyfully, and are not at all concerned for the calamity of Joseph, He threatens severely to punish their false security.” Wuertem. Summ.
3. Lam_1:1. The Targum Jonathan compares the destruction of Jerusalem with the expulsion from Paradise: “It was with Jerusalem as with Adam and Eve, when they were judged, who were ejected from the Paradise of pleasure, and then the Governor of the universe lamented over them.”—Origen conceives that under the image of Jerusalem, formerly noble and splendid, but now become widowed and servile, the human soul is represented: “In a sublimer sense, Jerusalem, in the enjoyment of felicity, abounding in people and nations, and the head of provinces, is the (divina est anima) soul which is of divine origin. * * * Even as we are permitted to see Jerusalem, living in the greatest prosperity, with a large population, crowded with foreigners, and head of the provinces, but when virtue fails, desolate and widowed and enslaved, so that it becomes tributary to the enemy that conquered it, so it happens to the soul of him who has fallen from virtue.” Ghisler., p. 11.—So also Olympiodorus: “She became as a widow, having been deprived of the bridegroom—the Logos.”—So also Rhaban Maurus: “Lamentation is made for the faithful soul of man, which formerly was full of virtues and controlled its various passions, governing the appetites of the flesh; but afterwards inflamed by the fire of lust through the agency of malignant spirits, deprived of angelical consolation and wanting divine communion, it was given over to serve as many masters as it had vices.” Ibid., p. 10.—Hugo a Sancto Victore: “When God reigning in our hearts governs us, then the flesh subjected serves Him in the outward life, and in proportion as we are inwardly more humbly submissive to Him, we have in a stronger degree the mastery over the outward life. Thus, therefore, our soul, when it had God for its King, was within ‘full of people,’ i. e., of virtues, and without was also ‘mistress of the nations’—that is, of carnal desires, and ‘a princess of provinces’—that is, of the bodily senses. But now she is ‘solitary,’ because she has lost her king; she is a ‘widow,’ because she is separated from her husband; she is ‘tributary,’ because she serves the vices to which she is subject.” Ibid.
4. Lam_1:1. Jerusalem, in this passage, is regarded by many as a type of the church. So says Paschasius Radbertus: “The Prophet mourns, not only because she sitteth in garments soiled with dust and earthly deeds (sedet pulvereis et terrenis operibus sordidata), but especially because she ‘sitteth solitary.’ Solitary, moreover, because ‘as a widow’. And widowed, because she has been deserted by her husband on account of the filthiness of her turpitude. But it should be observed that she is said to be ‘as a widow,’ and not really a widow; since, although she is despised by her spouse, yet her rights of marriage remain, so that if she should reform and discharge the duties of her former love, she may at least receive her husband and immortality through her penitence.” Ghisler., p. 9.—Hugo a Sancto Victore allegorizes in another fashion: “How is it that while we perceive so many people in the church, we see the church herself ‘solitary?’ Because we can find hardly any one who may be esteemed as truly with the church. * * * As Christ remains untouched by the crowd pressing upon Him (Mar_5:24-34), so the church, the body of Christ, ‘sitteth solitary’ amidst a multitude, because the Catholic faith has many professors, but few imitators.” Ibid., pp. 9, 10.—In another way still, the Abbot Rupert von Deutz: “What city is it that was ‘full of people,’ etc.? That holy city, Jerusalem, forsooth, the mother of us all, whose citizens we are, whosoever of us are believers. That city, before the creation of the world, was already full of people in the foreknowledge or predestination of God. * * * How has it come to pass that she should sit solitary, should become as a widow, should pay tribute? Forsooth by transgressing; namely, by one man’s sinning, the first man’s, for in him the whole multitude of his posterity sinned and suffered condemnation. Thus has it come to pass that the holy city should sit solitary—should sit, as it were, as a widow, not having her husband—God, a church holy through faith, though cast out of Paradise, a wanderer in this world, suffering through exile, death and an offended Lord—that is, paying penal tribute for sin.” Ibid., p. 10.
[5. Lam_1:1-11. With regard to the allegorical and mystical interpretations of this song, we may adopt the language of Kitto on 1 Samuel 17 : “Although we do not, with some, think that ‘these things are an allegory,’ * * * it is impossible for the experienced Christian to read it without being reminded of eventful passages in his own spiritual history. There is no doubt some mysterious connection between even the external things of Scripture history, and the inner things of our spiritual life, which ‘the wise’ are enabled, by the Spirit’s teaching, to discern, and which renders the seemingly least spiritual parts of the holy writ richly nourishing to their souls” (Daily Bible Illustrations).—Scott: “The serious mind perceives abundant cause to meditate, with solemn awe and deep concern, on the tokens of His indignation at the sins of men. * * * How is it that so many populous cities now sit solitary? That so many flourishing empires are now become tributary and enslaved? Whence are the tears, with which vast multitudes wear away their restless nights and joyless days; whilst they mourn the loss of dear relatives, the treachery of professed friends, the cruelty of enemies, the oppression of the powerful, the fury of persecutors, grievous servitude and multiplied afflictions? Whence is it, that idolaters now occupy the places where flourishing churches once were? That the ways of Zion are deserted, her ordinances interrupted or profaned, her gates desolated, her priests and people in bitterness, or cut off? How is it that the adversaries of the church are the chief, and prosper, and that her children are in captivity? However we may vary our inquiries, the same answer recurs: the fierce anger of the Lord for man’s transgressions hath filled the earth with sighs and groans, with tears, sickness and death. * * * Sin fills our consciences with remorse and our hearts with terror; deprives the soul of strength and confidence; perverts every pleasant thing and every good gift of God, and even His truths, Sabbaths and ordinances into occasions of deeper condemnation and misery. * * * Among the manifold evil effects of sin, the pious mind is peculiarly grieved, when, being committed by professors of true religion, it causes the enemies of God to blaspheme, and to mock and scoff at the truths and ordinances of His word and worship. We be to the world because of such offences: and we be to those by whom such offences come, except their repentance be as deep as their transgressions, are aggravated. We ought to prefer any of the other temporal effects of sin to this. Should any be wonderfully brought down from the height of affluence to the depth of penury; should their honor be changed for contempt; should they have no comforter in affliction, and be constrained to part with all their pleasant things for bread to sustain life; nay, should they have the prospect of dying by famine; yet all this ought to be considered as far less afflicting than that their sins should cause the name, truths and ordinances of God to be blasphemed; and men to stumble and fall and perish forever, through the increasing prejudice, hardness and impiety that they have excited. Even the profanation of sacred things, and the sacrilege of those who, in different ages, have laid their rapacious hands on the substance which was dedicated to the support of religion; and the contempt with which the clerical office hath been treated by profligates and infidels; have in great measure been chargeable upon the atrocious sins of professors and preachers of the gospel, who have rendered themselves vile, and exposed themselves to shame by their evident misconduct: and therefore the Lord hath made them vile and contemptible even to the most abandoned of mankind.” (Practical Observations).—W. H. H.]
6. Lam_1:1-3. “If God’s chastisements begin, they come not once, twice, or thrice only, but they follow one after another, as one wave pursues another in a tempestuous ocean (Psa_42:8). For no misfortune comes alone, as is plainly seen in the present instance in the case of the Jews.” Cramer according to Eg. Hunnius (Ser. 2, p. 28).
7. Lam_1:4. “What an unspeakable blessing of God it is, when He gives public tranquility, so that people may come in crowds and regularly observe the holy rites of Divine worship, the world knows not, until God creates a famine of His Word and people seek for it over land and water without finding it. Let us be admonished to love the Word of God and the sanctuary where it is preached. Example: David, Psa_26:8; Psa_27:4.” Cramer by Eg. Hunnius (Ser. 2, p. 19). “O how many people there are who sigh after the precious gospel and have willingly gone in crowds over many miles to the places, where alone they could obtain and enjoy it. These will on that day stand up and condemn those, who have had it at their very doors, and yet have regarded it so disdainfully and treated it so carelessly.” Eg. Hunnius, Ser. 2, p. 20.
8. Lam_1:5. “God has, on account of Zion’s sins, set her enemies in authority over her. What does not this signify! The enemy governs at pleasure! Thus the church must be trodden under foot by the world—and this drives her anew to penitence and prayer. The youth must go bound into slavery. To be obliged to see this, breaks the heart. He who will not understand that it is the enemy of souls, who leads the children, bound by lusts and false doctrine, to hell, that person must regard every thing that he reflects upon in a gross and literal sense.” Diedrich.
9. Lam_1:5. “The devil is the author of our spiritual captivity (Col_1:13; 2Ti_2:26), Christ is our Redeemer (Joh_8:36), the means of redemption are—in respect to the price paid (ratione acquisitionis) the blood of Christ (Zec_9:11; Col_1:14),—but with regard to its actual application to us (respectu autem exhibitionis) the Word and Sacraments, especially Baptism which by St. Basil, in his Homily on ‘Holy Baptism,’ is called ‘the ransom for captives’ (Isa_61:1).” Förster.
10. Lam_1:5. Förster here considers the question, how the participation of children in the sufferings of their parents for sins of which the children are innocent, may be explained. He refers in this connection to Luther’s explanation of Exo_20:5, where it is said: “This question, why the son suffers for the father, the prophet Ezekiel hath treated of and says (Eze_18:2), ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge;’ and Jeremiah says (Jer_31:29?), “Our fathers have sinned and are gone, but we must suffer for their sins;’—and it is still so in our days; we sin and deserve what those who come after us must suffer. We are not to understand by this that the child is damned on account of the father, as if it referred to the [eternal] punishment of souls. ‘All souls,’ says God by Ezekiel (Eze_18:4), ‘are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine; the soul that sinneth it shall die.’ But we should understand this of temporal punishment; He punishes children on account of the fathers, by letting them die who must yet at any rate die.”
11. Lam_1:5. For the multitude of her transgressions.—“If thou fearest not sin, fear at least that which sin leads to.” Augustin by Förster.
12. Lam_1:6. Her princes have become like harts, etc.—“The deer is an extremely timid animal, and on that account the heart of a deer is reproachfully imputed to the timid, as appears by this verse of Homer: “O son of Atreus, having dog’s eyes and the heart of a stag.’ And the Apothegm of Philip of Macedon from Stobæus is well known: ‘an army of stags with a lion for a leader, were better than an army of lions with a stag for a leader.’ ” Förster.
13. Lam_1:6. All her beauty is departed.—“Now they will consider well the mercies of the Lord they formerly possessed, and how little they had valued them. Such reflections God awakens by means of affliction, and herein again is mercy, though enjoyed only in the midst of tears.” Diedrich.
14. Lam_1:7. And did mock at her Sabbaths.—“A corresponding punishment (pœna ἀντίστροφος) answers, by the just judgment of God, to the sin of Sabbath profanation; viz., the derision of the Sabbath (comp. Gregor. Nazianz. The festivals of the people become the door of sins).” Förster. [Adam Clarke: “The Jews were despised by the heathen for keeping the Sabbath. Juvenal mocks them on that account:
Cui septima quæque fuit lux
Ignava et partem vitæ non attigit ullam. Sat. V.
‘To whom every seventh day was a blank and formed not any part of their life.’ St. Augustin represents Seneca as doing the same:—Inutiliter id eos facers affirmans, quod septimani fermè partem ætatis suæ perdent vacando, et multa in tempore urgentia, non agendo lædantur. ‘That they lost the seventh part of their life in keeping their Sabbaths; and injured themselves by abstaining from the performance of many necessary things in such times.’ He did not consider that the Roman calendar and customs gave them many more idle days than God had prescribed in Sabbaths to the Jews.”]
15. Lam_1:7. Jerusalem remembered.—Sinning first and remembering afterwards has brought many into great trouble.
16. Lam_1:8. Jerusalem hath grievously Binned.—“We, Jerusalem, must suffer on account of our sins, and this chiefly makes our sorrows so very bitter: sin is the sting of death and of every evil.” Diedrich. [Calvin: “Here the Prophet expresses more clearly and strongly what he had briefly referred to, even that all the evil which the Jews suffered proceeded from God’s vengeance, and that they were worthy of such a punishment, because they had not lightly offended, but had heaped up for themselves a dreadful judgment, since they had in all manner of ways abandoned themselves to impiety. It is common to all to mourn in adversities; but the end of the mourning of the unbelieving is perverseness, which at length breaks out into rage, when they feel their evils, and they do not in the meantime humble themselves before God. But the faithful do not harden themselves in their mourning, but reflect on themselves and examine their own life, and of their own accord prostrate themselves before God, and willingly submit to the sentence of condemnation, and confess that God is just.”]
17. Lam_1:9. [Her filthiness is in her skirts.—“Much of the Jewish law is employed in discriminating between things clean and unclean; in removing and making atonement for things polluted or prescribed: and under these ceremonies, as under a veil or covering, a meaning the most important and sacred is concealed, as would be apparent from the nature of them, even if we had not, besides, other clear and explicit authority for this opinion. Among the rest are certain diseases and infirmities of the body. * * * The sacred poets sometimes have recourse to these topics for imagery, even on the most momentous occasions, when they display the general depravity inherent in the human mind (Isa_64:6), or exprobate the corrupt manners of their own people (Isa_1:5-6; Isa_1:16; Eze_36:17), or when they deplore the abject state of the virgin, the daughter of Sion, polluted and exposed (Lam_1:8-9; Lam_1:17; Lam_2:2). If we consider these metaphors without any reference to the religion of their authors, they will doubtless appear in some degree disgusting and inelegant; if we refer them to their genuine source, to the peculiar rites of the Hebrews, they will be found wanting neither in force nor in dignity.” Lowth: Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews, Lec. VIII.]
18. Lam_1:9. She remembereth not her last end.—“It is a peculiarity of sin, that while it may rest a long time in a man’s heart without disturbing him, yet whenever God begins to show His wrath, it wakes up and stings as a serpent and makes a wound that no one can heal (Sir_21:2). It would be well for us to reflect, when the devil makes sin as sweet as honey, that there may be poison concealed in it.” Cramer by Eg. Hunnius (Ser. III., p. 27). [“My son, hast thou sinned? Do so no more, but ask pardon for thy former sins. Flee from sin as from the face of a serpent; for if thou comest too near it, it will bite thee: the teeth thereof are as the teeth of a lion, slaying the souls of men. All iniquity is as a two-edged sword, the wounds whereof cannot be healed.” Sir_21:1-3.]
19. Lam_1:10. “If we have failed to keep diligently the gates of our heart and through some one of our senses lying open the old enemy have found entrance, he advances thence by means of depraved suggestions and illicit lusts into the very sanctuary of our soul, where the Holy Trinity used to dwell by means of true faith, and he despoils that sanctuary of the wisdom and virtues that beautify and embellish it, and we become miserable and most deserving of being overwhelmed with shame.” Rhaban. Maurus by Ghisler. p. 36.
20. Lam_1:8-10. “Not the person, but the doctrine sanctifies a place, much less can a place sanctify the person and the doctrine. To which is pertinent that saying of Jerome in his Epistle to Heliodorus,—’It is not easy to stand in the place of Paul and to hold the rank of Peter, both of whom reign with Christ.’ Whence it is said,—‘They are not the sons of the saints who occupy the places of the saints, but those who do their works.’ Wherefore if Jerusalem, the holiest of all cities in the judgment of God Himself, is nevertheless declared in our text to be the wickedest of all cities, who will not rather say this of the city of Rome, which to-day, all the world knows, is the abyss of superstitions and of all possible abominations.” Förster.
21. Lam_1:11. See, O Lord, and consider: for I am become vile.—“The righteous are oppressed in the church that they may cry out, they cry that they may be heard, they are heard that they may glorify God.” Augustin by Förster. [Calvin: “We said yesterday, that the complaints which humbled the faithful, and, at the same time, raised them to a good hope, and also opened the door to prayers, were dictated by the Spirit of God. Otherwise, when men indulge in grief, and torment themselves, they become exasperated; and then to be kindled by this irritation is a kind of madness. The Prophet, therefore, in order to moderate the intensity of sorrow, and the raging of impatience, recalls again the faithful to prayer. And when Jerusalem asks God to see and to look, there is an emphasis intended in using the two words; and the reason given does also more fully show this, because she had become vile; so that the church set nothing else before God, to turn Him to mercy, but her own miseries. She did not, then, bring forward her own services, but only deplored her own miseries, in order that she might obtain the favor of God.”]
22. [Lam_1:12. Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is done unto Me.—Henry: “She justly demands a share in the pity and compassion of spectators. How pathetically does she beg their compassion! Lam_1:18. This is like that of Job_19:21. Have pity, have pity upon me, O ye my friends! It helps to make a burden sit lighter, if our friends sympathize with us and mingle their tears with ours; for this evinces that, though in affliction, we are not in contempt, commonly as much dreaded as anything in an affliction.”]
23. Lam_1:12. “This is allegorically expounded to be the voice of Christ hanging on the cross, or of souls in Purgatory. * * * Or it is the voice of the church in tribulation. * * * Of the same nature is the anguish of the mother when in labor, or mourning her dead children, or dreading separation from her husband, or carried captive with her children among enemies. * * * It is the voice of the truly penitent soul, for there is no greater desolation than separation from God.” Bonaventura by Ghisler. pp. 41, 42.
24. [Lam_1:12. Henderson: “The words of this verse have been very generally applied, in the language of the pulpit, to the sufferings of our Saviour, and unquestionably they graphically describe the intensity of those sufferings; but considering the extent to which the original sense of the passage has been lost sight of, and the accommodated one substituted in its room, it would be well to notify that the secondary meaning is merely an accommodation of the words.” Wordsworth: “This sorrowful exclamation may, in a secondary and spiritual sense, be regarded as coming from the lips of Christ on the cross, bewailing the sins and miseries of the world, which caused Him that bitter anguish, of which alone it could be properly said, ‘that no sorrow was like unto His sorrow.’ ” Thus George Herbert, in “The Sacrifice:”
“Oh all ye, who pass by, whose eyes and mind
To worldly things are sharp, but to Me blind,
To Me, who took eyes that I might you find:
Was ever grief like Mine?
* * * * * * * * * * *
But now I die; now all is finished.
My wo, man’s weal: and now I bow My head:
Only let others say, when I am dead,
Never was grief like Mine.”—W. H. H.]
25. Lam_1:12. “Our Saviour could have used this apostrophe on the day of the preparation for the Passover, which might without impropriety be called, in the very words of this text, the day of the wrath and indignation of the Lord, inasmuch as on that day He poured out His wrath as if by a sudden impulse, on His own Son, in accordance with the testimony of Isaiah 53. Speaking briefly: the suffering of Christ was infinite and infernal in regard to its atrocity, though not with regard to its duration; and this should be urged in refutation of the frivolous, carping objection of the disciples of Photinus, who with most impious sophistry assert, that the passion of Christ, because not eternal, could not be expiatory of sins which are infinite in guilt. Preachers ought to and can, by means of this prophetical exhortation, stimulate their hearers to more attentive meditation on the Lord’s passion.” Förster.
26. Lam_1:12. “Zion’s sorrow exceeds all other sorrow, for Zion is fully sensible of the nature of her sin,—which is the sin of a horrible rebellion against God Himself:—and, at the same time, she feels for the lost sinners, who were called by her word and whom she could have wished to see not lost. Zion’s sorrow is fulfilled and completely realized in Jesus Christ, of Him have the prophets, and all saints, and all who are His, interpreted it,—these know only Christ. He who inflicts the sorrow is God the Father, and He who bears it, in the fullest sense, is the Son of God” Diedrich.
27. [Lam_1:13. Pool: “The holy man owneth God as the first cause of all the evil they suffered, and entitles God to their various kinds of afflictions, both in captivity and during the siege, looking beyond the Babylonians, who were the proximate instrumental cause.”]
28. Lam_1:14. “Although it may have the appearance of wrath, that God should punish the Jewish people so severely with servitude, famine, disgrace and the contempt of their enemies, yet thereby God promoted their eternal benefit, since many of them were brought by these means to a knowledge of their sins they had not otherwise attained. Moreover, God does many a ‘strange work’ (Isa_28:21), in reference to that which He esteems His own. Example, Manasseh.” Cramer by Eg. Hunnius (Ser. III., pp. 28, 29).—“Oh! how salutary is the blow, when God punishes a man for his sins here in this life, and by such temporal punishment preserves him from the future eternal and terrible wrath of God and from unquenchable Hell fire! Thus that holy teacher Augustin speaks, in his Confessions: Lord, burn me here, saw me in pieces here, pierce me here, stone me here. Only spare me in that world.” Eg. Hunnius, id. loc.
29. Lam_1:14. “Punishment daily increases because guilt increases daily. Augustin. Sins because they excite the wrath of God, which is an intolerable burden (Prayer of Manass., Lam_1:5), are themselves well called, and are, a yoke and an intolerable burden (Psa_38:4; Psa_65:4).” Förster. [“My transgressions, O Lord, are multiplied: My transgressions are multiplied, and I am not worthy to behold and see the height of Heaven, for the multitude of mine iniquities. I am bowed down with many iron bands, that I cannot lift up mine head, neither have any release: for I have provoked Thy wrath, and done evil before Thee; I did not Thy will, neither kept I Thy commandments: I have set up abominations, and have multiplied offences.” (The Prayer of Manasseh.)—Henry: “We never are entangled in any yoke, but what is framed out of our own transgressions. The yoke of Christ’s commands is an easy yoke, Mat_9:30; that of our own transgressions a heavy one: God is said to bind this yoke, and nothing but the hand of His pardoning mercy will unbind it.”]
30. Lam_1:12-15. “We should observe here, what is the real source of all tribulation and adversity on earth; namely, not blind chance, not celestial agencies, not men, who err in their opinions, or cause misfortunes through wantonness or malice: in these we may find a secondary cause, but the highest cause, which should be first and most considered, is God. The Lord, says Jeremiah, has filled me full of grief; He has sent from on high a fire into my bones; the Lord has so severely handled me that I am not able to rise up. The Lord Himself freely confesses all this and says, ‘Is there evil in the city, which I, the Lord, have not done?’ (Amo_3:6). Therefore if we would escape evil, we must go to no one but God, and see to it that we are reconciled with Him in regard to our sins. Würtemb.: Summar.”—[Scott: “It may properly be inquired of all that pass by, whether the suffering of the people of God be nothing to them? If they have no thought of compassionating or attempting to alleviate their distresses, they may at least behold and be instructed: they may see in them the holiness of God, the evil of sin, the emptiness of forms, the fatal effects of hypocrisy and impiety: and they may take warning to flee from the wrath to come, by considering the temporal miseries to which sin exposes men in this world, ‘For if the righteous scarcely are saved, where will the ungodly and profligate appear?’ If the rod of correction be so terrible, what will the sword of vengeance be?—But whatever may be learned by viewing the desolations of Jerusalem, * * * far more may be learned from looking unto Jesus, and His sufferings and death. Does He not, as it were from the cross, call on every heedless mortal to attend to the scene? Does He not say. ‘Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? Behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto My sorrow, wherewith the Lord hath afflicted Me, in the day of His fierce anger against the sins of those whom I came to seek and save? Is it nothing to you that I am here a sinless sufferer? That I, the well-beloved Son of the Father, am consumed by the fire of His wrath, and that My heart in the midst of my bowels is even as melting wax, and all my bones out of joint, and that mine enemies stand staring on and insulting over Me? Is it nothing to you that the Father hath wreathed on My neck the yoke of man’s transgressions, and laid on Me the iniquity of all His people?’ I say, doth not our suffering Immanuel seem thus to address us? And does it not behoove us to consider, who this Sufferer was, what He suffered, and why He suffered at all? Here we may see the evil of sin, the honor of the law, and the justice of God, more than in all the other scenes that we have been contemplating: here we may learn the worth of our souls, the importance of eternal things, the vanity of the world, and the misery of fallen man. Here we may see the only foundation of our hope, and the source of our comfort and happiness. Here we may learn gratitude and patience, meekness and mercy, from the brightest example and the most endearing motives. Let then all our sorrows lead us to contemplate the cross of Christ, and to mark the way He took through sufferings and death to His glory; that we may be comforted under our trials, and cheerfully follow our Fore-runner, that where He is, there we may be also.”]
31. [Lam_1:16. Because the Comforter that should relieve my soul is far from me.—The church suffering for her actual sins becomes a type of the Saviour suffering for the sins of the church imputatively. Here we have another cry from the cross. “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani. My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” Those who forsake God will be forsaken of Him, and those who are forsaken of God, will seek in vain for any other comforter, and will be left to cry out with tears and lamentations and ‘spread forth their hands,’ Lam_1:17, in vain, because ‘there is none to comfort’ them. The constant allusion to an absent Comforter in this Song, see Lam_1:2; Lam_1:9; Lam_1:16-17; Lam_1:21, is significant. There is nothing like it in the other Songs of Lamentation.—W. H. H.]
32. Lam_1:17. Zion spreadeth forth her hands, and there is none to comfort her.—“She receives compensatory punishment, in that, having refused to hear Him, who stretched out His hands (Isa_65:2), and to seek safety under His wings (Mat_23:37), she herself should afterwards stretch out her hands and not find a comforter.” Ambrose by Ghisler. p. 53.—“The ancient church (Sion) spreadeth forth her hands, i. e., her legal works and carnal righteousnesses, but there is none to comfort her on account of those works, for the Lord does not justify her through them. But what [is the result of this exhibition of her good works]? If she expects to be justified by spreading out her hands after this fashion, God hath commanded that her adversaries, i. e., her sins, should be round about her, and her sins are much more numerous, nay without comparison, innumerable, and her thousand justifications are as if she were an unclean woman, as a prophet elsewhere testifies, when be says: ‘But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags’ (Isa_64:6).” Rupertus Abbas by Ghisler. p. 54.
33. Lam_1:18. “It is an ingenious and considerate method of discipline, when the good God would make us better and wiser, not by words, but by examples in other persons. Happy are they, who become wise thus by the misfortunes of others.” Cramer.—The Lord is righteous. “Here recurs a common saying, to which the church bears her most illustrious testimony, in the same way as Mauritius the General, when about to be beheaded, is said to have pronounced publicly these words from Psalms 119.: ‘Just art Thou, O Lord, and just are Thy judgments.’ Förster. [The Mauritius referred to is Mauritius Tiberius, sometimes called St. Maurice, though not the Saint usually so designated. Before he himself was beheaded, his five sons were massacred before his eyes; “and Maurice, humbling himself under the hand of God, was heard to exclaim, ‘Thou art just, O Lord, and Thy judgments are without partiality.’ ” (Encyc. Brit.)—W. H. H.]
34. Lam_1:19. I called for my lovers, but they deceived me.—“Under God’s judgments we first learn, how foolish it was ever to have expected anything good from the world, to which we paid our earliest court, as Judah to Egypt, and from the Princes of the world. They have betrayed me, is ever said of all nations, whenever the church has relied upon the great ones of a nation as such. The world is the church’s field, which bears thistles and thorns. Those who trust to the world must come eventually to beggary, and thus miserably prolong their lives; whereby they may possibly recover their senses.” Diedrich.
35. Lam_1:20-22. “Here the question occurs, whether we may pray against our enemies, since Christ says, ‘Love your enemies’ (Mat_5:44)? Answer: There are two kinds of enemies. Some, who bear ill-will towards us personally for private reasons, concern ourselves alone. When the matter extends no further than to our own person, then should we privately commend it to God, and pray for those who are ill-disposed towards us, that God would bring them to a sense of their sin; and, besides, we ought, according to the injunction of Christ, to do them good, and not return evil for evil, but rather overcome evil with good (Rom_12:17; Rom_12:21). But if our enemies are of that sort, that they bear ill-will to wards us, not for any private cause, but on account of matters of faith; and are also opposed, not only to us, but especially to God in Heaven, are fighting against His holy Word and are striving with eager impiety to destroy the Christian church;—then indeed should we pray that God would convert those who may be converted, but as for those who continue ever to rage, stubbornly and maliciously, against God and His church, that God would execute upon them according to His own sentence judgment and righteousness (Psa_139:19).” Cramer by Eg. Hunnius (Ser. III., p. 36).
36. Lam_1:20. [Behold, O Lord.—Calvin: “The people turn again to pray to God: and what has been before said ought to be remembered, that these lamentations of Jeremiah differ from the complaints of the ungodly; because the faithful first acknowledge that they are justly chastised by God’s hand, and secondly, they trust in His mercy and implore His aid. For by these two marks the church is distinguished from the unbelieving, even by repentance and faith.”]—For I am in distress. “Such is the distress which arises from a disturbed conscience, of which Ambrosius says (Lib. I., ep. 18), There is no greater pain than that which wounds the conscience with the sting of sin.” Förster.—[Abroad the sword bereaveth, at home there is as death. Hugh Broughton: “Deuteronomy 32. They shall be brent with hunger and eaten up with burning and bitter destruction: without, the sword shall rot; within shall be fear. St. Paul, 2Co_7:5, calleth Moses and Jeremy both into mind, saying when we came into Macedonia my flesh had no rest, we were always in distress, without was fighting, within was fear. Thus divinely honoreth he the Songs of Moses and Jeremy, as having their words still before him, joining Moses’ prophecy with Jeremy’s story, and showing how the Apostles were vexed in the world, as Jerusalem of the Chaldeans.”]
37. Lam_1:21. Thou hast done it.—“It is most worthy of observation, that the church in this prayer having turned towards God openly declares, Thou hast done it. Whence it is plainly to be inferred that all calamities are sent by God (θεόπεμπτοι).” Förster.
38. Lam_1:21-22. “O that God would let this day come soon, in which the discipline of His children has an end and the flames of God’s wrath shall consume the rods of His chastisement forever! Then, in truth, our sins and the Devil will be once for all under our feet, and the whole world, which now vexes us, will descend into the abyss with howling and shrieks. In the heart of the Prophet, speaks also the Christ, who judges the world and will make it His footstool: and if we are really Christians, then we have, at the same time and in full measure, both sorrows and confidence; yet often the sense of sorrow exceeds, so that we say, my sighs are many and my heart is faint. But these sighs will be turned into joy (Joh_16:20-22), for they are the birth throes of the new life and of the eternal world. Happy is he who has a part therein.” Diedrich.
39. Lam_1:22. “Although our prayer is not a work of merit on account of which God should hear us, yet it is a means by which we are heard (Mat_7:7).” Cramer.—[Calvin: “We, in short, see that the faithful lay humbly their prayers before God, and at the same time confess that what they had deserved was rendered to them, only they set before God their extreme sorrow, straits, griefs, tears, and sighs. Then the way of pacifying God is, sincerely to confess that we are justly visited by His judgment, and also to lie down as it were confounded, and at the same time to venture to look up to Him, and to rely on His mercy with confidence.”—Hugh Broughton: “The first alphabet row is ended in the prophecy of ending the wicked kingdoms which should be brought under Babel’s yoke, to show that all these troubles are in God’s Providence settled in the most exquisite order for His judgments.”]
40. [Prayer. “Grant, Almighty God, that as Thou hast hitherto dealt so mercifully with us, we may anticipate Thy dreadful judgment; and that if Thou shouldest more severely chastise us, we may not yet fail, but that being humbled under Thy mighty, hand, we may flee to Thy mercy and cherish this hope in our hearts, that Thou wilt, be a Father to us, and not hesitate to call continually on Thee, until, being freed from all evils, we shall at length be gathered into Thy celestial kingdom, which Thine only-begotten Son has procured for us by His own blood. Amen.” Calvin.]
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
1. Lam_1:1-11. On a fast-day, a church consecration, a festival in commemoration of the Reformation, at a Synod, or on similar occasions prompting to earnest warning, the congregation could be instructed, on the ground of this text, that the judgment which befell the Old Testament Zion by means of the Chaldeans is a warning example to the New Testament Zion. In doing so, it would be proper to consider: 1. The original glory of the Old Testament Zion, Lam_1:7 a. 2. Her presumptuous security and temerity, Lam_1:9 a. 3. The wickedness that became prevalent in consequence thereof, Lam_1:5 b, Lam_1:8 a. 4. The judgment of God, for that wickedness, in its details; intrusion of enemies, Lam_1:10, desolation of the city, Lam_1:1, captivity of the people and of the Priests and Princes, Lam_1:3-6, discontinuance of public worship, Lam_1:10, famine, Lam_1:11, triumph of enemies, Lam_1:5; Lam_1:7; Lam_1:9, disgrace and misery of the people, Lam_1:1-3; Lam_1:5; Lam_1:8-9. 5. The inference to be drawn from all this for our benefit; how that which happened to them may also happen to us, (Luk_23:31; Rom_11:21-23; Rev_2:5).
2. Lam_1:12. A sermon of consolation, on the occasion of a death, or other great misfortune. Our text suggests remedies for great pain. These are—I. Of a natural kind. 1. The sympathy of all men: ‘I say to you all, etc., look and see, etc.’ 2. Comparison with the pain of others: “see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow,”—where we are warned against the error of supposing our pain the greatest that ever was, and are reminded that some are more unfortunate than ourselves. II. Of a spiritual kind. 1. The Lord has inflicted the wounds. 2. The Lord will heal them. [Consider, here, especially the active sympathy of Christ. To the question ‘Was ever any sorrow like unto my sorrow!’ we may answer, ‘Yes, Christ’s, and greater, too?’ If “His visage was so marred more than any man, and His form more than the sons of men.” it was because, more than any man. He was “stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.” He bore the whole burden of our guilt and He suffered its full penalty. “The Lord laid on Him the iniquity of us all,” and ‘He bore our griefs and carried our sorrows.’ Why? Not only in the way of atonement, but that He might be a merciful High Priest, to sympathize with us and to help us. See Heb_2:17-18; Heb_4:15-16.—W. H. H.]
3. Lam_1:12-22. A sermon on penitence; when a calamity, that may properly be considered as a Divine chastisement, calls for repentance. Subject: The calamity, which has befallen us, considered in the light of Divine righteousness and love. I. It proceeds from Divine righteousness. 1. Not another, but the Lord, has ordained it against us, Lam_1:14-15. 2. It corresponds exactly to what we have deserved, Lam_1:14; Lam_1:18. II. It proceeds from Divine love. 1. It admonishes us to sincere repentance. 2. It dissuades us from confiding in any false hope or support, Lam_1:13-16; Lam_1:21. 3. It incites us to seek help from God in a believing spirit, Lam_1:20.
4. Lam_1:20. Florey—Biblical Guide for spiritual funeral discourses, Leipzig, 1861, No. Lam 385: “Well is it for a distressed widow, in her agony, to look to the Lord. For—1. The Lord knows thy pain, which He Himself has inflicted. 2. The Lord soothes thy pain, for He is the best Comforter. 3. The Lord changes thy pain, sooner or later, into a blessed experience of good.”
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv2–22 in the night--even in the night, the period of…
in the night--even in the night, the period of rest and oblivion of griefs (Job 7:3).
lovers . . . friends--the heathen states allied to Judah, and their idols. The idols whom she "loved" (Jer 2:20-25) could not comfort her. Her former allies would not: nay, some "treacherously" joined her enemies against her (Kg2 24:2, Kg2 24:7; Psa 137:7).
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20 THE MISERIES DESCRIBED, Lam_1:1-11.
THE MISERIES DESCRIBED, Lam_1:1-11.
1. As a widow — Jerusalem is personified as a desolate woman, deprived of children and husband, neglected by her lovers and betrayed by her friends. It is an interesting fact, that the image of this verse is the one chosen for the coin of Titus, struck to commemorate his triumph over Jerusalem, which shows a woman weeping under a palm tree, and the inscription, “Judea Capta.” The real structure of this first verse is disguised in the English Version, as also in the Masoretic pointing. The reading should be: —
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How sitteth she alone, the city full of people!
She has become like a widow (that was) great among the nations!
A princess among provinces, she has become a vassal.
The exclamation point in the English Version after “widow” should be removed to stand after nations, and the and introduced by the translators should be returned to the nothingness whence it sprung.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv1–22 1. How] The Heb. (’Ekhâh), which occurs also at…
1. How] The Heb. (’Ekhâh), which occurs also at the commencement of chs. 2 and 4, as well as in Lam_1:2 of the latter, and may well have been a word introductory to funeral dirges, has supplied the Hebrew name for this Book, the custom of naming the Books of the Bible by the first word being a common one with the Jews.
sit solitary] as emptied by the departure of the captives, and deserted by her friends, and by God Himself. Cp. this fate as foretold for her in Isa_3:26.
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a widow] The meaning here is not, as might be suggested by such passages as Jer_2:2, that Jehovah was her Husband and has now been lost. The point is that her condition resembles that of a widow inasmuch as she is exposed to penury and oppression in the absence of any to protect her. Cp. the boast of Babylon in Isa_47:8.
provinces] This name is used in one passage (1Ki_20:14-19) of the Israelitish districts, apparently those referred to in 1Ki_4:7, and afterwards frequently of satrapies of the Persian empire (Est_1:1, etc.), and is used in the singular of Judaea itself in Ezr_2:1; Ezr_5:8; Neh. 1:30, Neh_7:6, Neh_11:3. Here apparently it is simply equivalent to countries, nations.
tributary] a vassal. The original word implies bond-service. Cp. Jdg_1:3, R.V. mg., and for an account of the Heb. word Driver’s Heb. Text of Samuel, p. 267.
1, 2. Löhr points out as special characteristics of this ch. the writer’s yearning for revenge, and also his full recognition of the sin of his own time as well as of earlier generations. Lam_1:1 for metrical considerations should be arranged in three approximately equal lines; “she … nations” forming the second part of the second line.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv1–22 (1) How doth the city . . .—The poem…
I.
(1) How doth the city . . .—The poem of twenty-two verses divides itself into two symmetrical halves, (1) Lam_1:1-11, in which the prophet laments over Jerusalem; and (2) Lam_1:12-22, more dramatic in its form, in which the daughter of Zion bewails her own miseries. Each verse is divided into three lines, each line beginning, in the Hebrew, with the same letter. The opening picture reminds us of the well-known Judœa capta, a woman sitting under a palm-tree, on the Roman medals struck after the destruction of Jerusalem.
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How is she become.—Better, making one sentence instead of two, She is become a widow that was great among the nations, and so with the clause that follows.
Provinces.—The word, used in Est_1:1; Est_1:22, and elsewhere, of the countries subject to Persia and Assyria and so in Ezr_2:1; Neh_7:6, of Judah itself, here indicates the neighbouring countries that had once, as in the reign of Hezekiah, been subject to Judah. “Tributary,” as used here, implies, as in Jos_16:10, personal servitude, rather than the money payment, for which, at a later period, as in Est_10:1, it was commuted.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv1–22 Vers. 1-11. A WAIL OF DISTRESS FOR JERUSALEM.
Vers. 1-11. A WAIL OF DISTRESS FOR JERUSALEM.
Vers. 1, 2. The fate of Jerusalem is described in language which resembles here and there that used in Isaiah of fallen Babylon. (Isa_47:1, Isa_47:8) It is probably the finest passage in the whole bock, and has inspired some grand lines in Mr. Swinburne"s picture of the republican mater dolorosa"Who is she that sits by the way, by the wild wayside, In a rust-stained garment, the robes of a cast-off bride, In the dust, in the rainfall, sitting with soiled feet bare, With the night for a garment upon her, with torn, wet hair," etc.?
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How. The characteristic introductory word of an elegy, (comp. Isa_1:21 Isa_14:4, Isa_14:12) and adopted by the early Jewish divines as the title of the Book of Lamentations. It is repeated at the opening of ch. 2 and ch. 4. Sit solitary. Jerusalem is poetically personified and distinguished from the persons who accidentally compose her population. She is "solitary," not as having retired into solitude, but as deserted by her inhabitants. (same word as in first clause of Isa_27:10) How is she become as a widow! etc. Rather, She is become a widow that was great among the nations; a princess among the provinces, she is become a vassal. The alteration greatly conduces to the effect of the verse, which consists of three parallel lines, like almost all the rest of the chapter. We are not to press the phrase, "a widow," as if some. earthly or heavenly husband were alluded to; it is a kind of symbol of desolation and misery. (Isa_47:8) "The provinces at once suggests the period of the writer, who must have been a subject of the Babylonian empire. The term is also frequently used of the countries under the Persian rule, (e.g. Est_1:1, Est_1:22) and in Ezr_2:1 and Neh_7:6 is used of Judah itself. Here, however, the "provinces," like the "nations," must be the countries formerly subject to David and Solomon. (comp. Ecc_2:8)
Ver. 1. The solitary city.
The first elegy on the desolation of Jerusalem opens with a lament over her solitariness, widowhood, and humiliation.
I THE SOLITARINESS.
1. How it is to be measured.
(1) By the nature of the place. It is a city that is solitary. A deserted town strikes us as more lonely than the most dreary moor. We do not expect people in a wilderness; we look for them in a city. Streets which never echo to a footfall, windows which never brighten with a face, doors which are never opened, houses, palaces, shops, factories, markets, all silent and empty, this is indeed a picture of desolation. It is contrary to experience, expectation, and purpose.
(2) By the former condition of the place. It used to be populous. Jerusalem was no sleepy old provincial town, but a busy capital. Crowds would throng the streets, little children play, and old men stand gossiping at the corners, and hucksters set up their stalls, where now no live creature is to be seen, save, perhaps, a few lean dogs prowling after their unclean food. The contrast of the past thus aggravates the distress of the present.
2. Why it is most sad. The loss of men is the great trouble. Fine buildings have been thrown down, marble statues broken, gold and precious stones stolen. But these are not the worst evils. Had all remained untouched, still the trouble would have been heart rending. The people are gone! Chicago rises out of her ashes in greater splendour because her people remain. Jerusalem is most desolate because her citizens have been carried into captivity. The strength of a city is its population. The power of a nation is in its people. The vigour of a Church is in its membership. A splendid cathedral, with a rich full service, but no congregation, fails in comparison with the homeliest mission, if the latter gathers the people. Doctrine may be sound and "means of grace" abundant, yet we shall not advance except as we hold the people.
II WIDOWHOOD. Unintentionally and perhaps unconsciously, the inspired poet uses an illustration to describe the desolate condition of Jerusalem, which may serve as a hint of her deeper distress. "She is become as a widow ." Who had been her husband? The favoured city used to be regarded as the mystic bride of the Eternal. She had often been accused of unfaithfulness to her marriage vows. Now the faithless wife is punished by becoming the miserable widow. Jerusalem loses the presence and favour of God. It is said that the Shechinah was seen there no more. The greatest loss is to be bereft of God. They who are unfaithful to God will find that he will forsake them. Many would retain the privilege of blessings from God, while renouncing the obligation of fidelity to God. The unfaithful wife is both to lose the support and position contributed to her by her husband. But this inconsistency cannot be allowed. Christ the Bridegroom remains faithful. But if his bride, the Church, dishonours his Name, she will lose her Lord and become as a widow.
III HUMILIATION. The city had been the princess among the provinces. She now not only loses her dependencies; she loses her own independence; she becomes a vassal to a strange city. Humiliation will be the peculiar punishment of the great who abuse their rank. The doom of pride will be shame. Few troubles are more galling than to have to come down openly in the sight of those over whom a certain superiority had been maintained.
1. Loss of position and character results in loss of influence. When the Church falls, her power over the world will disappear. Christian elevation of character is essential to Christian influence among men.
2. Loss of power entails loss of liberty. Jerusalem weakened and conquered becomes a vassal. Only the strong can be free. Spiritual failings lead to the loss of spiritual liberty.
3. When the Church ceases to influence the world she will become subject to the world. The fallen suzerain becomes a vassal. The Church can only retain her liberty by maintaining her supremacy. This is the great truth the abuse of which has led to the monstrous pretensions of Rome. The lawful supremacy of the Church must be spiritual, and this may be lost and the Church subject to the spirit of the world, even while she is greedily grasping after temporal power, perhaps just because she does hanker after this lower advantage.
HOMILIES BY J.R. THOMSON Vers. 1, 2. The contrasts of adversity.
The keynote of this strain of sorrow, this poetical and pathetic dirge, is struck in the opening words of the composition. The heart of the prophet laments over the captured and ruined city. How natural that the present should recall the past! Jerusalem, now in the hands of the Chaldeans, was once, in the days of David and of Solomon, the scene of glory and the seat of empire, the joy of the whole earth. So much the sadder is the contrast, the deeper the fall, the bitterer the cup of woe..
I THE ONCE POPULOUS CITY IS SOLITARY. Not the walls, the streets, the palaces, the temples, but the inhabitants, are the true strength and glory of a city. Formerly Jerusalem was thronged with citizens who took pride in her majesty, of sojourners who came to gaze with wonder and admiration upon her splendours. Now her population has been reduced by famine, by exile, by war; and silence is in her streets.
II THE CITY ONCE A PRINCESS IS TRIBUTARY. The time was when other cities acknowledged her sway, paid her their tribute, sent her of their produce and of the labour of their sons. Now she is reduced to subjection, yields her treasure to the foe, and the toil of her children is for the profit of the alien.
III THE CITY THAT ONCE WAS JOYFUL WEEPS. Mirth and music have given place to mourning, lamentation, and woe. No longer are the sound of the viol and the harp, the voice of the bridegroom and the bride, heard in her dwellings. They resound with the cries of grief and anguish. She weepeth in the night, and her tears are on her cheek.
IV THE CITY ONCE THE SPOUSE OF THE LORD IS WIDOWED. To Jerusalem it had been said, "Thy Maker is thy Husband!" But because of her unfaithfulness and apostasy the Lord has forsaken her; she is become as a widow, unprotected, deserted, solitary, and comfortless.
V THE CITY ONCE RICH IN ALLIES AND HELPERS IS UNFRIENDED. Not only is she feeble within, she is friendless without. In prosperous days neighbouring nations sought her good will and alliance, and were forward with their offers of friendship and of help. All this is of the past; those who vowed faithfulness have proved treacherous, and have became the enemies of Judaea in the extremity of her desolation, forsaking, and woe. T.
HOMILIES BY D. YOUNG Ver. 1. Widowhood the emblem of loneliness.
I THE FORCE OF THE EMBLEM. Another emblem might have been used. Or the statement as to loneliness might have been left in its simplicity without any comparison at all. Why, then, this particular emblem? Because it sets forth the separation between two parties to a peculiar connection a connection intended to have all the permanence which anything in this earth can have. Of the husband and wife it is to be said that "they twain have become one flesh," and when the wife becomes a widow she is left in a peculiar and irremediable loneliness, even though she be in the midst of kindred, neighbours, and friends. So also we may say that the inhabitants of Jerusalem, together with the place itself, its site, its houses, its streets, had become one great whole. The children of Israel wandered through the wilderness for forty years, but when at last they left it, it would not have been suitable to say that the wilderness had become as a widow.
II A VIEW THUS SUGGESTED AS TO THE CAUSE OF SEPARATION. One kind of loneliness had come as a terrible visitation because another kind of loneliness had not been sought as an imperative condition of security. Had not Balaam said, "The people shall dwell alone, and shall not be reckoned among the nations"? (Num_23:9) Israel was to dwell in safety alone. What could be expected if the people mixed again so recklessly with these from whom they had been separated by a course of Divine marvels? It may also be noticed that Jerusalem would not have been left as a widow if the people of Jerusalem and the country altogether had had in them the spirit which prompted to deal wisely and compassionately with every widow. The widow had been carefully provided for by Mosaic enactments, e.g. in the solemn feasts and in the time of harvest. Yet in the first chapter of Isaiah"s prophecies we find him denouncing the princes of the once faithful city because the cause of the widow did not come unto them.
III A GROUND OF HOPE. Widowhood is evidently a state on which the loving God looks down with infinite tenderness and desire to help. Jerusalem became as a widow, yet the separation was not forever. Her exiled inhabitants returned. Yet this was a small matter compared with the greater truths taught alike by the separation and the restoration. Things nearest and dearest to us may have to be taken away for a time, but all that belongs to our real welfare and to our complete relation to even the whole universe will come back in due time. We must not mistake eclipse for destruction. Y.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 18, 19 That was fall of people!
Lam_1:1
That was fall of people!
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Reverses of fortune
The picture in this verse is strong by contrasts: solitary, and full of people; a widow, once a queen great among the nations; a princess receiving homage, now stooping in the act of paying tribute to a higher power.
No nest is built so high that Gods lightning may not strike it. To human vision, it certainly does appear impossible that certain estates can ever be turned to desolation; the owners are so full of health and high spirits, and they apparently have so much reason to congratulate themselves upon the exercise of their own sagacity and strength, that it would really appear as if no bolt could shatter the castle of their greatness. Yet that castle we have teen torn down, until there was not one stone left upon another. We are only strong in proportion as we spend our strength for others, and only rich in proportion as we invest our gold in the cause of human beneficence. The ruins of history ought to be monitors and guides to those who take a large view of human life. Is not the whole of human history a succession of ruins? Where is Greece? Rome? proud Babylon? the Seven Churches of Asia? We do not despair when we look at the ruins which strew antiquity; we rather reason that certain institutions have served their day, and what was good in them has been transferred into surviving activities. In the text, however, we have no question of ruin that comes by the mere lapse of time. Such ruin as is here depicted expresses a great moral catastrophe. Judah did not go into captivity because of her excellency or faithfulness; she was driven into servitude because of her disobedience to her Lord. What was true of Judah will be true of every man amongst us. No man can sin, and prosper. (J. Parker, D. D.)
Changes in the outward estate of the Church
1. God often alters the outward estate of His Church in this world.
(1) That He may daily declare Himself the disposer and governor of all things.
(2) To take from us all occasions of promising ourselves any certainty here. Therefore let us prepare ourselves to all conditions (Php_4:11-12); settle our affections on heaven and the things that lead thereto.
2. It is our duty to strive with ourselves to be affected with the miseries of Gods people (2Ch_11:28-29). For we are fellow members of one body, whereof Christ is the Head (1Co_12:25-26).
(1) This reproves those who seek only their own good.
(2) It teaches us to put on tender compassion and labour to profit the whole Church and every member thereof.
3. God sometimes giveth His Church an outward estate that flourisheth both in wealth and peace.
(1) That He may give His peoples taste even of all kinds of earthly blessings (Deu_28:2; Psa_84:11).
(2) That they may have all opportunity to serve Him, and every kind of encouragement thereto.
4. The outward flourishing state of Gods Church lasts not always, but is often changed into affliction and adversity.
5. God often changes the condition of His servants in this life from one extreme to another. Joseph; Job; Israel
(1) That His mighty power may appear to all
(2) That we may learn to ascribe all to Him.
6. It is a great blessing of God for a nation to be populous (Gen_12:2).
7. God often makes His people in their prosperity most admired of all.
(1) That He may show Him, self to love His servants.
(2) That the godly may know that godliness is not without reward.
(3) That the wicked may have all excuse taken from them, in that they are not allured by such notable spectacles of Gods love to them that fear Him.
8. God often humbles His servants under all His foes and their adversaries, because of their disobedience to His word (Deu_28:36).
(1) This shows us how great Gods anger is for sin.
(2) This teaches us not to measure the favour of God towards ourselves or others by the blessings or adversities of this life. (J. Udall.)
How is she become as a widow!--
Desolation
It would not be just to read into the image of widowhood ideas collected from utterances of the prophets about the wedded union of Israel and her Lord; we have no hint of anything of the sort here. Apparently the image is selected in order to express the more vividly the utter lonesomeness of the city. It is clear that the attribute solitary has no bearing on the external relations of Jerusalem--her isolation among the Syrian hills, or the desertion of her allies, mentioned a little later (Lam_1:2); it points to a more ghostly solitude, streets without traffic, tenantless houses. The widow is solitary because she has been robbed of her children. And in this, her desolation, she sits. The attitude, so simple and natural and easy under ordinary circumstances, here suggests a settled continuance of wretchedness; it is helpless and hopeless. The first wild agony of the severance of the closest natural ties has passed, and with it the stimulus of conflict; now there has supervened the dull monotony of despair. It is a fearful thing simply to sit in sorrow. The mourner sits in the night, while the world around lies in the peace of sleep. The darkness has fallen, yet she does not stir, for day and night are alike to her--both dark. In this dread night of misery her one occupation is weeping. The mourner knows how the hidden fountains of tears which have been sealed to the world for the day will break out in the silent solitude of night; then the bravest will wet his couch with his tears. The forlorn woman weepeth sore; to use the expressive Hebraism, weeping she weepeth. Her tears are on her cheeks; they are continually flowing; she has no thought of drying them; there is no One else to wipe them away. This is not the frantic torrent of youthful tears, soon to be forgotten in sudden sunshine, like a spring shower; it is the dreary winter rain, falling more silently, but from leaden clouds that never break. The woe of Jerusalem is intensified by reason of its contrast with the previous splendour of the proud city. This thought of a tremendous fall gives the greatest force to the portrait. It is Rembrandtesque; the black shadows on the foreground are the deeper because they stand sharply out against the brilliant radiance that streams in from the sunset of the past. The pitiableness of the comfortless present lies in this, that there had been lovers whose consolations would now have been a solace; the bitterness of the enmity now experienced is its having been distilled from the dregs of poisoned friendship. Against the protests of her faithful prophets Jerusalem had courted alliance with her heathen neighbours only to be cruelly deserted in her hour of need. It is the old story of friendship with the world, keenly accentuated in the life of Israel because this favoured people had already seen glimpses of a rich, rare privilege, the friendship of heaven. This is the irony of the situation; it is the tragic irony of all Hebrew history. (W. F. Adeney, M. A.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain On vv1, 8, 12 THE first elegy is devoted to moving pictures of…
DESOLATION
Lam_1:1-7
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THE first elegy is devoted to moving pictures of the desolation of Jerusalem and the sufferings of her people. It dwells upon these disasters themselves, with fewer references to the causes of them or the hope of any remedy than are to be found in the subsequent poems, simply to express the misery of the whole story. Thus it is in the truest sense of the word a "Lamentation." It naturally divides itself into two parts-one with the poet speaking in his own person, {Lam_1:1-11} the other representing the deserted city herself appealing to passing strangers and neighbouring nations, and lastly to God, to take note of her woes. {Lam_1:12-22}
The poem opens with a very beautiful passage in which we have a comparison of Jerusalem to a widow bereft of her children, sitting solitary in the night, weeping sorely. It would not be just to read into the image of widowhood ideas collected from utterances of the prophets about the wedded union of Israel and her Lord; we have no hint of anything of the sort here. Apparently the image is selected in order to express the more vividly the utter lonesomeness of the city. It is clear that the attribute "solitary" has no bearing on the external relations of Jerusalem-her isolation among the Syrian hills, or the desertion of her allies, mentioned a little later; {Lam_1:2} it points to a more ghostly solitude, streets without traffic, tenantless houses. The widow is solitary because she has been robbed of her children. And in this, her desolation, she sits. The attitude, so simple and natural and easy under ordinary circumstances, here suggests a settled continuance of wretchedness; it is helpless and hopeless. The first wild agony of the severance of the closest natural ties has passed, and with it the stimulus of conflict; now there has supervened the dull monotony of despair. This is the lowest depth of misery, because it allows leisure when leisure is least welcome, because it gives the reins to the imagination to roam over regions of heart-rending memory or sombre apprehension, above all because there is nothing to be done, so that the whole range of consciousness is abandoned to pain. Many a sufferer has been saved by the healing ministry of active duties, sometimes resented as an intrusion. It is a fearful thing simply to sit in sorrow.
The mourner sits in the night, while the world around lies in the peace of sleep. The darkness has fallen, yet she does not stir, for day and night are alike to her-both dark. She is statuesque in sorrow, petrified by pain, and yet unhappily not dead; benumbed, but alive in every sensitive fibre of her being and terribly awake. In this dread night of misery her one occupation is weeping. The mourner knows how the hidden fountains of tears which have been sealed to the world for the day will break out in the silent solitude of night; then the bravest will "wet his couch with his tears." The forlorn woman "weepeth sore"; to use the expressive Hebraism, "weeping she weepeth." "Her tears are on her cheeks"; they are continually flowing; she has no thought of drying them; there is no one else to wipe them away. This is not the frantic torrent of youthful tears, soon to be forgotten in sudden sunshine, like a spring shower; it is the dreary winter rain, falling more silently, but from leaden clouds that never break. The Hebrew poets picture is illustrated with singular aptness by a Roman coin, struck off in commemoration of the destruction of Jerusalem by the army of Titus, which represents a woman seated under a palm tree with the legend Judaea capta. Is it too much to imagine that some Greek artist attached to the court of Vespasian may have borrowed the idea for the coin from the Septuagint version of this very passage?
The woe of Jerusalem is intensified by reason of its contrast with the previous splendour of the proud city. She had not always appeared as a lonely widow. Formerly she had held a high place among the neighbouring nations-for did she not cherish memories of the great days of her shepherd king and Solomon the magnificent? Then she ruled provinces; now she is herself tributary. She had lovers in the old times-a fact which points to faults of character not further pursued at present. How opposite is the utterly deserted state into which she is now sunk! This thought of a tremendous fall gives the greatest force to the portrait. It is Rembrandtesque; the black shadows on the foreground are the deeper because they stand sharply out against the brilliant radiance that streams in from the sunset of the past. The pitiableness of the comfortless present lies in this, that there had been lovers whose consolations would now have been a solace; the bitterness of the enmity now experienced is its having been distilled from the dregs of poisoned friendship. Against the protests of her faithful prophets Jerusalem had courted alliance with her heathen neighbours only to be cruelly deserted in her hour of need. It is the old story of friendship with the world, keenly accentuated in the life of Israel, because this favoured people had already seen glimpses of a rich, rare privilege, the friendship of Heaven. This is the irony of the situation: it is the tragic irony of all Hebrew history. Why were these people so blindly infatuated that they would be perpetually forsaking the living waters, and hewing out to themselves broken cisterns that could hold no water? The question is only surpassed by that of the similar folly on the part of those of us who follow their example in spite of the warning their fate affords, failing to see that true friendship is too exacting for ties spun from mere convenience or superficial pleasantness to bear the strain of its more serious claims.
Passing on from the poetic image to a more direct view of the drear facts of the case, the author describes the hardships of the fugitives-people who had fled to Egypt, the retreat of Jeremiah and his companions. This must be the bearing of the passage which our translators render-
"Judah is gone into captivity because of affliction, and because of great servitude."
For if the topic were the captivity at Babylon it would be difficult to see how "affliction" and "great servitude" could be treated as the causes of that disaster; were they not rather its effects? Two solutions of this difficulty have been proposed. It has been suggested that the captivity is here presented as a consequence of the misconduct of the Jews in oppressing peoples subject to them. But the abstract words will not readily bear any such meaning; we should have expected some more explicit charge. Then it has been proposed to read the words "out of affliction," etc., in place of the phrase "because of affliction," etc., as though in escaping from trouble at home the Jews had only passed into a new misfortune abroad. This is not so simple an explanation of the poets language as that at which we arrive by the perfectly legitimate substitution of the word "exile" for "captivity." It may seem strange that the statement should be affirmed of "Judah," as though the whole nation had escaped to Egypt; but it would be equally inexact to say that "Judah" was carried captive to Babylon, seeing that only a selection from the upper classes was deported, while the majority of the people was probably left in the land. But so many of the Jews, especially those best known to the poet, were in voluntary exile, that it was quite natural for him to regard them as virtually the nation. Now upon these refugees three troubles fall. First, the asylum is a heathen country, abominable to pious Israelites. Second, even here the fugitives have no rest; they are not allowed to settle down; they are perpetually molested. Third, on the way thither they are harassed by the enemy. They are overtaken by pursuers "within the straits," a statement which may be read literally; bands of Chaldaeans would hover about the mountains, ready to pounce upon the disorganised groups of fugitives as they made their way through the narrow defiles that led out of the hill country to the southern plains. But the phrase is a familiar Hebraism for difficulties generally. No doubt it was true of the Jews in this larger sense that their opponents took advantage of their straitened circumstances to vex them in every possible way. This is just in accordance with the common experience of mankind all the world over. But while the fact of the experience is obvious, the inference to which it points like an arrow is obstinately eluded. Thus a commercial man in financial straits loses his credit at the very moment when he most needs it. We cannot say that this is a proof of spite, or even a sign of cynical indifference; because the needy person is really most untrustworthy, though his moral integrity may be unshaken, seeing that his circumstances make it probable that he will be unable to fulfil his obligations. But now it is the deeper significance of this fact that is so persistently ignored. There is perceptible at times in nature a law of compensation by the operation of which misfortune is mitigated; but that merciful law is frequently thwarted by the overbearing influence of the terrible law of the "survival of the fittest," the gospel of the fortunate, but the death-knell for all failures. If this is so in nature, much more does it obtain in human society so long as selfish greed is unchecked by higher principles. Then the world, the Godless world, can be no asylum for the miserable and unfortunate, because it will be hard upon them in exact proportion to the extremity of their necessities. Moreover, the perception that this bitter truth is not a fruit of temporary passions which may be restrained by education, but the outcome of certain persistent principles which cannot be set aside while society retains its present constitution, gives to it the adamantine strength of destiny.
Coming nearer to the city in his mental vision, the poet next bewails deserted roads; "those ways of Zion" up which the holiday folks used to troop, clad in gay garments, with songs of rejoicing, are left so lonely that it seems as though they themselves must be mourning. It is in keeping with the imagery of these poems which personify the city, to endow the very roads with fancied consciousness. This is a natural result of intense emotion, and therefore a witness to its very intensity. It seems as though the very earth must share in the feelings of the man whose heart is stirred to its depths; as though all things must be filled with the passion the waves of which flow out to the horizon of his consciousness, till the very stones cry out.
As he approaches the city, the poet is struck with a strange, sad sight. There are no people about the gates; yet here, if anywhere, we should expect to meet not only travellers passing through, but also groups of men, merchants at their traffic, arbitrators settling disputes, friends exchanging confidences, idlers lounging about and chewing the cud of the latest gossip, beggars whining for alms; for by the gates are markets, al fresco tribunals, open spaces for public meetings. Formerly the life of the city was here concentrated; now no trace of life is to be seen even at these social ganglia. The desertion and silence of the gateways gives a shock of distress to the visitor on entering the ruined city. More disappointments await him within the walls. Still keeping in mind the idea of the national festivals, and accompanying the course of them in imagination, the poet goes up to the temple. No services are proceeding; any priests who may be found still haunting the precincts of the charred ruins can only sigh over their enforced idleness; the girl-choristers whose voices would ring through the porticoes in the old times, are silent and desolate, for their mother, Jerusalem, is herself "in bitterness."
In this part of the elegy our attention is directed to the cessation of the happy national assemblies with their accompaniment of public worship in songs of praise for harvest and vintage and in the awful symbolism of the altar. The name "Zion" was associated with two things, festivity and worship. It was a happy privilege for Israel to have had the inspired insight as well as the courage of faith to realise the conjunction. Even with the fuller light and larger liberty of Christianity it is rarely acknowledged among us. Our services have too much of the funeral dirge about them. The devout Israelite reserved his dirge for the death of his worship. It does not seem to have occurred to the poet that anybody could come to regard worship as an irksome duty from which he would gladly be liberated. Are we, then, to suppose that the Israelites who practised the crude cult that was prevalent before the Exile, even among the true servants of Jehovah, were indeed more devout than Christians who enjoy the privileges of their richer revelation? Scarcely so; for it must be remembered that we are called to a more spiritual and therefore a more difficult worship. Inward sincerity is here of supreme importance; if this is missing there is no worship, and without it the miserable unreality becomes inexpressibly wearisome. No doubt it is the failure to reach the rare altitude of its lofty ideal that makes Christian worship to appear in the eyes of many to be a melancholy performance. But this explanation should not be permitted to obscure the fact that true, living, spiritual worship must be a very delightful exercise of the soul. Perhaps one reason why this truth is not sufficiently appreciated may be found in the very facility with which the outward means of worship are presented to us. People who are seldom out of the sound of church bells are inclined to grow deaf to their significance. The Roman Christian hunted in the catacombs, the Waldensian hiding in his mountain cave, the Covenanter meeting his fellow members of the kirk in a remote highland glen, the backwoodsman walking fifty miles to attend Divine service once in six months, are led by difficulty and deprivation to perceive the value of public worship in a degree which is surprising to people among whom it is merely an incident of everyday life. When Zion was in ashes the memory of her festivals was encircled with a halo of regret.
In accordance with the principle of construction which he follows throughout-the heightening of the effect of the picture by presenting a succession of contrasts-the poet next sets the prosperity of the enemies of Jerusalem in close juxtaposition to the misery of those of her people in whom it is most pitiable and startling, the children and the princes. Men with any heart in them would wish above all things that the innocent young members of their families should be spared; yet the captives carried off to Babylon consisted principally of boys and girls torn from their homes, conveyed hundreds of miles across the desert, many of them dragged down to hideous degradation by the vices that luxuriated in the corrupt empire of the Euphrates. The other class of victims specially commented on is that of the princes. Not only is the present humiliation of the nobility in sharp contrast to their former elevation of rank, and therefore their sufferings the more acute, but it is also to be observed that their old position of leadership has been completely reversed. The reference must be to Zedekiah and his courtiers. {Jer_39:4-5} These proud princes who formerly exercised command over the multitude have become a shameful flock of fugitives. In the expressive image of the poet, they are compared to "harts that find no pasture"; they are like fleet wild deer, so cowed by hunger that they meekly permit themselves to be driven by their enemies just as if they were a herd of tame cattle.
In the middle of this comparison between the success of the conquerors and the fate of their victims the poet inserts a pregnant sentence which suddenly carries us off to regions of far more profound reflection, touching upon the two sources of the ruin of Jerusalem that lie behind the visible hand of Nebuchadnezzar and his hosts, her own sin and the consequent wrath of her God. It flashes out as a momentary thought, and then retires with equal suddenness, permitting the previous current of reflections to be resumed as though unaffected by the startling interruption. This thought will reappear, however, with increasing fulness, shewing that it is always present to the mind of the poet and ready to come to the surface at any moment, even when it would seem to be inappropriate, although it can never be really inappropriate, because it is the key to the mystery of the whole tragedy.
Lastly, while the sense of a strong contrast is excited objectively by a comparison of the placid security of the invaders with the degradation of the fugitives, subjectively it is most vividly realised by the sufferers themselves when they call to mind their former happiness. Jerusalem is supposed to fall into a reverie in which she follows the recollection of the whole series of her pleasant experiences from far-off bygone times through all the succeeding ages down to the present era of calamities. This is to indulge in the pains of memory-pains which are decidedly more acute than the corresponding pleasures celebrated by Samuel Rogers. These pains are doubly intense owing to the inevitable fact that the contrast is unnaturally strained. Viewed in the softened lights of memory, the past is strangely simplified, its mixed character is forgotten, and many of its unpleasant features are smoothed out, so that an idyllic charm hovers over the dream, and lends it an unearthly beauty. This is why so many people foolishly damp the hopes of children, who, if they are healthily constituted, ought to be anticipating the future with eagerness, by solemnly exhorting them to make hay while the sun shines, with the gloomy warning that the sunny season must soon pass. Their application of the motto carpe diem is not only pagan in spirit; it is founded on an illusion. Happily there is some unreality about most of our yearning regrets for the days that have gone. That sweet, fair past was not so radiant as its effigy in the dreamland of memory now appears to be; nor is the hard present so free from mitigating circumstances as we suppose. And yet, when all is said, we cannot find the consolation we hunger after in hours of darkness among bare conclusions of common-sense. The grave is not an illusion, at least when only viewed in the light of the past-though even this chill, earthly reality begins to melt into a shadow immediately the light of the eternal future falls upon it. The melancholy that laments the lost past can only be perfectly mastered by that Christian grace, the hope which presses forward to a better future.
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 4, 5, 8, 12, 18 Lam_1:1-2 present the city as she is in sharp…
EXEGETICAL NOTES.—
Lam_1:1-2 present the city as she is in sharp contrast with what she was, and as an object of deep distress, on account of her sins and their penalties. The verses have a pictorial illustration in the medal struck by the Roman Emperor Titus in commemoration of the capture of Jerusalem (A.D. 71).
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(א) Lam_1:1. How, not in interrogation, but in surprise and pain. This particle is unnecessarily inserted twice in the Authorised Version. It is not again employed in the Hebrew of the book, except in chaps. Lam_2:1 and Lam_4:1-2, sitteth alone, in a posture of overpowering sorrow rather than of utter isolation, like Nehemiah, who, when he heard of the doleful state of Jerusalem, sat down and wept and mourned (Lam_1:4), the city = Jerusalem, as following verses prove. The fact that the Chaldean captain left of the poor of the people, which had nothing, in the land of Judah (Jer_39:10) suggests that a few waifs and strays might be still banging round the ruined city, while the reference (chap. Lam_2:10) to the elders of the daughter of Zion may intimate that some of better means were also with them; that was full of people. No known criterion exists by which to estimate the population of ancient Jerusalem. An approximate guess even cannot be made from the perfunctory census taken in David’s reign. She is become as a widow, forsaken and under the reproach of widowhood, seeing that she is not in communion with the Lord, her Maker; but still she is not quite a widow; there is to be a restoration, because for a small moment have I forsaken thee … saith the Lord thy Redeemer (Isa_54:6); that was great among the nations, respected and powerful; a princess over the provinces. The dominion centered in Jerusalem is illustrated by the letter of Artaxerxes to his subordinates, There have been mighty kings over Jerusalem, which have ruled over all the country beyond the river; and tribute, custom, and toll was paid unto them (Ezr_4:20). This jurisdiction over dependent peoples was at its height in the reigns of David and Solomon, though after them there were also kings whose rule embraced others beside the Jews. In sad contrast she is become a vassal, generally shown by taskwork, not so often by money-payment, and expressing entire subservience.
(ב) Lam_1:2. Intense grief overwhelms her, She weeps bitterly in the night; no temporary oblivion comes to her; the silent hours pass with her tears on her cheeks. For her there is no comforter among all her lovers; all her friends, or neighbours, have dealt treacherously with her. The Babylonians and all the Chaldeans, Pekod and Shoa and Koa, and all the Assyrians with them (Eze_23:23), were alienated from her, while Egypt, Amnion, Edom, Moab, disowned their alliance with her: they are become her enemies, and gloat over her downfall (2Ki_24:2).
HOMILETICS
Grief for a Ruined City
(Lam_1:1-2)
There is a fine piece of statuary representing the figure of a Hebrew female in a sitting posture, the head and shoulders slightly bent forward, the hair escaping in disordered tresses from the neatly plaited fillets, the arms, carelessly crossed over each other, resting helplessly in her lap, the eyes, moistened with tears, gazing wistfully on the ground, and the face expressing in every feature the tenderest pathos of sorrow. The whole figure seems to quiver with irrepressible emotion. Every part is moulded with voluptuous grace, and is susceptible of the deepest passion, but it is the passion of an inconsolable grief! The genius of the artist has thus sought to idealise unhappy Judah weeping amid the scattered fragments of national ruin. It is a reproduction, by the art of the nineteenth century, of the same sad image that appeared on the well-known medal of Titus, struck to celebrate his triumph over Jerusalem—a woman sitting weeping beneath a palm-tree, and below is inscribed the legend Judea capta. It is startling to observe how exactly the heathen conqueror copied the poetic description by Jeremiah of the forlorn condition to which his beloved country was reduced. These words describe a pathetic picture of grief for a ruined city.
I. Because of its utter desolation. “How doth the city sit solitary that was full of people” (Lam_1:1) There is a tradition that Jeremiah wrote these elegies in a grotto that is still shown, situated in the face of a rocky hill on the western side of Jerusalem; and there is a freshness and versatility in the images employed, as if every time he glanced at the ruins of the ill-fated city, full in his view, he was unable to repress a new outburst of grief. He had seen Jerusalem in prosperity, its Temple thronged with worshippers, its commerce flourishing, its people content and joyous; but now all is changed; the market-place is empty, the streets silent, the princes and people in exile, and the Temple, which the Jew fondly dreamed invulnerable, was a heap of ruins. Such desolation was unparalleled in the history of the nation and in the experience of the prophet, and his heart was riven with anguish. We may read about the decay of great cities without emotion; but to witness the demolition of our own city is a different matter.
II. Because of the loss of its beloved chief. “How is she become as a widow!” (Lam_1:1). A city is often described as the mother of its inhabitants, the king as husband, the princes as children. When the king is gone, and not even a representative is left, the city is widowed and orphaned indeed. The condition of an Eastern widow is pitiable. Her hair is cut short, she strips off all her ornaments, eats the coarsest food, fasts often, and is all but an outcast in the family of her late husband. The image employed by the prophet would therefore be painfully suggestive to the Jewish mind.
III. Because of its humiliating subjection. “She that was great among the nations and princess among the provinces, how is she become tributary?” (Lam_1:1). The older meaning of the word tributary refers not to a money-payment, but to personal labour (Jos_16:10). The city that ruled from the Nile to the Euphrates is now reduced to slavery, and the few inhabitants who are left must render bond-service to a heathen potentate. It is galling to a once proud and prosperous people to be thus humiliated. They who will not serve God faithfully must be compelled to serve their enemies.
IV. Because of its being cruelly betrayed. “Among all her lovers she hath none to comfort her. All her friends have dealt treacherously with her; they have become her enemies” (Lam_1:2). Her allies, who made great protestations of attachment when all was prosperous, not only forsake her when adversity comes, but unite with her enemies in completing her destruction. It is a bitter irony of human professions when love turns to enmity and friendship to treachery. “A loose tooth and a fickle friend are two evils.” The sooner we are clear of them the better; but who likes the wrench? If we lose the comfort of God, we are not likely to find help in man. We can trust in no one if we cannot trust in God.
V. Is expressed with irresistible pathos. “She weepeth sore in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks” (Lam_1:2). It was a fine touch of poetic genius when the prophet selected a sorrowful woman as an emblem of a disconsolate city. Woman is never so fascinating, so tender, so bewitchingly irresistible in commanding sympathy as when she is in tears! The hardest heart is melted, the sternest enemy subdued. The sorrow of Judah was overwhelming because the ruin was so unexpected and unparalleled. No city has been wept over like Jerusalem. The melancholy wail has been prolonged through the centuries, and is reproduced to-day. The Lamentations are still read yearly by the Jews to commemorate the burning of the Temple. Every Friday, Israelites young and old, of both sexes, gather at the wailing place in Jerusalem, where a few of the old stones of the Temple still remain in the wall, and, amid tears, recite these sad verses and suitable psalms, as they fervently kiss the stones. On the 9th of the month Ab, nearly our July, this dirge, composed about 600 years before Christ, is read aloud in every synagogue over the world. Weeping is not repentance; but the tears of the contrite do not flow in vain. They are noted in heaven, and God will help.
LESSONS.—
1. The ruin of a once prosperous city is a sad and suggestive spectacle.
2. The miseries of others should rouse our compassion.
3. The greatest grief finds relief in tears.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
Lam_1:1. “How doth the city sit solitary that was full of people.” A populous city.
1. A busy scene of activity, gaiety, sin, sorrow, and complicated experiences.
2. Produces a strange sensation upon the belated visitor when it is hushed in the silence of sleep.
3. Its ruin a subject of profound sorrow and suggestive reflections to one who has known it in the flood-tide of its prosperity.
—“How has she become as a widow, she that was great among the nations.” Widowhood.
1. Suggestive of loss—loss of happiness, solace, guardianship, affection.
2. Implies loneliness, dejection, sorrow.
3. A painful experience when contrasted with a former state of affluence and grandeur.
—“Princes among the provinces, how is she become tributary.” The strange reverses of fortune.
1. The ruler becomes the ruled.
2. The free are the conquered:
3. Wealth exchanged for poverty.
4. Life dependent on abject submission to those who were once our inferiors.
Lam_1:2. “She weepeth sore in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks.” The pathos of tears.
1. A sublime spectacle in the ideal woman.
2. An evidence of profound sorrow.
3. Gathers its significance from the character of the calamity it bewails
4. A merciful relief to an intensely sensitive nature.
—“All her friends have dealt treacherously with her; they are become her enemies.” The fickleness of human friendships. I. Genuine friends are rare. They may usually be counted on a thumb and finger; the one is the wife or husband, the other is the mother, who is father, mother, and a great deal more. There is no folly so fanatical as that which flings away a real friend. II. Friends are plentiful when we do not need their help. They depend on us more than ever we had occasion to depend on them. While we can help them, their friendship is effusive and their vows of fealty emphatic. When our power declines, so does their attachment: when our circumstances alter, so do they. They are swallow friends, fluttering merrily about us in the summertime of prosperity, but suddenly become invisible when the winter of adversity sets in. III. It is a sad proof of the perversity of human nature when a friend is transformed into an enemy. The enmity is often the more rancorous because of the intimacy of a former friendship. The secrets confided in a moment of familiarity are used against us with a studied ingenuity of irritating spitefulness. It is a painful shock to an unsophisticated youth, and leaves a wound that time cannot heal, when he discovers for the first time the base treachery of a pretended friend.
ILLUSTRATIONS.—Mutual sympathy in sorrow. When Henry VII. heard of the sudden death of his son Prince Arthur at Ludlow Castle in 1502, he said, “Send some one for the Queen; let me bear this grief with her.” She came and did her best to comfort him. She then retired to her own room, was overwhelmed with sorrow, and swooned away. It was now his turn to cheer and comfort. On both sides it was, “Let me bear this grief with her,” and, “Let me bear this grief with him.” And thus in their retreat at Greenwich the King and Queen of England mourned in silence for the loss of their first-born son.
—It is the weeping cloud that blesses the earth.
Grief useless that does not lead to active help. We are sorry (for the English are a kind-hearted people) for the victims of our luxury and neglect; sorry for the thousands whom we let die every year by preventible diseases, because we are either too busy or too comfortable to save their lives; sorry for the savages whom we exterminate by no deliberate intent, but by the mere weight of our heavy footstep; sorry for the thousands who are used up yearly in certain trades in ministering to our comfort, even to our very luxuries and frivolities; sorry for the Sheffield grinders, who go to work as to certain death; sorry for the people whose lower jaws decay away in lucifermatch factories; sorry for the diseases of artificial flower-makers; sorry for the boys working in glass-houses whole days and nights on end without rest, “labouring in the very fire, and wearying themselves with weary vanity.” We are sorry for them all, as the giant is for the worm on which he treads. Alas! poor worm. But the giant must walk on. He is necessary to the universe, and the worm is not. So we are sorry, for half an hour, and glad too (for we are a kind-hearted people) to hear that charitable persons or the Government are going to do something towards alleviating these miseries. And then we return, too many of us, each to his own ambition, comforting ourselves with the thought that we did not make the world, and we are not responsible for it.—C. Kingsley.
The All-seeing God and the lonely. God sees you always. There is no moment when He does not see you, night or day, waking or sleeping, alone or in company. It is told of Linnæus, the famous naturalist, that he was greatly impressed with this thought, and that it told upon his conversation, his writings, and his conduct. He felt the importance of this so much, that he wrote over the door of his study the Latin words, Innocui vivite; Numen ad est. “Live innocently; God is here!”
Christianity relieves the miseries of great cities. Look at those noble buildings which the generosity of our fellow-countrymen have erected in all our great cities. You may truly find in them sermons in stones; sermons for rich and poor alike. They preach to the rich, these hospitals, that the sick-bed levels all alike; that they are the equals and brothers of the poor in the terrible liability to suffer. They preach to the poor that they are, through Christianity, the equals of the rich in their means and opportunities of cure. Whether the founders so intended or not, these hospitals bear direct witness for Christ. They do this, and would do it even if—which God forbid!—the name of Christ was never mentioned within their walls. That may seem a paradox, but it is none; for it is a historic fact that hospitals are the creation of Christian times and of Christian men. The heathen knew them not. In the great city of ancient Rome, as far as I have been able to discover, there was not a single hospital, not even a single charitable institution. Fearful thought! A city of a million and a half inhabitants, the centre of human civilisation, and not an hospital there! The Roman Dives paid his physician; the Roman Lazarus literally lay at his gates full of sores, till he died the death of the street dogs which licked those sores, and was carried forth to be thrust under ground awhile, till the same dogs came to quarrel over his bones. The misery and helplessness of the lower classes in the great city of the Roman Empire, till the Church of Christ arose literally with healing in its wings, cannot, I believe, be exaggerated.—C. Kingsley.
—When you hear a man praising “the good old times,” ask him how the peasantry were then sheltered and fed.
The power of tears. A young lady once visited a lunatic asylum, and was led into a room where there was but one patient, a young girl of the same age as herself. She was standing in the corner of the room, her face almost touching the wall. In stony hopelessness she stood. She neither looked nor spoke. She might have been dead but that she still stood on. It was a pathetic sight. “Will you speak to her?” asked the doctor; “we can do nothing with her. She has been thus for days; but one like yourself might move her.” The young lady stepped forward, and, with an upward cry for Divine help, laid her hand gently on the shoulder of the listless form, and with tears in her eyes spoke one sentence of yearning sympathy and compassion. The spell was broken. The poor patient turned, gazed for a moment on the face of the weeping visitor, and then burst into tears! The doctor exclaimed, “Thank God, she may now be saved!” The visitor could never recall the words she had used; but, with the voice softened with tears, they had done their work. The still and cold indifference of the patient gave way before the warmth of a pitying heart and the magic touch of a hand stretched out to help. The eloquence of tears is irresistible.
The friends of youth: Where are they?
“I sought you, friends of youth, in sun and shade,
By home and hearth; but no! ye were not there.
Where are ye gone, beloved ones, where? I said.
I listened, and an echo answered, Where?
Then silence fell around: upon a tomb
I sat me down, dismayed at death, and wept;
Over my senses fell a cloud of gloom;
They sank before the mystery, and I slept.
I slept, and then before my eyes there pressed
Faces that showed a bliss unknown before;
The loved whom I in life had once possessed
Came one by one, till all were there once more.
A light of nobler worlds was round their head;
A glow of better actions made them fair.
‘The dead are there,’ triumphantly I said;
Triumphantly the echo answered, ‘There’!”
—Clive.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. R. Dummelow 1909 · Public Domain On v1 Zion's Desolation and Sorrow
Zion's Desolation and Sorrow
Though the five poems contained in the book have practically the same theme—the downfall of Jerusalem—yet each poem dwells on a different phase of the subject as intimated in the opening words of each chapter This first one emphasises the desolation and misery of the city, describing it as 'solitary,' as 'a widow,' and as 'tributary,' i.e. Judah has lost her independence; and there is 'no comforter,' Lam_1:2, Lam_1:9, Lam_1:17, Lam_1:21. It falls naturally into three sub-divisions, as seen below. In structure it is strictly alphabetical: each v. being of triple construction.
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1-11. The poet laments Zion's utter desolation.
1. How] a characteristic word for the commencement of an elegy: cp. Lam_2:1; Lam_4:1-2; Isa_14:4.
Sit solitary] in the sense of empty houses and deserted streets. Provinces] the neighbouring countries, such as Edom and Moab.
2. Lovers] synonymous with friends, viz. her allies Edom and Egypt (Lam_4:22).
3. Because of affliction and.. great servitude] i.e. Judah chose exile to escape the sufferings to which she was exposed in her own land (Jer_40:11). Between the straits] RV 'within the straits.'
4. The ways of Zion do mourn] The roads by which pilgrims came up to the feasts are now deserted (Jer_14:2).
Her virgins] those who took part in the festal occasions (Psa_68:25).
5. Are the chief] RV 'are become the head': i.e. Judah has lost her leadership. Before the enemy] driven as slaves.
6. Her princes are become like harts] referring to Zedekiah's flight with his sons (Jer_39:4-7).
7. Remembered] RV 'remembereth.'
Sabbaths] RV 'desolations,' in the sense probably of ceasings: cp. the enforced sabbaths of Lev_26:34, Lev_26:35. The Heb. word employed here is not found elsewhere in OT.
8. Is removed] RV 'is become as an unclean thing.' Her nakedness] her sin and its punishment (Lam_4:21).
9. Her filthiness] moral pollution, expressed by a bold but common Oriental figure (Jer_13:22).
She remembereth not] RV 'she remembered not.'
10. Pleasant things] primarily the vessels of the sanctuary (2Ch_36:10, 2Ch_36:19), but ineluding all of Jerusalem's precious possessions.
12-19. Zion's comfortless condition due to Jehovah's righteousness.
12. Zion yearns for sympathy.
13. From above] RV 'From on high.'
14. Is bound] a bucolic figure, God being represented as binding Judah's sins upon his neck as a ploughman binds the yoke upon oxen (Jer_27:2). He hath made my strength to fall] rather, 'it (the yoke) hath caused my strength to stumble.' The Lord] in Heb. Adonai, used 14 times in Lamentations to express lordship; the name Jehovah conveys the covenant idea of redemption.
15. He hath called an assembly] lit. 'an appointed time': i.e. a religious festival (Lev_23:4); not for Israel, however, but for the enemy, to celebrate the defeat of Zion's soldiers.
16. Mine eye, mine eye] The emphatic repetition reminding one of Jeremiah's style (Jer_4:19; Jer_6:14).
17. That his adversaries should be round about him] i.e. that his nearest neighbours should be his most hateful foes. In this v. the poet speaks.
19. Lovers] see on Lam_1:2. My priests and mine elders] Even the most honoured chiefs of the city died of starvation.
20-22. In distress Zion appeals to Jehovah for redress.
21. The day] i.e. the day of vengeance on Zion, long before announced (Jer_25:17-26).
22. Let all their wickedness come before thee] a not infrequent prayer of OT. saints for righteous retribution upon the enemy: cp. Psalms 69, 109, 137 Jer_18:20-23 not altogether unjustifiable, for the Hebrew was conscious that wickedness must be punished, but far below the plane of the Sermon on the Mount.
J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Arno C. Gaebelein 1922 · Public Domain On v1 CHAPTER 1 Jerusalem’s Great Desolation and the Sorrow of…
CHAPTER 1 Jerusalem’s Great Desolation and the Sorrow of His People
The chapter begins with an outburst of grief over Jerusalem’s desolation. Once she was a populous city; now she is solitary. Once she was great among the nations, like a princess among provinces, and now she is widowed. Then in the next verse we hear her weeping; she weeps all night long; none is there to comfort her; her friends have turned against her, they have become her enemies. She was disobedient to her Lord, she rejected His Word, she gave up her holy place as His separated people and now “she findeth no rest.” The Lord’s hand is upon her for the multitude of her transgressions. The hopeful note we find in Lam 1:8-11. Here is confession of her guilt and shame; here is humiliation and appeal to the Lord on account of the enemy. “See, O LORD, and behold; for I am become vile.” Such humiliation and self-judgment is pleasing in the Lord’s sight.
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In Lam 1:12 Jerusalem speaks: “is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is done unto me, wherewith the LORD hath afflicted me in the day of His fierce anger.” The passer-by who beholds the ruins of Zion is asked to look upon the desolations and then to consider that the Lord in His righteous anger smote her, who is still His beloved. Well may we think of Him, who had to say, “See if there be any sorrow like unto My sorrow,” who was smitten and afflicted, upon whom Jehovah’s rod rested, over whose blessed head all the waves and billows of Divine judgment-wrath rolled, He who is the Beloved, the Son of God, our Lord. Again the prophet breaks out in weeping, “His eye runneth down with water.” He is deeply affected over the desolation and judgment which has taken place. But a greater One, greater than Jeremiah, stood centuries after before the same city, brought back from the ruin of Jeremiah’s time. And as He beheld that city He wept, because His omniscient eye beheld a still more appalling judgment for city and nation.
Forsaken, uncomforted, distressed, humiliated, sighing and crying, owning her rebellion, vindicating Jehovah and His righteousness, Jerusalem sits in the dust, “abroad the sword bereaveth, at home there is death.”
Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On vv1, 12 Description of the Shameful Lot which has come upon…
Description of the Shameful Lot which has come upon Jerusalem
v. 1. How doth the city sit solitary that was full of people! It is a strong expression of horrified astonishment over the fact that the formerly populous city is now lonely and deserted, sitting alone in deep mourning. How is she become as a widow! She no longer enjoys the fellowship of Jehovah, her Husband, and she has lost her children, who have been killed in battle and carried away into exile. She that was great among the nations and princess among the provinces, her rule being accepted more or less continuously in the surrounding provinces from the Brook of Egypt to the Euphrates, how is she become tributary! herself condemned to servitude and to the payment of tribute-money.
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v. 2. She weepeth sore in the night, the slumber being driven away from her eyelids by the greatness of her sorrow, and her tears are on her cheeks, since they flow without stopping and have no chance to dry; among all her lovers, who formerly professed affection for her, she hath none to comfort her; all her friends, upon whom she depended for assistance, have dealt treacherously with her, deserting her in the midst of the dangers which came upon her; they are become her enemies, their former profession of loyalty changing to open hostility.
v. 3. Judah is gone into captivity, led away into exile, because of affliction, the misery upon the country on account of the occupation of the land by the Chaldeans, and because of great servitude, the servile work which was included in the tributary service exacted by the conquerors; she dwelleth among the heathen, sojourning among them, as it were, in the hope of finding some measure of security; she findeth no rest, being disappointed also in this respect; all her persecutors overtook her between the straits, so that there was no outlet for her, no chance to escape.
v. 4. The ways of Zion do mourn, all the roads leading to the capital lying desolate, because there are no pilgrims found there, because none come to the solemn feasts, the great festivals of the Jewish year; all her gates are desolate, for there is no longer the happy traffic of former years; her priests sigh, under the heavy oppression which they suffer and because the Temple and its worship are no longer in existence, her virgins are afflicted, since their joyful singing no longer enlivened the great festivals, and she is in bitterness, she feels her misfortunes with poignant grief.
v. 5. Her adversaries are the chief, that is, the head, the rulers of Judah, her enemies prosper, their good fortune intensifying the darkness of her own calamity; for the Lord hath afflicted her for the multitude of her transgressions, the punishment which she was suffering being fully deserved; her children are gone into captivity before the enemy, literally, "her infants in absence of strength before the pursuer. "
v. 6. And from the daughter of Zion all her beauty is departed, the presence of Jehovah and His glory in her midst; her princes are become like harts that find no pasture, so that they have no strength to flee and escape from the enemy, and they are gone without strength before the pursuer. Cf 2Ki 25:3-4.
v. 7. Jerusalem remembered in the days of her affliction and of her miseries all her pleasant things that she had in the days of old, the members of the Jewish Church recalling with eager remembrance the glorious evidences of God’s blessing which had been theirs, when her people fell into the hand of the enemy, and none did help her, the days of her calamity contrasting very strikingly with her former state of blessedness; the adversaries saw her and did mock at her Sabbaths. As the Jewish day of rest was a favorite object of mockery on the part of the enemies, so they now thought it a huge joke that a general and lasting Sabbath had come upon their country.
v. 8. Jerusalem hath grievously sinned, chiefly by joining in the idolatry of Israel and the heathen nations, therefore she is removed, as one separated from the congregation on account of legal impurity; all that honored her despise her because they have seen her nakedness, her sins and vices having now become known; yea, she sigheth, since now at last she has, in a measure, come to the realization of her transgressions, and turneth backward, withdrawing from men, so that her shame may no longer be witnessed.
v. 9. Her filthiness is in her skirts, as of a woman Levitically unclean; she remembereth not her last end, she did not consider the result of her persistent iniquity, therefore she came down wonderfully, the greatness of her fall being such as to cause men to marvel; she had no comforter, no one to take her part with so much as a word of consolation. It is for this reason that her sighing is heard: O Lord, behold my affliction; for the enemy hath magnified himself, increasing his insolence and violence. The prophet now continues his description of Jerusalem’s misery.
v. 10. The adversary hath spread out his hand upon all her pleasant things, blasphemously robbing even the precious vessels and appointments of the Temple; for she hath seen that the heathen entered into her Sanctuary, whom thou didst command that they should not enter into thy congregation, the heathen as such being excluded from the Temple, except where they were proselytes of righteousness. They had been excluded from the Sanctuary, but here they entered with blasphemous intent, ruthlessly trampling down and robbing just as they chose.
v. 11. All her people sigh, with the calamity of the severe famine as a further cause for groaning, they seek bread; they have given their pleasant things for meat to relieve the soul, no valuables being too precious, in this emergency, where the question is to save lives. Their groaning arises in a fervent appeal: See, O Lord, and consider, for I am become vile, an object of wretchedness. The first step of true repentance is a full and unequivocal acknowledgment of one’s own sinfulness and a corresponding free confession of it to the Lord.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 13, 15, 16, 18, 20, 21 General Information:
General Information:
Various poetic forms are used throughout this book. (See Poetry and Parallelism and Metaphor)
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is now sitting all alone
This speaks of the city of Jerusalem being empty, as if it were a woman who was sitting alone. AT: "is now empty" (See: Metaphor)
She
The writer of Lamentations writes about the city of Jerusalem as if it were a woman. (See: Personification)
like a widow
This speaks of Jerusalem as being without protection, as if it were a vulnerable widow. (See: Simile)
She was a princess among the nations
This speaks of Jerusalem being honored as if it were a princess. AT: "She was like a princess among the nations" (See: Metaphor)
forced into slavery
"forced to become a slave." This can be stated in active form. AT: "but she is now a slave" (See: Active or Passive)
She weeps and wails ... and her tears cover her cheeks
The author describes Jerusalem as having emotions like a human being. The city also stands for her inhabitants. AT: "Those who live in her weep and wail ... and their tears cover their cheeks" (See: Personification and Metonymy)
weeps and wails
The word "wails" refers to the sounds that a person makes when they "weep" loudly. AT: "weeps loudly" (See: Doublet)
None of her lovers comfort her. All her friends have betrayed her
This speaks of the people groups that had been faithful to Jerusalem betraying Jerusalem, as if the people groups were Jerusalem's lovers and friends. (See: Metaphor)
translationWords
people group
nation
prince
servant
lover
comfort
betray
adversary
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, 13, 14, 15, 19, 20, 21 1:1-22 Chapter 1 mourns the destruction and desolation of…
1:1-22 Chapter 1 mourns the destruction and desolation of Jerusalem, recognizing that this was God’s well-deserved judgment on Israel’s sins.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.