“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.
Parallel Translations
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“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.
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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.
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'Let it not come unto you, all ye that pass by! Behold, and see if there be any pain like unto my pain, which is done unto me, wherewith the LORD hath afflicted me in the day of His fierce anger.
Cross-references (9)
Passages linked to Lamentations 1:12 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- Daniel 9:12 He has confirmed his words, which he spoke against us, and against our judges who judged us, by bringing on us a great evil; for under the whole sky, such has not been done as has been done to Jerusalem.
- Luke 23:28-31 But Jesus, turning to them, said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, don’t weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For behold, the days are coming in which they will say, ‘Blessed are the barren, the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never nursed.’ Then they will begin to tell the mountains, ‘Fall on us!’ and tell the hills, ‘Cover us.’ For if they do these things in the green tree, what will be done in the dry?”
- Jeremiah 18:16 to make their land an astonishment, and a perpetual hissing. Everyone who passes by it will be astonished, and shake his head.
- Jeremiah 30:24 The fierce anger of Yahweh will not return until he has accomplished, and until he has performed the intentions of his heart. In the latter days you will understand it.”
- Lamentations 4:6-11 For the iniquity of the daughter of my people is greater than the sin of Sodom, which was overthrown as in a moment. No hands were laid on her. Her nobles were purer than snow. They were whiter than milk. They were more ruddy in body than rubies. Their polishing was like sapphire. Their appearance is blacker than a coal. They are not known in the streets. Their skin clings to their bones. It is withered. It has become like a stick. Those who are killed with the sword are better than those who are killed with hunger; For these pine away, stricken through, for lack of the fruits of the field. The hands of the pitiful women have boiled their own children. They were their food in the destruction of the daughter of my people. Yahweh has accomplished his wrath. He has poured out his fierce anger. He has kindled a fire in Zion, which has devoured its foundations.
- Isaiah 13:13 Therefore I will make the heavens tremble, and the earth will be shaken out of its place in Yahweh of Armies’ wrath, and in the day of his fierce anger.
- Lamentations 2:13 What shall I testify to you? What shall I liken to you, daughter of Jerusalem? What shall I compare to you, that I may comfort you, virgin daughter of Zion? For your breach is as big as the sea. Who can heal you?
- Matthew 24:21 for then there will be great suffering, such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now, no, nor ever will be.
- Luke 21:22-23 For these are days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled. Woe to those who are pregnant and to those who nurse infants in those days! For there will be great distress in the land, and wrath to this people.
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this verse (19 sources)
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John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain The beginning of the verse is variously explained. Some…
The beginning of the verse is variously explained. Some read it interrogatively, “Is it nothing to you who pass by the way?” Others more simply, “I see that I am not cared for by you; to you my sorrow is nothing.” Some again read thus, “Let it not be a sorrow to you;” and others, “Let not sorrow be upon you,” that is, let not what I have happen to you; so that it is a prayer expressive of benevolence.
What I prefer is the interrogation, Is it nothing to you who pass by the way? for the letter, ה, He, the note of a question, is often omitted. But were it read affirmatively, the meaning would not be unsuitable: “It does not concern you who pass by,” as though Jerusalem, in its lamentations, felt grieved that all those who passed by were not touched either with pity or with sorrow.
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But she addressed those who passed by, that she might more fully set forth the greatness of her calamity. For. had she directed her words to neighbors alone, there would not have been so much force in them; but when she spoke to strangers, she thus shewed that her calamity was so great, that it ought to have roused the sympathy of men from the remotest parts, even while on their journey. And she asks them to look and see. The order is inverted, for she said before, “See, Jehovah, and look.” Then Jerusalem asked God, first to turn his eyes to see her calamities, and then attentively to notice them: but now for another purpose she says, look ye and see, that is, consider how evident is my calamity, which otherwise might have been in a measure hidden from you. Look ye, she says, is there a sorrow like my sorrow? she adds, which is come to me: some render the words actively, “which Jehovah has brought on me;” but the other version is more correct, for it is more literal. Jerome’s rendering is, “who has gleaned me;” and צעלל olal, means sometimes to glean, nor do I wish to reject this interpretation. But what follows is incorrectly rendered, as in a former instance, by Jerome, “of which Jehovah has spoken:” for he derived the verb, as before stated, from הגה, ege; but it comes from יגה, ige, as it is evident from the letter ו, vau, being inserted. There is then no doubt but that the Church intimates that God was the author of that sorrow which she deplored.
And it is necessary to know this, lest men should be carried away into excesses in their mourning, as it frequently happens. For the majesty of God imposes a check, when we perceive that we have to do with him. Simple and bare knowledge of this is not, indeed, sufficient, for, as it has been said, the ungodly, while they know that their sorrows proceed from God, yet murmur against him: but it is nevertheless the beginning of patience and meekness when we have a regard to God. It was, then, for this reason that Jerusalem said that she had been afflicted by God.
And it is added, In the day of the indignation of his wrath. Here the Prophet wished to express the grievousness of God’s vengeance, by mentioning the indignation of wrath. Some render חרום, cherun, “fury;” but as the word “fury” is too harsh, the word “indignation,” or great heat (excandescentia) is not unsuitable. We must, however, bear in mind the design of the Prophet, which was to shew that God’s vengeance had been so dreadful, as though his wrath had all been on a flame against Jerusalem: and this is more fully confirmed in the following verse, —
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 Thus Jerusalem lamenteth moving others to pity her and…
Thus Jerusalem lamenteth moving others to pity her and to learn by her example.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain Lam 1:12 [Is it] nothing to you, all ye…
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, wherewith the LORD hath afflicted [me] in the day of his fierce anger.
Ver. 12. Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by the way?] Siste viator. Stay, passenger, hast not a tear to shed? &c. Sanchez thinks that this is Jerusalem’s epitaph, made by herself, as to be engraven on her tomb to move compassion. The Septuagint have οι προς υμας, Hei, id vos subaudite, clamo, Woe and alas, cry I to you; make ye nothing of my misery? I wish the like may never befall you - Ne sit super vos - for so some render the words.
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Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow.] What we see in the water seemeth greater than it is, so in the waters of Marah. See Lam 3:1. It is sure that "no temptation, taketh us but what is human, or common to man." {1Co 10:13} But what did the man Christ Jesus suffer! All our sufferings are but chips of his cross, saith Luther, not worthy to be named in the same day, &c.
Wherein the Lord hath afflicted me.] This was yet no small allay to her grief, that God had done it. The Stoics, who held that all came by destiny, were noted for their patience, or rather tolerance, and equanimity in all conditions.
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 The prophet speaks in the name of the Jewish…
The prophet speaks in the name of the Jewish church, as a woman in misery sitting by the way-side, and calling to passengers that came by to have compassion on her, suggesting to them that her affliction was no ordinary affliction, nor the effect of a common and ordinary providence, but the effect of the Lord’s fierce anger, a most severe punishment.
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 The complaints here are, for substance, the same with…
The complaints here are, for substance, the same with those in the foregoing part of the chapter; but in these verses the prophet, in the name of the lamenting church, does more particularly acknowledge the hand of god in these calamities, and the righteousness of his hand.
I. The church in distress here magnifies her affliction, and yet no more than there was cause for; her groaning was not heavier than her strokes. She appeals to all spectators: See if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, Lam 1:12. This might perhaps be truly said of Jerusalem's griefs; but we are apt to apply it too sensibly to ourselves when we are in trouble and more than there is cause for. Because we feel most from our own burden, and cannot be persuaded to reconcile ourselves to it, we are ready to cry out, Surely never was sorrow like unto our sorrow; whereas, if our troubles were to be thrown into a common stock with those of others, and then an equal dividend made, share and share alike, rather than stand to that we should each of us say, "Pray, give me my own again."
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II. She here looks beyond the instruments to the author of her troubles, and owns them all to be directed, determined, and disposed of by him: "It is the Lord that has afflicted me, and he has afflicted me because he is angry with me; the greatness of his displeasure may be measured by the greatness of my distress; it is in the day of his fierce anger," Lam 1:12. Afflictions cannot but be very much our griefs when we see them arising from God's wrath; so the church does here. 1. She is as one in a fever, and the fever is of God's sending: "He has sent fire into my bones (Lam 1:13), a preternatural heat, which prevails against them, so that they are burnt like a hearth (Psa 102:3), pained and wasted, and dried away." 2. She is as one in a net, which the more he struggles to get out of the more he is entangled in, and this net is of God's spreading. "The enemies could not have succeeded in their stratagems had not God spread a net for my feet." 3. She is as one in a wilderness, whose way is embarrassed, solitary, and tiresome: "He has turned me back, that I cannot go on, has made me desolate, that I have nothing to support me with, but am faint all the day." 4. She is as one in a yoke, not yoked for service, but for penance, tied neck and heels together (Lam 1:14): The yoke of my transgressions is bound by his hand. Observe, We never are entangled in any yoke but what is framed out of our own transgressions. The sinner is holden with the cords of his own sins, Pro 5:22. The yoke of Christ's commands is an easy yoke (Mat 11:30), but that of our own transgressions is a heavy one. God is said to bind this yoke when he charges guilt upon us, and brings us into those inward and outward troubles which our sins have deserved; when conscience, as his deputy, binds us over to his judgment, then the yoke is bound and wreathed by the hand of his justice, and nothing but the hand of his pardoning mercy will unbind it. 5. She is as one in the dirt, and he it is that has trodden under foot all her mighty men, that has disabled them to stand, and overthrown them by one judgment after another, and so left them to be trampled upon by their proud conquerors, Lam 1:15. Nay, she is as one in a wine-press, not only trodden down, but trodden to pieces, crushed as grapes in the wine-press of God's wrath, and her blood pressed out as wine, and it is God that has thus trodden the virgin, the daughter of Judah. 6. She is in the hand of her enemies, and it is the Lord that has delivered her into their hands (Lam 1:14): He has made my strength to fall, so that I am not able to make head against them; nay, not only not able to rise up against them, but not able to rise up from them, and then he has delivered me into their hands; nay (Lam 1:15), he has called an assembly against me, to crush my young men, and such an assembly as it is in vain to think of opposing; and again (Lam 1:17), The Lord has commanded concerning Jacob that his adversaries should be round about him. He that has many a time commanded deliverances for Jacob (Psa 44:4) now commands an invasion against Jacob, because Jacob has disobeyed the commands of his law.
III. She justly demands a share in the pity and compassion of those that were the spectators of her misery (Lam 1:12): "Is it nothing to you, all you that pass by? Can you look upon me without concern? What! are your hearts as adamants and your eyes as marbles, that you cannot bestow upon me one compassionate thought, or look, or tear? Are not you also in the body? Is it nothing to you that your neighbor's house is on fire?" There are those to whom Zion's sorrows and ruins are nothing; they are not grieved for the affliction of Joseph. How pathetically does she beg their compassion! (Lam 1:18): "Hear, I pray you, all people, and behold my sorrow: hear my complaints, and see what cause I have for them." This is a request like that of Job (Job 19:21), Have pity upon me, have pity upon me, O you my friends! It helps to make a burden sit lighter if our friends sympathize with us, and mingle their tears with ours, for this is an evidence that, though we are in affliction, we are not in contempt, which is commonly as much dreaded in an affliction as any thing.
IV. She justifies her own grief, though it was very extreme, for these calamities (Lam 1:16): "For these things I weep, I weep in the night (Lam 1:2), when none sees; my eye, my eye, runs down with water." Note, This world is a vale of tears to the people of God. Zion's sons are often Zion's mourners. Zion spreads forth her hands (Lam 1:17), which is here an expression rather of despair than of desire; she flings out her hands as giving up all for gone. Let us see how she accounts for this passionate grief. 1. Her God has withdrawn from her; and Micah, that had but gods of gold, when they were stolen from him cried out, What have I more? And what is it that you say unto me? What aileth thee? The church here grieves excessively; for, says she, the comforter that should relieve my soul is far from me. God is the comforter; he used to be so to her; he only can administer effectual comforts; it is his word that speaks them; it is his Spirit that speaks them to us. His are strong consolations, able to relieve the soul, to bring it back when it is gone, and we cannot of ourselves fetch it again; but now he has departed in displeasure, he is far from me, and beholds me afar off. Note, It is no marvel that the souls of the saints faint away, when God, who is the only Comforter that can relieve them, keeps at a distance. 2. Her children are removed from her, and are in no capacity to help her: it is for them that she weeps, as Rachel for hers, because they were not, and therefore she refuses to be comforted. Her children were desolate, because the enemy prevailed against them; there is none of all her sons to take her by the hand (Isa 51:18); they cannot help themselves, and how should they help her? Both the damsels and the youths, that were her joy and hope, have gone into captivity, Lam 1:18. It is said of the Chaldeans that they had no compassion upon young men nor maidens, not on the fair sex, not on the blooming age, Ch2 36:17. 3. Her friends failed her; some would not and others could not give her any relief. She spread forth her hands, as begging relief, but there is none to comfort her (Lam 1:17), none that can do it, none that cares to do it; she called for her lovers, and, to engage them to help her, called them her lovers, but they deceived her (Lam 1:19), they proved like the brooks in summer to the thirsty traveller, Job 6:15. Note, Those creatures that we set our hearts upon and raise our expectations from we are commonly deceived and disappointed in. Her idols were her lovers. Egypt and Assyria were her confidants. But they deceived her. Those that made court to her in her prosperity were shy of her, and strange to her, in her adversity. Happy are those that have made God their friend and keep themselves in his love, for he will not deceive them! 4. Those whose office it was to guide her were disabled from doing her any service. The priests and the elders, that should have appeared at the head of affairs, died for hunger (Lam 1:19); they gave up the ghost, or were ready to expire, while they sought their meat; they went a begging for bread to keep them alive. The famine is sore indeed in the land when there is no bread to the wise, when priests and elders are starved. The priests and elders should have been her comforters; but how should they comfort others when they themselves were comfortless? "They have heard that I sigh, which should have summoned them to my assistance; but there is none to comfort me. Lover and friend hast thou put far from me." 5. Her enemies were too hard for her, and they insulted over her; they have prevailed, Lam 1:16. Abroad the sword bereaves and slays all that comes in its way, and at home all provisions are cut off by the besiegers, so that there is as death, that is, famine, which is as bad as the pestilence, or worse - the sword without and terror within, Deu 32:25. And as the enemies, that were the instruments of the calamity, were very barbarous, so were those that were the standers by, the Edomites and Ammonites, that bore ill will to Israel: They have heard of my trouble, and are glad that thou hast done it (Lam 1:21); they rejoice in the trouble itself; they rejoice that it is God's doing; it pleases them to find that God and his Israel have fallen out, and they act accordingly with a great deal of strangeness towards them. Jerusalem is as a menstruous woman among them, that they are afraid of touching and are shy of, Lam 1:17. Upon all these accounts it cannot be wondered at, nor can she be blamed, that her sighs are many, in grieving for what is, and that her heart is faint (Lam 1:22) in fear of what is yet further likely to be.
V. She justifies God in all that is brought upon her, acknowledging that her sins had deserved these severe chastenings. The yoke that lies so heavily, and binds so hard, is the yoke of her transgressions, Lam 1:14. The fetters we are held in are of our own making, and it is with our own rod that we are beaten. When the church had spoken here as if she thought the Lord severe she does well to correct herself, at least to explain herself, but acknowledging (Lam 1:18), The Lord is righteous. He does us no wrong in dealing thus with us, nor can we charge him with any injustice in it; how unrighteous soever men are, we are sure that the Lord is righteous, and manifests his justice, though they contradict all the laws of theirs. Note, Whatever our troubles are, which God is pleased to inflict upon us, we must own that therein he is righteous; we understand neither him nor ourselves if we do not own it, Ch2 12:6. she owns the equity of God's actions, but owning the iniquity of her own: I have rebelled against his commandments (Lam 1:18); and again (Lam 1:20), I have grievously rebelled. We cannot speak ill enough of sin, and we must always speak worst of our own sin, must call it rebellion, grievous rebellion; and very grievous sins is to all true penitents. It is this that lies more heavily upon her than the afflictions she was under: "My bowels are troubled; they work within me as the troubled sea; my heart is turned within me, is restless, is turned upside down; for I have grievously rebelled." Note, Sorrow for our sin must be great sorrow and must affect the soul.
VI. She appeals both to the mercy and to the justice of God in her present case. 1. She appeals to the mercy of God concerning her own sorrows, which had made her the proper object of his compassion (Lam 1:20): "Behold, O Lord! for I am in distress; take cognizance of my case, and take such order for my relief as thou pleasest." Note, It is matter of comfort to us that the troubles which oppress our spirits are open before God's eye. 2. She appeals to the justice of God concerning the injuries that her enemies did her (Lam 1:21, Lam 1:22): "Thou wilt bring the day that thou hast called, the day that is fixed in the counsels of God and published in the prophecies, when my enemies, that now prosecute me, shall be made like unto me, when the cup of trembling, now put into my hands, shall be put into theirs." It may be read as a prayer, "Let the day appointed come," and so it goes on, "Let their wickedness come before thee, let it come to be remembered, let it come to be reckoned for; take vengeance on them for all the wrongs they have done to me (Psa 109:14, Psa 109:15); hasten the time when thou wilt do to them for their transgressions as thou hast done to me for mine." This prayer amounts to a protestation against all thoughts of a coalition with them, and to a prediction of their ruin, subscribing to that which God had in his word spoken of it. Note, Our prayers may and must agree with God's word; and what day God has here called we are to call for, and no other. And though we are bound in charity to forgive our enemies, and to pray for them, yet we may in faith pray for the accomplishment of that which God has spoken against his and his church's enemies, that will not repent to give him glory.
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 Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass…
Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by?.... O ye strangers and travellers that pass by, and see my distress, does it not at all concern you? does it not in the least affect you? can you look upon it, and have no commiseration? or is there nothing to be learned from hence by you, that may be instructive and useful to you? Some consider the words as deprecating; may the like things never befall you that have befallen me, O ye passengers; be ye who ye will; I can never wish the greatest stranger, much less a friend, to suffer what I do; nay, I pray God they never may: others, as adjuring. So the Targum,
"I adjure you, all ye that pass by the way, turn aside hither:''
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or as calling; so the words may be rendered, "O all ye that pass by" (y); and Sanctius thinks it is an allusion to epitaphs on tombs, which call upon travellers to stop and read the character of the deceased; what were his troubles, and how he came to his end; and so what follows is Jerusalem's epitaph:
behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is done unto me; as it is natural for everyone to think their own affliction greatest, and that none have that occasion of grief and sorrow as they have; though there is no affliction befalls us but what is common unto men; and when it comes to be compared with others, perhaps will appear lighter than theirs:
wherewith the Lord hath afflicted me, in the day of his fierce anger; signifying, that her affliction was not a common one; it was not from the hand of man only, but from the hand of God; and not in the ordinary way of his providence; but as the effect of his wrath and fury, in all the fierceness of it.
(y) "O vos omnes", V. L.
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 Is it nothing - The prophet speaks in the…
Is it nothing - The prophet speaks in the name of the Jewish church.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain Verse 12. Is it nothing to you, all ye…
Verse 12. Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by?] The desolations and distress brought upon this city and its inhabitants had scarcely any parallel. Excessive abuse of God's accumulated mercies calls for singular and exemplary punishment.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain Lam 1:12. Is it nothing to you? &c. —…
Lam 1:12. Is it nothing to you? &c. — The Vulgate reads this clause without an interrogation, thus: O vos omnes qui transitis per viam attendite, videte, &c. O all ye, who pass by the way, observe, see, &c. Lowth also and Blaney prefer reading it in a similar way; the former thus: O all ye that pass by; or, O! I appeal to all you that pass by: and the latter, O that among you, all ye that pass by the way, ye would look and see, &c. Our translation, however, is more agreeable to the Hebrew, and certainly more expressive and emphatical. The prophet speaks in the name of Jerusalem, or of the Jewish Church, still represented as a woman in misery, sitting by the way-side, and calling to travellers that passed by to have compassion on her, suggesting to them that hers was no ordinary affliction, nor the visitation of a common and ordinary providence, but the effect of the Lord’s fierce anger, a most severe though just chastisement. The intention of the passage is to show that the calamities brought on the Jews, as the punishment of their idolatries and other crimes, ought to be observed and maturely considered by people of all nations, that from their miseries they might learn how dangerous it was to provoke the God of Israel by such practices; which he would not overlook in any people, not even in those that stood in the nearest relation to him, but would assuredly punish them: and to signify to the Babylonians themselves in what danger they stood by despising and setting at naught this only living and true God. But the prophet does not address them by name, nor speak more pointedly, lest he should irritate them still more against his already too miserable countrymen. “These words are often quoted in speaking of our Lord’s sufferings, and they are capable of a striking accommodation thereto: but it should be recollected that this is only an accommodation, and not the real meaning of the sacred writer.” — Mr. Scott: who adds, “The address is so exquisitely pathetical, that no comment can possibly do justice to it.”
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 The lamentation of the city, personified as a woman…
The lamentation of the city, personified as a woman in grief over her fate.
Lam 1:13
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It prevaileth - Or, hath subdued.
He hath turned me back - Judaea, like a hunted animal, endeavors to escape, but finds every outlet blocked by nets, and recoils from them with terror and a sense of utter hopelessness.
Lam 1:14
Bound by his hand - As the plowman binds the yoke upon the neck of oxen, so God compels Judah to bear the punishment of her sins.
They are wreathed, and ... - Or, they are knotted together, “they come up” etc. Judah’s sins are like the cords by which the pieces of the yoke are fastened together Jer 27:2; they are knotted and twined like a bunch upon the neck, and bind the yoke around it so securely that it is impossible for her to shake it off.
He hath made ... - Or, it hath made “my strength” to stumble. The yoke of punishment thus imposed and securely fastened, bows down her strength by its weight, and makes her totter beneath it.
The Lord - The third distich of the verse begins here, and with it a new turn of the lamentation. The title Adonai (properly, my Lord) is in the Lamentations used by itself in fourteen places, while the name Yahweh is less prominent; as if in their punishment the people felt the lordship of the Deity more, and His covenant-love to them less.
Lam 1:15
The Lord hath trodden under foot - Or, אדני 'ădonāy has made contemptible (i. e. put into the balance, made to go up as the lighter weight, and so made despicable) “my war-horses” (put metaphorically for heroes).
In the midst of me - They had not fallen gloriously in the battlefield, but remained ignominiously in the city.
Assembly - Or, “a solemn feast;” the word especially used of the great festivals Lev 23:2. אדני 'ădonāy has proclaimed a festival, not for me, but against me.
The Lord hath trodden ... - Or, “אדני 'ădonāy hath trodden the winepress for the virgin daughter of Judah.” See Jer 51:14 note. By slaying Judah’s young men in battle, God is trampling for her the winepress of His indignation.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain The pathetic appeal of Jerusalem, not only to her…
The pathetic appeal of Jerusalem, not only to her neighbors, but even to the strangers "passing by," as her sorrow is such as should excite the compassion even of those unconnected with her. She here prefigures Christ, whom the language is prophetically made to suit, more than Jerusalem. Compare Israel, that is, Messiah, Isa 49:3. Compare with "pass by," Mat 27:39; Mar 15:29. As to Jerusalem, Dan 9:12. M AURER, from the Arabic idiom, translates, "do not go off on your way," that is, stop, whoever ye are that pass by. English Version is simpler.
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 LAMENTATIONS IN VIEW OF PRESENT MISERIES, Lam_1:12-22.
LAMENTATIONS IN VIEW OF PRESENT MISERIES, Lam_1:12-22.
12. Thus far the misery of Jerusalem is predicted. With consummate art the writer now makes us hear the lamentations of this widow sitting in the solitude of her deep and bitter grief. Is it nothing to you, etc. — Literally, not to you, all ye wayfarers. The fact that the Hebrew often dispenses with the use of the interrogative particle makes this passage capable of some variety of interpretation, and this is reflected in the Versions. The Vulgate, Targum, and probably the Septuagint, depart from the Masoretic pointing, and render substantially, “I adjure you, all ye that pass by, turn aside and see, etc. But the rendering of the English Version is by all means to be preferred. The pathos of this verse is touching indeed.
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 12. Is it nothing to you] This rendering is…
12. Is it nothing to you] This rendering is precarious. Löhr considers the original commencement of the v. to be irrevocably lost. The lit. rendering of MT. is “not to you, etc.” So the Syr., while the LXX fail to give any clear indication of their Heb. text. The Heb. letter (Lamed) which commences the v. is written small, apparently as an indication that a corruption is suspected. Budde’s translation (obtained by a slight difference in the punctuation of the first word in MT.), viz. “O ye that pass by, look on me and see,” is perhaps the best.
12–22. See introductory note. Zion, as at the end of the previous v., now speaks.
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 (12) Is it nothing to you . . .—Literally,…
(12) Is it nothing to you . . .—Literally, Not to you, ye passers by, which the Authorised version takes as a question. The LXX. and Vulg., however, seem to have taken the adverb as an interjection: “O all ye that pass by . . .” And some interpreters have taken the negative but not the question, “Nor to you . . . (do I say this).” The Authorised version, however, has most to commend it. What the mourning city felt most keenly was that her unparalleled sufferings were met with an unparalleled indifference.
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 Vers. 12-22. The same subject; Jerusalem the speaker.
Vers. 12-22. The same subject; Jerusalem the speaker.
Is it nothing to you? The Hebrew is very difficult, and the translation therefore insecure. Keil, however, adopts a rendering very near that of the Authorized Version "(Cometh it) not unto you?" i.e. "Do ye not heed it?" Ewald supposes the phrase to be abbreviated from "Do I not call unto you?"; (comp. Pro_8:4) but this would be a very harsh construction. The Septuagint has Oi pro ; the Targum, "I adjure you;" the Vulgate, O vos; all apparently pronouncing lu instead of lo. At any rate, the object of the words is to heighten the force of the appeal which follows.
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Sorrow unequalled, yet unheeded.
Jerusalem sits alone in her unparalleled grief, and the bitterness of it is intensified by the pitiless disregard of spectators. Bedouins of the desert pitch their tents in sight of her ruined towers, and merchants passing north and south see her deserted streets, and yet all gaze unmoved at the heartrending picture.
I THE SORROW WAS UNEQUALLED.
1. Never was city more favoured than Jerusalem. She was the chosen scat of Divine grace. In her temple stood God"s mercy seat. High privileges of revelation and spiritual blessings descended on her sons and daughters. The loss of these privileges brought a distress that men who had never enjoyed them could not feel. They who have tasted of the heavenly gift will find the outer darkness more terrible than those who have had no anticipation of the joys of the wedding feast. Apostate Christians will suffer agonies which the heathen and godless will not have to endure.
2. Never was city more loved than Jerusalem. This city of sacred memories and tender associations was dear to the hearts of her inhabitants. Her overthrow brought a grief that was proportionate to this love. The most fatal wound is one aimed at the heart. We are pained most cruelly when we are wounded in affection. What grief can be greater than that of parents for ruined children, and especially when the parents" sin has been the children"s temptation?
3. Never was city more visited by Divine wrath than Jerusalem. Here is the secret of her deepest trouble. She is afflicted in the day of God"s fierce anger. God is most angry with her because she has sinned against most light, most ungratefully, and most rebelliously.
II THE SORROW WAS UNHEEDED. It would be thought that such unequalled grief would arrest the attention of the most hasty and strike pity into the hardest. But no; it seems that all will pass by with cold and stony indifference.
1. Note the causes of this indifference.
(1) Callousness. Men look with the eye who do not feel with the heart. The very sight of misery often encountered hardens men"s sensibilities.
(2) Selfishness. People are self-absorbed. Sympathy requires effort, attention, self-renunciation. It costs more than the selfish will give.
(3) Contempt. The worst trouble of Jerusalem was her humiliation. But humiliation leads to contempt. Now, it is hard to pity those who are despised.
2. Consider the exceptions to this indifference.
(1) Good Samaritans. Thank God, such exist, though no synagogue honours them. One such is worth scores of priests and Levites who "pass by on the other side.
(2) The Divine compassion. The sufferer looks down and looks around him and sees no pity. If he will look up, he will see that the very Being who smote in righteous wrath is waiting to heal in merciful forgiveness. (Hos_6:1)
In conclusion, a parallel may be drawn between the sorrow of Christ and that of Jerusalem. The text cannot be understood to be written of our Lord. But it may illustrate that sorrow which far surpassed all other human grief. To how many is it as nothing! They pass the cross as Arabs and Phoenicians passed Jerusalem in her ruin. Yet, is it nothing to them?
(1) Their sins caused Christ"s sorrow.
(2) Christ"s sorrow can save their souls.
(3) Christ"s sorrow calls, not for pity, but for gratitude and faith.
Unparalleled woe.
The prophecy here rises into poetry. The captured and afflicted city is personified. Like a woman bereaved and desolate and lonely, bewailing her misfortunes, and pouring out the anguish of her heart, Jerusalem sits in her solitary desolation and contempt, and calls upon bystanders to remark her sad condition, and to offer their sympathy to unequalled anguish..
I THE CONSCIOUSNESS SORROW, DESOLATION, AND SHAME. How extreme is the distress and humiliation here depicted is apparent from the fact that this language has been attributed to our Divine Saviour when hanging upon the cross of Calvary. If a city never endured sorrow like that of Jerusalem, certainly no human being ever experienced agonies so piercing as those which the Captain of our salvation willingly bore for our sake when he gave his life a ransom for many. "All ye that pass by, To the Saviour draw nigh; To you is it nothing that Jesus should die? For sins not his own He died to atone; Was pain or was sorrow like his ever known?
II THE ADMISSION THAT AFFLICTION IS OF DIVINE APPOINTMENT, THAT IT IS CHASTISEMENT. When Jerusalem came to herself she could not fail to recognize a Divine hand in the miseries which befell her. The scourge was the army of the Chaldeans, but the hand was the righteous and retributive hand of the Eternal. It is too common for those who are in trouble to murmur against Providence, to exclaim against the injustice of providential appointments. Yet true wisdom points out that the path of submission and resignation is the right path. When once the mind is brought to acknowledge, "It is the Lord!" there is a prospect of spiritual improvement.
III THE CRY FOR SYMPATHY. By a striking figure of speech, Jerusalem is presented as calling upon surrounding nations for interest and compassion. "Is it nothing to you? ... Behold, and see!" Human sympathy is welcome in seasons of sorrow, Yet true help and deliverance must be from God, and from God alone, It is better to call upon the Lord than to call upon man; for he is both ready to sympathize and mighty to save. T.
The observation of suffering.
I A SEEMINGLY UNREASONABLE COMPLAINT. "Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by?" So speaks Jerusalem, personified under the guise of the weeping widow, with the tears on her cheeks and the beauty faded, deprived of all her pleasant things, and left in solitude so far as her familiar supports and consolations are concerned. She sits, as it were, by the highway, and the crowd passes on, taking no notice. Why, indeed, should it take notice? The spectacle of a conquered nation and a pillaged capital was not a rare thing. The nations asked to sympathize had been through the same experience themselves. We are all prompted to say, "Surely no trouble has been like our trouble;" and yet, as our observation of human affairs enlarges, we see how human nature, in every individual instance, is made to know its extraordinary capacity for suffering. Nevertheless, the piteous appeal here is not a baseless one. The trouble of the children of Israel had not come upon them after the manner of a common nation. They were peculiar in constitution, privileges, and biscay. If only there had been eyes to see it, there was something very significant to demand attention. But the thing to be seen did not lie on the surface, nor was it to be discovered save by faculties specially illuminated. The downfall and the sufferings of Israel, as they are to be seen both in the Scriptures and subsequent history, belong to the things that are to be spiritually discerned. Therefore this complaint., while superficially it may be called unreasonable, is yet reasonable enough, if we only consider the position and mission of Israel, and the work which, even in her degradation, she has done for the world.
II THE NEED THERE IS TO MARK JEHOVAH"S SURE VISITATIONS ON THE DISOBEDIENT. This is the critical element in the appeal that widow like Jerusalem makes to the passers by: "Look at me as the greatest illustration of the certainty with which Jehovah punishes those who rebel against him." We must, of course, beware of the conclusion that suffering always means punishment; but where we can see that it is punishment we must mark it as such, so that we ourselves may be admonished and may also mare effectually admonish others. Here was a nation that in obedience might have rested confidently and happily in Jehovah"s promise. The power behind that promise was more than all the armies of the great empires round about. But when the power was withdrawn it meant not merely suffering; the withdrawing had in it the nature of a judicial, solemn sentence from Jehovah himself. 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 Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass…
Lam_1:12-22
Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by?
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Zions appeal
1. The whole passage evidently expresses a deep yearning for sympathy. Mere strangers, roving Bedouin, any people who may chance to be passing by Jerusalem, are implored to behold her incomparable woes. The wounded animal creeps into a corner to suffer and die in secret, perhaps on account of the habit of herds, in tormenting a suffering mate. But among mankind the instinct of a sufferer is to crave sympathy, from a friend, if possible; but if such be not available, then even from a stranger. This sympathy, if it is real, would help if it could; and under all circumstances it is the reality of the sympathy that is most prized, not its issues. It should be remembered, further, that the first condition of active aid is a genuine sense of compassion, which can only be awakened by means of knowledge and the impressions which a contemplation of suffering produce. Evil is wrought not only from want of thought, but also from lack of knowledge; and good-doing is withheld for the same reason. Therefore the first requisite is to arrest attention. We are responsible for our ignorance and its consequences wherever the opportunity of knowledge is within our reach.
2. The appeal to all who pass by is most familiar to us in its later association with our Lords sufferings on the Cross. But this is not in any sense a Messianic passage; it is confined in its purpose to the miseries of Jerusalem. Of course there can be no objection to illustrating the grief and pain of the Man of Sorrows by using the classic language of an ancient lament if we note that this is only an illustration.
3. In order to impress the magnitude of her miseries on the minds of the strangers whose attention she would arrest, the city, now personified as a suppliant, describes her dreadful condition in a series of brief, pointed metaphors. Thus the imagination is excited; and the imagination is one of the roads to the heart. Let us look at the various images under which the distress of Jerusalem is here presented.
(1) It is like a fire in the bones (Lam_1:13). It burns, consumes, pains with intolerable torment; it is no skin-deep trouble, it penetrates to the very marrow.
(2) It is like a net (Lam_1:13). We see a wild creature caught in the bush, or perhaps a fugitive arrested in his flight and flung down by hidden snares at his feet. Here is the shock of surprise, the humiliation of deceit, the vexation of being thwarted. The result is a baffled, bewildered, helpless condition.
(3) It is like faintness. The desolate sufferer is ill. It is bad enough to have to bear calamities in the strength of health. Jerusalem is made sick and kept faint all the day--with a faintness that is not a momentary collapse, but a continuous condition of failure.
(4) It is like a yoke (Lam_1:14) which is wreathed upon the neck--fixed on, as with twisted withes. The poet is here more definite. The yoke is made out of the transgressions of Jerusalem. As there is nothing so invigorating as the assurance that one is suffering for a righteous cause, so there is nothing so wretchedly depressing as the consciousness of guilt.
(5) It is like a winepress (Lam_1:15). Wine is to be made, but the grapes crushed to produce it are the people who were accustomed to feast and drink of the fruits of Gods bounty in the happy days of their prosperity. So the mighty men are set at nought, their prowess counting as nothing against the brutal rush of the enemy; and the young men are crushed, their spirit and vigour failing them in the great destruction.
4. The most terrible trait in these pictures, one that is common to all of them, is the Divine origin of the troubles. Yet there is no complaint of barbarity, no idea that the Judge of all the earth is not doing right. The miserable city does not bring any railing accusation against her Lord; she takes all the blame upon herself. The grief is all the greater because there is no thought of rebellion. The daring doubts that struggle into expression in Job never obtrude themselves here to check the even flow of tears. The melancholy is profound, but comparatively calm, since it does not once give place to anger. It is natural that the succession of images of misery conceived in this spirit should be followed by a burst of tears. Zion weeps because the comforter who should refresh her soul is far away, and she is left utterly desolate (verse 16).
5. Here the supposed utterance of Jerusalem is broken for the poet to insert a description of the suppliant making her piteous appeal (verse 17). He shows us Zion spreading out her hands, that is to say, in the well-known attitude of prayer. She is comfortless, oppressed by her neighbours in accordance with the will of her God, and treated as an unclean thing; she who had despised the idolatrous Gentiles in her pride of superior sanctity has now become foul and despicable in their eyes!
6. After the poets brief interjection describing the suppliant, the personified city continues her plaintive appeal, but with a considerable enlargement of its scope. She makes the most distinct acknowledgment of the two vital elements of the case--Gods righteousness and her own rebellion (verse 18). These carry us beneath the visible scenes of trouble so graphically illustrated earlier, and fix our attention on deep seated principles. Although it cannot be said that all trouble is the direct punishment of sin, and although it is manifestly insincere to make confession of guilt one does not inwardly admit, to be firmly settled in the conviction that God is right in what He does even when it all looks most wrong, that if there is a fault it must be on mans side, is to have reached the centre of truth.
7. Enlarging the area of her appeal, no longer content to snatch at the casual pity of individual travellers on the road, Jerusalem now calls upon all the peoples--i.e., all neighbouring tribes--to hear the tale of her woes (verse 18). The appeal to the nations contains three particulars. It deplores the captivity of the virgins and young men; the treachery of allies--lovers who have been called upon for assistance, but in vain; and the awful fact that men of such consequence as the elders and priests, the very aristocracy of Jerusalem, had died of starvation after an ineffectual search for food--a lurid picture of the horrors of the siege (verses 18, 19).
8. In drawing to a close the appeal goes further, and, rising altogether above man, seeks the attention of God (verses 20-22). This is an utterance of faith where faith is tried to the uttermost. It is distinctly recognised that the calamities bewailed have been sent by God; and yet the stricken city turns to God for consolation. Not only is there no complaint against the justice of His acts; in spite of them all, He is still regarded as the greatest Friend and Helper of the victims of His wrath. This apparently paradoxical position issues in what might otherwise be a contradiction of thought. The ruin of Jerusalem is attributed to the righteous judgment of God, against which no shadow of complaint is raised; and yet God is asked to pour vengeance on the heads of the human agents of His wrath! The vengeance here sought for cannot be brought into line with Christian principles; but the poet had never heard the Sermon on the Mount. It would not have occurred to him that the spirit of revenge was not right, any more than it occurred to the writers of maledictory Psalms. There is one more point in this final appeal to God which should be noticed, because it is very characteristic of the elegy throughout. Zion bewails her friendless condition, declaring, there is none to comfort me. This is the fifth reference to the absence of a comforter (see 1:2, 9, 16, 17, 21). The idea may be merely introduced in order to accentuate the description of utter desolation. And yet when we compare the several allusions to it, the conclusion seems to be forced upon us that the poet has a more specific intention. Our thoughts instinctively turn to the Paraclete of St. Johns Gospel. (W. F. Adeney, M. A.)
A Jeremiad
I. An earnest expostulation. If there is anything in all the world that ought to interest a man, it is the death of Christ. Yet do I find men, learned men, spending year after year in sorting out butterflies, beetles, and gnats, or in making out the various orders of shells, or in digging into the earth and seeking to discover what strange creatures once floundered through the boundless mire, or swam in the vast seas. I find men occupied with things of no sort of practical moment, yet the story of God Himself is thought to be too small a trifle for intelligent minds to dwell upon it. O reason! where art thou gone? O judgment! whither art thou fled? It is strange that even the sufferings of Christ should not attract the attention of men, for generally, if we hear any sad story of the misfortunes of our fellow creatures, we are interested. How is it earth does not stretch out her hands and say, Come and tell us of the God that loved us, and came down to our low estate, and suffered for us men and for our salvation? It ought to interest us, if nothing more. Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? And should it not be more than interesting? Should it not excite our admiration? You cannot read of a man sacrificing himself for the good of his fellow creatures without feeling at once that you wish you had known that fine fellow, and you feel instinctively that you would do anything in the world to serve him if he still lives, or to help relatives left behind if he has died in a brave attempt. Is it nothing to you that Jesus should die for men? If I had no share in His blood, I think I should love Him. The life of Christ enchants me; the death of Christ binds me to His Cross. Even were I never washed in His blood, and were myself cast away into hell, if that were possible, I still feel I must admire Him for His love to others. Yea, and I must adore Him, too, for His Godlike character, His superhuman love in suffering for the sons of men. But why, why is it that such a Christ, so lovely and so admirable, is forgotten by the most of mankind, and it is nothing to them?
II. A solemn question. The Lord Jesus Christ may be represented here as bidding men see if there be any sorrow like unto His sorrow, which is done unto Him.
1. Truly the sufferings of Jesus were altogether unique; they stand alone. History or poetry can find no parallel. King of kings and Lord of lords was He, and the government was upon His shoulders, and His name was called Wonderful, the Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. All the hallelujahs of eternity rolled up at his august feet. But He was despised and rejected of men, a Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief, and we hid as it were our faces from Him; He was despised and we esteemed Him not. Never one so falsely accused. Oh! was ever grief like His! exonerated yet condemned! adjudged to be without fault, yet delivered up to His direst foes! treated as a felon, put to death as a traitor; immolated on a gibbet which bore triple testimony to His innocence by its inscription. With none to pity, no one to administer comfort, forsaken utterly, our Saviour died, with accessories of sorrow that were to be found in no other decease than that which was accomplished at Jerusalem. Still, the singularity of His death lies in another respect.
2. There was never sorrow like unto the sorrow which was done unto Christ, because all His sorrow was borne for others. His Godhead gave Him an infinite capacity, and infused a boundless degree of compensation into all the pangs He bore. You have no more idea of what Christ suffered in His soul than you have, when you take up in a shell a drop of sea-water, power to guess from that the area of the entire boundless, bottomless ocean. What Christ suffered is utterly inconceivable. Was ever grief like Thine? Needless question; needless question; all but shameful question; for were all griefs that ever were felt condensed into one, they were no more worthy to be compared therewith than the glowworms tiny lamp with the ever-blazing sun. If Christ be thus alone in suffering, what then?
3. Why, let Him stand alone in our love. High, high, set up Christ high in your heart. Love Him; you cannot match His love to you; seek at least to let your little stream run side by side of the mighty river. If Christ be thus alone in suffering, let us seek to make Him, if we can, alone in our service. I wish we had more Marys who would break the alabaster box of precious ointment upon His dear head. Oh! for a little extravagance of love, a little fanaticism of affection for Him, for He deserves ten thousand times more than the most enthusiastic devotees ever dream of rendering.
4. If He be thus so far beyond all others in His sorrow, let Him also be first and foremost in our praise. If ye have poetic minds, weave no garlands except for His dear brow. If ye be men of eloquence, speak no glowing periods except to His honour. If ye be men of wit and scholarship, oh seek to lay your classic attainments at the foot of His Cross! Come hither with all your talents, and yield them to Him who bought you with His blood. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Is it nothing to you?
The crucified Christ is still amongst us. We may even now by faith behold the Lamb of God in the very act of sacrificing Himself for the sin of the world. There are many who do not pass by the Cross on which He hangs. Come joy or sorrow, come honour or disgrace, whether others join you or whether you should be alone, in life and in death, you are resolved in penitential love and joyful obedience to dwell beneath the shadow of the Cross of Christ. But there are others who pass by. There are scorners and scoffers now, as in the times of old. All who live profligate and wicked lives; all who deliberately indulge in fleshly lusts; the licentious, the intemperate, the covetous, the proud, the revengeful; all who cherish some secret sin and will not give it up; all such pass by; for the sight of the great Example of self-sacrifice so condemns those who are resolved on a life of self-indulgence, and the sufferings He endured to save from sin so reproach those who determine to commit sin, that they cannot find any pleasure in their wickedness except as they banish Him from their thoughts; and so they pass by. It is possible that none of you may be fairly classed either with scorners or profligates. But nevertheless you may pass by Christ. Here are some in holiday attire, tripping and dancing along. Listening to the syren voice of pleasure, they wander off, some in one direction, some in another, in quest of new delights and fresh excitements. They often come within reach of the Cross, but they do not even see it, or they look at it so listlessly that it produces no effect. Others rush past, eager to grasp the phantom forms which beckon them onward and still fly before them. Here comes one bending beneath a heavy load which eagerly he increases, as ever and anon he picks up some shining bit of earth and adds it to his store. Stooping down and gazing intently on the ground, he does not see the Cross. Miserable man! Eager to multiply riches which increase your cares and which you must soon lose, you neglect the only true, the imperishable treasure, and pass by! Now approach a sorrowful company, in dark attire, their cheeks bedewed with tears, their heads bowed down with grief. Oh, why do you not look up to that great Example of suffering, that Brother in adversity? You are passing by Him who is able to remove at once the heaviest portion of your burden, and by His sympathy to wipe your tears and heal your wounds! Others approach who have often been here before. They stopped at first, and admired, and went on; but now the Cross is too familiar to attract their notice. Here come others apparently determined to remain. They are much interested in the Cross. One sits down to sketch it. Another examines the wood of which it is made. A third measures its height and thickness. It is possible to be profound theologians and eloquent preachers, and yet pass by Christ. Others approach who are too intent in contemplating themselves to consider the crucified One. Not confessing themselves to be sinners, they pass by the Saviour, as having no need of Him. At length others come who resolve not to pass by. They are arrested by the sight of that patient sufferer; they wonder, they admire, they regret their former ignorance and folly, they will amend their lives, they will abandon their sins, they will remain beside the Cross; but it shall be--tomorrow! And so they also pass by! In order to pass by Christ it is not necessary to insult. Ye who have never yet really mourned for sin and forsaken it; who are not earnestly seeking Christ and relying on Him as your only Saviour; who do not imitate His example and obey His commands; ye who are not, for His sake, crucifying the flesh, dying with Christ to sin, that you may live with Christ in holiness; whatever your external behaviour, in heart you are amongst those to whom Jesus appeals, Is it nothing to you all ye that pass by? Do not say it is nothing to you because you are not included in the favoured few for whom Christ died. He is the propitiation for the sins of the whole world, and therefore for yours! You helped to fasten Christ to the Cross. Every sin was a blow of the hammer to drive in the nails. Is this nothing to you? On the Cross God proclaims that He is ready to pardon you and receive you home as His child; and that for this He gave Jesus to die for you. Is this nothing to you? Will you refuse to give heed to the earnest appeal of Him who beseeches you to be saved? What is anything to you if not Christ? If you heard a cry of Fire, you might selfishly say, It is nothing to me. But suppose it was your own house in flames? Sinner! it is your own soul which is in jeopardy, and it is for you that Jesus dies. (Newman Hall, D. D.)
The appeal of the Saviours sorrows
There is a most striking and close parallel between the sufferings of Jerusalem here impersonated as crying, Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? and those endured by our Saviour, Jesus Christ.
1. The city that was in ruins, was, of all earths cities, the one most intimately associated with God. The suffering Saviour was the only begotten Son of God; He alone, of all living beings, could say, I and the Father are one.
2. The misery of Jerusalem consisted largely in the wrongs and insults of foes. Is this the city that men call the perfection of beauty, the joy of the whole earth? And as His enemies passed by the suffering Saviour on Calvary, they wagged their heads, and said, He saved others, etc.
3. The misfortunes of Jerusalem were greatly aggravated, because her friends dealt treacherously with her, and became her enemies. The suffering Saviour was betrayed by one disciple, denied by another, and at last they all forsook Him and fled.
4. In her sorrows, Jerusalem cried unto God who had left her, and delivered her into the hand of her enemies, The suffering Saviour too appealed to God in the profoundly awful cry, My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?
5. Jerusalem was enduring the greatest misfortunes that history records of any city in any war. The suffering Saviour bore agony that no other being could endure. Every man has to bear his own burden, but the Lord laid on Him the iniquity of us all.
I. Those who sorrow claim our special attention.
1. Because by sorrow sympathy is excited. Even those men who are most depraved are quickened to sympathise by any suffering that is placed before them in the peculiar phase they can understand. The best men will be quickened to sympathise with it in whatever form it appears. Christ was. No sort of sorrow was beneath His compassion, nor beyond the limits of HIS sympathy.
2. Because sorrow will generally teach us some lesson. The asking of Why this sorrow? How can it be destroyed? will often lead to the discovery of the profoundest and most necessary truths. Parents endure sorrow and suffering that their sons may learn lessons; neighbours, that their neighbours; nations, that surrounding nations may. But if the son will thoughtlessly pass by the sorrow of his parent; or the neighbour will pass by that of the neighbour; or the nation will pass by that of the nation--the son, the neighbour, the nation, must sorrow for themselves.
II. Of all who ever have sorrowed, Jesus Christ preeminently claims our attention.
1. He sorrowed more intensely than all others. He held Himself back from no grief, shrank from no abyss, refused no cross. Others have crowned themselves with royalty. He put the crown of sorrows upon his own brow. The solitariness of the Saviours sufferings, moreover, gives Him preeminence in grief. Others have known the creeping shadows of loneliness; He its midnight.
2. As a sorrower, He taught infinitely more important lessons than all others.
(1) The evil of sire If sin could cause that sorrow in a holy Being, what will it cause in us?
(2) Gods hatred of sin. He loved His Son, and yet He thus gave Him to bruising and to death for us.
(3) Gods love for man, and way of saving him. Comprehend Gods mercy, by comprehending Christs agony. (A. R. Thomas.)
The sufferings of Christ demand the attention of all
I. Let us, first, inquire into the true meaning of these words; and, in order to that, examine the connection in which they stand. Jerusalem is here represented as speaking, in the character of a female person, and that of a widow, bitterly lamenting her desolate condition, and calling for compassion. Whether any sorrow was like unto her sorrow at this period, we cannot determine, nor is this material. It was, undoubtedly, very great; and it was not unnatural for them to suppose it peculiar and unexampled. This is a common ease, both with bodies of people and individuals. Persons, when exercised with heavy and complicated afflictions, are very apt to suppose no sufferings equal to their own, and no sorrow like theirs. It is also very common and very natural for persons under heavy afflictions to feel it as a high aggravation that they have none to sympathise with them under their troubles, or to show any disposition to afford them relief.
1. This is a very grievous and pitiable condition for any to be in.
2. To exercise sympathy towards the afflicted is what may most reasonably be expected, and the neglect of it is highly culpable.
II. How applicable the description in the text is to the Lord Jesus Christ.
III. There are many who may be said to pass by with unconcern, as if all this was nothing to them and they had no concern in it.
1. What think yon of the great number of those who are called by the name of Christ, who never set themselves seriously to contemplate His sufferings: who never, or but seldom, attend the preaching of Christ crucified; or who, though they may sometimes hear the doctrine of the Cross, never bestow a serious thought about the ends and designs of the Saviours sufferings, or the concern which they themselves have in them?
2. And what shall we say of those persons, who even profess faith in Christ and love to His name, and attend the ordinary worship of His house with apparent decency, who yet neglect to fulfil His dying command to commemorate His sufferings and death in that peculiar ordinance, in which we have a visible representation of them, designed to perpetuate the memory of them in the world, and affect the heart with a sense of His love. (S. Palmer.)
Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto My sorrow.
Searchings of heart
The greatest natures are capable of the greatest sorrow. It is utterly inconceivable to man of how much sorrow a nature like that of Jesus is capable. What sorrow would be ours if, for a single day, we were endowed with a power of vision which enabled us to see underneath all the coverings of life, into the heart of things; if all persons were laid bare to us, and we saw the stern reality below the veneer and polish and dress and shows of things! Let us not forget that the sufferings of our Lord historically recorded, are but part of His sufferings. The apostle speaks of filling up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ. There are sorrows for the Son of Man still, for He has identified Himself with us, and become one with us. Does not His Church cause Him sorrow? Is it not like raw material, so very hard to His hand as to be almost incapable of being moulded into any shape or form of beauty? Does He not sorrow over our ignorance? Our mental dulness? Our pride of knowledge which is often worse than ignorance? Our unloveliness of spirit and unlovableness? Our hard thoughts of others? Do not these things cause Him sorrow? Again, our want of patience in doing His work? Our expecting to reap on the very day we sow? Does not our Lord sorrow over our legalism--that old Jewish spirit of slavishness to mere forms and customs which are of human device--the letter which killeth; the rigidity which knows not how to bend or adapt itself to weakness and feebleness and infirmity? Must He not sorrow over our sectarianisms--our thinking more of mere sectional names than of the real unity which underlies all these? Yea, sometimes, must not our very prayers be a source of sorrow to Him? Yes, truly, our Lord may well say, as He looks into the hearts of the members of His professing Church, Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto My sorrow. When, in a court of justice, a mans own witnesses seem to damage his cause, the ease is indeed painful And yet, our Lords deepest, profoundest, tenderest sorrow does not arise from any inconsistencies, or defects, or blunders, or ignorances, or wilfulnesses which He sees among those who believe in Him, trust Him and look to Him, many of whom do their feeble, blundering best, to serve Him. For, every man who names the name of Christ, and departs from iniquity, honours Christ. His chief sorrow is not over His Church, with all its multiplied inconsistencies, ignorances, and wilfulnesses, but over others; over you young man, to whom He has given a godly father and mother, who daily pray for you, though you hear it not, who love you with a love that, as far as a finite thing can represent an infinite thing, is like the love of God. Over you also, fathers and mothers, men and women bearing the holiest names that this world knows; into whose arms a gift has been placed than which this earth can furnish none so marvellous or wonderful--have you appreciated that gift at its true value? Have you realised that the flesh was only a platform for an immortal spirit to stand upon! Must there not be sorrow in the heart of Christ as He sees fathers and mothers treating children as though they were mere animal forms, or, at the most, mere children of this world, to be trained for this world, everything nurtured in them except that which is highest, that which is distinctive, that which makes them men? When our Lord looks from the height of His infinite knowledge upon the world of fathers and mothers, and sees how, by their example, they are bending their childrens souls away from Him, how often must His feeling be like to that expressed in these words, Is any sorrow like unto My sorrow? Does not this line of reflection touch every one of us? What sorrow greater than that of being perpetually misunderstood? And who knows this sorrow as the Son of God knows it? Have we not misunderstood Him most egregiously? Have we not thought of Him as the condemner? Yet is He the Saviour. Have we not resisted the Holy Spirits movements in our souls? Have we not almost forced ourselves into darkness? And all this has been so much of sorrow poured into the lot of the Son of Man. Yet still He broods over us, with a love that many waters cannot quench. (R. Thomas.)
Everyone disposed to think his afflictions peculiarly severe
I. The afflicted are very apt to imagine that God afflicts them too severely.
1. There are many degrees and shades of difference in those evils which may be properly called afflictions. But those who suffer lighter troubles are very apt to let their imagination have its free scope, which can easily magnify light afflictions into great and heavy ones. So that mankind commonly afflict themselves more than God afflicts them.
2. There is another way, by which the afflicted are apt to magnify their afflictions. They compare their present afflictions, not only with their past prosperity, but with the afflictions of others; which leads them to imagine that their afflictions are not only great, but singular, and such as nobody else has suffered; at least, to such a great degree.
II. This is a great and unhappy mistake.
1. None that are afflicted ever know that God lays His hand heavier upon them than upon others. Mankind are extremely apt to judge erroneously, concerning the nature and weight of their own afflictions, and the nature and weight of the afflictions which others around them suffer. They have a high estimation of the good which they see others enjoy, but a low estimation of the evil they suffer. And, on the other hand, they cherish a low idea of their own prosperity, and a high idea of their own adversity.
2. The afflicted never have any reason to imagine that God afflicts them too severely, because He never afflicts them more than they know they deserve. Every person has sinned and come short of the glory of God. Every sin deserves punishment; and it belongs to God to inflict any punishment that sin deserves.
3. The afflicted have no reason to think that God afflicts them too severely, because He never afflicts them more than they need to be afflicted. God afflicts some to draw forth the corruption of their hearts, and make them sensible that they are under the entire dominion of a carnal mind, which is opposed to His character, His law, His government, and the Gospel of His grace, and of course exposed not only to His present, but His future and everlasting displeasure. This is suited to alarm their fears, and excite them to flee from the wrath to come. God afflicts others to try their hearts, and draw forth their right affections, and give them sensible evidence of their having the spirit of adoption, and belonging to the number of His family and friends, and thereby removing their past painful doubts and fears. And He afflicts others, to give them an opportunity to display the beauties of holiness, by patience, submission, and cordial obedience in the darkest and most trying seasons.
4. The afflicted have no reason to think that God afflicts them too severely, because He never afflicts them any more than His glory requires Him to afflict them.
Improvement--
1. It is very unwise, as well as criminal, for the afflicted to brood over and aggravate the greatness of their affliction.
2. If the afflicted have no reason to think hard of God, or indulge the feeling that He corrects them too severely, then as long as they do indulge such a thought and feeling, they can receive no benefit from the afflictions they suffer.
3. If the afflicted have no reason to think that God afflicts them too severely, then they always have reason to submit to Him under His correcting hand.
4. It appears from what has been said, that men may derive more benefit from great than from light afflictions. They are suited to make deeper and better impressions on the mind.
5. It is as easy to submit to heavy as to light afflictions. As there are greater and stronger reasons to submit to heavy than to lighter evils, so these reasons render it mere easy to submit to heavy than light afflictions.
6. If men are apt to think that God afflicts them too severely, then their afflictions give them the best opportunity to know their own hearts. (N. Emmons, D. D.)
Instructive sorrows
1. The godly in all their afflictions must look unto the Lord the striker, and not respect the rod wherewith He smiteth.
2. Corrections laid upon others ought not to be neglected, but duly considered of, as the rest of Gods works.
(1) God often smiteth some to instruct others thereby.
(2) We being of one mould should take to heart the condition one of another.
3. Man is not to be proud though God do many things by him and for him that seem both strange and commendable.
4. The wicked have no cause to rejoice when they prevail against the godly, though they do so usually.
(1) They are but the Lords rods, who (without repentance) shall be cast into the fire.
(2) They do not, as they imagine, overthrow the godly and establish themselves, but the clean contrary.
5. The godly endure more trouble in this world, both inwardly and outwardly, than any other.
(1) God loveth us, and would wean us from delighting in this world.
(2) Our nature is so perverse that it will not he framed to any spiritual things without many and grievous corrections.
(3) Satan and the world do hate us, and labour continually for our destruction.
6. It is a usual thing with us, to think our own troubles more heavy and intolerable than any others suffer.
(1) We feel all the smart of our own, and do only afar off behold that which others bear.
(2) We are more discontented with our own crosses than we should, which maketh us bear them the more impatiently, and think them the more intolerable.
7. The afflictions that God layeth upon His servants are and ought to be grievous unto them for the present time (Heb_12:11).
(1) We justly have deserved them through our sins.
(2) We must be led by them to repentance, or we abuse them.
8. Though our sins do always deserve it, and our foes do daily desire, yet can no punishment befall the godly till God see it meet to lay it upon them.
9. The anger of God is hot against sin, even in His dearest servants.
(1) He is most righteous, and cannot bear with any evil.
(2) It tendeth to His great dishonour.
10. God doth not always afflict His servants, but at such special times as He seeth it meetest for them. (J. Udall.)
Good Friday
I. Some of the particulars in which our Saviours sufferings were above those of all others.
1. He endured bodily torture the most severe.
2. Jesus suffered still deeper sorrows of the soul. All that pierces our hearts with sorrow was heaped on Christ. What so grievous as the treachery of a friend? And Judas, His own familiar friend, betrayed Him. What so bitter as to be forsaken? Yet all His disciples forsook Him and fled. Mockery and scorn and reviling are more cruel than the pains of the body; and He suffered them all, though He had done no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth. Often man has much to soothe his dying moments; the eye of love watches by his pillow, and the hand of affection tries to lighten his pains. But this was denied to Jesus. When He died, malice and hatred were by, to pour fresh bitterness into His cup of death.
3. But will not God support Him? will not His Heavenly Fathers presence and consolation supply the place of all others? No: Christ is in the sinners stead; He is made sin for us, and His Fathers countenance is turned away.
II. How are we to think of what Christ has done and suffered? Why are we come together on this day, if it concerns us not? This day is our day of redemption. Hope, this day, has risen to a lost and sinful world. The things we hear and read of today are no vain story of years gone by: they are our very life. You who are passing by, as it were, in the carelessness and thoughtlessness of youth, young men and young women! you are called today to think of Jesus Christ. He speaks to you, and says, Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto My sorrow, which I have borne for you. It is for your redemption. He will count all His sorrows as lightly borne, if you will let Him save your souls alive. Go to Him now in the first and best of your days. Give them to God, and not to sin; and so will He be with you in all your journey through this evil world, so shall you enjoy true peace of conscience. You who are passing by in manhood! to you also Jesus speaks. What are His sorrows to you? Do you find time and leisure to think of Him amidst the business, the labour, the burdens of life? Do you know anything of the power of His Cross? Has it led you to hate sin? Are you become new creatures in Christ Jesus? Do you pray for His Spirit to lead and sanctify you? You who are old, on the brink of the grave and of eternity! have you ever listened to the Saviours call? Have you believed upon His name? How has your faith been shown? Has it appeared in a life devoted to His service, or have your years been spent in deadness to God? You who are living in the practice and love of any known sin, in profaneness, in the lusts of the flesh, in general carelessness about religion, trample not under your feet the precious blood as on this day shed. Oh, may you seek Him while He may be found, and call upon Him while He is near. Christian! is the death of Christ nothing to you? Nay; it is all in all. It is your hope, your life, the source of pardon and of peace. What is the voice that speaks to you from the Cross of Christ? It bids you die wholly unto sin, rise more truly unto righteousness. (E. Blencowe, M. A.)
Sorrow seen in its true light
Everybody is so sorry for me except myself! These are the words of Frances Ridley Havergal, that sweet singing spirit who dragged about through many years a weary, fragile, pain-ridden body. Everybody poured their sympathy upon her, and yet she half resented it. What is the secret of her triumph? She gives it us in one of the letters she wrote to her friends: I see my pain in the light of Calvary. Everything depends upon the light in which we view things. There are objects in the material world which, seen in certain lights, are visions of glory. Deprived of that revealing light, they are grey and commonplace. The Screes at Wastwater, looked at in dull light, are only vast slopes of common pebble and common clay, but when the sunlight falls upon them they shine resplendent with the varied colours of a pigeons neck. We must set our things in the right light. Frances Havergal set her pain in the light of Calvary, and so could almost welcome it. I remember another of her phrases, in which she said she never understood the meaning of the apostles words, In His own body, until she was in great pain herself, and then it seemed as though a new page of her Masters love had been unfolded to her. Bring your common drudgery, your dull duties, your oommonplace tasks, your heavy, sullen griefs, into the light of the Saviour s sacrifice, and they will glow and burn with new and unexpected glory. In Thy light shall we see light. (Hartley Aspen.)
Our sorrows rightly estimated
Wilt we see in the water seemeth greater than at is, so is the waters Marah. All our sufferings, saith Luther, are but chips of His Cross, not worthy to ye names in the same day. (J. Trapp.)
On the Passion of our Saviour
I. The greatness of our Saviours sufferings.
II. The interest that we have in our Saviours sufferings.
1. We were the occasion of them.
2. Their benefits redound unto us (Col_1:14; Heb_10:19-20; Rom_3:15; Heb_10:20).
III. The regard and consideration we should bestow on them. Fix the eyes of your mind, and call up your most serious attention; reach hither the hand of your faith, and thrust it into your Saviours side; put your fingers into the print of the nails; lay to heart all the passages of His lamentable story; and this cannot but melt your heart, unless it be harder than the rocks, and dealer than the bodies in the graves. (H. Scougal, 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 IN the latter part of the second elegy Jerusalem…
ZIONS APPEAL
Lam_1:12-22
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IN the latter part of the second elegy Jerusalem appears as the speaker, appealing for sympathy, first to stray, passing travellers, then to the larger circle of the surrounding nations, and lastly to her God. Already the suffering city has spoken once or twice in brief interruptions of the poets descriptions of her miseries, and now she seems to be too impatient to permit herself to be represented any longer even by this friendly advocate; she must come forward in person and present her case in her own words.
There is much difference of opinion among commentators about the rendering of the phrase with which the appeal begins. The Revisers have followed the Authorised Version in taking it as a question-"Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by?" {Lam_1:12} But it may be treated as a direct negative-"It is nothing," etc., or, by a slightly different reading of the Hebrew text, as a simple call for attention-"O all ye that pass by," etc., as in the Vulgate "O vos," etc. The usual rendering is the finest in literary feeling, and it is in accordance with a common usage. Although the sign of an interrogation, which would set this meaning beyond dispute, is absent, there does not seem to be sufficient reason for rejecting it in favour of one of the proposed alternatives. But in any case the whole passage evidently expresses a deep yearning for sympathy. Mere strangers, roving Bedouin, any people who may chance to be passing by Jerusalem, are implored to behold her incomparable woes. The wounded animal creeps into a corner to suffer and die in secret, perhaps on account of the habit of herds, in tormenting a suffering mate. But among mankind the instinct of a sufferer is to crave sympathy, from a friend, if possible; hut if such be not available, then even from a stranger. Now although where it is possible to give effectual aid, merely to cast a pitying look and pass by on the other side, like the priest and the Levite in the parable, is a mockery and a cruelty, although unpretentious indifference is better than that hypocrisy, it would be a great mistake to suppose that in those cases for which no direct relief can be given sympathy is of no value. This sympathy, if it is real, would help if it could; and under all circumstances it is the reality of the sympathy that is most prized, not its issues.
It should be remembered, further, that the first condition of active aid is a genuine sense of compassion, which can only be awakened by means of knowledge and the impressions which a contemplation of suffering produces. Evil is wrought not only from want of thought, but also from lack of knowledge; and good-doing is withheld for the same reason. Therefore the first requisite is to arrest attention. A royal commission is the reasonable precursor of a state remedy for some public wrong. Misery is permitted to flourish in the dark because people are too indolent to search it out. No doubt the knowledge of sufferings which we might remedy implies a grave responsibility; but we cannot escape our obligations by simply closing our eyes to what we do not wish to see. We are responsible for our ignorance and its consequences wherever the opportunity of knowledge is within our reach.
The appeal to all who pass by is most familiar to us in its later association with our Lords sufferings on the cross. But this is not in any sense a Messianic passage; it is confined in its purpose to the miseries of Jerusalem. Of course there can be no objection to illustrating the grief and pain of the Man of Sorrows by using the classic language of an ancient lament if we note that this is only an illustration. There is a kinship in all suffering, and it is right to consider that He who was tried in all points as we are tried passed through sorrows which absorbed all the bitterness even of such a cup of woe as that which was drunk by Jerusalem in the extremity of her misfortunes. If never before there had been sorrow like unto her sorrow, at length that was matched, nay, surpassed at Gethsemane and Golgotha. Still it would be a mistake to confine these words to their secondary application-not only an exegetical mistake, but one of deeper significance. Jesus Christ restrained the wailing of the women who offered Him their compassion on His way to the cross, bidding them weep not for Him, but for themselves and their children. {Luk_23:28} Much more when His passion is long past and He is reigning in glory must it be displeasing to Him for His friends to be wasting idle tears over the sufferings of His earthly life. The morbid sentimentality which broods over the ancient wounds of Christ, the nail prints and the spear thrust, but ignores the present wounds of society-the wounds of the world for which He bled and died, or the wounds of the Church which is His body now, must be wrong in His sight. He would rather we gave a cup of cold water to one of His brethren than an ocean of tears to the memory of Calvary. If then we would make use of the ruined citys appeal for sympathy by applying it to some later object it would be more in agreement with the mind of Christ to think of the miseries of mankind in our own day, and to consider how a sympathetic regard for them may point to some ministry of alleviation.
In order to impress the magnitude of her.miseries on the minds of the strangers whose attention she would arrest, the city, now personified as a suppliant, describes her dreadful condition in a series of brief, pointed metaphors. Thus the imagination is excited; and the imagination is one of the roads to the heart. It is not enough that people know the bald facts of a calamity as these may be scheduled in an inspectors report. Although this preliminary information is most important, if we go no further the report will be replaced in its pigeonhole, and lie there till it is forgotten. Ii it is to do something better than gather the dust of years it must be used as a foundation for the imagination to work upon. This does not imply any departure from truth, any false colouring or exaggeration; on the contrary, the process only brings out the truth which is not really seen until it is imagined. Let us look at the various images under which the distress of Jerusalem is here presented.
It is like a fire in the bones. {Lam_1:13} It burns, consumes, pains with intolerable torment; it is no skin-deep trouble, it penetrates to the very marrow. This fire is overmastering; it is not to be quenched, neither does it die out; it "prevaileth" against the bones. There is no getting such a fire under.
It is like a net. {Lam_1:13} The image is changed. We see a wild creature caught in the bush, or perhaps a fugitive arrested in his flight and flung down by hidden snares at his feet. Here is the shock of surprise, the humiliation of deceit, the vexation of being thwarted. The result is a baffled, bewildered, helpless condition.
It is like faintness. {Lam_1:13} The desolate sufferer is ill. It is bad enough to have to bear calamities in the strength of health. Jerusalem is made sick and kept faint "all the day"-with a faintness that is not a momentary collapse, but a continuous condition of failure.
It is like a yoke {Lam_1:14} which is wreathed upon the neck - fixed on, as with twisted withes. The poet is here more definite. The yoke is made out of the transgressions of Jerusalem. The sense of guilt does not lighten its weight; the band that holds it most closely is the feeling that it is deserved. It is natural that the sinful sufferer should exclaim that God, who has bound this terrible yoke upon her, has made her strength to fail. As there is nothing so invigorating as the assurance that one is suffering for a righteous cause, so there is nothing so wretchedly depressing as the consciousness of guilt.
Lastly, it is like a winepress. {Lam_1:15} This image is elaborated with more detail, although at the expense of unity of design. God is said to have called a "solemn assembly" to oppress the Jews, by an ironical reversal of the common notion of such an assembly. The language recalls the idea of one of the great national festivals of Israel. But now instead of the favoured people their enemies are summoned, and the object is not the glad praise of God for His bounties in harvest or vintage, but the crushing of the Jews. They are to be victims, not guests as of old. They are themselves the harvest of judgment, the vintage of wrath. The wine is to be made, but the grapes crushed to produce it are the people who were accustomed to feast and drink of the fruits of Gods bounty in the happy days of their prosperity. So the mighty men are set at nought, their prowess counting as nothing against the brutal rush of the enemy; and the young men are crushed, their spirit and vigour failing them in the great destruction.
The most terrible trait in these pictures, one that is common to all of them, is the Divine origin of the troubles. It was God who sent fire into the bones, spread the net, made the sufferer desolate and faint. The yoke was bound by His hands. It was He who set at nought the mighty men, and summoned the assembly of foes to crush His people. The poet even goes so far as to make the daring statement that it was the Lord Himself who trod the virgin daughter of Judah as in a winepress. It is a ghastly picture - a dainty maiden trampled to death by Jehovah as grapes are trampled to squeeze out their juice! This horrible thing is ascribed to God! Yet there is no complaint of barbarity, no idea that the Judge of all the earth is not doing right. The miserable city does not bring any railing accusation against her Lord; she takes all the blame upon herself. We must be careful to bear in mind the distinction between poetic imagery and prosaic narrative. Still it remains true that Jerusalem here attributes her troubles to the will and action of God. This is vital to the Hebrew faith. To explain it away is to impoverish the religion of Israel, and with it the Old Testament revelation. That revelation shews us the absolute sovereignty of God, and at the same time it brings out the guilt of man, so that no room is allowed for complaints against the Divine justice. The grief is all the greater because there is no thought of rebellion. The daring doubts that struggle into expression in Job never obtrude themselves here to check the even flow of tears. The melancholy is profound, but comparatively calm, since it does not once give place to anger. It is natural that the succession of images of misery conceived in this spirit should be followed by a burst of tears. Zion weeps because the comforter who should refresh her soul is far away, and she is left utterly desolate. {Lam_1:16}
Here the supposed utterance of Jerusalem is broken for the poet to insert a description of the suppliant making her piteous appeal. {Lam_1:17} He shews us Zion spreading out her hands, that is to say, in the well-known attitude of prayer. She is comfortless, oppressed by her neighbours in accordance with the will of her God, and treated as an unclean thing; she who had despised the idolatrous Gentiles in her pride of superior sanctity has now become foul and despicable in their eyes!
The semi-dramatic form of the elegy is seen in the reappearance of Jerusalem as speaker without any formula of introduction. After the poets brief interjection describing the suppliant, the personified city continues her plaintive appeal, but with a considerable enlargement of its scope. She makes the most distinct acknowledgment of the two vital elements of the case-Gods righteousness and her own rebellion. {Lam_1:18} These carry us beneath the visible scenes of trouble so graphically illustrated earlier, and fix our attention on deep-seated principles. It cannot be supposed that the faith and penitence unreservedly confessed in the elegy were truly experienced by all the fugitive citizens of Jerusalem, though they were found in the devout "remnant" among whom the author of the poem must be reckoned. But the reasonable interpretation of these utterances is that which accepts them as the inspired expressions of the thoughts and feelings which Jerusalem ought to possess, as ideal expressions, suitable to those who rightly appreciate the whole situation. This fact gives them a wide applicability. The ideal approaches the universal. Although it cannot be said that all trouble is the direct punishment of sin, and although it is manifestly insincere to make confession of guilt one does not inwardly admit, to be firmly settled in the conviction that God is right in what He does even when it all looks most wrong, that if there is a fault it must be on mans side, is to have reached the centre of truth. This is very different from the admission that God has the right of an absolute sovereign to do whatever He chooses, like mad Caligula when intoxicated with his own divinity; it even implies a denial of that supposed right, for it asserts that He acts in accordance with something other than His will, viz., righteousness.
Enlarging the area of her appeal, no longer content to snatch at the casual pity of individual travellers on the road, Jerusalem now calls upon all the "peoples"-i.e., all neighbouring tribes-to hear the tale of her woes. {Lam_1:18} This is too huge a tragedy to be confined to private spectators; it is of national proportions, and it claims the attention of whole nations. It is curious to observe that foreigners, whom the strict Jews sternly exclude from their privileges, are nevertheless besought to compassionate their distresses. These uncircumcised heathen are not now thrust contemptuously aside; they are even appealed to as sympathisers. Perhaps this is meant to indicate the vastness of the misery of Jerusalem by the suggestion that even aliens should be affected by it; when the waves spread far in all directions there must have been a most terrible storm at the centre of disturbance. Still it is possible to find in this widening outlook of the poet a sign of the softening and enlarging effects of trouble. The very need of much sympathy breaks down the barriers of proud exclusiveness, and prepares one to look for gracious qualities among people who have been previously treated with churlish indifference or positive animosity. Floods and earthquakes tame savage beasts. On the battlefield wounded men gratefully accept relief from their mortal enemies. Conduct of this sort may be self-regarding, perhaps weak and cowardly; still it is an outcome of the natural brotherhood of all mankind, any confession of which, however reluctant, is a welcome thing.
The appeal to the nations contains three particulars. It deplores the captivity of the virgins and young men; the treachery of allies-"lovers" who have been called upon for assistance, but in vain; and the awful fact that men of such consequence as the elders and priests, the very aristocracy of Jerusalem, had died of starvation after an ineffectual search for food-a lurid picture of the horrors of the siege. {Lam_1:18-19} The details repeat themselves with but very slight variations.
It is natural for a great sufferer to revolve his bitter morsel continuously. The action is a sign of its bitterness. The monotony of the dirge is a sure indication of the depth of the trouble that occasions it. The theme is only too interesting to the mourner, however wearisome it may become to the listener.
In drawing to a close the appeal goes further, and, rising altogether above man, seeks the attention of God. {Lam_1:20-22} It is not enough that every passing traveller is arrested, nor even that the notice of all the neighbouring nations is sought; this trouble is too great for human shoulders to bear. It will absorb the largest mass of sympathy, and yet thirst for more. Twice before in the first part of the elegy the language of the poet speaking in his own person was interrupted by an outcry of Jerusalem to God. {Lam_1:9; Lam_1:11} Now the elegy closes with a fuller appeal to Heaven. This is an utterance of faith where faith is tried to the uttermost. It is distinctly recognised that the calamities bewailed have been sent by God; and yet the stricken city turns to God for consolation. And the appeal is not at all in the form of a cry to a tormentor for mercy; it seeks friendly sympathy and avenging actions. Nothing could more clearly prove the consciousness that God is not doing any wrong to His people. Not only is there no complaint against the justice of His acts; in spite of them all He is still regarded as the greatest Friend and Helper of the victims of His wrath.
This apparently paradoxical position issues in what might otherwise be a contradiction of thought. The ruin of Jerusalem is attributed to the righteous judgment of God, against which no shadow of complaint is raised; and yet God is asked to pour vengeance on the heads of the human agents of His wrath! These people have been acting from their own evil, or at all events their own inimical motives. Therefore it is not held that they deserve punishment for their conduct any the less on account of the fact that they have been the unconscious instruments of Providence. The vengeance here sought for cannot be brought into line with Christian principles; but the poet had never heard the Sermon on the Mount. It would not have occurred to him that the spirit of revenge was not right, any more than it occurred to the writers of maledictory Psalms.
There is one more point in this final appeal to God which should be noticed, because it is very characteristic of the elegy throughout. Zion bewails her friendless condition, declaring, "there is none to comfort me." {Lam_1:21} This is the fifth reference to the absence of a comforter. {See Lam_1:2; Lam_1:9; Lam_1:16-17; Lam_1:21} The idea may be merely introduced in order to accentuate the description of utter desolation. And yet when we compare the several allusions to it, the conclusion seems to be forced upon us that the poet has a more specific intention. In some cases, at least, he seems to have one particular comforter in mind, as, for example, when he says, "The comforter that should refresh my soul is far from me." {Lam_1:16} Our thoughts instinctively turn to the Paraclete of St. Johns Gospel. It would not be reasonable to suppose that the elegist had attained to any definite conception of the Holy Spirit such as that of the ripe Christian revelation.
But we have his own words to witness that God is to him the supreme Comforter, is the Lord and Giver of life who refreshes his soul. It would seem, then, that the poets thought is like that of the author of the twenty-second Psalm, which was echoed in our Lords cry of despair on the cross. {Mar_15:34} When God our Comforter hides the light of His countenance the night is most dark. Yet the darkness is not always perceived, or its cause recognised. Then to miss the consolations of God consciously, with pain, is the first step towards recovering them.
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 Lam_1:12-22. These verses form the second section of the…
EXEGETICAL NOTES.—
Lam_1:12-22. These verses form the second section of the poem. The city is represented as complaining of its harassed condition, 12–16, and then as acknowledging her persistent sin in sight of her righteous Lord, who will deal out justice to all transgressors, 17–22.
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(ל) Lam_1:12. The curtness of the opening Hebrew phrase causes doubt as to its proper explanation. Hence by some it is taken as an address to the wayfarers, and is paraphrased in words like, “I pray all you,” or “Oh, that my cry might reach all you.” By others it is taken as a question, and more reasonably; so they explain it by words like, “Does not my misery come to you?” or “Do you not observe what has befallen me?” In either case it conveys a call, as from the weeping, solitary woman, sitting on the ground, to all travellers to consider her deplorable state, and our English Versions have caught the right tone. Is it nothing to you, all ye passers by the way? Is there nothing in my condition to produce seriousness in you instead of indifference or levity? Nothing to warn you? Nothing to call forth your sympathy? Behold and see if there is sorrow like my sorrow. The feeling of a troubled present tends to make it loom before the sufferer as if there never was the like before, which is done to me whom Jehovah has afflicted in the day of the heat of his anger.
The ascription, in religious addresses, which has been often made of this verse to the sufferings of the Lord Jesus Christ, is far from commendable. In a very real sense His sorrows were unparalleled, but innocent of sin though He was, He made no attempt to call attention to Himself as peculiarly afflicted. His thought was for others’ sufferings. Weep not for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children.
(מ) Lam_1:13. Here begin references to various events which had contributed to her unequalled sorrow. Fire, a net, sickness and a yoke are set forth. The figure presented in the last clause of the preceding verse is now more fully traced. From on high he sent fire, Upon the wicked He shall rain fire (Psa_11:6), into my bones, where pain is supposed to be most keenly felt. She recognises that the cause, which is behind all visible causes, of her pain is in the spiritual realm, and that in the face of the Eternal Righteousness her bones must be shrivelled up; and it overpowered them. The next figure is, He spread a net for my feet; he turned me back. So entangled, she could not go away and escape capture. The third figure is sickness. He made me desolate, all the day faint. The light of her life was quenched, and she was constantly exhausted.
(נ) Lam_1:14. There follows a figure from agricultural pursuits. A yoke [formed] of my transgressions is bound by his hand. The Hebrew verb here is of uncertain meaning, and there is no rendering preferable to that which is given. She has made thongs or cords for the yoke with her sins; they are twisted together. Her misdoings have acted and reacted that they are knit together, so as to constitute a thraldom which cannot be thrown off; so intertwined they have come up upon my neck. A consequence of this enthralment by the knotted yoke is, it has made my strength to fail, literally to stumble, i.e., to stagger from the weakness and exhaustion incident to such a fearful yoke. The yoke of transgression is hard; the yoke of Christ is easy. The conviction is now expressed that the Divine Ruler is at work, and a new phase rises in the lamentation. The Lord has given me into the hands [of those that are against me]. I am not able to stand up. She can do nothing but yield. Consciousness of transgression paralyses body and mind. Note that it is the general, not the covenant name of her God which she utters. This title occurs fourteen times by itself in this book, while in the Prophecies of Jeremiah only along with the covenant name. The reason for this usage of Lord, and of refraining from Jehovah has yet to be found. To say that the people, in their punishment, felt the Lordship of the Deity more, and His covenant love to them less, is a statement which is not confirmed by an examination of the passages in the Lamentations where each name is found.
(ם) Lam_1:15. Inability to resist is associated with other fatal experiences. He has set at naught all my strong ones; not on an open battlefield, not in a struggle to hold an important post, is it that her able-bodied men are counted for nothing before the Chaldean host; losses they might have had, “the bubble reputation” attached to thém, but not when cooped up in the city, in the midst of me. He has convoked a solemn assembly against me; it is the word used of the annual and other religious festivals, as in Lam_1:4, and intimates that to the enemies of Jerusalem a call had been issued to gather at an appointed time and have such joy as might be found in the ability to crush my young men, those who promised to be the strength of the nation in the generation following. And, to make the overthrow complete, the maidens, who had been carefully guarded from violence, the Lord has trodden as in a wine-press the virgin daughter of Judah. The treading of the grapes in a wine-press, as illustrative of the execution of divine judgment, is not unusual in the Scriptures (Isa_63:5; Rev_14:19), and signifies both suffering and good results from suffering rightly borne—
“Still hope and trust, it sang; the rod
Must fall, the wine-press must be trod.”
(ע) Lam_1:16. Having shown by the events how terrible her sorrow could not but be, Jerusalem reiterates her complaint with a flood of tears. Because of these things I weep; mine eye, mine eye runs down with water, so great is her trouble and so unalleviated, for far from me is the comforter, the restorer of my soul. My children are become desolate, and cannot cheer me, for the enemy has prevailed.
(פ) Lam_1:17. The sobs of the weeper stifle her utterance. In the pause the poet himself seems to take up the word, something like the part of the chorus in Greek tragedies, and describes the state of the three personified objects—the Temple, the people, the city. He sees that Zion, representing the house of prayer for all nations, stretches out her hands, as praying in a land where no water is, but in suspense; there is no comforter for her. He sees that Jehovah, her covenant God, has commanded concerning Jacob, representing the people whom He chose for His heritage, that those round about him, the neighbouring nations, should be his adversaries. He sees that Jerusalem, representing the government and national aspirations, has become as an unclean one among them (Lam_1:8).
HOMILETICS
A DISTRESSED NATION
(Lam_1:12-17)
I. Utters a piteous appeal for sympathy. “Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? Behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow,” &c. (Lam_1:12). Sorrow craves sympathy. A crumb an atom, however trifling, is eagerly seized and fondly cherished. It matters not from what source it comes. It is welcome from any casual passer-by, from anybody, from anything. The despairing find comfort in a flower as it gracefully bends towards them; in the mute sympathy of a favourite dog, as it caressingly thrusts its nose into the limp hands. It is easy to exaggerate our troubles and imagine there is no sorrow like our own; but a wider knowledge of the world’s ills helps us to correct our magnified estimate. There is only One—the world’s Redeemer—whose sufferings are unique and unparalleled.
II. Painfully conscious of the overwhelming nature of its sufferings (Lam_1:13-15).
1. In their fierceness. “From above hath He sent fire into my bones, and it prevaileth against them”—subdues them (Lam_1:13). It is no earthly, but heavenly fire which burns in the bones of Jerusalem (Speaker’s Commentary). It is a fact well established in osteology that inflammation in the bones is not only extremely painful, but dries them up and renders them brittle and useless (Henderson).
2. All attempts to escape from them are futile. “He hath spread a net for my feet, He hath turned me back: He hath made me desolate and faint all the day” (Lam_1:13). Judea, like a hunted animal, endeavours to escape, but finds every outlet blocked with nets, and recoils from them in terror, and a sense of utter hopelessness and exhaustion. The only thing to flee from is sin; the only refuge to flee to is God. There is no relief from suffering till we are divested of the coils of our sin.
3. They are an unmistakable consequence of sin. “The yoke of my transgressions is bound by His hand: they are wreathed and come up upon my neck,” &c. (Lam_1:14). The metaphor is taken from agricultural life. As the ploughman binds the yoke with cords so knotted and twined together that they form a bunch upon the neck of the oxen impossible to shake off, so does God compel Judah to bear the punishment of her sins. The yoke thus imposed by the hand of God, and securely knotted around the neck of Judah by the entangled bonds of her own sins, bows down her strength by its weight, and makes her totter and stumble beneath it. “He hath made my strength to fall”—to stumble (Speaker’s Commentary). Sin by and by becomes an intolerable burden, and is constantly reasserting its power over us. There is a lake in Switzerland, shut in by high mountains, a solitary, lonely place, which few travellers visit, and where few care to linger, so desolate and homeless is the spot. Here, an old legend says, every night at midnight the watcher may see the ghost of Pilate come to the shore and try with piteous lamentations to wash from his hands some red stains that are upon them—the marks of the blood of Jesus. But as fast as he washes them off they reappear. So is it with all our sins, small and great.
4. They are an evidence of contemptuous and crushing defeat. “The Lord hath trodden under foot all my mighty men in the midst of me,” &c. (Lam_1:15). They had not fallen gloriously in the battlefield, but remained ignominiously in the city, confessing their inability to fight. Irving once said, “With every exertion, the best of men can do but a moderate amount of good, but it seems in the power of the most contemptible individual to do incalculable mischief.” The governor-general of a Russian province was once mildly remonstrated with by his secretary regarding a high-handed proceeding, producing at the same time a paragraph from a state volume proving the illegality of the action. The angry governor seized the book and sat upon it, shouting, “Where is the law now?” He then pointed to his decorated breast, and continued in a pompous strain, “Here it is; I am the law!” and the secretary had to beat a prudent retreat. It is very humiliating to be in the grip of tyranny like this.
III. The most passionate expression of sorrow brings no relief. “For these things I weep, &c. Zion spreadeth forth her hands, and there is none to comfort her,” &c. (Lam_1:16-17). Spreading out the hands is a token of the deepest distress. There is no one to comfort—not God, for He is chastening; nor man, for all the neighbouring nations have become enemies (Lam_1:2). Tears are a sign of weakness and helplessness. To give way to grief is not the way to conquer it. God is the only refuge in distress, and His help, if sincerely sought, is not in vain. The common cry of the Breton mariner is, “My God, protect me! my bark is so small and Thy ocean so vast.”
“I am so weak, dear Lord, I cannot stand
One moment without Thee:
But oh! the tenderness of Thine enfolding;
And oh! the faithfulness of Thine upholding;
And oh! the strength of Thy right hand:
That strength is enough for me.
I am so needy, Lord, and yet I know
All fulness dwells in Thee;
And hour by hour that never-failing treasure
Supplies and fills, in overflowing measure,
My least, my greatest need; and so
Thy grace is enough for me.”
LESSONS.—
1. It is painful to witness distress we are helpless to relieve.
2. National distress is the fruit of national crime.
3. National suffering should purify the national life.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
Lam_1:12. The sufferings of the classes of the human family.
2. Unique world’s Redeemer:
1. Appeal to all in their character and purpose.
Lam_1:3. Aggravated by the mysterious manifestation of the Divine wrath.
4. The basis of the world’s salvation.
5. Should arrest the attention and engage the prayerful thought of the sinner.
—Is it nothing to you? I. The sufferings of Christ upon the Cross were unparalleled.
1. Because of the dignity of His person.
2. Because of the perfect innocence of His character.
3. Because there was such a conjunction of griefs.
4. Because they were voluntarily undertaken and continued in.
5. Because those for whom He died thus voluntarily were His enemies.
6. Because they were expiatory. II. The sufferings of Christ have had a deep interest in them for many.
1. Multitudes have found in them a cure for despair.
2. In others they have wrought a complete transformation of their lives.
3. Had power on men’s minds to gird them to heroic deeds.
4. Men who love the suffering Saviour become patient in their everyday sufferings.
5. They learn to hate sin by seeing the agonies by which redemption was obtained. III. What have you to do with Christ? Write down your decision whether you will have Christ or not. A poor, suffering girl, who had long loved the Saviour, under a feeling of depression, confessed to her minister that she had deceived herself, and did not love Him. The minister walked to the window and wrote on a piece of paper, “I do not love the Lord Jesus Christ,” and said, “Susan, here is a pencil. Just put your name to that.” “No, sir,” she said, “I could not sign that.” “Why not?” “I would be torn to pieces before I would sign it, sir.” “But why not sign it if it is true?” “Ah! sir,” she said, “I hope it is not true. I think I do love Him.”—C. H. Spurgeon.
—Our duty towards the Jewish people. I. The facts on which the appeal is founded. The unparalleled sorrow and sufferings of the Jewish people. Where is the nation that has been subject to such universal contempt? All mankind seems to have conspired to despise the Jews. They seem under the curse of Heaven. II. The appeal itself. “Is it nothing to you?” That the world should pass by we cannot wonder. That the heathen or Mohammedan should neglect the Jew can excite no surprise. That the mere self-loving nominal Christian should heed him not, is all natural; but that the follower of Christ should pass by may well excite astonishment. It is an error to suppose we need not care to labour among the Jews because the Gospel is a Gentile dispensation, and that the Jews are shut out until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in. The Gospel is as much a Jewish dispensation as was the Law. To them it was promised; to them it was given. By them it was proclaimed to the Gentiles, and theirs it still is. Zeal for the honour of Christ should lead us to direct our first endeavours to the Jewish people.—M‘Caul.
Lam_1:13. Divine punishment. I. Marked try great severity. “From above hath He sent fire into my bones, and it prevaileth against them.” II. Admits of no escape from its toils. “He hath spread a net for my feet; He hath turned me back.” III. Thoroughly subdues the sufferer. “He hath made me desolate and faint all the day.”
Lam_1:14. The galling tyranny of sin. I. Oppressive. “The yoke of my transgressions is bound by His hand; they are wreathed and come up upon my neck.” II. Exhausting. “He hath made my strength to fall.” III. Reduces the soul to helplessness. “The Lord hath delivered me into their hands, from whom I am not able to rise up.”
—The misery of the penitent.
1. When conscious of the burden of sin.
2. When realising his increasing helplessness. III. When abandoned to reap the consequences of his transgressions.
4. Can be relieved only by the pitifulness of the Divine mercy.
Lam_1:15. Inglorious defeat. I. The veteran warriors are captured in the midst of the city from which they had not courage to issue forth and defend. “The Lord hath trodden under foot all my mighty men in the midst of me.” II. The combinations of the foe were too powerful for the bravery of the young to resist. “He hath called an assembly against me to crush my young men.” III. The defeat of the nation is abject and complete. “The Lord hath trodden the virgin, the daughter of Judah, as in a wine-press.”
Lam_1:16-17. The helplessness of despair. I. Tears and entreaties are in vain. “For these things I weep; mine eye, mine eye runneth down with water. Zion spreadeth forth her hands, and there is none to comfort her” (Lam_1:16-17). II. Sin debases a people in the estimation of God and man. “Jerusalem is as a menstruous woman”—hath become a loathing—“among them” (Lam_1:17). III. There is no hope of escape. “My children are desolate because the enemy prevailed” (Lam_1:16). “The Lord hath commanded concerning Jacob that his adversaries should be round about him” (Lam_1:17).
ILLUSTRATIONS.—A distressed nation: the havoc of war. When the French army invaded Russia in 1812, and penetrated as far as Moscow, Count Rostopchin, the governor, thinking it more glorious to destroy the ancient capital of the Czars than suffer it to harbour and protect an enemy, caused it to be burned to the ground. The most heartrending scenes were witnessed. The people, hastily snatching up their most precious effects, fled before the flames. Others, actuated by the general feelings of nature, saved only their parents or their infants, who were closely clasped in their arms. They were followed by their other children, running as fast as their little strength would permit, and, with all the wildness of childish terror, vociferating the beloved name of mother! The old people, borne down by grief more than by age, had not sufficient power to follow their families, and expired near the houses in which they were born. No cry, no complaint was heard. Both the conqueror and the conquered were equally hardened. The fire, whose ravages could not be restrained, soon reached the finest parts of the city. The palaces were enveloped in flames. Their magnificent fronts, ornamented with bas-reliefs and statues, fell with a dreadful crash. The churches, with their steeples resplendent with gold and silver, were destroyed. The hospitals, containing more than 12,000 wounded, began to burn, and almost all the inmates perished. A few who still lingered were seen crawling half burnt amongst the smoking ruins, and others, groaning under heaps of dead bodies, endeavoured in vain to extricate themselves from the horrible destruction which surrounded them. From whatever side viewed, nothing was seen but ruin and flames. The fire raged as if it were fanned by some invisible power. The most extensive range of buildings seemed to kindle, to burn, and to disappear in an instant. The wild pillagers precipitated themselves into the midst of the flames. They waded in blood, treading on dead bodies without remorse, while the burning ruins fell on their murderous hands. The signal patriotism of sacrificing the city in order to subdue the enemy actuated all ranks.
Affliction reveals our sins. So long as leaves are on the trees and bushes, you cannot see the bird’s nests; but in the winter, when all the leaves are off, then you see them plainly. And so long as men are in prosperity and have their leaves on, they do not see what nests of sin and lust are in their hearts and lives; but when all their leaves are off, in the day of their afflictions, then they see them, and say, “I did not think I had had such nests of sins and lusts in my soul and life.”—Bridge.
Whose sorrows are like unto mine? O thou erring mortal, repine not. Our Father has some great and wise purpose in thus afflicting thee, and wilt thou dare murmur against Him when He removed the idol that He alone may reign? Pause and reflect. Examine well thy conscience, and see if there were not earthly attractions clinging to thy soul and leading thee to forget the Creator in thy love for the creature. Raise not thy feeble voice against the Most High, lest He send upon thee a still greater trial in order to teach thee submission. Behold His noble example when persecuted by a whole world. Imagine Him, the God of the universe, standing before the Jewish Sanhedrin, condemned, buffeted, spit upon! One blazing look of wrathful indignation would have annihilated that rude rabble; but, with all the beauty and grace of self-abnegation, He bowed His head and prayed, “Father, forgive them; they know not what they do.” Wouldst thou find relief for thy sufferings? Contemplate the life of Him who spake as never man spake. Follow Him through all those years of toil and suffering. Witness His deeds of mercy and love, and then—go thou and do likewise.—German Reformed Messenger.
Self-sacrifice. An extraordinary example of self-sacrifice was witnessed at Chicago. A member of the brotherhood of Knight-Templars was operated upon for cancer, and a wound nearly a foot square was left. The surgeon declared that if the patient was to recover, the wound must be covered with new human skin. At once 132 members of the brotherhood volunteered to allow a small strip of skin to be cut from their arms, so that the pieces thus obtained might be transferred to the wound of their comrade. The operation was performed. Several of the brave fellows fainted, but the majority bore the incision of the surgeon’s knife without flinching. It is inspiriting to hear of such heroic self-sacrifice. Much of the suffering of the Christian worker is vicarious; but no number of acts of suffering on behalf of others can equal the sublime sacrifice of Him who suffered and died for the whole race.—The Scottish Pulpit.
Divine punishment and pessimism. Noah was a pessimist to the antediluvian world; Moses was a pessimist to Pharaoh in Egypt; Samuel was a pessimist, and his very first prediction foretold the downfall of the aged Eli and his godless family. Jeremiah was a pessimist, constantly foretelling evil and danger; Jonah was a pessimist, who disturbed the peace of the city, crying, “Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” Nahum was a pessimist, crying, “Woe to the bloody city!” Micaiah was a pessimist when he foretold the overthrow of Ahab, the guilty king, who complained that he never prophesied any good of him. The Saviour was a pessimist, for He foretold the destruction of Jerusalem and the calamities that were to come upon the world. The Apostles Peter, James, John, Jude were all pessimists, for they were continually foretelling perilous times, departure from the faith, and the coming judgment upon the godless world. The great preachers and poets of the ages have been pessimists, for they were ever warning men of present evil and coming wrath, of predicted calamities and judgments overhanging the godless and profane.—Christian Repository.
Sin a slavery.
“There is a bondage which is worse to bear
Than his who breathes, by roof and floor and wall
Pent in, a tyrant’s solitary thrall:
’Tis his who walks about in the open air,
One of a nation who henceforth must wear
Their fetters in their souls.”
—Wordsworth.
Discovery of the destructive work of sin. The steeple of the Church of St. Bride, London, originally built by Christopher Wren, was struck by lightning in 1764, and the upper part had to be rebuilt, when it was lowered eight feet. It was then discovered that an old hawk had inhabited the two upper circles, the open arcades of which were filled with masses of birds’ bones, chiefly those of the city pigeons upon which it had preyed. It would be well if more frequent discovery could be made of those wily hawks of society who prey with such merciless and ingenious greed upon the simple and unsuspecting. Their discovery is all the more difficult when they make the Church of Christ their hiding-place, and the clean-picked relics of their numerous victims are all the more sad to contemplate when one at length finds out that the work of plunder has been carried on under the sacred garb of religion.
The misery of the penitent; how cured. Five persons were studying what were the best means for mortifying sin. One said, to meditate on death; the second, to meditate on judgment; the third, to meditate on the joys of heaven; the fourth, to meditate on the torments of hell; the fifth, to meditate on the blood and sufferings of Christ; and certainly the last is the choicest and strongest motive of all. If ever we would cast off our despairing thoughts, we must dwell and muse much upon and apply this precious blood to our own souls; so shall sorrow and mourning flee away.—Brooks.
Remorse. Remorse may disturb the slumbers of a man who is dabbling with his first experiences of wrong; and when the pleasure has been tasted and is gone, and nothing is left of the crime but the ruin which it has wrought, then the Furies take their seats upon the midnight pillow. But the meridian of evil is for the most part left unvexed; and when a man has chosen his road, he is left alone to follow it to the end.—Froude.
Inglorious defeat—The retreat from Moscow. The annals of ancient and modern warfare, in the vast catalogue of woes which they record, do not present a parallel to the sufferings of the French on the retreat from Moscow—sufferings neither cheered by hope nor mitigated by the slightest relief. The army in its retreat had to encamp on the bare snow in the midst of the severest winter that even Russia ever experienced. The soldiers, without shoes and almost without clothes, were enfeebled by fatigue and famine. Sitting on their knapsacks, the cold buried some in a temporary, but more in an eternal sleep. Those who were able to rise from this benumbing posture, only did it to broil some slices of horse-flesh, perhaps cut from their favourite charger, or to melt a few morsels of ice. In the march it was impossible to keep them in order, as imperious hunger seduced them from their colours, and threw their columns into confusion. Many of the French women accompanied the army on foot, with shoes of stuff little calculated to defend them from the frozen snow, and clad in old robes of silk or the thinnest muslin; and they were glad to cover themselves with tattered pieces of military cloaks, torn from the dead bodies of the soldiers. The cold was so severe that men were frozen to death in the ranks, and at every step were seen the dead bodies of the soldiers stretched on the snow. Of four hundred thousand warriors who had crossed the Niemen at the opening of the campaign, scarcely twenty thousand repassed it. Such was the dreadful havoc which a Russian winter caused to the finest, best-appointed, and most powerful army that ever took the field.
Christianity addresses the despairing. Throughout all the ages which have followed Christ’s word, Christ’s message has rung in with power upon men’s lives just in proportion to their dejection and despair. One of the earliest attacks upon Christianity was the censure that it was a word to the miserable. Such indeed it is. If it is censurable to move among men when they are dispirited, when they have come to the end of a civilisation, when nothing but blank hopelessness and no remedy lies in front of them, then Christianity is censurable, Christ’s message is open to reproach. If that be a fault, it is not faultless. It stands condemned. If too you deem it blameworthy to go to the individual when he has sinned, when he has flung away his life madly, wickedly, passionately, to stand beside him, nay, to bend over him with affectionate interest, when he is lying ragged, beaten, hungry, and filthy in the far country into which he has gone, then neither Christianity nor Christ can escape your blame. They stand convicted of the crime of receiving sinners and eating with them, of laying their hands on lepers who are unclean, of seeking the society of the demented and insane.—Rev. H. Ross.
Crying to God. Several children of a family were once playing in a garden when one fell into a tank. When the father heard of it, he asked what means they thought of to rescue their brother from his perilous situation. Inquiring of the youngest, he said, “John, what did you do to rescue your brother?” The boy answered, “Father, what should I do? I am so young that I could not do anything, but I stood and cried as loud as I could.” If we cannot bring a ladder or rope, all can cry, all can plead with God.
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.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain The Lament of the City and the Answer of…
The Lament of the City and the Answer of the Lord
v. 12. Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? Will none of those who are witnesses of her misery and shame take the proper notice of her calamity? 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 greatness of Jerusalem’s misery was so unusual that men seeing it were bound to conclude that there was a special hand and work of God in it. The picture is that of an outcast by the wayside begging the passers-by for at least some show of sympathy. And it may be said that Jerusalem, in this instance, prefigures Christ, whom the language is prophetically made to suit.
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v. 13. From above hath He sent fire into my bones, which are here thought of as organs of the body that are first to feel a racking pain, and it prevaileth against them, so that the very vital powers are affected; He hath spread a net for my feet, to entangle her in His judgments; He hath turned me back, making it impossible to become free from the meshes of the net; He hath made me desolate and faint all the day. The city is thus pictured as a person whose happiness is destroyed and whose health is broken.
v. 14. The yoke of my transgressions is bound by His hand, sin being not only a taskmaster, but a yoke pressing the sinner down, with God Himself, as it were, holding the reins firmly twisted round His hand, so that escape is impossible; they are wreathed, the many cords of sin being woven together increasing the load, and come up upon my neck, binding the sinners to their willful transgressions; He hath made my strength to fall, so that it is entirely broken; the Lord hath delivered me into their hands from whom I am not able to rise up, whom she did not have the strength to resist.
v. 15. The Lord hath trodden under foot all my mighty men in the midst of me, slaying them while they were engaged in the defense of the city; He hath called an assembly against me to crush my young men, the very expression setting forth the strange contrast and the severity of the punishment; the Lord hath trodden the virgin, the daughter of Judah, as in a wine-press. Cf Isa 63:2-3.
v. 16. For these things I weep, giving free rein to her tears, mine eye, mine eye, runneth down with water, because the comforter that should relieve my soul is far from me, the friends to whom she might have looked for words and deeds which would restore her soul having forsaken her; my children are desolate because the enemy prevailed, the enemy being still in power, with the result that the inhabitants of Jerusalem were destroyed, that they perished most miserably.
v. 17. Zion spreadeth forth her hands, in a gesture imploring help, and there is none to comfort her; the Lord hath commanded concerning Jacob that his adversaries should be round about him, his very neighbors being his enemies and seeking his destruction. Jerusalem is as a menstruous woman among them, shut out from intercourse with people and from attendance at the Temple-worship. These facts impress Jerusalem as being important and true; she must admit their justice.
v. 18. The Lord is righteous, just in His treatment of the rebellious city; for I have rebelled against His commandment. Hear, I pray you, all people, and behold my sorrow, since she feels the need of sympathy; my virgins and my young men are gone into captivity, this fact showing the very climax of her afflictions.
v. 19. I called for my lovers, the nations which had professed an interest of true affection, but they deceived me; my priests and mine elders gave up the ghost in the city, both the spiritual and the temporal rulers expiring in the neighborhood of the Sanctuary of Jehovah, while they sought their meat to relieve their souls, the very nobles of the people being obliged to seek food of any kind whatsoever, if it only would suffice to preserve their lives.
v. 20. Behold, O Lord, for I am in distress, she implored Him to observe how badly she fared. My bowels are troubled, being violently excited with excessive grief; mine heart is turned within me, for I have grievously rebelled, the punishment being altogether deserved, in the full measure in which it struck her. Abroad the sword bereaveth, as the battle demanded its victims; at home there is as death, namely, by famine and pestilence.
v. 21. They have heard that I sigh, the former friends and allies being fully aware of her groaning; there is none to comfort me, for they all ignore her trouble. All mine enemies have heard of my trouble; they are glad that Thou hast done it, rejoicing over the Lord’s punishment upon Zion. Thou wilt bring the day that Thou hast called, the day of wrath with whose coming the Lord had threatened for many years, and they shall be like unto me, for the Lord would visit her enemies as He had punished her.
v. 22. Let all their wickedness come before Thee, for a just punishment, and do unto them as Thou hast done unto me for all my transgressions, according to the same righteous judgment; for my sighs are many, and my heart is faint. This is not a vindictive prayer, but a plea for justice, which repentant believers of all times may well send up to the throne of God. The very punishment of God upon rebellious children is intended to change into a blessed experience of good.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.