PUBLIC-DOMAIN CHRISTIAN BOOK
The Expositor's Bible: The Song of Solomon and the Lamentations of Jeremiah
Adeney, Walter F. (Walter Frederic) · 101,330 words · 142 reading sections
Chapter Xix
Produced by Marcia Brooks, Colin Bell, Julia Neufeld and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) Transcriber's note: Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). Small capital …
253 wordsSECTION 2_The Structure Of The Book_
VAIN HOPES 288 iv. 17-20. THE DEBT OF GUILT EXTINGUISHED 300 iv. 21, 22. AN APPEAL FOR GOD'S COMPASSION 311 v. 1-10. SIN AND SHAME 324 v. 11-18. THE EVERLASTING THRONE 335 v. 19-22. The Song of Solomon is a puzzle to the commentator. Quite apart from the wilderness of mystical interpretations with which it ha…
666 wordsSECTION 3_The Structure Of The Book_
The question whether the work is a drama or an idyl has been discussed with much critical acumen. But is it not rather pedantic? The sharply divided orders of European poetry were not observed or even known in Israel. It was natural, therefore, that Hebrew imaginative work should partake of the characteristics of sever…
654 wordsSECTION 4_The Structure Of The Book_
It is impossible to find any time in the life of David's successor when this great conversion might have taken place; and the occurrence itself is highly improbable. Those however are not fatal objections to the proposed scheme, because the poem may be entirely ideal; it may even be written _at_ the king. Historical co…
678 wordsSECTION 5_The Structure Of The Book_
If we are thus led to accept what has been called "the shepherd hypothesis" the value of the book will be considerably enhanced. This is more than a mere love poem; it is not to be classed with erotics, although a careless reading of some of its passages might incline us to place it in the same category with a purely s…
742 wordsSECTION 6_The Structure Of The Book_
[5] viii. 6, 7. [6] 1 Kings xi. 3. The date of the poem can be conjectured with some degree of assurance, although the language does not help us much in the determination of this point. There are archaisms, and there are also terms that seem to indicate a late date--Aramaic words and possibly even words of Greek extr…
671 wordsSECTION 7CHAPTER i.-v. 1
"He sang of love with quiet blending; Slow to begin, and never ending; Of serious faith and inward glee; That was the song--the song for me." [16] See _Ency. Brit._, Art. "Canticles," by Robertson Smith. The poem opens with a scene in Solomon's palace. A country maiden has just been introduced to the royal harem. …
818 wordsSECTION 8CHAPTER i.-v. 1
[23] i. 9--ii. 6. The king begins with the familiar device by which rich men all the world over try to win the confidence of poor girls when there is no love on either side,--a device which has been only too successful in the case of many a weak Marguerite though her tempter has not always been a handsome Faust; but i…
719 wordsSECTION 9CHAPTER i.-v. 1
[28] ii. 3. [29] ii. 4. She is fainting. How she longs for her lover to comfort her! She has just compared him to an apple tree; now the refreshment she hungers for is the fruit of this tree; that is to say, his love.[30] Oh that he would put his arms round her and support her, as in the old happy days before she had…
693 wordsSECTION 10CHAPTER i.-v. 1
"In the spring a young man's fancy Lightly turns to thoughts of love." [35] ii. 9. [36] ii. 11-13. There is even a deeper association between the ideas of the poem and the season in which it is set. None of the freshness of spring is to be found about Solomon and his harem, but it is all present in the Shulammite a…
820 wordsSECTION 11CHAPTER i.-v. 1
[44] iv. 8-15. Next--whether we take it as in imagination or in fact--the shepherd lover calls his bride to follow him from the most remote regions. His language is entirely different from that of the magnificent monarch. He does not waste his breath in formal compliments, high-flown imagery, wearisome lists of the ch…
818 wordsSECTION 12CHAPTER v. 1-viii
[46] v. 1. We have seen how this strange poem mingles fact and fancy, memory and reverie, in what would be hopeless confusion if we could not detect a common prevailing sentiment and one aim towards which the whole is tending, with all its rapidly shifting scenes and all its perplexingly varying movements. The middle …
710 wordsSECTION 13CHAPTER v. 1-viii
[48] v. 8. [49] v. 9. [50] v. 10-16. The mocking ladies ask their victim where then has this paragon gone?[51] She would have them understand that he has not been so cruel as really to desert her. It was only in her dream that he treated her with such unaccountable fickleness. The plain fact is that he is away at hi…
774 wordsSECTION 14CHAPTER v. 1-viii
The concluding words of the passage which opens with Solomon's praises of the Shulammite present another of the many difficulties with which the poem abounds. Mention is made of Solomon's sixty queens, his eighty concubines, his maidens without number; and then the Shulammite is contrasted with this vast seraglio as "M…
672 wordsSECTION 15CHAPTER v. 1-viii
[59] vi. 13. This is obscured in the Authorised Version. [60] vii. 1-9. [61] vii 1. It has been suggested, with some degree of probability, that the Shulammite is supposed to make her escape while the attention of the king and his court is diverted by this entrancing spectacle. It is to be observed, at all events, t…
714 wordsSECTION 16CHAPTER v. 1-viii
[67] viii. 2. [68] viii. 2. [69] viii. 3. [70] viii. 4. Now the bridegroom is seen coming up from the wilderness with his bride leaning upon him, and telling how he first made love to her when he found her asleep under an apple tree in the garden of the cottage where she was born.[71] As they converse together we r…
803 wordsSECTION 17_Mystical Interpretations_
"Like to a roe or a young hart Upon the mountains of spices."[77] [73] viii. 11. [74] i. 6. [75] viii. 12. [76] viii. 13. [77] viii. 14. And so the poem sinks to rest in the happy picture of the union of the two young lovers. Thus far we have been considering the bare, literal sense of the text. It cannot be de…
944 wordsSECTION 18_Mystical Interpretations_
It is not easy to discover any justification for the rabbinical explanation of the Song of Solomon as a representation of successive events in the history of Israel, an explanation which Jewish scholars have abandoned in favour of simple literalism. But the mystical view, according to which the poem sets forth spiritua…
884 wordsSECTION 19_Mystical Interpretations_
If the choice spiritual ideas which some people think they see in the Song of Solomon are not imported by the reader, but form part of the genuine contents of the book, how comes it that this fact was not recognised by one of the inspired writers of the New Testament? or, if privately recognised, that it was never util…
844 wordsSECTION 20_Mystical Interpretations_
But we may push the case further. There is a positive improbability of the highest order that the spiritual ideas read into the Song of Solomon by some of its Christian admirers should have been originally there. This would involve the most tremendous anachronism in all literature. The Song of Solomon is dated among th…
865 wordsSECTION 21_Canonicity_
It is scarcely to be expected that the view of the Song of Solomon expounded in the foregoing pages will meet with acceptance from every reader. A person who has been accustomed to resort to this book in search of the deepest spiritual ideas cannot but regard the denial of their presence with aversion. While, however, …
823 wordsSECTION 22_Canonicity_
Since there is no reason to believe that the Song of Solomon had received any allegorical interpretation before the commencement of the Christian era, we must conclude that it was not on the ground of some such interpretation that it was originally admitted into the Hebrew collection of Scripture. It was placed in the …
749 wordsSECTION 23_Canonicity_
This subject also deserves attention on its positive side. The literature of all ages is a testimony to the fact that nothing in the world is so interesting as love. What is so old as love-making? and what so fresh? At least ninety-nine novels out of a hundred have a love-story for plot; and the hundredth is always reg…
442 wordsSECTION 24_Hebrew Elegies_
The book which is known by the title "The Lamentations of Jeremiah" is a collection of five separate poems, very similar in style, and all treating of the same subject--the desolation of Jerusalem and the sufferings of the Jews after the overthrow of their city by Nebuchadnezzar. In our English Bible it is placed among…
669 wordsSECTION 25_Hebrew Elegies_
"The virgin daughter of Israel is fallen--she shall no more rise: She is cast down upon her land--there is none to raise her up."[89] [89] Amos v. 2. Similarly constructed elegiac pieces are scattered over the Old Testament scriptures from the eighth century B.C. onwards. Several illustrations of this peculiar kind …
674 wordsSECTION 26_Hebrew Elegies_
In the first place, it is a sort of note of exclamation prefixed to the sentence it introduces. Thus it infuses an emotional element into the statements which follow it. The word is a relic of the most primitive form of language. Judging from the sounds produced by animals and the cries of little children, we should co…
713 wordsSECTION 27_Hebrew Elegies_
From suggestions thus rising out of a consideration of the opening word of the elegy we may be led on to a perception of similar traits in the body of this poetry. It is emotional in character; it is vague in description; and it sets before us visions of vast woe. But now it is quite clear that poetry such as this mus…
774 wordsSECTION 28_Hebrew Elegies_
"Poets learn in sorrow what they teach in song," must it not be also the fact that sorrow while inspiring song is itself glorified thereby? To use suffering merely as the food of aestheticism would be to degrade it immeasurably. We should rather put the case the other way. Poetry saves sorrow from becoming sordid by r…
469 wordsSECTION 29_The Origin Of The Poems_
As we pass out of Jerusalem by the Damascus Gate, and follow the main north road, our attention is immediately arrested by a low hill of grey rock sprinkled with wild flowers, which is now attracting peculiar notice because it has been recently identified with the "Golgotha" on which our Lord was crucified. In the face…
684 wordsSECTION 30_The Origin Of The Poems_
In this dearth of external testimony we turn to the book itself for indications of origin and authorship. The poems make no claim to have been the utterances of Jeremiah; they do not supply us with their author's name. Therefore there can be no question of genuineness, no room for an ugly charge of "forgery," or a deli…
966 wordsSECTION 31_The Origin Of The Poems_
"Our eyes do yet fail in looking for our vain help: In watching we have watched for a nation that could not save."[94] [94] iv. 17. Would Jeremiah, who bade the Jews bow to the scourge of Jehovah's chastisement and look for no earthly deliverer, thus confess participation in the worldly policy which he, in common wi…
650 wordsSECTION 32_The Origin Of The Poems_
[102] Lam. ii. 15. [103] Ezek. xxvii. 3, xxviii. 12. Failing Jeremiah, it is not possible to hit upon any other known person with the least assurance. Some have followed Bunsen in his conjecture that Baruch the scribe may have been the author of the poems. Others have suggested a member of the family of Shaphan, in w…
1,010 wordsSECTION 33_The Theme_
No more pathetic subject ever inspired a poet than that which became the theme of the Lamentations. Wave after wave of invasion had swept over Jerusalem, until at length the miserable city had been reduced to a heap of ruins. After the decisive defeat of the Egyptians at the great battle of Carchemish during the reign …
678 wordsSECTION 34_The Theme_
Poetry inspired with this intention must acquire a certain breadth not found in more personal effusions. Too much indulgence in private grief cannot but produce a narrowing effect upon the mind. Intense pain is as selfish as intense pleasure. We may mourn our dead until we have no room left in our sympathies for the gr…
748 wordsSECTION 35_The Theme_
And this is not all. The city has its own peculiar character--a character which is not only more than a summary of the morals and manners of the men and women who live in it, but also unique when compared with other cities. Every city that can boast of real civic life has its distinctive individuality; and often this i…
732 wordsSECTION 36_The Theme_
[107] Neh. ii. 3. There is a hopeful side to these reflections. A city with such a character may be said to bear the seeds of her own revival. Her individuality has that within it which fights against extinction. To put it another way, the idea of the city is too marked and too attractive for its privileged custodians…
708 wordsSECTION 37_Desolation_
"What is it all if we all of us end but in being our own corpse coffins at last, Swallowed in Vastness, lost in Silence, drowned in the deeps of a meaningless Past! What but a murmur of gnats in the gloom, or a moment's anger of bees in their hive? . . . . . . . . Peace, let it be! for I loved him, and love him …
733 wordsSECTION 38_Desolation_
The woe of Jerusalem is intensified by reason of its contrast with the previous splendour of the proud city. She had not always appeared as a lonely widow. Formerly she had held a high place among the neighbouring nations--for did she not cherish memories of the great days of her shepherd king and Solomon the magnifice…
1,056 wordsSECTION 39_Desolation_
Coming nearer to the city in his mental vision, the poet next bewails deserted roads; "those ways of Zion" up which the holiday folks used to troop, clad in gay garments, with songs of rejoicing, are left so lonely that it seems as though they themselves must be mourning. It is in keeping with the imagery of these poem…
760 wordsSECTION 40_Desolation_
In accordance with the principle of construction which he follows throughout--the heightening of the effect of the picture by presenting a succession of contrasts--the poet next sets the prosperity of the enemies of Jerusalem in close juxtaposition to the misery of those of her people in whom it is most pitiable and st…
777 wordsSECTION 41_Sin And Suffering_
i. 8-11 The doctrinaire rigour of Judaism in its uncompromising association of moral and physical evils has led to an unreasonable disregard for the solid truth which lies behind this mistake. It can scarcely be said that men are now perplexed by the problem that inspired the Book of Job. The fall of the tower of Silo…
719 wordsSECTION 42_Sin And Suffering_
It does not fall in with the plan of the Lamentations for this subject to be treated so fully in these poems as it is in the stirring exhortations of the great prophets. Yet it comes to the surface repeatedly. In the fifth verse of the first elegy the poet attributes the affliction of Zion to "the multitude of her tran…
744 wordsSECTION 43_Sin And Suffering_
The new aspect of the misery of Jerusalem is thus set forth as one of degradation and ignominy. The vision of sin is immediately followed by a scene of shame. Commentators have been divided over the question whether this picture of the humiliated woman is intended to apply to the sin of the city or only to her misfortu…
962 wordsSECTION 44_Sin And Suffering_
But now it may be objected that this reference to the mere thought of consequences suggests considerations that are too low to furnish the reasons for the ruin of Jerusalem. Would the city have been spared if only her inhabitants had been a little more foreseeing? It should be observed that though mere prudence is neve…
956 wordsSECTION 45_Zion'S Appeal_
[112] Isa. i. 10-17. [113] Dan. xi. 31. [114] Mark xiii. 14. Before we pass from this portion of the elegy there is one curious characteristic of it which calls for notice. The poet suddenly drops the construction in the third person and writes in the first person. This he does twice--at the end of the ninth verse, …
661 wordsSECTION 46_Zion'S Appeal_
[115] i. 12. 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 go…
714 wordsSECTION 47_Zion'S Appeal_
It is like a fire in the bones.[117] 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. [117] i. 13. I…
820 wordsSECTION 48_Zion'S Appeal_
[122] i. 16. Here the supposed utterance of Jerusalem is broken for the poet to insert a description of the suppliant making her piteous appeal.[123] 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 wi…
652 wordsSECTION 49_Zion'S Appeal_
[125] i. 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 Jerusale…
775 wordsSECTION 50_God As An Enemy_
[129] i. 21. [130] See i. 2, 9, 16, 17, 21. [131] i. 16. [132] Mark xv. 34. ii. 1-9 The elegist, as we have seen, attributes the troubles of the Jews to the will and action of God. In the second poem he even ventures further, and with daring logic presses this idea to its ultimate issues. If God is tormenting His …
718 wordsSECTION 51_God As An Enemy_
[135] Matt. xi. 23. Still keeping in mind the temple, the poet tells us that God has forgotten His footstool. He seems to be thinking of the Mercy-Seat over the ark, the spot at which God was thought to shew Himself propitious to Israel on the great Day of Atonement, and which was looked upon as the very centre of the…
728 wordsSECTION 52_God As An Enemy_
[138] ii. 6. The central object of the sacred shrine is the altar, where earth seems to meet heaven in the high mystery of sacrifice. Here men seek to propitiate God; here too God would be expected to shew Himself gracious to men. Yet God has even cast off His altar, abhorring His very sanctuary.[139] Where mercy is m…
776 wordsSECTION 53_God As An Enemy_
Still, although this idea of the elegist is a fruit of his unshaken faith in the universal sway of God, it startles and shocks us, and we shrink from it almost as though it contained some blasphemous suggestion. Is it ever right to think of God as the enemy of any man? It would not be fair to pass judgment on the autho…
682 wordsSECTION 54_God As An Enemy_
It may be contended, on the other side, that there is a world of difference between antagonistic actions and unfriendly feelings, and that the former by no means imply the latter. May not God oppose a man who is doing wrong, not at all because He is his Enemy, but just because He is his truest Friend? Is it not an act …
563 wordsSECTION 55_The Cry Of The Children_
ii. 10-17 Passion and poetry, when they fire the imagination, do more than personify individual material things. By fusing the separate objects in the crucible of a common emotion which in some way appertains to them all, they personify this grand unity, and so lift their theme into the region of the sublime. Thus whi…
718 wordsSECTION 56_The Cry Of The Children_
[143] ii. 9. With the banishment of the custodians of law the poet associates the accompanying silence of the voice of prophecy. This, however, is so important and significant a fact, that it must be reserved for separate and fuller treatment.[144] [144] See next chapter. Next to the princes come the elders, to whom…
769 wordsSECTION 57_The Cry Of The Children_
When we turn to the moral elements of the case we encounter its most serious difficulties. Children may not be accounted innocent in the absolute sense of the word. Even unconscious infants come into the world with hereditary tendencies to the evil habits of their ancestors; but then every principle of justice resists …
835 wordsSECTION 58_The Cry Of The Children_
All this is very vague, and if we offer it as a consolation to a mother whose heart is torn with anguish at the sight of her child's pain, it is likely she will think our balm no better than the wormwood of mockery. It would be vain for us to imagine that we have solved the riddle, and vainer to suppose that any views …
782 wordsSECTION 59_Prophets Without A Vision_
[151] Luke xiii. 20. [152] ii. 13. The poet can offer no comfort for such misery as this. His confession of helplessness agrees with what we must have perceived already, namely, that the Book of Lamentations is not a book of consolations. It is not always easy to see that the sympathy which mourns with the sufferer m…
762 wordsSECTION 60_Prophets Without A Vision_
Thus the lament of the elegist suggests a real loss--something more serious than the failure of assistance such as some Roman Catholics try to obtain from St. Anthony in the discovery of lost property. The prophets were regarded as the media of communication between heaven and earth. It was because of the low and narro…
879 wordsSource & rights
Public domain in the USA; original historical text digitized by Project Gutenberg.
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Historical Christian writing; not Scripture.