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
_Prophets Without A Vision_
[155] Isa. xlii. 1. Now the question forces itself upon our attention, what is the explanation of these variations in the distribution of the spirit of prophecy? Why is the fountain of inspiration an intermittent spring, a Bethesda? We cannot trace its failure to any shortness of supply, for this fountain is fed from …
669 wordsSECTION 62_Prophets Without A Vision_
[156] ii. 14. [157] Numb. xxiv. 13. It must ever be that unfaithfulness to the light we have already received will bar the door against the advent of more light. There is nothing so blinding as the habit of lying. People who do not speak truth ultimately prevent themselves from perceiving truth, the false tongue lead…
683 wordsSECTION 63_Prophets Without A Vision_
[158] ii. 14. The crying fault of the prophets is their reluctance to preach to people of their sins. Their mission distinctly involves the duty of doing so. They should not shun to declare the whole counsel of God. It is not within the province of the ambassador to make selections from among the despatches with which…
538 wordsSECTION 64_The Call To Prayer_
ii. 18-22 It is not easy to analyse the complicated construction of the concluding portion of the second elegy. If the text is not corrupt its transitions are very abrupt. The difficulty is to adjust the relations of three sections. First we have the sentence, "Their heart cried unto the Lord." Next comes the address …
757 wordsSECTION 65_The Call To Prayer_
"She must weep or she will die." Nevertheless, an unchecked rush of feeling, not followed by any action, cannot but evince weakness; it has no lifting power. Although, if the emotion is distressful, such an expression may give relief to its subject, it is certainly very depressing to the spectator. For this reason the…
688 wordsSECTION 66_The Call To Prayer_
In personifying the wall of Zion, however, the Hebrew poet does not indulge in reflections such as these, which are more in harmony with the mild melancholy of Gray's _Elegy_ than with the sadder mood of the mourning patriot. He names the wall to give unity and concreteness to his appeal, and to clothe it in an atmosph…
754 wordsSECTION 67_The Call To Prayer_
Now the awakened soul is urged to cry out in the night, and in the beginning of the night watches--that is to say, not only at the commencement of the night, for this would require no rousing, but at the beginning of each of the three watches into which the Hebrews divided the hours of darkness--at sunset, at ten o clo…
877 wordsSECTION 68_The Call To Prayer_
It is to be noted that the elegist points to a definite occasion for the outpouring of the heart before God. He singles out specifically the sufferings of the starving children--a terrible subject that appears more than once in this elegy, shewing how the horror of it has fastened on the imagination of the poet. This w…
297 wordsSECTION 69_The Man That Hath Seen Affliction_
iii. 1-21 Whether we regard it from a literary, a speculative, or a religious point of view, the third and central elegy cannot fail to strike us as by far the best of the five. The workmanship of this poem is most elaborate in conception and most finished in execution, the thought is most fresh and striking, and the …
652 wordsSECTION 70_The Man That Hath Seen Affliction_
In the present case the speaker who recounts his own misfortunes is more than a casual witness, more than a mere specimen picked out at random from the heap of misery accumulated in this age of national ruin. He is not simply a man who has seen affliction, one among many similar sufferers; he is the man, the well-known…
828 wordsSECTION 71_The Man That Hath Seen Affliction_
In amplifying the account of his sufferings, after giving a general description of himself as the man who has experienced affliction, and adding a line in which this experience is connected with its cause--the rod of the wrath of Him who is unnamed, though ever in mind--the stricken patriot proceeds to illustrate and e…
866 wordsSECTION 72_The Man That Hath Seen Affliction_
[171] iii. 9. [172] iii. 10. [173] iii. 11. [174] iii. 12. [175] iii. 13. Here the poet breaks away from his imagery for a second time to tell us that he has become an object of derision to all his people, and the theme of their mocking songs.[176] This is a striking statement. It shews that the afflicted man is n…
750 wordsSECTION 73_The Man That Hath Seen Affliction_
[180] iii. 18. When we come to look at the series of pictures of affliction as a whole we shall notice that one general idea runs through them. This is that the victim is hindered, hampered, restrained. He is led into darkness, besieged, imprisoned, chained, driven out of his way, seized in ambuscade, hunted, even for…
715 wordsSECTION 74_The Unfailing Goodness Of God_
The triplet of verses 19 to 21 serves as a transition to the picture of the other side of the Divine action. It begins with prayer. Thus a new note is struck. The sufferer knows that God is not at heart his enemy. So he ventures to beseech the very Being concerning whose treatment of him he has been complaining so bitt…
723 wordsSECTION 75_The Unfailing Goodness Of God_
Nor is this wholly a matter of temperament. Is it not more or less the case with all of us, that since absorption with one class of ideas entirely excludes their opposites, when the latter are allowed to enter the mind they will rush in with the force of a pent-up flood? Then we are astonished that we could ever have f…
690 wordsSECTION 76_The Unfailing Goodness Of God_
"Sometimes a light surprises The Christian while he sings: It is the Lord who rises With healing in His wings. When comforts are declining, He grants the soul, again, A season of clear shining, To cheer it after rain." We may thank the Calvinistic poet for here touching on another side of the subject. He remind…
724 wordsSECTION 77_The Unfailing Goodness Of God_
The elegist declares that the reason why God's mercies are not consumed is that his compassions do not fail. Thus he goes behind the kind actions of God to their originating motives. To a man in the condition of the writer of this poem of personal confidences the Divine sympathy is the one fact in the universe of supre…
806 wordsSECTION 78_The Unfailing Goodness Of God_
"Awake into some holy thought," no more holy thought can be desired than a grateful recognition of the new mercies on which our eyes open with the new day. A morning so graciously welcomed is the herald of a day of strength and happy confidence. [185] Prov. viii. 17. To the notion of the morning renewal of the merci…
628 wordsSECTION 79_Quiet Waiting_
iii. 25-36 Having struck a rich vein, our author proceeds to work it with energy. Pursuing the ideas that flow out of the great truth of the endless goodness of God, and the immediate inference that He of whom so wonderful a character can be affirmed is Himself the soul's best possession, the poet enlarges upon their …
981 wordsSECTION 80_Quiet Waiting_
[189] Matt. v. 45. [190] vii. 7, 8. [191] James iv. 2. Quiet waiting, then, is the right and fitting condition for the reception of blessing from God. But the elegist holds more than this. In his estimation the state of mind he here commends is itself good for a man. It is certainly good in contrast with the unhappy…
828 wordsSECTION 81_Quiet Waiting_
But now the poet has been brought to see that it was for his own advantage that he was made to bear the yoke in his youth. How so? Surely not because it prevented him from taking too rosy views of life, and so saved him from subsequent disappointment. Nothing is more fatal to youth than cynicism. The young man who prof…
786 wordsSECTION 82_Quiet Waiting_
[193] iii. 29. [194] iii. 30. We cannot consider this subject without being reminded of the teaching and--a more helpful memory--the example also of our Lord. It is hard to receive even from His lips the command to turn the other cheek to one who has smitten us on the right cheek. But when we see Jesus doing this ver…
777 wordsSECTION 83_God And Evil_
[195] iii. 31, 32 [196] iii. 33. [197] iii. 34-6. [198] Gen. xviii. 25. [199] iii. 32. iii. 37-9 The eternal problem of the relation of God to evil is here treated with the keenest discrimination. That God is the supreme and irresistible ruler, that no man can succeed with any design in opposition to His will, th…
651 wordsSECTION 84_God And Evil_
[202] Job i. 6-12, ii. 1-7. [203] Zech. iii. 1, 2. [204] 1 Chron. xxi. 1. Meanwhile a very different problem, the problem of suffering, is answered by attributing this form of evil quite unreservedly and even emphatically to God. It is to be remembered that our Lord, accepting the language of His contemporaries, asc…
693 wordsSECTION 85_God And Evil_
Of course the uselessness of complaining, or rather the uselessness of attempting resistance, may be impressed upon us in this way. If the source of our trouble is nothing less than the Almighty and Supreme Ruler of all things it is stupid to dream of thwarting His purposes. If a man will run his head like a battering-…
778 wordsSECTION 86_God And Evil_
The conception of the primary unity of causation which the Hebrew poet reaches through his religion is brought home to us to-day with a vast accumulation of proof by the discoveries of science. The uniformity of law, the co-relation of forces, the analyses of the most diverse and complex organisms into their common che…
770 wordsSECTION 87_God And Evil_
The last verse of the triplet startles the reader with an unexpected thought. The considerations already adduced are all meant to check any complaint against the course of Providence. Now the poet appends a final argument, which is all the more forcible for not being stated as an argument. At the very end of the passag…
565 wordsSECTION 88_The Return_
iii. 40-42 When prophets, speaking in the name of God, promised the exiles a restoration to their land and the homes of their fathers, it was always understood and often expressly affirmed that this reversal of their outward fortunes must be preceded by an inner change, a return to God in penitent submission. Expulsio…
681 wordsSECTION 89_The Return_
We are led to look in this direction by the startling thought with which the previous triplet closes. If the calamities bewailed are the chastisements of sin it is necessary for this sin to be sought out. The language of the elegist suggests that we are not aware of the nature of our own conduct, and that it is only by…
786 wordsSECTION 90_The Return_
Then while a certain kind of self-study is always mischievous--the sickly habit of brooding over one's feelings, it is to be observed that the elegist does not recommend this. His language points in quite another direction. It is not emotion but action that he is concerned with. The searching is to be into our "ways," …
888 wordsSECTION 91_The Return_
On the other hand, there are one or two further considerations which should be borne in mind. Thus it must not be forgotten that the greatest sinner is not necessarily the man whose guilt is most glaringly apparent; nor that sins of the heart count with God as equivalent to obviously wicked deeds committed in the full …
735 wordsSECTION 92_The Return_
Following up his general exhortation to return to God, the elegist adds a particular one, in which the process of the new movement is described. It takes the form of a prayer from the heart. The resolution is to lift up the heart with the hands. The erect posture, with the hands stretched out to heaven, which was the H…
278 wordsSECTION 93_Grieving Before God_
iii. 43-54 As might have been expected, the mourning patriot quickly forsakes the patch of sunshine which lights up a few verses of this elegy. But the vision of it has not come in vain; for it leaves gracious effects to tone the gloomy ideas upon which the meditations of the poet now return like birds of the night ha…
950 wordsSECTION 94_Grieving Before God_
Turning from the contemplation of the hopeless failure of prayer the lament naturally falls into an almost despairing wail of grief. The state of the Jews is painted in the very darkest colours. God has made them as no better than the refuse people cast out of their houses, or the very sweepings of the streets--not fit…
1,050 wordsSECTION 95_Grieving Before God_
[217] iii. 48 ff. [218] iii. 51. [219] iii. 48. The poet is moved to tears--quite unselfish tears, tears of patriotic grief, tears of compassion for helpless suffering. Here again the modern Anglo-Saxon habit makes it difficult for us to appreciate his conduct as it deserves. We think it a dreadful thing for a man t…
880 wordsSECTION 96_Grieving Before God_
Lastly, we must not fail to remember, in reading these expressions of patriotic and personal grief, that they are the outpourings of the heart of the poet before God. They are all addressed to God's ear; they are all part of a prayer. Thus they illustrate the way in which prayer takes the form of confiding in God. It i…
358 wordsSECTION 97_De Profundis_
iii. 55-66 As this third elegy--the richest and the most elaborate of the five that constitute the Book of Lamentations--draws to a close it retains its curious character of variability, not aiming at any climax, but simply winding on till its threefold acrostics are completed by the limits of the Hebrew alphabet, lik…
652 wordsSECTION 98_De Profundis_
It has been suggested that in this passage the elegist is following the sixty-ninth psalm, and that perhaps that psalm is his own composition and the expression of the very prayer to which he is here referring. At all events, the psalm exactly fits the situation; and therefore it may be taken as a perfect illustration …
801 wordsSECTION 99_De Profundis_
The prayer was more than heard; it was answered--there was a Divine voice in response to this cry to God, a voice that reached the ear of the desolate prisoner in the silence of his dungeon. It consisted of but two words, but those two words were clear and unmistakable, and quite sufficient to satisfy the listener. The…
750 wordsSECTION 100_De Profundis_
This was in the olden times; but if then, why not also now? Evidently the elegist regarded it as a rare and wonderful occurrence--a single experience to which he looked back in after years with the interest one feels in a vivid recollection which rises like a mountain, clean cut against the sky, above the mists that so…
822 wordsSECTION 101_De Profundis_
Considering how God acted as his advocate when he was in danger in the earlier crisis, and then redeemed his life, the poet points to this fact as a plea in his new necessity.[230] God will not desert the cause He has adopted. Men feel a peculiar interest in those whom they have already helped, an interest that is stro…
600 wordsSECTION 102_Contrasts_
iv. 1-12 IN form the fourth elegy is slightly different from each of its predecessors. Following the characteristic plan of the Book of Lamentations, it is an acrostic of twenty-two verses arranged in the order of the Hebrew alphabet. In it we meet with the same curious transposition of two letters that is found in th…
906 wordsSECTION 103_Contrasts_
[234] 2 Kings xxv. 9. [235] iv. 1. [236] iv. 2. [237] iv. 7. This somewhat aristocratic poet, the mouthpiece of an aristocratic age, compares the sons of the Jewish nobility to purest gold. Yet he tells us that they are treated as common earthen vessels, perhaps meaning in contrast to the vessels of precious metal …
692 wordsSECTION 104_Contrasts_
[241] iv. 6. Passing on to the consideration of the parallel section, we see that the author follows the same lines, though with considerable freshness of treatment. Still directing especial attention to the tremendous change in the fortunes of the aristocracy, he begins again by describing the splendour of their earl…
759 wordsSECTION 105_Contrasts_
[248] Heb. xii. 29. [249] Matt. iii. 12. In view of the whole situation so graphically portrayed by means of the double line of illustrations the poet concludes this part of his elegy with a device that reminds us of the function of the chorus in the Greek drama. We see the kings of all other nations in amazement at …
734 wordsSECTION 106_Contrasts_
But unhappily the fall of the pampered youth of Jerusalem was not confined to a reversal of external fortune. The elegist has been careful to point out that the miseries they endured were the punishments of their sins. Then there had been an earlier and much greater collapse. Before any foreign enemy had appeared at he…
276 wordsSECTION 107_Lepers_
iv. 13-16 Passing from the fate of the princes to that of the prophets and priests, we come upon a vividly dramatic scene in the streets of Jerusalem amid the terror and confusion that precede the final act of the national tragedy. The doom of the city is attributed to the crimes of her religious leaders, whose true c…
663 wordsSECTION 108_Lepers_
[253] Jer. vi. 14; viii. 11. The sin of these religious leaders of Israel consists essentially in betraying a sacred trust. The priest is in charge of the _Torah_--traditional or written; he must have been unfaithful to his law or he could not have led his people astray. If the prophet's claims are valid this man is t…
676 wordsSECTION 109_Lepers_
[254] Ezek. iii. 16-21. In the hour of their exposure these wretched prophets and priests lose all sense of dignity, even lose their self-possession, and stumble about like blind men, helpless and bewildered. Their behaviour suggests the idea that they must be drunk with the blood they have shed, or overcome by the in…
759 wordsSECTION 110_Lepers_
The Jews show their disgust and horror for their former leaders by pelting them with the leper call. According to the law the leper must go with rent clothes and flowing hair, and his face partly covered, crying, "Unclean, unclean."[255] It is evident that the poet has this familiar mournful cry in his mind when he des…
690 wordsSECTION 111_Lepers_
Exile is the doom of these guilty prophets and priests. But even in their banishment they can find no place of rest. They wander from one foreign nation to another; they are permitted to stay with none of them. Unlike our English pretenders who were allowed to take up their abode among the enemies of their country, the…
403 wordsSECTION 112_Vain Hopes_
iv. 17-20 The first part of the fourth elegy was specially concerned with the fate of the gilded youth of Jerusalem; the second and closely parallel part with that of the princes; the third introduced us to the dramatic scene in which the fallen priests and prophets were portrayed; now in the fourth part of the elegy …
1,000 wordsSECTION 113_Vain Hopes_
But now we find the old-established faith in Jerusalem so far undermined that it has to be supplemented by other grounds of hope. In particular there are two of these--the king and a foreign ally. The ally is mentioned first because the poet starts from the time when men still hoped that the Egyptians would espouse the…
1,051 wordsSECTION 114_Vain Hopes_
Now this obstinate disregard of the repeated lessons of experience is too remarkable a habit of life to be reckoned as a mere accident. There must be some adequate causes to account for it. In the first place, it testifies with singular force to the vitality of what we may call the faculty of hope itself. Disappointmen…
705 wordsSECTION 115_Vain Hopes_
These considerations will be confirmed when we follow the elegist in his treatment of the disappointment of the second ground of hope, that which was found in the royalist's confidence in his sovereign. The poetic account of the events which ended in the capture of Zedekiah seems to consist in a blending of metaphor wi…
768 wordsSECTION 116_The Debt Of Guilt Extinguished_
[262] iv. 20. iv. 21, 22 One after another the vain hopes of the Jews melt in mists of sorrow. But just as the last of these flickering lights is disappearing a gleam of consolation breaks out from another quarter, like the pale yellow streak that may sometimes be seen low on the western sky of a stormy day just befo…
977 wordsSECTION 117_The Debt Of Guilt Extinguished_
[263] Ezek. xxv. 12-14. In all this it is very plain that the author of the Lamentations, like the Hebrew prophets generally, had an unhesitating belief in a supremacy of God over foreign nations that was quite as effective as His supremacy over Israel. On the other hand, iniquity is ascribed to Israel in exactly the …
854 wordsSECTION 118_The Debt Of Guilt Extinguished_
[264] Page 269. [265] iii. 39. [266] ii. 17. We are brought then to the conclusion that the elegist here announces the extinction of the Jews' debt of guilt. Accordingly they are told that God will no more carry them away into captivity. This promise has occasioned much perplexity to people concerned for the literal…
966 wordsSECTION 119_The Debt Of Guilt Extinguished_
[267] Isa. liii. 4-6. It may be objected that all such ideas as those just expressed tend to generate superficial views of sin. Possibly they may be employed so as to encourage this tendency. But if so, it will only be by misinterpreting and abusing them. Certainly the elegist does not belittle the rigour of the Divin…
434 wordsSECTION 120_An Appeal For God'S Compassion_
v. 1-10 Unlike its predecessors, the fifth and last elegy is not an acrostic. There is little to be gained by a discussion of the various conjectures that have been put forth to account for this change of style: as that the _crescendo_ movement which reached its climax in the third elegy was followed by a _decrescendo…
736 wordsSource & rights
Public domain in the USA; original historical text digitized by Project Gutenberg.
Project Gutenberg source record →
Historical Christian writing; not Scripture.