LAMENTATIONS, BOOK OF :iS L A:\IENTATI0NS, BOOK OF
(comp. DeVitzschjCommentar iiher den Psalter, on Psa. ix, x). De Wette, however, allows, condescendingly, that the Lainontations, in spite of their degenerate taste, " have Slime merit in their way." Other critics have been more cntluisiastic in their admiration of this book. Dr. Hlavney remarks, " We cannot too much admire the flow of that full and graceful pathetic eloquence in which the auttior pours out the effusions of a patriotic heart, and piously weeps over the ruins of his venerable coun- try''(./i:'/Y;/ij«/(, p. 37G). '• Never," says an unquestion- able judge of these matters, '• was there a more rich and elegant variety of beautiful images and adjuncts ar- ranged together within so small a compass, nor more happily chosen and applied" (Lowth, De Sacra Poesi Ilebr. rrwlect. xxii). The poet seizes with ^vonderful tact those circumstances which point out the objects of his pity as the subjects of sympathy, and founds his ex- postulations on the miseries which arc thus exhibited. 11 is book of Lamentations is an astonishing exhibition of his power to accumulate images of sorrow% The whole series of elegies has but one object — the expres- sion of sorrow for the forlorn condition of his country ; and yet he presents this to us in so many lights, alludes to it by so many figures, that not only are his mournful strains not felt to be tedious reiterations, but the reader is captivated by the plaintive melancholy which per- vades tlic whole.
3. The power of entering into the spirit and meaning of poems such as these depends on two distinct condi- tions. AVe must seek to see, as with our own eyes, the desolation, misery, confusion, which came before those of the iirophet. We must endeavor also to feel as he felt when he looked on them. The last is the more dif- ticidt of the tv.-o. Jeremiah was not merely a patriot- poet, weeping over the ruin of his country. He was a ])roiihet who liad seen all this coming, and had foretold it as inevitable. He had urged submission to the Chal- dirans as the only mode of diminishing the terrors of that " day of the Lord." And now the Chaldwans had come, irritated by the perfidy and rebellion of the king and ]irinccs of Judab; and the actual horrors tliat he saw. surpassed, though he had predicted them, all th.it he had been able to imagine. All feeling of exultation in which, as a mere prophet of evil, he might have in- dulged at the fulfilment of his forebodings, was swal- loweil iij) in deep, overwhelming sorrov^. Yet sorrow, not less than other emotions, works on men according to their characters, and a man with Jeremiah's gifts of utterance could not sit down in the mere silence and stu))or of a hopeless grief. He was compelled to give expression to that which was devouring his heart and the heart of his people. The act itself was a relief to him. It led him on (as has been seen .above) to a calmer and serener state. It revived the faith and hope which had been nearly crushed out.
4. Tliore are, jierhaps, few portions of the O. T. which aiipcar to have done the work they were meant to do mcirc elfectually than tliis. It has presented but scanty materials for the systems and controversies of theology. It has suiiplied thousands with the fullest utterance for tlieir sorrows in the critical periods of national or indi- vidual suffering. We may well believe that it soothed the weary years of the Babylonian exile (comp. Zech. i, (i with Lam. ii,17). When the Jews returned to their own laud, and the desolation of Jerusalem was remem- bered as belonging only to the past, this was the book of remembrance. On the ninth day of the month of Ab ( .July), the Lamentations of Jeremiah were read, year by year, with fasting and weeping, to commemorate the misery out of which the people had been delivered. It lias come to be connected with the thoughts of a later devastation, and its words enter, sometimes at least, into tlio jirayers of the pilgrim Jews who meet at the "place of wailing" to mourn over the departed glory of their city. It enters largely into the nobly-constructed order of tlie Latin Clnirch for the services of Passion-week {Breviur. Rom. l''eri:i (Juinta. '■ In Cocna Domini"). If
it has been comparatively in the background in times (vhen the study of Scripture had passed into casuistry and spectdation, it has come forward, once and again, in times of danger and suffering, as a messenger of jieace, comforting men, not after the fashion of the friends of Job, with formal moralizings, but by enabling them to express themselves, leading them to feel that they might give utterance to the deepest and saddest feelings by which they were overwhelmed. It is striking, as wc cast our eye over the list of writers who have treated specially this book, to notice how many must have pass- ed through scenes of trial not unlike in kind to that of which the Lamentations speak. The book remains to do its work for any future generation that may be ex- posed to analogous calamities.
VIII. Commentaries. — The following are the special exegetical helps on the whole book of Lamentations ex- clusively, to a few of the most important of which we prefix an asterisk : Origen, Scholia (Greek, in Oj^J. iii, 320) ; Ephrem Syrus, Explanatio (Syr., in 0}yp. v, 105) ; Jerome, In Lam. (in 0pp. YSiippos.'] xiv, 227); Theod- oret, Interpretatio (Greek, in 0pp. ii, 1) ; Paschalius Eat- bertus, /« Threnos (in 0pp. p. 1307) ; Hugo ii St.A'ictor, A nnotationes (in 0pp. i, 103) ; Aquinas, Commentaria (in 0pp. ii) ; Bonaventiura, Exjjlicatio (in Opp. i, 428) ; Al- bertus Magnus, Commentarii (in Opp. viii) ; Q^^colampa- dius, Enarrationes [including Jer.] (Argent. 1533, 4to) ; Clenard, Medifationes (Paris, 153G, 8vo) ; Bugenhagen, Adnotationes (Vitemb. 1546, 4to) ; Quinquaboreus, Ad- notationes (Paris, 1556, 4to); Palladius, Enarratio (Vi- temb. 1560, 8vo) ; Pintus, Commentarius [including Isa. and Jer.] (Lugd. 1561, etc., fol.) ; Strigel, Commentarius (Lips, et Brem. 1564, 8vo) ; Selnecker, Auslefiiinf/ (Lpz, 1565. 4to); QaXw'iu, Pradectiones [incliid. Jer.] (Frankft.