THE
PULPIT COMMENTARY. EDITED BY THE
·vERY REV. H. D. M. SPENCE, D.D.t DEAN OF GLOUCESTER;
AND BY THE
REV. JOSEPH S. EXELL, M.A.
LAMENTATIONS. 0xposition BY REV. T. K. CHEYNE, M.A., D.D., EECTOB OF TENDRING, AND LATE FELLOW OF llALLIOL COLLJ:GE, OllOllll.
1!1omiletics BY REV. W. F . .A.DENEY, M.A.
1!1omilies bi;1 Fatfous !autf)ors. REV. PROF. J. R. THOMSON, M.A. REV. D. YOUNG, B.A.
NEW EDITION.
FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY LONDON AND NEW YORK 1906 TIIE LAMENTATIONS OF JERE~IIAH,
INTRODUCTION.
THE Book of Lamentations has no author's name attached to it in the Hebrew Bible, which, indeed, places it far away from Jeremiah in the so- called K'thubhim or Hagiographa, between Ruth and Koheleth (Ecclesiastes). It is the Septuagint which, in some manuscripts, appends" 0£ Jeremiah" to the descriptive title "Lamentations," at the same time grouping it with the prophecies 0£ Jeremiah and the (apocryphal) Book of Barnch. But before we can form an opinion as to the justice 0£ this view 0£ the author- ship, and the romantic tradition connected with it (see below), we must :lirst 0£ all take a general survey of the book and gather up all its internal evidence as to date and origin ; and also we must illuminate this by the results 0£ a critical study 0£ the Old Testament. One 0£ the most interesting 0£ these results is the discovery 0£ a great lyric movement among the conquered Jews, as well those in Babylon as those who remained in their much-loved home. "I£ I forget thee, 0 Jeru- salem," was their dominant thought, even when surrounded by the wonders of Babylonian art; and it naturally expressed itself in lyric verse. Ewald has done much to enable modern students to realize the vast debt which we owe to the Captivity and the subsequent period for much 0£ the most precious part of the Psalms, and, by including his translation of the Lamen- tations in the same volume with the Psalter (he even inserts the former as a portion of the sacred hymn-book), he has brought vividly before us the essential unity 0£ the great lyric movement referred to. We have spoken 0£ these psalms and lamentations as expressions 0£ a mood ; they are this most truly; but they are something more. Nursed up on the writings 0£ the prophets, the authors 0£ these lyric poems were in a sense prophets, just as the prophetic writings addressed to the later Jews may to a certain extent be classed with the lyric literature. The truths which the lyric or elegiac poets had imbibed from the prophets gave a colour even to the expressions 0£ grief, and so, monotonous as the Book 0£ Lamentations may be, it has justly been admitted as a sacred Scripture into the Old Testament canon. T~e authorship of Jeremiah may be doubtful, and yet we cannot fa.il to ii INTRODUCTION TO
r<>cngnize in this short elegiR.C book that peculiar quality which, in e,ll its degrees of manifestation, the Jewish doctors agree with us in describing RB irn,pira.tion. 'l'he common theme of tbe Lamentations is the terrible fate which befel.1 Jerusalem when the Chaldeans captured the city (n.c. 588) and carried away its inhabitants (less fortunate in one sense the,n those of the country di!-t.ricts) to Babylon. That they were all written at the same time is, however, to say the least, improbable; the third, and in e, still higher degree the fifth, will be found to present some striking points of dissimilarity t.o the rest. Let ns first of all endeavour to characterize the three which have most in common, and each of which begins with the word echah, how! viz. the first, t.he second, and the fourth. Et"en in this narrower group, indeed, some divergences will strike the reader, but they are not sufficient to compel us to assume a diversity of authorship. Each elegy is in the strictest sense alphabetical (which means that every verse or half-verse or every group of verses begins with one of the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet; comp. Ps. ix., :x:., xx:v., xx:x:iv., mvii., cxix., cx:lv.), but with this di.!Ierence-that whereas in the first the initial letters come in their usual order, in the second and fourth the letter !l (pe) precedes the letter 11 ( ayin) .1 Another unimportant technical divergence is that the verses of eh. i. and ii. are in the original, as a rule, composed of three lines, and those of .eh. iv. of four. It may seem strange, at first sight, that so artificial a form as the alphabetic should have been selected for elegies. But further con- sideration will show that it was really both natural and appropriate. These elegies were probably not so much intended for private use as for a liturgical purpose, for which the alphabetic form, so convenient for the memory, would be a great recommendation. It has for ages been the custom to read the Lamentations in the synagogues on the ninth day of Ah, the anniversary of the burning of the temple, and, as this is a very ancient fast-day (Zech. vii. 3), it is reasonable to conjecture that the Lamentations, or some of them, were from the first designed for this solemn occasion. The didactic element which now and then appears in the poems gives an additional appropriateness to the alphabetic form, as a reference to the alphabetic psalms will at once show. The contents of these three elegies, in spite of their monotony, indicate a certain difference in the point of view of the writer or writers. The first directs the attention to the sorrow-laden Mater Dolorosa (if the application suggested by a living poet may be allowed), the widowed city, Zion. The cause of the catastrophe is bnt lightly touched upon, and the description 1 This is in itself not more surprising than other irregularities of Hebrew poets in the
handling of alphabetic verHification. What is surprising is that the same violation of order should be found in one of the psalms which there is no ground for assigning to the author (or 1.o a11y of the authors) of the Lamentations. For there can hardly be a doubt .that Hitzig, Deliizsch, and Bickell ore right in transposing vers. 15 and 16 (Hebrew, 16, 17) of Ps. :uxi v. Let any one try the two modes of reading these verses together with the following verse, and jud:;e for himB':IJf. THE LAMENTATIONS OF JElU-.:MIAH. iii