Ver. 6. — We have given the hand, etc. StarvatioB awaits the Jews unless they suh- mit to one or the other of their hereditary foea. Some escape to Egypt and " give the hand" (i.e. surrender, Jer. 1. 1.5) to the lords of the fertile Nile valley; others acquiesce in the fate of the mpjority, and sue for the alms of the Babylonians.
Ver. 7. — We have borne their iniquities. The fathers died before the iniquity was fully ripe for punishment, and their descend- ants have the feeling that the accumulated Bins of the nation are visited upon them. This view of national troubles is very clearly endorsed by one important class of passages (Exod. xx. 5 ; xxxiv. 7 : Numb. xiv. 18 ; Jer. xxxii. 18). The objection to it is forcibly expressed by Job (xxi. 19), " God [it is said] layeth up his iniquity for hia children : [but] let him requite it to him- self, that he may feel it I " Hence Jeremiah (xxxi. 30) and Ezekiel (xviii. 1, etc.) insist on the truth that every man is punished for his own sins. Of course the two views of punishment are reconcilable. The Jews were not only punished, according to Jer. xvi. 11, 12, for their fathers' sins, but for their own still more flagrant offences.
Ver. 8. — Servants have ruled ; rather, ilave$. The Babylonians in general might be called slaves, by comparison with the " kingdom of priests " (Exod. xix. 6), and the " gone " of Jehovah (Isa. xlv. 11 ; Hos. i. 10). Or the expression may mean (hat even basebom hangers-on of the conquering host assumed the right to command the defeuce- less captives.
Ver. 9. — ^We gat our bread ; rather, uje get our bread. The allusion in the follow- ing words is perhaps to murderous attacks of Bedawins (as we should cull the Ishmael- ites) on the Jews who attempted to gather in the scanty harvest.
Ver. 10. — Was blaok like an oven. The translation is misleading ; there is no real parallel to ch. iv. 8. Render, gloweth. It is the feverish glow produced by gnawing hunger which is meant. The terrible famine ; rather, tlie burning heat of hunger. Hariri, the humoristio author of the cycle of stories in rhymed Arabic prose and verse, Culled 'Makamat,' puts into the mouth of his ne'er-do-well Abu Seid very similar words to describe a famished man —
" Deas Eingeweide brennend naoh Erquick- ung sohrein, Der nichta gegessen leit zwei Tagen oder
drein." (Rtiokert's adaptation, third Makama.)
Ver. 12. — Princes are hanged up by theii hand ; i.e. by the band of the enemy. Im- palement after death was a common punish- ment with the Assyrians and Babylonians. Thus Sennacherib says that, after capturing rebellious Ekron, he hung the bodies of the chief men on stakes all round the city (' Eecords of the Past,' i. 38). Bnnomi gives a picture of such an impalement from ojie of the plates in Botta's gnat work (' Nine- veh and its Palaces,' p. 192).
Ver. 13. — They took the young men to grind ; rather, the young men have borne the mill. The lower millistone seems to have been specially hard, and therefore heavy (see Job xli. 24), and to carry it about must have required a more severe exertion even than (he constant turning of the mill- handle. Dr. Thomson " cannot recall an instance in which men were grinding at the mill" ('The Land and the Book,' edit. 1881, p. 108), and both Exod. xi. 5 and Matt. xxiv. 41 presuppose that it was women's work. The conquered Jewish youths, however, share the fate of Samson —
" Eyeless, in Gaza, at the miil with slaves." (' Samson Agonistes,' 41.)
"Eyeless," indeed, they may some of them have been, as putting out the eyes was a common Oriental punishment (comp. Jer. xxxix. 7). The children. This is, perhaps too strong. The Hebrew na'-ar is applic- able, not only to children, but to youths at the age for marriage (Gen. xxxiv. 19) or war (1 Kin;;s XX. 15). The wood; not the wooden hauille of the mill, but the wood required for fuel.
Ver. 14. — From the gate. The place where the elders, technically so called, as- sembled for legal proceedings, and where the citizens in general met together for social concourse (comp. Gen. xi.^;. 1; Kuth iv. 11 ; Ps. Ixix. 12 ; Amos v. 12, 15 ; Dan. ii. 49). From their music (como. Jer. vii. 34 : xvi. 9).
Ver. 16. — The crown is fallen, etc. ; rathei, the crown of our head is fallen. The Jewish people is compared to a rich man at a ban- quet, crowned with a diailein (comp. Isa. xxviii. 1). Jeremiah has a similar phrase in his prophecies (xiii. 18). It evidently expiesdes figur.itively the prosiierity and honoirr formerly enjoyed by the now van- quished people
Vers. 17, 18. — These verses form a transi- tion to the final appeal. The thought ol the desolation of Zion overwhelms the spirit of the poet. But he will soon be able to lift hiiiisi-lf up again when he recalls t!ie sublime truth of the inviolable security ol Israel's God. Foxes ; rather, joohib.
Vers. 19 — 22. — Final Appisal to God fou THE Reversal of the Judgment.
CH. V. i— 22.]
THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEREMIAH.
81
Ver. 19.— Bemalnest; better, art enthroned.
Vet. 20. — Wherefore dost thou forget us, etc. ? The poet does not say, " Wherefore hast then forgotten us 7 " One of the psalmistB, indeed, does go so far (Ps. Ixxir. 1) ; but the poet of this lamentation, with a more tender and trustful reserve, adopts the tense of feeling (the imperfect) in pre- ference to that of fact (the perfect), and asks, " Wherefore dost thou [to ray feeling] forget us? Wherefore, if Jehovah's power is still unbroken, does he allow Israel to feel herself forsaken ? " The fact is certain , V z. that the land of Israel is desolate, and (the poet seems to imply) desolate for some time already. The interpretation is hypo- thetical, and, as the last verse will show, the poet cannot bring himself to believe that it can be accurate.
Ver. 21. — Turn thou us, etc. Not " bring us back to thee," i.e. to the sacred land (as Thenius), for it is not a speech of the exiles, but of the Jews left behind, at least fur the present, in Judsea. " Turn thou us " means " Bring us into a state of reconciliation with thee." The next petition, Eenew our days as of old, means, " Restore the old happy mode of life, each man with his own vine and his own fig tree, undisturbed by the fear of
invasion, and rejoicing in the tenie of the favour of Jehovah." The first petition has the priority because only on repentance and recovered purity of heart and life can Jerusalem rise from her ashes. Isaisb had said this long ago (i. 26, 27), and the elegiae poet repeats it (comp. Jer. zxxi. 18).