Ver. 21. — " Turn us again I" The Scriptures are the volume of hope ; they lend no countenance to despondency ; they rebuke despair. Deep as was the degradation of the Jews, far as they had wandered from God's ways, inexcusably as they had defied his authority, there was for them a place of repentance. And Jeremiah closes this Book of Lamentations with language of confident supplication and well-grounded hope of better times.
I. The need of turning. The whole of the book thus closed witnesses to this necessity. Judah had gone wrong, had wilfully taken the path of rebellion and defiance. In this respect her case represents that of every culpable transgressor. The end of the way of sin is death, is destruction without remedy. It is a stem truth, but it is a truth, and a truth which mercy reveals.
II. To whom the tubnino must bk. " Turn us unto thee I " Away f^om the sin which has misled, away from the human counsellors and helpers in whom is no wise counsel and no sufficient help, away from self, to Gk>d against whom the sinner has transgressed and to whom he needs to be reconciled. The old phrase, " conversion unto God," ia one full of truth, meaning, and appropriateness.
OH.V. 1— 22.] THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEBKMIAH. 89
ni. By whom the tttrnino must be effeotbd. The prayer is unto the Lord ; for he alone can turn the wanderer unto himself. By the authority of his Law, by the winning, melting power of his gospel, by the sweet constraint of his Spirit, he alone can transform the heart, reverse the steps, and renew the olden days of those who have transgressed but have now at length sought his favour and forgiveness. — T.
Ver. 2. — Tilt fate of inheritance and houies. The Israelite reckoned a great deal on his inheritance, that which came to him as an Israelite; and in this he did quite right, seeing how he was bound to dwell on the promises made to Abraham. There was the national territory, sanctified and made a peculiarly valuable thing by the manner in whiph it first came into Israel's hand. Then there were the tribal inheritances and the family inheritances. So that altogether inheritance was continually before the Israelite mind ; inheritance' became almost a part of sell Doubtless many tracts of land had run down in the same families for generations. And now the foreigner comes in to reap the riches of these lands and dwell m the houses built on them. What the Israelites failed to recollect was that the inheritance they esteemed so much was not the real inheri- tance in the eyes of God. The visible land, out of which comes the corn, the wine, the oil, is only the type of that deeper, that truly exhaustless spiritual land, where we are to sow plentifully, assured that a harvest cannot faU. There is the inheritance, cor- ruptible, defiled, that doth fade away. There is the house made with hands, temporal, an the earth. And then, all unconscious of the pains we are preparing for ourselves, we let our heart's best affections get round these things. The loss of the inheritance, the loss of the houses, was the way to gain, if only the loser could see it. Doubtless what we may fail to possess of temporal things some one else gets hold of ; but his getting is not with a firm, abiding grasp. These lamenting Israelites would reckon that the loss of inheritance and houses, which made them so miserable, would make the new possessors correspondingly happy ; and such would be the case for a time, but only so long as the brightness of the first delusion lasted. God does not mean that we should ever say of any really good thing that our inheritance is turned to strangers, our houses to aliens. Of the really good things there is enough and to spare for alL Christ sends out his apostles to urge every one towards the inheritance of the saints in light ; and in the house of him who is Father of Jesus and of all that believe in Jesus there are many mansions, many abiding-places, a place for every one wishing to dismiss the restless, craving spirit, and abide in such a place.— Y.
Ver. 7. — The sin of the fathers and the suffering of the children. This chapter is the complaint of those who suffer. " We," " us," " our," — these are the prominent wends. The complainers are those who have lost inheritance and houses, become fatherless, and entered into a galling servitude. And now what do they give as the reason of all this terrible experience ? This — that " our fathers have sinned."
I. The MEA8UBE OF TBUTH IN THIS. The fathers had sinned. That was an historical fact. The utterances of former prophets, recorded, perhaps, in far greater abundance than we have any idea of, attested the iniquities of past generations. No generation of which there was any record had been without its disobedience. And had it not also been said that the sins of the fathers should bo visited on the children ? Hence there is plain logic in these words, "Our fathers have sinned, . . . and we have borne their iniquities." Great is the suffering in bodily pain, in privation, and in emotion, of every generation ; and each generation has a right to say that some, at all events, of this suffering would have been escaped if only preceding generations had lived according to the fall law of righteousness. Hence the appeal to us, when self-indulgence presses with all its energieis, to consider others. Indulging self, we have to make ready for after-pains; Vmt those pains cannot be kept within the limit of our own lives.
II. True as this statement is, there is a measubb of defect in it. Note exactly how the point is put : " Our fathers have sinned, and are not ; " that is, " they cannot suffei any more, and now the suffering comes on to us." In such an aspect of the situation there is great pathos, but we need to travel round to the other aspects also. There is a difference between retribution and suffering. Some kinds of pain and injury may be inherited to the third and fourth generation, but a guilty conscience belongs to the indi- viduaL The worst pains, the worst consequences, and those on which the Saviour looks
90 THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEREMIAH. [oh, t. 1—22.
with the most pity, are surely those coming out of our own wrong-doing ; and searching into the connection between the sins of past generations and the suffering of the pre- sent one will do harm rather than good, if such a searching tends to obscure our own lawlessness, our own want of attention to the requirements of God. There is, indeed, a great difference in kind between the suffering coming on us from the vickednesa of others and that which comes from our own. — Y.