1:1 How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people!

How is she become as a widow!

She that was great among the nations, and princess among the provinces,

How is she become tributary!

2. She weepeth sore in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks;

Among all her lovers she hath none to comfort her:

All her friends have dealt treacherously with her,

They are become her enemies.

3. Judah is gone into captivity because of affliction, and because of great servitude;

She dwelleth among the heathen, she findeth no rest:

All her persecutors overtook her within the straits.

4. The ways of Zion do mourn, because none come to the solemn assembly;

All her gates are desolate, her priests do sigh:

Her virgins are afflicted, and she herself is in bitterness.

5. Her adversaries are become the head, her enemies prosper;

For the LORD hath afflicted her for the multitude of her transgressions:

Her young children are gone into captivity before the adversary.

6. And from the daughter of Zion all her majesty is departed:

Her princes are become like harts that find no pasture,

And they are gone without strength before the pursuer.

7. Jerusalem remembereth in the days of her affliction and of her miseries

All her pleasant things that were from the days of old:

When her people fell into the hand of the adversary, and none did help her,

The adversaries saw her, they did mock at her desolations.

8. Jerusalem hath grievously sinned; therefore she is become as an unclean thing:

All that honoured her despise her, because they have seen her nakedness:

Yea, she sigheth, and turneth backward.

9. Her filthiness was in her skirts; she remembered not her latter end;

Therefore is she come down wonderfully; she hath no comforter:

Behold, O LORD, my affliction; for the enemy hath magnified himself.

10. The adversary hath spread out his hand upon all her pleasant things:

For she hath seen that the heathen are entered into her sanctuary,

Concerning whom thou didst command that they should not enter into thy congregation.

11. All her people sigh, they seek bread;

They have given their pleasant things for meat to refresh the soul:

See, O LORD, and behold; for I am become vile.

12. Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by?

Behold, and see, if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is done unto me,

Wherewith the LORD hath afflicted me in the day of his fierce anger.

13. From on high hath he sent fire into my bones, and it prevalleth against them:

He hath spread a net for my feet, he hath turned me back;

He hath made me desolate and faint all the day.

14. The yoke of my transgressions is bound by his hand;

They are knit together, they are come up upon my neck; he hath made my strength to fail:

The Lord hath delivered me into their hands, against whom I am not able to stand.

15. The Lord hath set at nought all my mighty men in the midst of me:

He hath called a solemn assembly against me to crush my young men:

The Lord hath trodden-as in a winepress the virgin daughter of Judah.

16. For these things I weep; mine eye, mine eye runneth down with water;

Because the comforter that should refresh my soul is far from me:

My children are desolate, because the enemy hath prevailed.

17. Zion spreadeth forth her hands; there is none to comfort her;

The Lord hath commanded concerning Jacob, that they that are round about him should be his adversaries:

Jerusalem is among them as an unclean thing.

18. The LORD is righteous; for I have rebelled against his commandment:

Hear, I pray you, all ye peoples, and behold my sorrow:

My virgins and my young men are gone into captivity.

19. I called for my lovers, but they deceived me:

My priests and mine elders gave up the ghost in the city,

While they sought them meat to refresh their souls.

20. Behold, O LORD; for I am in distress; my bowels are troubled;

Mine heart is turned within me; for I have grievously rebelled:

Abroad the sword bereaveth, at home there is as death.

21. They have heard that I sigh; there is none to comfort me;

All mine enemies have heard of my trouble; they are glad that thou hast done it:

Thou wilt bring the day that thou hast proclaimed, and they shall be like unto me.

22. Let all their wickedness come before thee:

And do unto them, as thou hast done unto me for all my transgressions:

For my sighs are many, and my heart is faint.

THIS book, like the several books of the Pentateuch, is denominated in Hebrew Eicah (How?) from its first word, and sometimes Kinnoth (Lamentations), from its subject. It is one of the books of the Megilloth or Roll among the Jews; and because it relates to the ruin of their affairs, and contains promises of restoration, it is peculiarly prized, and frequently read. The five Megilloth are—Ecclesiastes, Canticles, Lamentations, Ruth and Esther. The whole current of antiquity and modern times have pointed out Jeremiah as the writer; of this the style is a sufficient evidence. A. C.

Jerusalem, after the fall and ruin of the city at the hands of Nebuchadnezzar and the Chaldeans, long predicted by Jeremiah, is the general subject of all the five elegies; of the three (first, second and fourth), in which considerable points of likeness occur: the first dwells on the sad, ruined city, Zion. The second sings of the fons et origo of the woe of Zion—Jehovah, who at last has carried out the awful threats of punishment on a wicked people. The theme of the fourth depicts the sufferings of the various classes of the people at the hands of their conquerors. The third of these elegies again is distinguished by the alphabetical structure of the poetry. It is even more artificial in its arrangement than the first, second and fourth. It too dwells on the sorrow of the people, but it is more personal. The writer in this poem speaks of himself as “the man that has seen the affliction.” Spence.

Among all Orientals, poetry and music lend their aid to the expression of grief. The Hebrews give a liberal space in their literature to elegiac song in the form of plaintive elegies in commemoration of the virtues of the dead, and in sad recollection of great calamities. The reader will at once recall the elegies of David upon the death of Saul and Jonathan (2 Sam. 1: 17-27); of Abner (2 Sam. 3: 33, 34), and of Absalom (2 Sam. 18: 33). Jeremiah prepared a similar elegy on the death of Josiah (2 Chron. 35: 25, 26). In the same strain, though more extended, are these “lamentations” over the fall of Jerusalem, the defeat of her armies, the murder of her priests and princes, the fearful slaughter of her young men and maidens, and the utter desolation of her holy Temple. The third chapter is chiefly occupied with the prophet’s own personal trials and sorrows. The whole is in Hebrew poetry. The first four chapters are acrostic. In chaps. 1, 2 and 4 the successive verses begin with the successive letters of the Hebrew alphabet, twenty two in number; while chap. 3 is composed in triplets of verses, each verse in the first triplet beginning with the first letter of the alphabet, and each verse of the second with the second letter, etc. This artificial arrangement would aid the memory, and may have been also a matter of literary taste. In their moral tone, these “lamentations” naturally partake somewhat deeply of the general character of such compositions among the Jews of that age. They are thoroughly elegiac. It follows almost or quite of necessity, that they contemplate the great subjects of public grief as seen upon their human side, and not merely as they would appear when considered in the light of a moral discipline sent of God, or in the light of that fearful apostasy from God which called for a retribution so signal as this. Yet coming from the hand of such a prophet as Jeremiah, we might naturally expect occasional allusions to the moral causes of these calamities—some recognitions of the anger of a just God, and some confessions of national sin. Such, in fact, we find. There is nothing in this Book of Lamentations to militate against its inspiration. It had a noble moral purpose. It availed itself most wisely of a current usage in regard to public lamentations in order to give direction to the feeling of public grief, and so to turn to good account the chastened sensibility of a deeply stricken people. The subject precludes all special messages from the Lord, whether of a prophetic or hortatory character. It would be out of place to look for them here. The phrase so oft recurring in the other book of Jeremiah, “Thus saith the Lord of hosts,” does not occur in all this book. The only passage that seems in any wise prophetic is chap. 4:21, 22, which gives an outlook upon the future doom of Edom and the termination of calamity on Zion. The third chapter differs widely in its general scope from all the others. It is thoroughly personal to the prophet, giving his own experiences, and not those of the people. There was good reason for his reciting thus his own personal trials and griefs. It was adapted to secure for him the sympathy of at least the more considerate among the people, and would help them to appreciate his character and his work. We have reason to be thankful for this chapter. All the other chapters were prepared for the use of the people, and were designed to represent their actual feelings of grief and sorrow, as also to lead them on to a proper recognition of the hand of the Lord, and into a spirit of due confession of sin and prayer for pardon. It is clear that this elegy was written after the fall of the city and the destruction of the Temple. But whether written specially for the exiles in Chaldea, or specially for those in Egypt, or for both indiscriminately, the book affords no decisive data to show. Yet inasmuch as the remnant that went into Egypt were mostly cut off by the judgments of God, while those who went to Chaldea multiplied and ultimately furnished the returning pilgrims who replanted Judea and rebuilt Jerusalem, it cannot well be doubted that this book was sent to them, and by them preserved with the other sacred books. Jeremiah understood very well that the hope of the future Zion lay in that party and not in the Egyptian, and hence would have a special reason for whatever effort he could make for their moral culture. H. C.

The Legal or Forensic Element in the Book.

Are there evidences of a consciousness of this element as a present and operative influence? Let us look at the first chapter, by way of seeking for a reply to this question. In the fourth verse we find the prophet lamenting on behalf of Zion that none come to her solemn feasts, but that her ways mourn. Now this word rendered solemn feast is the one used in Exodus and elsewhere of the appointed feasts of the Lord; it is that after which the tabernacle of the congregation, or tent of meeting, was named. It is clear, therefore, that the prophet refers to some such kind of gathering as is contemplated and provided for in the Law. At the time of the Captivity, when he wrote, the observance of these feasts, which had been a custom of old, had ceased. But besides this he refers to the principle of centralization by which they are characterized, and implies that they were held in Zion, and that the people went up to Zion to keep them. Now there must have been some reason for this custom, to the observance of which his language is a witness. But we know that this principle of centralization was a main feature of the legal system, so much so that on the establishment of the second kingdom, Jeroboam made a point of imitating it.

Again, the prophet speaks also, in verses 4, 7 and 19, of her priests, and her sabbaths, and her elders, and alludes in verse 8 to legal separation on account of uncleanness; so that, in addition to a recognized priesthood and company of elders, we have two main features of the law implied in the remarkably characteristic institution of the Sabbath and in the stringent provisions for ceremonial uncleanness found in it. In the tenth verse we have express reference to the regulations of De. 23, and a clear proof that the prophet regarded these regulations as divine. This is the more remarkable because they are only found in the fifth book of the law. We may just notice the mention of the Nazarites in 4:7, implying the law in Num. 6, but otherwise it is not necessary to pursue this examination further. Any one can do so for himself. This first chapter is taken only as a specimen of a book of the Captivity period, such as the Lamentations are. It affords undeniable testimony to the national condition of that period, and to what it must have been for many generations previously. Leathes.

Chap. 1:1, 2. The contrasts of adversity. The key-note of this strain of sorrow, this poetical and pathetic dirge, is struck in the opening words of the composition. The heart of the prophet laments over the captured and ruined city. How natural that the present should recall the past! Jerusalem, now in the hands of the Chaldeans, was once, in the days of David and of Solomon, the scene of glory and the seat of empire, the joy of the whole earth. So much the sadder is the contrast, the deeper the fall, the bitterer the cup of woe. T.

2. In her distress Jerusalem looks for comfort to those neighboring nations which flattered her during her prosperity and behaved then as “lovers;” but she is disappointed in finding that they all desert her in the hour of her need. Jerusalem had her “lovers.” This fact throws a significant light on the statement that she had “become as a widow” (verse 1). What shame that she, the wife of the Eternal, should have to be spoken to of “lovers”! But having them, she must find her comfort in them. She dare not look to her husband for comfort. In plainer language, the Jews had adopted the idolatry of neighboring nations as well as renounced the exclusive and retiring position which had been required of them by their God. It was fitting that they should find their consolation from the Babylonian invasion in these foreign connections and religions. If we let our business, our pleasure, our ambition, or any other earthly thing usurp the place of God in our hearts, the time will come when we shall have to try what help we can get in trouble from our idol. Adeney.

Nights of weeping explained. The metaphor is kept up with which this first song of lamentation begins. The sensitiveness of the woman-nature helps to bring out the prostration of Jerusalem. It is not only that her condition is lamentable, but she herself is a prey to the keenest anguish. People do not always see their own sad state as others see it. There is either a shallowness of nature or something has happened to deaden the sensibilities. But in this verse we have both the mention of tears and of most sufficient causes for tears. Y.

4. The abandoned feasts. Jerusalem was the religious centre of the nation. Thither the tribes came up to present themselves before the Lord. Great assemblies and joyous feasts were held there for the benefit of all the Jews. But after the Babylonian destruction all this was suspended. None now came to the solemn feasts. The high-roads which were wont to be thronged with pilgrims mourn for the lack of travellers; the gates through which they used to press are unused; priests sigh with weariness and distress, having no glad offerings to present; and the virgins who led the song and dance in honor of God are smitten with affliction. Adeney.

Zion forsaken as a religious centre. The ways of Zion mourned now, but the very fact that such a thing should be said showed that they had once been filled with rejoicing. The gates had been crowded with worshippers from every district of the land. Zion was glorified as the site of the Temple, and the Temple was glorified as holding within its imposing walls the ark of the covenant. Zion was the city of solemnities. Things were done there not according to will worship or mere immemorial tradition, but according to Jehovah’s definite instructions given in the wilderness through Moses centuries before. Praise continually waited for God in Zion. Jehovah loved the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob. There was no day without its morning and evening sacrifice, and every Sabbath and new moon brought their peculiar additions. Nor must we forget the feast of the Passover, of the first fruits, of the Pentecost, and the great feast of the seventh month. If as nothing more than times of mirth and relaxation, these would play a large part in the life of the people, and true prophets and who soever among the priests had deep reverence for God would get much strength out of these services, finding in them, according to the measure of their faith, zeal and diligence, constant means of grace. Y.

The decline of national religion. Nowhere has the great truth of the close dependence of national prosperity upon national religion been more plainly and emphatically taught than in the writings of the Hebrew prophets. Their spiritual insight detected the true cause of national degradation. Whoever looks below the surface may see that the decline and fall of nations may usually be traced to spiritual causes, to the loss of any hold upon eternal principles of righteousness and piety. T.

5. The sins of Jerusalem are here complained of as the procuring, provoking cause of all these calamities. Whoever are the instruments, God is the author of all these troubles; it is the Lord that has afflicted her (verse 5), and He has done it as a righteous judge, for she has sinned. H.

6. Her beauty departed from Zion. The dwellings of Zion shone splendid in cedar and gold. A softer beauty was shed over her from old memories and tender associations. The spiritual Zion has her beauty. It is not the magnificence of marble columns and gilded decorations. The beauty of Zion is the beauty of her worship and life. Adeney.

7. All her pleasant things. What these pleasant things are we may learn from Isa. 64 : 11, where, to the complaint of the burning of the Temple, it is added, All our pleasant things are laid waste; the ark and the altar and all the other tokens of God’s presence with them, these were their pleasant things above any other things, and these were now broken to pieces and carried away. Thus from the daughter of Zion all her beauty is departed (verse 6). The beauty of holiness was the beauty of the daughter of Zion; when the Temple, that holy and beautiful house, was destroyed, her beauty was gone; that was the breaking of the staff of beauty, the taking away of the pledges and seals of the covenant (Zech. 11 : 10). H.

The recollection of the past may be the occasion of the highest joy or of the profoundest sorrow. To remember former happiness is one of the great pleasures of human life, if that happiness did but lead on to its own continuance and increase. The first beginnings of a delightful friendship, the first steps of a distinguished career, are remembered by the prosperous and happy with satisfaction and joy. It is otherwise with the memory of a morning of brightness which soon clouded, and which was followed by storms and darkness. In the text the anguish of Jerusalem is pictured as intensified by the recollection of bygone felicity. T.

It is foolish to yield to fond regrets of the pleasant things in the days of old. The past cannot be recalled. Let it die. The future is ours. The west will not brighten again with a return of the fading glow of sunset, but a new day will break in the east. We may call to mind the happy things in days of old, not to increase our present distress, but to encourage hope. The sun did shine, then it may shine again. God is the same now as ever. If He blessed in the past He can bless in the future. Former mercies encourage us to hope for better things still to come. Adeney.

9-11. Jerusalem’s God is here complained to, concerning all these things, and all is referred to His compassionate consideration (verse 9), “O Lord, behold my affliction, and take cognizance of it;” and (verse 11), “See, O Lord, and consider, take order about it.” The only way to make ourselves easy under our burdens is to cast them upon God first, and leave it to Him to do with us as seemeth Him good. H.

10. Spoliation and profanation. The presence of a foreign foe in its capital has always been regarded, and is still regarded, as among the heaviest calamities that can befall a nation. In our own times, a neighboring nation has been required to endure this humiliation and indignity, shocking its patriotism and its pride. We can understand how bitter must have been the anguish of the Jews when the Chaldean hosts patrolled their city, quartered themselves upon its inhabitants, appropriated its wealth, and violated the sanctity of its Temple. T.

11. The real need of the soul made manifest by experience. The greatest need of the natural life is bread, taking the word “bread” as representative of all food. Clothing and shelter, while they may indeed be reckoned as needs, are not needs after the same imperative fashion as food; and every one, however easily his daily bread comes to him, will assent to this same general truth that food is the great need of natural life. But he will only really feel this in such circumstances as are indicated in this verse. For a long while these people of Jerusalem had found bread lying to their hands when they were hungry. They could buy it, and have abundance of pleasant things beside. The feeling of their hearts was that they could not do without these pleasant things, and when at last they gave them up to keep body and soul together, it must have been with terrible pain they made the surrender. And what is true of bread for the natural life is also true of the Bread coming down from heaven for the spiritual life. Christians, living in the midst of all manner of pleasant things of this world, with no lack of money to buy them and faculty to enjoy them, try to feel at the same time that more than all pleasant things are the grace, the life, the wisdom, the everflowing fulness of the Spirit, which come from Christ. But all the testimony of believers proves that the pleasant things need to be withdrawn before it can be apprehended that Christ is emphatically the Bread. It is when we lose relish of nature’s best contributions to our happiness that Christ comes forward, confident as ever in His power to satisfy us. Y.

12-22. The complaints here are for substance the same with those in the foregoing part of the chapter; but in these verses the prophet, in the name of the lamenting Church, does more particularly acknowledge the hand of God in these calamities, and the righteousness of His hand. H.

12. Sorrow unequalled, yet unheeded. Jerusalem sits alone in her unparalleled grief, and the bitterness of it is intensified by the pitiless disregard of spectators. Bedouins of the desert pitch their tents in sight of her ruined towers, and merchants passing north and south see her deserted streets, and yet all gaze unmoved at the heart-rending picture. Never was city more favored than Jerusalem. She was the chosen seat of Divine grace. In her Temple stood God’s mercy-seat. High privileges of revelation and spiritual blessings descended on her sons and daughters. The loss of these privileges brought a distress that men who had never enjoyed them could not feel. They who have tasted of the heavenly gift will find the outer darkness more terrible than those who have had no anticipation of the joys of the wedding feast. Apostate Christians will suffer agonies which the heathen and godless will not have to endure. Never was city more loved than Jerusalem. This city of sacred memories and tender associations was dear to the hearts of her inhabitants. Her overthrow brought a grief that was proportionate to this love. The most fatal wound is one aimed at the heart. We are pained most cruelly when we are wounded in affection. What grief can be greater than that of parents for ruined children, and especially when the parents’ sin has been the children’s temptation? Never was city more visited by Divine wrath than Jerusalem. Here is the secret of her deepest trouble. She is afflicted in the day of God’s fierce anger. God is most angry with her because she has sinned against most light, most ungratefully, and most rebelliously. Adeney.

The bitter tears shed by our Saviour over impenitent Jerusalem are shadowed forth in the prophet’s prolonged and profound lament over his own idolatrous and disobedient countrynmen. His well-known words, “Is it nothing to you all ye that pass by?” uttered concerning the sorrows of Jerusalem and her people, have come to be so universally appropriated to our Lord, that the prophet’s own deep distress which they tell of, and the occasion of that distress, are alike almost if not entirely forgotten. “His sufferings come nearest of those of the whole army of martyrs to those of the Teacher against whom princes, and priests, and elders, and people were gathered together.” To him, as to the great apostle, was it given to know “the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings, and to be made conformable unto His death.” P. C.

She sits by the highway, and the crowd passes on, taking no notice. The spectacle of a conquered nation and a pillaged capital was not a rare thing. The nations asked to sympathize had been through the same experience themselves. We are all prompted to say, “Surely no trouble has been like our trouble;” and yet, as our observation of human affairs enlarges, we see how human nature, in every individual instance, is made to know its extraordinary capacity for suffering. Nevertheless, the piteous appeal here is not a baseless one. The trouble of the children of Israel had not come upon them after the manner of a common nation. They were peculiar in constitution, privileges and history. If only there had been eyes to see it, there was something very significant to demand attention. But the thing to be seen did not lie on the surface, nor was it to be discovered save by faculties specially illuminated. The downfall and the sufferings of Israel, as they are to be seen both in the Scriptures and subsequent history, belong to the things that are to be spiritually discerned. Therefore this complaint, while superficially it may be called unreasonable, is yet reasonable enough, if we only consider the position and mission of Israel, and the work which, even in her degradation, she has done for the world. Here was a nation that in obedience might have rested confidently and happily in Jehovah’s promise. The power behind that promise was more than all the armies of the great empires round about. But when the power was withdrawn it meant not merely suffering; the withdrawing had in it the nature of a judicial, solemn sentence from Jehovah Himself. Y.

14,15. Figures of speech are multiplied; a yoke on her neck, made up of her sins and bound by the hand of God, against which she has no strength; the Lord “treading under foot her mighty men;” making all their strength of

no account; and finally treading down the daughter (whole people) of Judah as grapes are trodden in a wine-press. H. C.