Lamentations 3
Butler3:1 I AM the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of his wrath.
2. He hath led me and caused me to walk in darkness and not in light.
3. Surely against me he turneth his hand again and again all the day.
4. My flesh and my skin hath he made old; he hath broken my bones.
5. He hath builded against me, and compassed me with gall and travail.
6. He hath made me to dwell in dark places, as those that have been long dead.
7. He hath fenced me about, that I cannot go forth; he hath made my chain heavy.
8. Yea, when I cry and call for help, he shut-teth out my prayer.
9. He hath fenced up my ways with hewn stone, he hath made my paths crooked.
10. He is unto me as a bear lying in wait, as a lion in secret places.
11. He hath turned aside my ways, and pulled me in pieces; he hath made me desolate.
12. He hath bent his bow, and set me as a mark for the arrow.
13. He hath caused the shafts of his quiver to enter into my reins.
14. I am become a derision to all my people; and their song all the day.
15. He hath filled me with bitterness, he hath sated me with wormwood.
16. He hath also broken my teeth with gravel stones, he hath covered me with ashes.
17. And thou hast removed my soul far off from peace; I forgat prosperity.
18. And I said, My strength is perished, and mine expectation from the LORD.
19. Remember mine affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the gall.
20. My soul hath them still in remembrance, and is bowed down within me.
21. This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope.
22. It is of the LORD’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not.
23. They are new every morning; great is thy faithfulness.
24. The LORD is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in him.
25. The LORD is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him.
26. It is good that a man should hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the LORD.
27. It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth.
28. Let him sit alone and keep silence, because he hath laid it upon him.
29. Let him put his mouth in the dust; if so be there may be hope.
30. Let him give his cheek to him that smiteth him; let him be filled full with reproach.
31. For the Lord will not cast off for ever.
32. For though he cause grief, yet will he have compassion according to the multitude of his mercies.
33. For he doth not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of men.
34. To crush under foot all the prisoners of the earth,
35. To turn aside the right of a man before the face of the Most High,
36. To subvert a man in his cause, the Lord approveth not.
37. Who is he that saith, and it cometh to pass, when the Lord commandeth it not?
38. Out of the mouth of the Most High cometh there not evil and good?
39. Wherefore doth a living man complain, a man for the punishment of his sins?
40. Let us search and try our ways, and turn again to the LORD.
41. Let us lift up our heart with our hands unto God in the heavens.
42. We have transgressed and have rebelled; thou hast not pardoned.
43. Thou hast covered with anger and pursued us; thou hast slain, thou hast not pitied.
44. Thou hast covered thyself with a cloud, that our prayer should not pass through.
45. Thou hast made us as the offscouring and refuse in the midst of the peoples.
46. All our enemies have opened their mouth wide against us.
47. Fear and the pit are come upon us, devastation and destruction.
48. Mine eye runneth down with rivers of water, for the destruction of the daughter of my people.
49. Mine eye poureth down, and ceaseth not, without any intermission,
50. Till the LORD look down, and behold from heaven.
51. Mine eye affecteth my soul, because of all the daughters of my city.
52. They have chased me sore like a bird, that are mine enemies without cause.
53. They have cut off my life in the dungeon, and have cast a stone upon me.
54. Waters flowed over mine head; I said, I am cut off.
55. I called upon thy name, O LORD, out of the lowest dungeon.
56. Thou heardest my voice; hide not thine ear at my breathing, at my cry.
57. Thou drewest near in the day that I called upon thee: thou saidst, Fear not.
58. O Lord, thou hast pleaded the causes of my soul; thou hast redeemed my life.
59. O LORD, thou hast seen my wrong; judge thou my cause.
60. Thou hast seen all their vengeance and all their devices against me.
61. Thou hast heard their reproach, O LORD, and all their devices against me;
62. The lips of those that rose up against me, and their imagination against me all the day.
63. Behold thou their sitting down, and their rising up; I am their song.
Chap. 3. The title of the 102d Psalm might fitly be prefixed to this chapter, “The prayer of the afflicted, when he is overwhelmed, and pours out his complaint before the Lord;” for it is very feelingly and fluently that the complaint is here poured out. H.—In the interpretation of this chapter, we must assume either that Jeremiah spoke of himself, or of the people—for himself, or for the people—giving his own personal experience, or the experience of the people as a whole. I accept the former theory—viz., that Jeremiah here speaks of and for himself, giving his own personal experiences, and not specially those of the people. H. C.
1. The man that has seen affliction has gained knowledge of some of the deepest facts of life.** We do not know life till we have felt pain. Suffering opens the eyes to the facts of life and breaks up many idle dreams. Mere show and pretence are then felt to be vain and mocking. True friends are discriminated from idle acquaintances. The value of inward things is discovered. Adeney.
Affliction leads some to doubt the existence of God. It is not uncommon for people to say in their hearts, what some even venture to say with their lips, “If there were a God, I should not be suffered to pass through misfortunes and sorrows so distressing and so undeserved.” Affliction leads some to doubt God’s kindly interest in human beings. Not denying the existence of Deity, these afflicted ones question His moral attributes. They ask, “If God were a Being of boundless benevolence, would He suffer us to go through waters so deep, flames so fierce? His kindness and compassion—were such attributes part of His nature—would interpose on our behalf and deliver us.” Some who believe that God permits affliction misinterpret it as a sign of His wrath. This it may be; this it was in the case of Jerusalem. Yet God in the midst of wrath remembers mercy; He doth not keep His anger forever. And there are instances in which no greater misinterpretation could be possible than the view that suffering is mere penalty, that those who suffer most are necessarily sinners above all their neighbors. Affliction should be regarded by the believer as a proof
64. Thou wilt render unto them a recompence, O LORD, according to the work of their hands.
65. Thou wilt give them hardness of heart, thy curse unto them.
66. Thou wilt pursue them in anger, and destroy them from under the heavens of the LORD.
of Divine mercy and as meant for their good. Scripture represents suffering as the chastening of a Father’s hand. The experience of many a Christian is summed up in the language of the psalmist: “It was good for me that I was afflicted.” Affliction may thus become the occasion for devout thanksgiving. How often have mature and holy Christians been heard to say, “I would not, upon looking back, have been without the ruggedness of the road, the bitterness of the cup!” T.
7. Fenced me about.** Every life is surrounded by Divine limitations. God hedges all of us about. Some have a narrow field of freedom and others a wider field. But every man’s field is fenced in. Within certain limits we have scope for choice and will. Yet even there choice is fettered. For there is not only the hedge that bounds our area of action, there is the chain on our own person that hampers our movements. Free-will is far from being unlimited. Or, if the will is not fettered, the execution of it is. Adeney.
Sin is but another name for self-direction. We cast off the will of God in it, and set up for a way and for objects of our own. We lay off plans to serve ourselves, and we mean to carry them straight through to their result. Whatever crosses us, or turns us aside, or in any way forbids us to do or succeed just as we like, becomes our annoyance. And these kinds of annoyance are so many and subtle and various, that the very world seems to be contrived to baffle us. In one view it is. It would not do for us, having cast off the will of God, and set up our own will, to let us get on smoothly and never feel any friction or collision with the will cast off. Therefore God manages to turn us about, beat us back, empty us from vessel to vessel, and make us feel that our bad will is hedged about, after all, by His Almighty purposes. It would not answer even for the Christian, who has meant to surrender his will, and really wants to be perfected in the will of God, to be made safe in his plans and kept in a continual train of successes. He wants a reminder every hour; some defeat, surprise, adversity, peril; to be agitated, mortified, beaten out of his courses, so that all remains of self-will in him may be sifted out of him. Bushnell.
The highest obedience is not the restraint of our will before God’s will, but the assimilation of the two. We learn to will what God wills. Then we keep within the Divine limitations, and yet they cease to be limitations to us. They never touch us because we never attempt nor wish to cross them. Here lies the secret of peace as well as of holiness. Adeney.—Resignation to His will, waiting for His time of deliverance, confidence in His goodness—such is the attitude of heart in which true consolation and ultimate prosperity will be found. T.
9-13. We must interpret Jeremiah to say only, The Lord hath led me into paths of sore trial, where I found myself involved in constant reproach from my people, in more or less peril of my life, in no small suffering under imprisonment and torture, and an immense amount of heart-sorrow in benevolent labors for a people who could not be won back to penitence and to God. We ought to be very slow to interpret Jeremiah’s words to mean that God seduced him into sin. H. C.
18. I have even given up all for gone, concluding, “My strength and my hope are perished from the Lord, I can no longer stay myself upon God as my support, for I do not find that He gives me encouragement to do so; nor can I look for His appearing in my behalf, so as to put an end to my troubles, for the case seems remediless, and even my God inexorable.” Without doubt it was his infirmity to say thus (Ps. 77:10), for with God there is everlasting strength, and He is His people’s never-failing hope, whatever they may think. H.
19-21. In his distress the sufferer cries to God, calling upon his great Helper to note his condition and remember it. Then he is calmed by prayer, and rests in the assurance that God does not forget his trouble. Recalling this thought to mind, he recovers hope. Adeney.
There is gall and wormwood in the transgressor’s cup, but it is in the after-taste that the bitterness is perceived. With those that suffer under the loving chastisement of the Lord, the case is reversed; all the bitterness is concentrated in the suffering, the after-taste is joy and consolation; no savor of the wormwood remains; but in proportion to the bitter quality of the first infliction is the delight with which he tastes and sees that the Lord is gracious, and full of compassion and loving mercy to His obedient children. No chapter in the Old Testament is more rich in comfort than this. The character of Jeremiah is peculiarly sweet and interesting; hardly could he finish his pathetic complaints, suggested by the sorrowing recollections of which his heart was full, before the promises of Jehovah burst upon his view with the brightness of a sunbeam, and the sudden transition of his thoughts from the anguish he had suffered to the assurances the Spirit had given him of blessedness that was to last forever, is one of the most striking instances to be found in all Scripture of the efficacy of Divine grace in wiping away the tears from off the cheek of the faithful. Anon.
22. At this point the meditations of the prophet take a turn. He looks away from his own and his fellow-countrymen’s afflictions and directs his gaze heavenward. The scene of his vision changes. No longer the calamities of Jerusalem, but the character and the purposes of the Most High absorb his attention. There is a rainbow which spans even the stormiest sky. Earth may be dark, but there is brightness above. Man may be cruel or miserable, but God has not forgotten to be gracious. T.
Let those who enjoy health and hilarity acknowledge dependence, and consider from whom the blessing comes. As there is a pride of family, of beauty, of riches, so there is a pride of health; and some of the most signal and admonitory reverses we have ever known have befallen families and individuals whose habit it was to vaunt that they owed nothing to the physician. Every day, if possible, every hour, let us give thanks that our health has had no interruption, or that it has continued long, or after illness and decay, that it has been restored. “It is of the Lord’s mercy that we are not consumed, and because His compassions fail not.” That balance of the faculties, mental and bodily, which causes each and all together to work to the greatest advantage, manifests itself by a natural lightness of temper and clear animation of spirits, which is most remarkable in youth, but which we sometimes observe even in the autumnal days of a beautiful old age. It is the greatest of all blessings to the body; but at the same time it is a blessing which nothing bodily has power to confer. And therefore, we must look higher. J. W. A.
It is of the Lord’s mercies. Here are mercies in the plural number, denoting the abundance and variety of those mercies; God is an inexhaustible fountain of mercy, the Father of mercies. We all owe it to the sparing mercy of God that we are not consumed; others have been consumed round about us, and we ourselves have been in the consuming, and yet we are not consumed. Had we been dealt with according to our sins, we had been consumed long ago; but we have been dealt with according to God’s mercies, and we are bound to acknowledge it to His praise. Even in the depth of affliction we still have experience of the tenderness of the Divine pity, and the truth of the Divine promise. God’s compassions fail not; no, not when in anger He seems to have shut up His tender mercies. These rivers of mercy run fully and constantly, but never run dry; no, they are new every morning; every morning we have fresh instances of God’s compassion toward us; He visits us with them every morning. When our comforts fail, yet God’s compassions do not. H.
22, 23. The unceasing mercies of God. It would seem, according to the best authorities, that we ought to read the first of these two verses thus: “The Lord’s mercies, verily they cease not, surely His compassions fail not.” Thus we are assured of the enduring character of God’s mercies. How striking is this assurance, coming where it does after monstrous dirges of despair! In the Lamentations we meet with one of the richest confessions of faith in the goodness of God. The black clouds are not universal; even here there is a break, and the brightest sunlight streams through, all the more cheering for the darkness that precedes it. This is a remarkable testimony to the breadth and force of Divine grace. Surely it is a great consolation for the desponding that even the exceptional sufferer of the Lamentations sees the unceasing mercies of God! Adeney.
New mercies are constantly bestowed. The successive stages of our earthly pilgrimage reveal fresh wants, call for fresh supplies from the bounty and benevolence of our God and Father. With new needs come new favors. Varying duties, fresh relationships and changing circumstances are the occasion of ever-renewed manifestations of Divine goodness. And our repeated errors and infirmities are the occasion of new manifestations of Divine forbearance and forgiveness. T.
Every trusting child of God can have this prophet’s comfort and this prophet’s hope. The Lord’s mercies are “new every morning,” and he whose portion is by faith in Him who is ever saying, “Behold, I make all things new,” can joy in every new morning as a New Year’s morning—new in truth as well as in name. “If any man is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things are passed away; behold they are become new.” Old sins, old sorrows, old failures, old disappointments, old weaknesses—they are all passed away; and in their stead are new opportunities, new possibilities, new hopes and new strength. Faith in Christ is in itself “newness of life;” and its possession is the possession of the Fountain of Eternal Youth. To him who would find new freshness at any other fountain, Jesus says: “Every one that drinketh of this water shall thirst again, but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him, shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall become in him a well of water springing up into eternal life.” This is not a mere abstraction, but a practical truth for every-day help. There are those who have found the Fountain of Eternal Youth, and whose faces glow in its freshness—“new every morning.” And there are careworn faces which are growing old in hopelessness, because they will not trust, and take, the Lord’s gracious provisions for their spiritual renewing. S. S. T.
24,25. The sense of this is plain. To take God for one’s portion implies the cheerful relinquishment of all good inconsistent with His service. You accept His will as your supreme law, and cheerfully forego everything that He declines to give. For better or for worse, you take Him and His work and His reward as your own, discarding all other portions, all other good. So doing, you are welcome to hope in Him. You may expect Him to deal well enough by you, and you can surely afford to be satisfied with whatever His allotments may be. The testimony of the prophet here is that the Lord will surely do well by all those who thus receive Him as their God and portion. It is safe to presume that His own experience through a life of terrible hardship testified to this great fact. H. C.
24. That God is, and ever will be, the all-sufficient happiness of His people, and they have chosen Him and depend upon Him to be such. The Lord is my portion, saith my soul. “When I have lost all I have in the world, liberty and livelihood and almost life itself, yet I have not lost my interest in God.” Portions on earth are perishing things, but God is a portion forever. “While I have an interest in God, therein I have enough; I have that which is sufficient to balance all my troubles, and make up all my losses.” Whatever we are robbed of, our portion is safe. “That is that which I depend upon, and rest satisfied with; therefore will I hope in Him. I will stay myself upon Him, and encourage myself in Him, when all other supports and encouragements fail me.” It is our duty to make God the portion of our souls, and then to make use of Him as our portion, and to take the comfort of it in the midst of our lamentations. H.
A “portion,” as the word is here employed, denotes whatever constitutes the stable and permanent source of our chief enjoyment, as distinguished from an occasional and transient benefit. The prophet rests in God as his portion; places on God his expectation of good; concentrates all his hopes and affections, all the sentiments of confidence and complacency on Him, and on Him alone. Other beings might administer to his relief, but God alone could supply his supreme good. R. Hall.
The happiness derived from the affections must arise from their exercise, and the highest conceivable happiness would arise from the perfect love of such a being as God. It is in this way only that God can become the portion of the soul; and thus He may become its infinite and only adequate portion. Let the affections rest upon a perfect being, and happiness, so far as it can be derived from them, will be complete; but when their object is not only perfect, but infinite and unchangeable, then is there provision both for perfect happiness, and for its perpetuity and augmentation forever. M. Hopkins.
“The Lord is my portion, saith my soul.” Though God alone is fit to be the portion of any of His creatures, He is not such to any, unless they choose Him. Till He is fixed upon as such, and preferred to all besides, we have no part or lot in His favor and perfection. All that choose this Divine portion first entertain such notions of His character, His administration and their own need of His favor as determine their choice of none beside. And when this choice is made, it is made with the whole heart; all the activity of the mind, all the powers of our nature, are well employed here; he that has turned to the Lord often retraces the course he has been led, often reflects with delight on the choice he has made; he never thinks of regretting it; the more experience of it he obtains, the more his satisfaction in it is confirmed; that this is his portion, his soul saith it; it never enters into his thoughts to doubt the propriety and wisdom of his choice; the consciousness of having such a portion illuminates the future, while it cheers the present. R. Hall.
The secret of hope. The reader of the psalms is familiar with the utterance, “The Lord is my portion.” The characteristic peculiarity of the adoption of this confession of faith by the sufferer of the Lamentations is his taking it as a ground of hope. The present is so dark that he can have little joy even in God. Earthly things are so unpropitious that he can hope little from them. But with God for his portion he can look forward from the troubles of the present and the threatenings of earthly calamities to an unearthly joy in the future. To have God for our portion is the secret of hope. Adeney.
When the Christian is uniting himself with God and Christ by acts of faith, by efforts of devotion, contemplation, love, the influences of peace and union with Christ are such, and so endearing, that it is some participation of the Divine happiness itself. God is His own portion, His own rest, His own centre, and the Christian derives his happiness from resting upon that eternal centre of felicity, in finding in God a fulness of good; all desires being subdued to that one desire after happiness, which is only to be found in God. The communication of those holy pleasures which spring from love, from faith, from devotion, is to have fellowship with the Divine fulness of felicity. R. Hall.
24-26. God and his salvation are the object of his desire. Gladly would he possess them, but if he cannot, he will make them the object of his hope, and if hope fails, he will quietly wait. There is no case so desperate, no weary disappointment so prolonged, in which there does not remain some duty toward God. This is what we have to consider. In the 24th verse this sufferer speaks of his hope in God: “The Lord is my portion, saith my soul, therefore will I hope in Him.” In the 25th verse he speaks of “waiting for God.” “The Lord is good unto them that wait for Him, to the soul that seeketh Him.” And in the 26th verse he combines the two. “It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord.” Ker.
26. It is good that a man should both hope. Hope is essentially necessary to faith; he that hopes not cannot believe; if there be no expectation, there can be no confidence. When a man hopes for salvation, he should wait for it; use every means that may lead to it; for hope cannot live if there be no exercise. If hope become impatient, faith will be impossible—for who can believe for his salvation when his mind is agitated? He must therefore quietly wait. He must expect, and yet be dumb, as the words imply, ever feeling his utter unworthiness; and, without murmuring, struggle into life. A. C.
Quiet waiting. We are here first reminded that God does not disregard those who seek Him. Though His grace may be delayed, it will come in due time. Then we are told that this waiting for God’s response to our prayers is for our good, provided it be patient. That this waiting may be profitable it must be quiet. Impatience wrecks faith and submissiveness and obedience, and all the graces that are necessary for a right reception of Divine salvation. It is difficult to be quiet while waiting. We grow restless and fret ourselves as the weary hours drag past. It is harder to wait than to work, because work occupies us as waiting does not. Yet we lose much for lack of patience. We are not quiet enough to hear the still small voice that would bring salvation. In our patience we must possess our souls if we are to receive into them the richest gifts of the goodness of God. Adeney.
What is wanted is that we should put all our highest interests in the hand of God, and then go quietly about our daily opportunities of serving Him. When the passenger goes on board ship at the beginning of a long voyage he puts complete confidence in the captain, and thus he hopes and quietly waits for the voyage to come to an end. Through all perils of the sea he can only hope and quietly wait, knowing that the master of the vessel is the only one who can guard against the perils. And so in the voyage of life; we cannot shorten it, we cannot determine what its circumstances will be; but we can put ourselves in the hands of the great Guide. He will look after our safety, if we only take heed to our part in the doing of His work. Y.
We must cultivate patience by a calm attention to duties. Quiet waiting is not inaction. We may be waiting for one object, while we are steadily working for another. If some aim that engrossed our life is withdrawn, and some way of usefulness that had all our affection is closed, we shall find there are other roads to walk in, and other works to perform, provided the heart will accept them. Even though the heart shrinks, if the hand will only give itself to what it finds to do, and will do it with its might, the heart will follow. It is a kind law of our nature, that labor expended on any object gives an interest in it; and it is a still kinder law of the kingdom of God, that the tament and most insignificant of daily duties may be made noble and divine, when the thought of God and the will of Christ are carried into them. One soul may rise to heroism in the narrowest circle of routine, when another dwindles upon the grandest fields of action. Thus the means are at our disposal for building up these virtues of hope and patience in our character. When we give our souls up in trust to God, He gives them back to us again with His hand on them, that we may labor to fill them with all that can make them happy in the future and strong in the present.
We shall find increasingly “how good it is.” It is good now in the depth of the soul, in the conscious assurance that it is better to rest in the hardest of God’s ways than to wander at will in our own. “Behold, we count them happy who endure.” We shall find it good in the growth of all the Christian graces, under the shadow of patience. Were we to gain every blessing so soon as sought, the blessing itself would be small, and we should gain nothing more. But now, while we patiently wait, faith becomes stronger, resignation sinks into a deeper attitude of reverence, gentleness and meekness are clothed with softer beauty, and courage and fortitude, and all the stronger powers of the soul, arouse themselves and put on armor “to endure hardness as good soldiers of Jesus Christ.” Ker.
Hope and quietly wait. Contentment does not come of one’s possessions or of one’s position, but it comes of one’s way of looking at these. He who realizes that he is where God wants him to be, and that he has what God wants him to have, will be contented with his lot and his store, whatever they are; but he who fails to realize this truth would never be contented, though he were the most favored man in all the world. S. S. T.—They that deserves nothing should be satisfied with anything; bless God for what you have, and trust God for what you want; if we cannot bring our condition to our mind, we must bring our mind to our condition; if a man is not content in the state he is in, he will not be content in the state he would be in. Erskine Mason.—The fountain of content must spring up in the mind, and he who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts and multiply the griefs which he proposes to remove. Anon.
Discontent is a miserable fault. It grieves God, for it springs from a want of faith in Him. It destroys one’s own heart-peace; discontented people are always unhappy. It disfigures beauty of character. It sours the temper, ruffles the calm of sweet life, and tarnishes the loveliness of the spirit. It even works out through the flesh, and spoils the beauty of the fairest face. To have a transfigured face, one must have heaven in one’s heart. Just in proportion as the lesson is learned are the features brightened by the outshining of the indwelling peace. Besides all this, discontent casts shadows on the lives of others. One discontented person in a family often makes a whole household wretched. If not for our own sake, then, we ought at least for the sake of our friends to learn to be contented. We have no right to cast shadows on other lives.
But how can we learn contentment? One step toward it is patient submission to unavoidable ills and hardships. No earthly lot is perfect. No mortal ever yet in this world found a set of circumstances without some drawback. Sometimes it lies in our power to remove the discomfort. Much of our hardship is of our own making. Much of it would require but a little energy on our own part to cure. We surely are very foolish if we live on amid ills and frets, day after day, which we might change for comforts if we would. All removable troubles we ought, therefore, to remove. But there are trials which we cannot change into pleasures, burdens which we cannot lay off, crosses which we must continue to carry, “thorns in the flesh” which must remain with their rankling. When we have such trials, why should we not sweetly accept them as part of God’s best way with us? Discontent never made a rough path smoother, a heavy burden lighter, a bitter cup less bitter, a dark way brighter, a sorrow less sore. It only makes matters worse. One who accepts with patience what he cannot change has learned the secret of victorious living. J. R. Miller.
I do not know that I can better mark out the limits of Christian contentment than in these words. The ills which we cannot cure we must bear, with Christian patience and resignation; and they are thus converted into blessings. But with anything in us, around us, or in the world, which is wrong, imperfect, unsatisfying, when it might be made better, there is a glorious discontent whose goadings should urge us to action. This noble discontent with the present is the great lever that moves the world. It has impelled man’s progress in the arts and sciences, and social life, in government, in civilization; it has added its stimulus to the pious zeal of evangelists and missionaries in carrying the glad tidings around the whole earth. Like Caesar, it deems nothing done so long as anything remains to be done; like Paul, forgetting the things that are behind, it is always stretching forward to the things that are before. Let us cherish this discontent, this unwillingness to acquiesce in any evil which we can possibly remedy; and let us not be content with the absence of any good, unless it is impossible to attain it, or its attainment will interfere with other ends which our duties to God and our fellow-men make even more desirable. T. Chase.
27. In this matter of taking the yoke in one’s youth, Jeremiah doubtless spoke from his own experience. He is supposed to have been not far from twenty years of age when the Lord put this heavy yoke of his prophetic mission upon his neck. (See Jer. 1.) He gave him then to understand that it would be a life of stern self-denial, of bitter opposition, and of great trial. H. C.
That he bear the yoke in his youth. Early habits, when good, are invaluable. Early discipline is equally so. He who has not got under wholesome restraint in youth will never make a useful man, a good man, nor a happy man. A. C.—The discipline experienced in youth fits for the toil and suffering of after life. This is why it is “good” then to endure it. Many of the noblest characters have known trouble in early life, and have thus learned the wholesome lessons of adversity which have stood them in good stead in after years. They who are afflicted in their youth learn the limitation of their own powers, learn the inexorable necessities of human life, and become apt scholars in the great school of Divine providence. T.
Here it seems to be meant of the yoke of affliction; many have found it good to bear this in youth, it has made them humble and serious, and has weaned them from the world who otherwise would have been proud and unruly and as a bullock unaccustomed to the yoke. But when do we bear the yoke so that it is really good for us to bear it in our youth? He answers in the following verses: 1. When we are quiet under our afflictions; when we sit alone and keep silence, that we may converse with God and commune with our own hearts, silencing all discontented, distrustful thoughts, and laying our hand upon our mouth, as Aaron, who under a very severe trial held his peace. We must keep silence under the yoke, as those that have borne it upon us, not wilfully pulled it upon our own necks, but patiently submitted to it when God laid it upon us. When those who are afflicted in their youth accommodate themselves to their afflictions and study to answer God’s end in afflicting them, then they will find it good for them to bear it, for it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who are thus exercised thereby. 2. When we are humble and patient under our affliction; he gets good by the yoke who puts his mouth in the dust in token of sorrow and shame at the remembrance of sin. H.
28. Alone.** The God of our lives puts into all of them some solitude, for a purpose of His own. Nothing else would do as well. He arranges it for us that we cannot be always in anybody’s company. He keeps curtains about us, and drops them very often. Friend after friend departs. Something happens that tells you there is a space of mutual misunderstanding or want of understanding between you and the nearest and dearest heart on earth. There is a night between every two days. He ordains sickness, and shuts us in chambers, and sends us on journeys, and beckons away from us all our companions. Is it not plain that this is because the deepest and holiest exercises of the Spirit are where no human presence is by? Before the Spirit has done His deepest and best work in you He will have you all to Himself. The question of everlasting love is a private question: Wilt thou be Mine forever? The bridegroom must stand at your heart’s door when no human form, or face, or voice, can come in between you and Him. Each succeeding struggle, when we get the better of a besetting sin, when we wrestle with a fierce tempter and finally cast him behind us, when we make the terrible sacrifice which carries us clear of some entangling alliance or corrupting but fascinating acquaintance and sets our feet on a rock, or when God Himself puts out His hand and cleanses us by some unsought suffering, is solitary work. F. D. H.
Silence. Looking round on the noisy inanity of the world, words with little meaning, actions with little worth, one loves to reflect on the great empire of silence. The noble silent men, scattered here and there each in his department, silently thinking, silently working, of whom no mention is made. Carlyle.
30. The prophet, profiting by his own experience and by that of his countrymen, admonishes all to meekness and submission. In resistance is neither peace nor deliverance; in patient subjection and waiting is true wisdom, for such is the way to contentment and to final salvation. T.
31-33. The Lord will not cast off forever His real friends, those who humbly trust in Him. He may sometimes smite them sorely in chastisement for their sins, or, as in the case of Jeremiah, may lay heavy burdens upon them, because he has hard work to be done; but He will surely have compassion in accordance with the multitude of His mercies. Verse 33 expresses its thought beautifully: “God doth not afflict from His heart.” H. C.
God’s good purposes in causing pain. All this is the language of hope, and continues naturally what is said in verses 21 and 24. The existence of present trouble presses upon the heart, but along with it there is the confident assurance of future deliverance. God casts men off, as it were, that they may realize their weakness and true state, and then, when they make the full discovery, God’s hand is stretched out to restore. Y.—God does “cast off” and “cause grief.” His love does not nullify His wrath. When grieved and disowned by God the soul feels utterly desolate. But the terrible judgment is only for a season. It will end in reconciliation and compassion. This great truth gives an entirely new complexion to our views of life and providence. We see at times the severe side. But we misjudge if we take that as a sample of the whole. Indeed, the very severity prepares the way for mercy; for God can show compassion after chastisement to a degree that would not be good before the wholesome discipline. Adency.
“God does not willingly afflict the children of men;” He seems to share in the suffering while He inflicts it, and to feel the very pain of His own blows, while they fall heavy upon the poor sinner. Judgment is called God’s “strange work;” a work that He has no proneness to, nor finds any complacency in; and therefore, whensoever He betakes Himself to it, we may be confident that it is not for the sake of the work itself, but that He has some secret, overruling design of love, which He is to compass after an unusual, extraordinary way. He never lops and prunes us with His judgments because He delights to see us bare, and poor, and naked, but because He would make us fruitful; nor would He cause us to pass through the fiery furnace, but to purge and to refine us. For can it be any satisfaction to a father to employ a surgeon to cut off his child’s arm, were not the taking away a part found necessary to secure the whole? Common humanity never uses the lance to pain and torture, but to restore the patient. But now, the care and tenderness of an earthly parent or physician is but a faint shadow and resemblance of that infinite compassion and affection which God bears to His children, even in the midst of His severest usage of them. South.
Evil and suffering are all around us, but it is a part of our faith in the fatherliness of God to believe that “He doth not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of men;” and to say with the psalmist, “I know, O Lord, that Thy judgments are right, and that Thou in faithfulness hast afflicted me.” The universe is in the interests of comfort and happiness and joy. Everything is contrived to bend toward a blessing; God started man in Paradise; as good a Paradise as he could bear and a good deal better; and all that lies after Paradise is preparation for a Paradise improved. The Paradise regained is not the Paradise that was lost. God does not willingly afflict. There is no sorrow that has not lodged in it the possible seed-kernel of fruition. Faith in the fatherliness of God involves all this. When we experience vexation and tribulation we must always bethink ourselves of the issue to which in our Christian faith we are sure it is divinely designed to conduct. C. H. P.
Thy Heavenly Father sometimes hides His face from thee, and withdraws His quickening and refreshing presence for a time, not for want of love, for He loves thee freely; He loves thee with an everlasting love; He loves thee with the very same love with which He loves Jesus Christ; and that dear Son of His loves thee with the same love His Father loves Him; but to put more heat and life in thine affections toward Him and heavenly things; to cause thee to relish communion with Jesus Christ, when thou enjoyest it, more sweetly; to preserve it more carefully, to joy in it more thankfully, and to shun more watchfully whatsoever might rob thee of it; to stir up all the powers of thy soul, and all the graces of God in thee, to seek His face and favor again with more extraordinary and universal seriousness and industry. For we find with pleasure, possess with singular contentment, and keep with special care what we have sought with pain. Seeming desertions then and delays of this nature are fruits of thy Heavenly Father’s love, and ought to be no discouragements to thee at all, holding thy integrity. Bolton, 1631.
God never dispenses any event to us, so much with intent to exercise His power over us, as to express His goodness toward us; He never “doth afflict or grieve” us more against our will than against His own desire; never indeed but when goodness itself calleth for it, and even mercy doth urge thereto. Isaac Barrow.—Omnipotence cannot do an unloving thing toward a believer. Oh, rest quite sure, Christian, a hard thing, an unloving thing from God toward one of His own people is quite impossible! The only question is, Art thou His child? If so, He hath rebuked thee in affection, and there is love in His chastisement. Spurgeon.—Take all afflictions as tokens of God’s love to thee and trials of thy love to Him, and purposes of kindness to enrich thee, and increase more plentifully in thee His blessed gifts and spiritual graces, if thou persevere faithfully unto the end. Leighton.
Consider your affliction as a mark of your relation to the Father of your spirits; a proof of His love and care; of His preparing you for His kingdom! He is melting you in the furnace, that you may bear His image. He values you too much not to bestow pains upon you. This is the mysterious process by which He is conducting you to heaven, and training you for its enjoyment. Be not, then, overmuch cast down! Remember the immutability of His promises; the stability of His covenant; the perpetuity of His love! “Remember the years of the right hand of the Most High!” Let those who have been afflicted seriously consider what has been the effect of their trials upon themselves. If no effect has been produced, what can they expect but “sorrow upon sorrow”? What but greater severity, since the former chastening has failed of its purpose? It is a fearful thing to have come out of the furnace hardened! to have produced none of those “fruits of righteousness,” for the production of which the chastening was sent! Consider that unsanctified affliction can only be succeeded either by final impenitence or by greater affliction, in order to our recovery. Let us be anxious that, being made, by our trials, more patient, more spiritual, we may be found, as gold tried and purified, to praise and honor, at the appearing of Jesus Christ! R. Hall.
Suffering is intended to prepare and make room in our hearts for the grace of Christ, because the tendency of the human heart, if left to itself, is to pride and self-dependence; and if suffered to work our own way, we will almost inevitably make shipwreck of our souls. He who has infinite wisdom knows what ballast of suffering we want, as well as what fair wind to swell our sails; and His love will undertake both for the one and the other, and so temper them together, that we may not be stranded on the heavy sands of adversity, nor be drawn off out of our reckoning by too strong a gale of apparent prosperity. Let us adore our heavenly Father for His merciful and wise dispensations, and pray with sincerity of heart that He will neither give us those possessions which would in any wise draw our hearts aside from Him, nor take away that suffering which is designed to drive us to Him, until it has wrought this effect, nor suffer our ears to get heavy or dull under His teachings. That is a striking word of Jeremiah, true, alas! of very many, “I spake unto thee in thy prosperity, and thou saidst, I will not hear.” How often is it so, a man’s ear wanton and ungoverned, or quite deaf to expostulation and to the voice even of God, and the heart obdurate as marble, till the deaf ear is pierced, and the hard heart made tender by suffering! Anon.
Trial brings man face to face with God—God and he touch; and the flimsy veil of bright cloud that hung between him and the sky is blown away; he feels that he is standing outside the earth, with nothing between him and the Eternal Infinite. Oh, there is something in the sick-bed, and the aching heart, and the restlessness and the languor of shattered health, and the sorrow of affections withered, and the stream of life poisoned at its fountain, and the cold, lonely feeling of utter rawness of heart which is felt when God strikes home in earnest, that forces a man to feel what is real and what is not. F. W. R.
The thought that God is training us for a wide sphere than this life affords is both ennobling to character and helpful in serving Him while upon the earth. We are at present absent from home. The classes for spiritual instruction are now being formed for our sakes; each soul is being called to his definite and appropriate place. The keenest, sharpest discipline God may find necessary in some cases. A prolonged stay in primary principles He may see to be the only way toward advancement. Even a seeming withdrawal of His favor may be the Divine way of dealing with some of us. He is our Teacher. His eye is fixed upon our spiritual growth. His providential arrangements are adjusted to our individual need. He is striving to lead us up to graduation into a perfect life, the chief characteristic of which shall be perfect readiness for service through endless ages. That we know so little of what that service shall be is only an evidence that its scope will surpass the limits of our present capacities. That will be the employment of perfected natures—an employment for which the school of this life is preparing us. Anon.
Suffering subserves our sanctification, as it is a necessary means of self-knowledge, as it leads to self-conquest and promotes the growth of the Christian graces, as through self-knowledge edge it imparts the knowledge of duty to others, and as through self-conquest it prompts to and strengthens for the actual discharge of this duty. Thus we see that God’s discipline is wholly for “our profit.” Our heavenly Father chastens, not for His pleasure, but “that we may be partakers of His holiness.” B.
34-36. The form of this Hebrew sentence makes it entirely clear that these three verses are to be constructed together thus: God does not look with favor on these things—viz., crushing under foot the prisoner; subverting a man’s inherent rights before God; defeating his rightful cause. H. C.—In these verses certain acts of tyranny, malice and injustice are specified, which men often indulge themselves in the practice of, one toward another, but which the Divine goodness is far from countenancing or approving by any similar conduct. Blayney.
38. Out of the mouth of the Most High proceedeth not evil and good? Do not calamities come from God’s will and disposal, as well as prosperity? (See Isa. 45:7; Amos 3:6.) W. Lowth.—It is not sin, but suffering, that is referred to, as the context clearly shows. We have just been told that God will not cast off forever because He does not afflict from His heart. We are now reminded that it is not the less true that God sends adverse as well as pleasant things. Adeney.
There is here an assertion of universal and particular providence. The inequality of the human lot has ever been the theme of meditation, inquiry and study. It has been attributed to chance, to men themselves, to the operation of law. But the enlightened and religious mind recognizes the voice and the hand of the Most High in human society, even when the immediate causes of what takes place are apparent. Nothing is so vast as to be above, and nothing is so minute as to be beneath, Providence. The afflictions and sufferings of life, as well as its joys and prosperity, are all allowed and all overruled for good to God’s people. And all may become means of grace and blessing to such as receive them in a teachable and submissive spirit. T.
Upon this theme of universal and intense interest a word of caution calls for suggestion. It is that very much of human suffering is the necessary result of purely natural causes, and is produced solely by man’s own wilful or negligent infringement of fixed and known physical laws. To alter existing natural laws for every such infringement would be not only to work by perpetual miracle, but it would be to stop the complicated machinery of Nature, to reverse the whole movement of her admirable system and involve it in ceaseless changes and utter planless confusion and instability. And yet, notwithstanding this most obvious truth, it is a strange fact that the mass of objections to the doctrine of Providence and the loudest murmurings and complaints uttered against it relate to these very cases—to suffering induced simply by the ignorant or deliberate disregard, the voluntary infraction of physical laws. B.
39. Wherefore doth a living man complain. How great soever his affliction may be, he is still alive; therefore he may seek and find mercy unto eternal life. Of this death would deprive him; let not, therefore, a living man complain. A. C.—If we consider God’s afflictions as a just reward of our evil deeds, this will prevent all murmuring and repining against Providence; especially as long as men are on this side of the grave, they ought to be thankful for having an opportunity given them for repentance. W. Lowth.
Why murmur? The world is full of complaints and murmuring. It sometimes is observable that those whose lot is peculiarly fortunate, whose circumstances are peculiarly favorable, are foremost in complaint when anything occurs to them which does not fall in with their expectations, which does not correspond with their desires. On the other hand, we now and again meet with the poor, the suffering, the friendless, who display a cheerful, uncomplaining disposition. T.
Murmuring is a species of blasphemy. You are in the Lord’s guest chamber. You sit at His table. If you complain of the fare, you insult Him on whose bounty you live. If you doubt whether you will be taken care of, you impugn the truthfulness of Him who declares that He is more willing to give good things to them that ask Him than parents are to give bread to their children. If we had eyes and hearts of faith, we would see that whatever He gives is best for us. Anon.
Sin is the cause of every other source of complaint on earth; were there no sin, there would be no sorrow. This holds good of the pain which comes directly from above, but not less of the pain which others procure for us—nay, even of that for which we have only ourselves to blame; not a suffering is to be named which stands entirely without connection with sin, by whomsoever perpetrated. Wherefore, then, does a living man complain, who through his sins has merited more than the worst of his sufferings, and has long since forfeited the enjoyments of his lot? Let us rather appear as our own accusers, than dare to criticise the ways and the work of a holy God! Thou, who so long and loudly complainest over an infinite number of things here below, complain above all of thine own sins, which have produced so much sorrow, and have closed to thee the only source of consolation. Van O.
The woes of broken health and grim depression; the pains, the unspeakable agonies by which human bodies are wrenched for whole years; the wrongs of orphanage; pestilence, fire, flood, tempest and famine—how can a good God launch His bolts on men, we ask, in severities like these? And the sufferers themselves sometimes wonder, even in their faith, how it is that if God is a father, He can let fall on His children such hail-storms of inevitable, unmitigated disaster. No, suffering mortal! a truce to all such complainings. These are only God’s merciful indirections, fomentations of trouble and sorrow, that He is applying to soften the rugged and hard will in you. These pains are only switches to turn you off from the track of His coming retributions. If your great, proud nature could be won to the real greatness of character by a tenderer treatment, do you not see, from all God’s gentle methods of dealing with mankind, that He gladly would soften your troubles? And if diamonds are not polished by soap, or oil, or even by any other stone, but only by their own fine dust, why should you complain that God is tempering you to your good only by such throes and lacerations and wastings of life as are necessary? Bushnell.
We cannot be useless while we are doing and suffering God’s will, whatever it may be found to be. And we can always do that. If we are bringing forth the fruits of the Spirit, we are not useless. And we can always do that. If we are increasing in the knowledge of God’s will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding, we are not useless. And we can always do that. While we pray we cannot be useless. And we can always do that. God will always find us a work to do, a niche to fill, a place to serve, nay, even a soul to save, when it is His will, and not ours, that we desire to do; and if it should please Him that we should sit still for the rest of our lives, doing nothing else but waiting on Him, and waiting for Him, why should we complain? “Here is the faith and patience of the saints.” Bp. Thorold.
40-42. At this point it was exceedingly appropriate that the prophet should change his strain of discourse to the plural, should include the people with himself, and so exhort both them and himself to most thorough, self-searching repentance, prayer and confession. The last clause was painfully true; the sins of the people had reached a depth of depravity that God could not pardon. H. C.
40. How are we to get the pardon of our sins? The prophet tells us: Let us examine ourselves. Let us turn again to the Lord. Let us lift up our heart; let us make fervent prayer and supplication for mercy. Let us lift up our hand; let us solemnly promise to be His, and bind ourselves in a covenant to be the Lord’s only; so much lifting up the hand to God implies. We have transgressed; let our confession of sin be fervent and sincere. And to us who profess Christianity it may be added, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ as having died for thee; and thou shalt not perish, but have everlasting life. A. C.
Self-introspection may easily, and will certainly, become morbid, if it be not checked by a constant outlooking of the mind. True religion is all comprised in two precepts, “Look into yourself to see your own vileness, Look out of yourself to Christ.” Little enough health, comfort, peace and satisfaction shall we derive from the first of these precepts, unless we constantly couple with it the second. The knowledge and consciousness of guilt is only valuable as a background, on which to paint more vividly to the mind’s eye the rainbow colors of the love of Jesus. Walk abroad ever and anon, and expatiate freely in the sunlight of God’s grace and love in Christ. Breathe it, bask in it, walk in it, there is no other mode of really invigorating the spiritual system. A religion, if it is to be strong, must be joyous; and joyous it cannot be without the light of God’s love in Christ shining freely into every corner of the soul. Goulburn.—Two things our afflictions should put us upon. 1. A serious consideration of ourselves, and a reflection upon our lives past. Let us try our ways, that by them we may try ourselves, for we are to judge of our state not by our faint wishes, but by our steps; not by one particular step, but by our ways; the ends we aim at, the rules we go by, and the agreeableness of the temper of our minds and the tenor of our lives to those ends and those rules. 2. A sincere conversion to God; “Let us turn again to the Lord, to Him who is turned against us, and whom we have turned from; to Him let us turn by repentance and reformation, as to our owner and ruler; we have been with Him, and it has never been well with us since we forsook Him, let us therefore now turn again to Him.” This must accompany the former, and be the fruit of it; therefore we most search and try our ways, that we may turn from the evil of them to God; this was the method David took (Ps. 119: 59), “I thought on my ways, and turned my feet unto Thy testimonies.” H.
Times of affliction are special times of confession and repentance. Usually in prosperity men will not be at leisure to search their hearts and take notice of their sins. Therefore the Lord draweth them to confession by drawing them from the world, by laying them upon sick beds, or by bringing them into straits. Caryl.
41. Our hearts must go along with our prayers; we must lift up our hearts with our hands, as we must pour out our souls with our words. It is the heart that God looks at in that and every other service; for what will a sacrifice without a heart avail? If inward impressions be not in some measure answerable to outward expressions, we do but mock God and deceive ourselves. Praying is lifting up the soul to God (Ps. 25: 1), as to our Father in heaven; and the soul that hopes to be with God in heaven forever will thus, by frequent acts of devotion, be still learning the way thither, and pressing forward in that way. H.
“Drawing nigh to God” is the most comprehensive expression to describe the soul’s attitude toward God. Prayer is the culminating point of this attitude. If we rightly view prayer, it embraces our whole life, our thought and feeling, our will and work, our conflict and rest. “Drawing nigh to God” describes the character of the Christian’s life. In the meditation of our hearts, in the desires of our soul, in the activities and enjoyments of our daily path, we approach God; for we wish to live before Him, conscious of His presence, in constant dependence and in constant enjoyment of His grace. And all Divine revelations encourage us to draw nigh to God. They disclose the abundant mercy, the overflowing riches, the infinite love, awaiting us when we draw nigh; the atmosphere of free and all-sufficient grace which we breathe when we approach the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Saphir.—Prayer has just two limits: the first is, that its range is confined to the promises; but within these, what a bank of wealth, what a mine of mercies, what a store of blessings! The second is, that God will grant or deny our requests as is best for His glory and our good. He makes His answers to correspond with our wants rather than to our wishes. Guthrie.
42,44,49,50. When the believer’s repentings are kindled, when he knows how evil and bitter a thing it is to forsake the Lord, and to depart from His fear, and when he considers how long God has borne with him, how many favors he has received, and how brutish has been his ingratitude, his heart is broken, his tears flow, he seeks the lowest place in the dust of abasement, wonders that affliction has not long since overtaken him for his carelessness and neglect, and bows down before the Lord without a murmur. At such a time the language of the afflicted soul will be: “Wherefore doth a living man complain, a man for the punishment of his sins? Let us search and try our ways, and turn again unto the Lord. Let us lift up our heart with our hands unto God in the heavens. We have transgressed and have rebelled; thou hast not pardoned. Thou hast covered thyself with a cloud, that our prayer should not pass through. Mine eye trickleth down and ceaseth not, without any intermission, till the Lord look down and behold from heaven.” J. W. A.
43,44. What can be more dreadful than this! To have all hearing of our prayer shut off; clouds enveloping our great Father’s throne which no prayer of ours can pierce through! To our joy let us remember that this can never be, save because of our great sins, and that then deep and true repentance scatters this cloud away. H. C.
44. So long as we are praying, rebelliously demanding our own way and not submitting to God’s will, no prayer of ours can reach His throne in heaven. We may dare to lay our wish before God in humility, but yet in frank expression of it. Nevertheless, it can only be entertained by God when we add in spirit, if not in words, “Not my will, but Thine, be done.” Thus may we cry to the void and have back only the mocking echo of our foolish prayer. We may send urgent requests toward heaven, and they will only lose themselves in the thick, black clouds of Divine disfavor which come between us and God. It is hopeful, however, for a soul to know this. When we see the cloud we are half-way toward the removal of it. Adeney.
48-51. In these points the prophet could not unite the people with himself, and say “Our eyes,” etc. But of himself he could truly say it. He had said before, “O that my head were waters and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night,” etc. (Jer. 9:1). The strong expression, “rivers of waters,” for intense weeping, is altogether Oriental. (See Jer. 9:18; Ps. 119:136.) In verse 51, the prophet means, “Mine eye saddens my heart;” my tears, instead of affording relief, seem only to make my sorrows the more poignant. The weeping prophet felt that he could not cease to weep until the Lord should look down propitiously and mercifully from heaven and reverse the sore calamities of His people. This was the great burden of his prayer and of his heart. H. C.
51. The eye and the life. “Mine eye affecteth mine heart.” More correctly, “Mine eye paineth my soul, or my life”—that is, what I see, so melancholy is it, that it preys on my mind and undermines my health. What we get from the exercise of our senses will depend upon what we bring. The prophet saw desolation all around him where once there had been crowded and prosperous life. What could he do but feel as if a broken heart would be the end of his thoughts? But the spoilers would look at the scene differently, for to them it was the place of enrichment and triumph. Y.
55-66. We may observe throughout this chapter a struggle in the prophet’s breast between sense and faith, fear and hope; he complains and then comforts himself, yet drops his comforts and returns again to his complaints, as Ps. 42. But as there, so here, faith gets the last word, and comes off a conqueror, for in these verses he concludes with some comfort. H.
55-57. Here are the thoughts of his heart and the fearful trials he passed through when cast repeatedly into prison and sometimes subjected to torture. “They have cut off my life in the dungeon,” does not state an actual fact, but probably the purpose and aim of his enemies. Twice they had thrust him into a dungeon under ground—viz., once in the prison of Jonathan the scribe (37:15, 16, 20), which was a dungeon with its underground cells, of which the prophet said to the king, “Do not send me back lest I die there;” and again in the dungeon of Malchiah, where he “sunk in the mire” (38:6), and whence the good Ebed-melech saved him. From this terrible darkness and mire he lifted up his imploring cry to his God and received the joyous reply, “Fear not.” The Lord did not close His ear to the outbreaking of his agony of prayer. He never does! When His real children have cried unto Him from the depth of their distress, was it ever known that He shut His ear against their breathing and their cry? H. C.—The prophet testifies that his cry had not been unheeded. Even when immured in a pit so deep that his voice could not reach his fellow-men, his entreaty had reached the ear and roused the pity of the eternal Lord. And He who had heard had answered too, and had sent His messenger to deliver His servant. Where is there a child of God who has not experienced the compassionate interposition of the Most High? T.
58-62. As between himself and his virulent, cruel and wicked persecutors, the Lord had fully interposed, vindicating and avenging His faithful servant and confounding his enemies. H. C.
60, 61. Jeremiah’s belief that God’s eye was upon these enemies. “Thou hast seen.” It is a great matter to feel that God has His eye upon all human wickedness. We may suffer greatly from it, and yet see only a very small part of what He sees. We are forever running into extremes, exaggerating or palliating, magnifying the reality or else diminishing it. We look at things too much in reference to our individual selves, and as they concern us. But God sees things as they truly are, in all their relations and possibilities. Some things are worse than we think them, others better. And so we are enabled to feel that all wickedness is kept within comparatively innocuous limits. The mischief only reaches the outside of what is attacked, for the same God who watches the wicked watches the good at the same time. Y.
63-66. This passage must be expounded in the same way with various other passages in the Psalms which breathe similar imprecations. The pious heart reaches essentially the same standpoint of view which God has when He dooms incorrigible sinners to destruction. Both alike look upon the wicked as hopelessly incorrigible—past the moral possibility of being reclaimed to repentance. Both alike feel the resistless demands of justice, and can, in fact, say nothing less than this: Let justice take its course! Let the great interests of a moral universe be saved and not sacrificed. H. C.
We have to distinguish between the prophet taken out of himself by inspiration and the man of like passions with ourselves, who has to pass through a long discipline before he can pray as he ought to pray. We may feel here that a silent waiting upon God would have been better than any imprecations of vengeance, and yet, at the same time, we must acquit Jeremiah of anything like personal malice. He wished that the wicked might be recompensed according to the work of their hands. The wicked wished Jeremiah to be treated according to the ferocity of their own hearts. Y.
The purpose for which retribution is implored. Not for the gratification of vindictive feelings. Not for the exaltation of the oppressed at the expense of the oppressor. But for the speedy deliverance of God’s wronged and harassed people. For the advancement of God’s cause upon earth. For the honor of God’s glorious name, “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” T.