Lamentations

Of all the poetical books of the Old Testament this is probably the one least generally known; yet it is the one about which our information is most complete. About the circumstances in which some of these books were produced we know, it must be acknowledged, little or nothing with certainty; we cannot fix their dates to within hundreds of years; but we can tell precisely the circumstances in which this book arose; and we can fix its date to within at the most a year or two; some would say, to within a month or two.*

In the year 588 b.c. the city of Jerusalem was compassed round by the Babylonians, and, after a siege of a year-and-a-half, during which the inhabitants were spared none of the extremities of such a situation, it fell into the hands of the enemy, who burned it to the ground and transported its inhabitants, a few excepted, to far-off Babylonia. Those who stayed behind attempted to organise

* Bleek argues that it was written between the surrender and the destruction of the city.

themselves in the empty country; but they were attacked in their weakened condition by the predatory tribes living on their borders and harassed to such a degree that at last, panic-stricken and demoralised, they set off for Egypt, to see if any refuge could be found for them there.*

The book has for its theme this catastrophe of the holy nation and, especially, of the Holy City; and it is evident that it was written at the time by one who was not only an eye-witness of the scenes depicted, but felt to the very depths of his soul the pain and horror of the tragedy.

II

There is one man, well known to us, who was on the spot during all these events. For many years the prophet Jeremiah had been foretelling that this calamity was coming upon the capital of his country. But he spoke to deaf ears. The false prophets, by whom he was surrounded, made light of his warnings and assured those who listened to them that he was entirely mistaken: the city of Jehovah could never be given over into the hands of the heathen. To such flatterers the people were only too ready to listen; and the heads of the community were so irritated by what they called Jeremiah’s pessimistic

* Ewald contends that the book was written after the fugitives arrived in Egypt, and was used at a mournful anniversary-celebration of the events.

croakings that they shut his mouth by casting him into prison. It turned out, however, that he was a true prophet; and he lived to see the fulfilment of the worst which he had predicted. He was in Jerusalem all through the siege and the subsequent destruction of the city; and, after the transportation of the inhabitants had taken place, he was among the small remnant who stayed for a time in the empty country. The migration to Egypt was not in accordance with his will or judgment; but he was compelled by the force of circumstances to go thither with the rest.

It is very natural, therefore, to suppose that he was the author of the book. This, no doubt, is why it is separated in our Bible from the rest of the poetical books and inserted after Jeremiah’s prophecy. In the Septuagint it is introduced with the following superscription: “And it came to pass, after Israel was led into captivity and Jerusalem laid waste, that Jeremiah sat weeping, and lamented with this lamentation over Jerusalem, and said.” These words, however, do not occur in the Hebrew, which nowhere supplies the name of the author.

Jeremiah has always been supposed to be the author till the present day, when it is the fashion to suppose a new author wherever there is the faintest pretext for doing so.* The reasons which have

“Whenever the writer pauses to take breath,” says Matthew Arnold. An amusing yet suggestive instance of the lengths been discovered for attributing Lamentations to another than Jeremiah are of the most microscopic order; yet they have appeared sufficient to a certain school. It is allowed, however, that the writer was living at the same time as Jeremiah and went through the same experiences. Bunsen made the suggestion that he may have been Baruch, Jeremiah’s loved disciple.

The question is of comparatively little interest, and it has no religious importance whatever. It would be gratifying to know that, besides Jeremiah, there was another gifted son of Israel in those days who loved Zion with an affection as passionate as is displayed in this book and was able to express in such enduring literary form the meaning of the tragic events through which he and his fellow-countrymen were passing. But Nature is perhaps hardly so prodigal of her gifts.

The genius of Jeremiah was a rare and peculiar

to which biblical criticism of this kind can go occurs in the work of Dr. Gordon referred to in the Preface. First he separates Lamentations as a whole from Jeremiah. Then he finds chapters ii. and iv. to present strong points of resemblance, yet he assumes for them separate authors. Chapters i. and v. also exhibit similarities, yet they are by different authors, writing later than the first couple. Chapter iii. is a great summing-up of the entire situation, but is by a fifth author, writing later still. This is not literary criticism at all, but the nervousness of a youthful scholar, afraid of being accused for leaving unregistered any suggestion of the learned, however puerile. If applied all round, it would separate half the great literary name3 of antiquity from their property one, but it could not have been more worthily embodied than in the profound impression made on the writer of this book by his country’s calamities and the religious view he takes of the situation. It is, also, a noteworthy circumstance that we know from other Scripture that Jeremiah was a lamentwriter. Of course a man might be a prophet without possessing the peculiar gift of the poet; but Jeremiah not only wrote oetry, but this kind of poetry; he wrote a lament on the death of Josiah.* There are some peculiarities in the language of the Lamentations which do not occur in Jeremiah’s prophecy; but this is no more than might be expected when a writer is passing from one species of composition to another; and, on the other hand, there are many striking resemblances, and imong them certain phrases so characteristic of Jeremiah’s style that they may almost be called his cipher. t By far the most conclusive proof,

* 2 Chron. xxxv. 25. Dr. Driver takes no notice of this fact, when stating the reasons fro and con in his Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament.

t What can be the use of quoting as arguments against Jeremiah’s authorship, as Dr. Driver does, single words occurring in Lamentations but not in Jeremiah, when, according to Dr. Driver’s own theory, these words were current at the time and as accessible to Jeremiah as to any of his contemporaries? In a case like this, whilst striking resemblances of word or phrase are important evidence, minute verbal differences have no weight whatever. Another argument to which Dr. Driver gives prominence, as proving that at least a portion of the book is not by Jeremiah, is ♦hat, while, in the three poems after the first, two of the initial however, of the authorship is the account of Jeremiah’s personal experience given in the third chapter. Here the facts of the prophet’s history are described with autobiographical fulness; and who else could have used the opening words of that great chapter, “I am the man that hath seen affliction”? Only a prominent public character could have presumed to apply such a description to himself, and whom does the grandiose phrase fit so well as the typical sufferer of the age ?* The form of the book is of course poetical; but there are certain peculiarities in its poetry which deserve to be noticed.

The book is not a continuous poem, but a collection of five separate poems, all of the same character and all on the same theme; and, in our version, the book is so divided that each poem just fills a chapter.

The poems belong to the elegiac species of poetry, and we should call the separate pieces elegies or

Hebrew letters change places, they occupy in the first poem their usual positions. But he does not mention the simple suggestion of Ewald, that in the first poem an editorial hand may have altered the arrangement. The verses read better, in Eyvald’s opinion, when their initial letters stand as in chapters ii., iii., iv.

* The interpretation of those who do not accept Jeremiah’s authorship of the book is that the nation personified speaks here. But in chapter i. the nation is personified as a woman.

dirges or laments. Kinah is the Hebrew term; and this species of poetry seems to have been much cultivated in Israel. In the Bible we possess not a few other laments besides these of Jeremiah. They appear to have been frequently composed on the death of persons prominent in the public eye or beloved by a large circle of acquaintance; and it is not unlikely that they were sung in connection with the funeral-rites. But they might also be composed in commemoration of public calamities; and there are some very remarkable prophetic laments, predicting the destruction of cities, with the accompanying scenes of woe and desolation.*

But there is a still more remarkable peculiarity to be mentioned in these laments of Jeremiah. The first four of them are acrostics on the Hebrew alphabet; and, stranger still, in the great third chapter each successive letter begins three successive verses. The fifth chapter has the same number of verses as it would have if it were such an acrostic also; but for some unknown reason the acrostic form has been dropped. This strikes us as a very peculiar thing. A form so artificial, it might be

* Driver has a valuable note on the form of the Hebrew lament; and Budde (in Hastings’ Dictionary oj the Bible, iv. 5) says of the kinahs: “These were uniformly composed in verses of two members, the length of the first of which stands to that of the second in the proportion of 3: 2, giving rise to a peculiar limping rhythm.”

thought, must cramp the thinking and crush out all naturalness. Yet it is not uncommon in Hebrew poetry. As was mentioned in an earlier chapter, it appears in several of the Psalms, culminating in Psalm cxix., in which each successive letter of the alphabet is the initial letter of no fewer than eight successive verses. It is essentially of the same nature as parallelism, alliteration, metre and rhyme. It appears to be the nature of poetical thought to submit to such restraints and yet be able to move with more grace and freedom than in the slovenly garb of common speech. Odd as this acrostic form seems to us, it probably appeared more natural to an ancient poet than rhyme would have done, which seems to us so natural. It was apparently resorted to when the material of the poem consisted of a great many somewhat similar remarks and an artificial thread was required on which to string the separate thoughts.*

IV

The picture painted in the Lamentations is one of colossal sorrow. The siege and the sack of cities have always been horrible incidents in history, but the enemies by whom Jerusalem was destroyed were notorious for cruelty and ruthlessness. In their

* Driver alleges this acrostic form as an argument against attributing the book to Jeremiah, “who, in his literary style, followed the promptings of nature “!

own annals and in the artistic delineations of their practices in war which have been dug in recent times from beneath the sands of the desert, this has been made painfully evident. At the height of their power the Babylonians not only practised the most revolting inhumanities, but gloried in them; and they had many reasons for not sparing Israel.

A most pitiful description is given of the extremities endured during the siege — especially the sufferings arising from famine. The children swooned with hunger and cried for bread to their mothers, who had none to give. The aged gave up the ghost, “while they sought their meat to relieve their souls.” The famished crept through the streets like grey and feeble ghosts. Those who had all their lives before lived delicately and been clothed with scarlet were reduced to such straits that they were willing to part with anything for a morsel of bread. Of the nobles* it is said that once “they were purer than snow, they were whiter than milk, they were more ruddy in body than rubies, their polishing was of sapphire,” but now, as the effect of famine, “their visage is blacker than a coal; they are not known in the streets” (so disfigured are they); “their skin cleaveth to their bones; it is withered, it is become like a stick.” A dark rumour was even in circulation that mothers, mad with hunger, had * In Authorised Version “Nazarites.”

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Boddcn their own children, to keep themselves in life.

After the siege, ensued the indescribable horrors of the sack of the city, when the gates were burst open, and the cruel and brutal soldiery, irritated by long delay, rushed in, to wreak their will on the doomed inhabitants. Every home had to endure its own share of cruelty and shame. But above all private grief towered the public calamity. Everything noble and venerable, to which patriotic affection and religious feeling clung, was ruthlessly dishonoured. To crown all, in the temple was heard the ribald noise of the enemy, loud as had been in happier days on the same spot the mirth of the solemn festivals. “The adversary has 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.”

Then followed the deportation of the inhabitants to Babylon, in which king and princes, priests and prophets, high and low, were all mingled in a common degradation; and, as the long procession moved away, they could see, or seemed in their melancholy hearts to see, the ancient and implacable enemies of Israel, such as the Edomites, drawn up along the path, as scornful and exultant spectators of their misery.

A remnant were left behind, among whom was the author of the Lamentations. But their lot was perhaps the most calamitous of all. Not only were they constantly harassed by the incursions of the skirmishers from the desert and caused to live in perpetual fear, but they had before their eyes the ruins of their country and their capital. The gates were sunk in the ground and the bars broken; the city was a heap of ruins, and silence reigned in the streets. If “a sorrow’s crown of sorrow is remembering happier things,” they now tasted the cup to the dregs; for, amidst the silence of the deserted city, they remembered the days of music and mirth, calling to mind especially the happy pilgrim bands which used to make vocal the roads of the country, now deserted, and crowd the courts of the temple, now in ruins. No wonder they lamented: “How is the gold become dim! How is the most pure gold changed!”

To all this history of sorrow the author of Lamentations gives complete and sympathetic expression. His book is full of tears. “Mine eye runneth down with rivers of water,” he says, “for the destruction of the daughter of my people.” In the first chapter he personifies Israel as a woman, weeping and appealing to the whole world: “Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? Behold, and see, if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow.” But the author had a deeper purpose than merely to give vent to the national grief. All through these poems the minds of those for whose use they were composed are directed, in a truly prophetic spirit, to the cause of their sufferings. The Babylonians were not the cause: they were merely the instruments of a Higher Will. It was God who was chastising His people; and they were chastised because they had sinned. “The Lord hath afflicted her for the multitude of her transgressions “; “The Lord is righteous; for I have rebelled against His commandment.” Such is the undertone from first to last below the record of calamity; and the poet seeks to impress his fellow- sufferers with the conviction, that hope lies only in acknowledging their iniquity and seeking forgiveness from Him against whom they have offended.

The most remarkable, however, of all the five chapters is the middle one. The two on either side may be said to lean up against it, while it towers above them all. In it Jeremiah comes forward to speak in his own person, beginning with the words already quoted: “I am the man that hath seen affliction.” He goes on to give a poetical rendering of his own history, for the purpose of showing the right way of dealing with trouble. His fellow-countrymen had just come into trouble, but he had been a man of sorrows all his life. Years before their chastisement commenced, the hand of God had been laid on him: “He hath bent His bow and set me as a mark for the arrow. He hath caused the shafts of His quiver to enter into my reins. I am become a derision to all my people and their song all the day.” His personal grief could have been described in the very words which would now best describe their public calamities. But he had discovered for himself the way out of trouble, and he could now teach it to them. At first he had agitated himself and cried out against the hand by which he was being chastised. His whole being was in tumult and refused to be comforted. But, when he became still and humbled himself, then the day broke and the daystar arose in his heart. The most delightful and comforting truths came pouring into his mind, in the strength of which he surmounted sorrow, and, though outward trouble did not cease, he was able to rise above it.

It is at this point that there occur a dozen or score of verses totally different from the rest of this book. The major part of the book is steeped in tears, but this portion is flushed with sunshine:

It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because His

compassions fail not. They are new every morning; great is Thy faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in Him. The Lord is good unto them that wait for Him, to the soul that

seeketh Him. It is good that a man should hope and quietly wait for the salvation

of the Lord. It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth.

For the Lord will not cast of! for ever.

For, though He cause grief, jret will He have compassion according

to the multitude of Ilip mei For He doth not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of

men.

These verses are like a bed of water-lilies lying on the surface of a brackish and desolate mere; or, if the rest of the book be compared to a sky full of black and dripping clouds, this portion is like a rainbow arched athwart them, speaking of hope in the depths of desolation and showing the way to reach it. Here sounds the true evangelical note, which echoes all through the Scriptures, and this leads up to the proposal with which, at the close, Jeremiah appeals to his fellow- sufferers: “Let us search and try our ways, and turn again to the Lord.”

Thus the book has not merely an historical and poetical interest, but it handles with inspired power the problems of sin and suffering, and points clearly out the way to God.

As we close this book of Scripture, the image which remains in our minds is that figure of the Septuagint — Jeremiah seated on the ruins of Jerusalem, with the calamity of his country, in all its compass and significance, mirrored in his tear-filled heart. But that figure makes the eye travel forward to another. Another son of Israel and lover of Jerusalem, when He was come near, as He descended the Mount of Olives, beheld the city and wept over it. Strange city! What sons that nation bore! how amazingly they loved her! and how unmotherly was her treatment of them! Some said, in the days of our Lord’s flesh, that He was Jeremiah.* And between the prophet and the Saviour there were not a few resemblances. Both loved the people and the capital of their country with passionate affection. Both were repaid with deadly cruelty and persecution, and yet they could not cease to love. Each of them was the man of sorrows of his own age. But from this Book of Lamentations we may draw a profounder resemblance. Jeremiah, in this book, attempted to solve the twin mysteries of suffering and sin; and may we not say that to do this was the purpose of the entire life of Christ? Well did Jeremiah solve the mystery in his degree; but it was reserved for the Son of God to provide the perfect solution, when He made sin the background against which to display to the universe the glory of love divine, and when, by His suffering even unto death, He brought to the world joy unspeakable and life everlasting.

* Matt. xvi. 14.