THE SONG OF SOLOMON
CHAPTER I
THE STRUCTURE OF THE BOOK
The Song of Solomon is a puzzle to the commentator.
Quite apart from the wilderness of
mystical interpretations with which it has been overgrown
in the course of the ages,To be considered later. See chap. iv.
its literary form and
motive are subjects of endless controversy. There are
indications that it is a continuous poem; and yet it
is characterised by startling kaleidoscopic changes that
seem to break it up into incongruous fragments. If it
is a single work the various sections of it succeed one
another in the most abrupt manner, without any connecting
links or explanatory clauses.
The simplest way out of the difficulty presented by
the many curious turns and changes of the poem is to
deny it any structural unity, and treat it as a string of
independent lyrics. That is to cut the knot in a rather
disappointing fashion. Nevertheless the suggestion to
do so met with some favour when it was put forth at
the close of the last century by Herder, a writer who
seemed better able to enter into the spirit of Hebrew
poetry than any of his contemporaries. While accepting
the traditional view of the authorship of the book,
this critic described its contents as "Solomon's songs
of love, the oldest and sweetest of the East;" and
Goethe in the world of letters, as well as biblical
students, endorsed his judgment. Subsequently it fell
into disfavour, and scholars who differed among themselves
with respect to their own theories, agreed in
rejecting this particular hypothesis. But quite recently
it has reappeared in an altered form. The book, it
is now suggested, is just a chance collection of folk
songs from northern Palestine, an anthology of rustic
love-poems. These songs are denied any connection
with Solomon or the court. The references to royalty
are accounted for by a custom said to be kept up among
the Syrian peasants in the present day, according to
which the week of wedding festivities is called "The
king's week," because the newly-married pair then
play the part of king and queen, and are playfully
treated by their friends with the honours of a court.
The bridegroom is supposed to be named Solomon in
acknowledgment of his regal splendour—as an English
villager might be so named for his conspicuous wisdom;
while perhaps the bride is called the Shulammite,
with an allusion to the famous beauty Abishag, the
Shunammite of David's time.1 Kings i. 3.
Such a theory as this is only admissible on condition
that the unity of the poem has been disproved. But
whether we can unravel it or not, there is much that
goes to show that one thread runs through the whole
book. The style is the same throughout, and it has
no parallel in the whole of Hebrew literature. Everywhere
we meet with the same rich, luxurious language,
the same abundance of imagery, the same picturesque
habit of alluding to a number of plants and animals by
name, the same vivacity of movement, the same pleading
tone, the same suffused glow as of the light of
morning. Then there are more peculiar features that
continually recur, such as the form of the dialogue,
certain recognisable characters, the part of chorus taken
by the daughters of Jerusalem, in particular the gentle,
graceful portrait of the Shulammite, the consistency of
which is well preserved. But the principal reason for
believing in the unity of the work is to be found in an
examination of its plot. The difficulty of making this
out has encouraged the temptation to discredit its existence.
But while there are various ideas about the
details, there is enough in common to all the proposed
schemes of the story to indicate the fact that the book
is one composition.
The question whether the work is a drama or an idyl
has been discussed with much critical acumen. But is
it not rather pedantic? The sharply divided orders of
European poetry were not observed or even known in
Israel. It was natural, therefore, that Hebrew imaginative
work should partake of the characteristics of several
orders, while too naïve to trouble itself with the rules
of any one. The drama designed for acting was not
cultivated by the ancient Jews. It was introduced as an
exotic only as late as the Roman period, when Herod
built the first theatre known to have existed in the
Holy Land. Previous to his time we have no mention
of the art of play-acting among the Jews. Nevertheless
the dialogues in the Song of Solomon are certainly
dramatic in character; and we cannot call the poem an
idyl when it is rendered entirely in the form of speeches
by different persons without any connecting narrative.
The Book of Job is also dramatic in form, though, like
Browning's dramatic poetry, not designed for acting; but
in that work each of the several speakers is introduced
by a sentence that indicates who he is, while in our
poem no such indication is given. Here we only
get evidence of a change of speakers in the form
and contents of the utterances, and the transition
from the masculine to the feminine gender and from
the singular number to the plural. Even the chorus
takes an active part in the movement of the dialogue,
instead of simply commenting on the proceedings of
the principal characters as in a Greek play. We
seem to want a key to the story, and the absence of
anything of the kind is the occasion of the bewildering
variety of conjectures that confronts the reader. But
the difficulty thus occasioned is no reason for denying
that there is any continuity in the book, especially
in view of numerous signs of unity that cannot be
evaded.
Among those who accept the dramatic integrity of the
poem there are two distinct lines of interpretation, each
of them admitting some differences in the treatment of
detail. According to one scheme Solomon is the only
lover; according to the other, while the king is seeking
to win the affections of the country maiden, he has
been forestalled by a shepherd, fidelity to whom is
shewn by the Shulammite in spite of the fascinations
of the court.
There is no denying the rural simplicity of much
of the scenery; evidently this is designed to be in
contrast to the sensuous luxury and splendour of the
court. Those who take Solomon to be the one lover
throughout, not only admit this fact; they bring it into
their version of the story so as to heighten the effect.
The king is out holiday-making, perhaps on a hunting
expedition, when he first meets the country maiden.
In her childlike simplicity she takes him for a rustic
swain; or perhaps, though she knows who he is, she
sportively addresses him as she would address one
of her village companions. Subsequently she shews
no liking for the pomp of royalty. She cannot make
herself at home with the women of the harem. She
longs to be back in her mother's cottage among the
woods and fields where she spent her child days. But
she loves the king and he dotes on her. So she would
take him with her away from the follies and temptations
of the court down to her quiet country retreat. Under
the influence of the Shulammite Solomon is induced
to give up his unworthy habits and live a healthier,
purer life. Her love is strong enough to retain the
king wholly to herself. Thus the poem is said to
describe a reformation in the character of Solomon.
In particular it is thought to celebrate the triumph of
true love over the degradation of polygamy.
It is impossible to find any time in the life of David's
successor when this great conversion might have taken
place; and the occurrence itself is highly improbable.
Those however are not fatal objections to the proposed
scheme, because the poem may be entirely ideal; it
may even be written at the king. Historical considerations
need not trouble us in dealing with an
imaginative work such as this. It must be judged
entirely on internal grounds. But when it is so judged
it refuses to come into line with the interpretation
suggested. Regarding the matter only from a literary
point of view, we must confess that it is most improbable
that Solomon would be introduced as a simple peasant
without any hint of the reason of his appearing in
this novel guise. Then we may detect a difference
between the manner in which the king addresses the
Shulammite and that in which, on the second hypothesis,
the shepherd speaks to her. Solomon's compliments
are frigid and stilted; they describe the object of his
admiration in the most extravagant terms, but they
exhibit no trace of feeling. The heart of the voluptuary
is withered, the fires of passion have burnt themselves
out and only the cold ashes remain, the sacred word
"love" has been so long desecrated that it has ceased
to convey any meaning. On the other hand, frequent
practice has outstripped the clumsy wooing of inexperienced
lovers and developed the art of courtship to
a high degree. The royal bird-catcher knows how
to lay his lines, though fortunately for once even his
consummate skill fails. How different is the bearing
of the true lover, a village lad who has won the
maiden's heart! He has no need to resort to the
vocabulary of flattery, because his own heart speaks.
The English translations give an unwarrantable appearance
of warmth to the king's language where he is
represented as calling the Shulammite "My love."i. 9.
The word in the Hebrew means no more than my
friend. When Solomon first appears he addresses
the Shulammite with this title, and then immediately
tries to tempt her by promising her presents of jewelry.
Take another instance. In the beginning of the fourth
chapter Solomon enters on an elaborate series of
compliments describing the beauty of the Shulammite,
without a single word of affection. As she persists
in withstanding his advances her persecutor becomes
abashed. He shrinks from her pure, cold gaze, calls
her terrible as an army with banners, prays her to
turn away her eyes from him. On the theory that
Solomon is the accepted lover, the beloved bridegroom,
this position is quite unintelligible. Now turn to the
language of the true lover: "Thou hast ravished my
heart, my sister, my bride; thou hast ravished my heart
with one look of thine eyes."iv. 9.
A corresponding difference is to be detected in the
bearing of the maiden towards the rivals. Towards
the king she is cool and repellent; but no dream of
poetry can equal the tenderness and sweetness of her
musing on her absent lover or the warmth of love with
which she speaks to him. These distinctions will be
more apparent in detail as we proceed with the story
of the poem. It may be noticed here, that this story
is not at all consistent with the theory that Solomon
is the only lover. According to that hypothesis we
have the highly improbable situation of a separation
of the newly married couple on their wedding day.
Besides, as the climax is supposed to be reached at
the middle of the book, there is no apparent motive for
the second half. The modern novel, which has its
wedding at the middle of its plot, or even at the very
beginning, and then sets itself to develop the comedy
or perhaps the tragedy of married life, is not at all
parallel to this old love story. Time must be allowed
for the development of matrimonial complications; but
here the scenes are all in close connection.
If we are thus led to accept what has been called
"the shepherd hypothesis" the value of the book will
be considerably enhanced. This is more than a
mere love poem; it is not to be classed with erotics,
although a careless reading of some of its passages
might incline us to place it in the same category with
a purely sensuous style of poetry. We have here
something more than Sappho's fire. If we are tempted
to compare it with Herrick's Hesperides or Shakespeare's
Sonnets, we must recognise an element that lifts it
above the sighs of love-sick youths and maidens.
Even on the "Solomon theory" pure love and simple
living are exalted in opposition to the luxury and vices
of the royal seraglio. A poem that sets forth the
beauty of a simple country life as the scene of the true
love of husband and wife in contrast to the degradation
of a corrupt court is distinctly elevating in tone and
influence, and the more so for the fact that it is not
didactic in form. It is not only in kings' palaces and
amid scenes of oriental voluptuousness that the influence
of such ideas as are here presented is needed.
Christian civilisation has not progressed beyond the
condition in which the consideration of them may be
resorted to as a wholesome corrective. But if we are
to agree to the "shepherd hypothesis" as on the
whole the more probable, another idea of highest
importance emerges. It is not love, now, but fidelity,
that claims our attention. The simple girl, protected
only by her virtue, who is proof against all the
fascinations of the most splendid court, and who prefers
to be the wife of the poor man whom she loves, and
to whom she has plighted troth, to accepting a queen's
crown at the cost of deserting her humble lover, is
the type and example of a loyalty which is the more
admirable because it appears where we should little
expect to find it. It has been said that such a story
as is here depicted would be impossible in real life;
that a girl once enticed into the harem of an oriental
despot would never have a chance of escape. The
eunuchs who guarded the doors would lose their heads
if they allowed her to run away; the king would
never give up the prey that had fallen into his
trap; the shepherd lover who was mad enough to
pursue his lost sweetheart into her captor's palace
would never come out alive. Are we so sure of all
these points? Most improbable things do happen.
It is at least conceivable that even a cruel tyrant might
be seized with a fit of generosity, and why should we
regard Solomon as a cruel tyrant? His fame implies
that there were noble traits in his character. But
these questions are beside the mark. The situation is
wholly ideal. Then the more improbable the events
described would be in real life, the more impressive
do the lessons they suggest become.
Who wrote the book? The only answer that can
be given to this question is negative. Assuredly,
Solomon could not have been the author of this lovely
poem in praise of the love and fidelity of a country lass
and her swain, and the simplicity of their rustic life.
It would be difficult to find a man in all history who
more conspicuously illustrated the exact opposites of
these ideas. The exquisite eulogy of love—perhaps
the finest in any literature—which occurs towards the
end of the book, the passage beginning, "Set me as a
seal upon thine heart," etc.,viii. 6, 7.
is not the work of this
master of a huge seraglio, with his "seven hundred
wives" and his "three hundred concubines."1 Kings xi. 3.
It is
impossible to find the source of this poetry in the
palace of the Israelite "Grand Monarch"; we might as
soon light on a bank of wild flowers in a Paris dancing
saloon. There is quite a library of Solomon literature,
a very small part of which can be traced to the king
whose name it bears, the greatness of this name having
attracted attention and led to the ascription of various
works to the royal author, whose wisdom was as proverbial
as his splendour. It is difficult to resist the
impression that in the present case there is some irony
in the singular inappropriateness of the title.
The date of the poem can be conjectured with some
degree of assurance, although the language does not
help us much in the determination of this point. There
are archaisms, and there are also terms that seem to
indicate a late date—Aramaic words and possibly even
words of Greek extraction. The few foreign terms
may have crept in under the influence of revisers. On
the other hand the style and contents of the book
speak for the days of the Augustan age of Hebrew
history. The notoriety of Solomon's court and memories
of its magnificence and luxury seem to be fresh in the
minds of people. These things are treated in detail
and with an amount of freedom that supposes knowledge
on the part of the readers as well as the writer. There
is one expression that helps to fix the date with more
definiteness. Tirzah is associated with Jerusalem as
though the two cities were of equal importance. The
king says:—
"Thou art beautiful, O my love, as Tirzah,
Comely as Jerusalem."vi. 4.
Now this city was the northern capital for about fifty
years after the death of Solomon—from the time of
Jeroboam, who made it his royal residence,1 Kings xiv. 17.
till the
reign of Omri, who abandoned the ill-omened place
six years after his vanquished predecessor Zimri had
burnt the palace over his own head.1 Kings xvi. 18, 23, 24.
The way in
which the old capital is mentioned here implies that it
is still to the north what Jerusalem is to the south.
Thus we are brought to the half century after the death
of the king whose name the book bears.
The mention of Tirzah as the equal of Jerusalem is
also an evidence of the northern origin of the poem; for
it is not at all probable that a subject of the mutilated
nation of the south would describe the beauty of the
rebel headquarters by the side of that of his own idolised
city, as something typical and perfect. But the poem
throughout gives indications of its origin in the country
parts of the north. Shunem, famous as the scene of
Elisha's great miracle, seems to be the home of the
heroine.vi. 13.
The poet turns to all points of the compass
for images with which to enrich his pictures—Sharon
on the western coast,ii. 1.
Gilead across the Jordan
to the east,iv. 1.
Engedi by the wilderness of the Dead
Sea,i. 14.
as well as the northern districts. But the north
is most frequently mentioned. Lebanon is named over
and over again,iii. 9; iv. 8, 15; vii. 4.
and Hermon is referred to as in the
neighbourhood of the shepherd's home.iv. 8.
In fact the
poem is saturated with the fragrant atmosphere of the
northern mountains.
Now this has suggested a striking inference. Here
we have a picture of Solomon and his court from the
not too friendly hand of a citizen of the revolted provinces.
The history in the Books of Kings is written
from the standpoint of Judah; it is curious to learn
how the people of the north thought of Solomon in
all his glory. Thus considered the book acquires a
secondary and political meaning. It appears as a
scornful condemnation of the court at Jerusalem on the
part of the poorer and more simple inhabitants of the
kingdom of Jeroboam and his successors.See Ency. Brit., Art. "Canticles," by Robertson Smith.
But it also
stands for all time as a protest against luxury and vice,
and as a testimony to the beauty and dignity of pure
love, stanch fidelity, and quiet, wholesome, primitive
country manners. It breathes the spirit that reappears
in Goldsmith's Deserted Village, and inspires the muse
of Wordsworth, as in the poem which contrasts the
dove's simple notes with the nightingale's tumultuous
song, saying of the homely bird,
"He sang of love with quiet blending;
Slow to begin, and never ending;
Of serious faith and inward glee;
That was the song—the song for me."
CHAPTER II
TRUE LOVE TESTED
Chapter i.-v. 1
The poem opens with a scene in Solomon's palace.
A country maiden has just been introduced to
the royal harem. The situation is painful enough in
itself, for the poor, shy girl is experiencing the miserable
loneliness of finding herself in an unsympathetic crowd.
But that is not all. She is at once the object of
general observation; every eye is turned towards her;
and curiosity is only succeeded by ill-concealed disgust.
Still the slavish women, presumably acting on command,
set themselves to excite the new comer's admiration for
their lord and master. First one speaks some bold
amorous words,i. 2.
and then the whole chorus follows.i. 3.
All this is distressing and alarming to the captive,
who calls on her absent lover to fetch her away from
such an uncongenial scene; she longs to run after him;
for it is the king who has brought her into his chambers,
not her own will.i. 4.
The women of the harem take no
notice of this interruption, but finish their ode on the
charms of Solomon. All the while they are staring at
the rustic maiden, and she now becomes conscious of
a growing contempt in their looks. What is she that
the attractions of the king before which the dainty
ladies of the court prostrate themselves should have
no fascination for her? She notices the contrast between
the swarthy hue of her sun-burnt countenance
and the pale complexion of these pampered products
of palace seclusion. She is so dark in comparison
with them that she likens herself to the black goats-hair
tents of the Arabs.i. 5.
The explanation is that her
brothers have made her work in their vineyards. Meanwhile
she has not kept her own vineyard.i. 6.
She has
not guarded her beauty as these idle women, who have
nothing else to do, have guarded theirs; but perhaps
she has a sadder thought—she could not protect
herself when out alone at her task in the country
or she would never have been captured and carried
on to the prison where she now sits disconsolate.
Possibly the vineyard she has not kept is the lover
whom she has lost.See viii. 12.
Still she is a woman, and with
a touch of piqued pride she reminds her critics that
if she is dark—black compared with them—she is
comely. They cannot deny that. It is the cause of
all her misery; she owes her imprisonment to her
beauty. She knows that their secret feeling is one of
envy of her, the latest favourite. Then their affected
contempt is groundless. But, indeed, she has no
desire to stand as their rival. She would gladly make
her escape. She speaks in a half soliloquy. Will not
somebody tell her where he is whom her soul loveth?
Where is her lost shepherd lad? Where is he feeding
his flock? Where is he resting it at noon? Such
questions only provoke mockery. Addressing the simple
girl as the "fairest among women," the court ladies bid
her find her lover for herself. Let her go back to her
country life and feed her kids by the shepherds' tents.
Doubtless if she is bold enough to court her swain in
that way she will not miss seeing him.
Hitherto Solomon has not appeared. Now he comes
on the scene, and proceeds to accost his new acquisition
in highly complimentary language, with the ease
of an expert in the art of courtship. At this point we
encounter the most serious difficulty for the theory
of a shepherd lover. To all appearances a dialogue
between the king and the Shulammite here ensues.i. 9—ii. 6.
But if this were the case, the country girl would be
addressing Solomon in terms of the utmost endearment—conduct
utterly incompatible with the "shepherd
hypothesis." The only alternative is to suppose that
the hard-pressed girl takes refuge from the importunity
of her royal flatterer by turning aside to an imaginary,
half dream-like conversation with her absent lover.
This is not by any means a probable position, it must
be allowed; it seems to put a strained interpretation
on the text. Undoubtedly if the passage before us
stood by itself, there would not be any difference of
opinion about it; everybody would take it in its obvious
meaning as a conversation between two lovers. But
it does not stand by itself—unless, indeed, we are to
give up the unity of the book. Therefore it must be
interpreted so as not to contradict the whole course of
the poem, which shews that another than Solomon is
the true lover of the disconsolate maiden.
The king begins with the familiar device by which
rich men all the world over try to win the confidence
of poor girls when there is no love on either side,—a
device which has been only too successful in the case
of many a weak Marguerite though her tempter has
not always been a handsome Faust; but in the present
case innocence is fortified by true love, and the trick
is a failure. The king notices that this peasant girl
has but simple plaited hair and homely ornaments.
She shall have plaits of gold and studs of silver!
Splendid as one of Pharaoh's chariot horses, she shall
be decorated as magnificently as they are decorated!
What is this to our stanch heroine? She treats it
with absolute indifference, and begins to soliloquise,
with a touch of scorn in her language. She has been
loaded with scent after the manner of the luxurious
court, and the king while seated feasting at his table
has caught the odour of the rich perfumes. That is
why he is now by her side. Does he think that she
will serve as a new dainty for the great banquet, as a
fresh fillip for the jaded appetite of the royal voluptuary?
If so he is much mistaken. The king's
promises have no attraction for her, and she turns for
relief to dear memories of her true love. The thought
of him is fragrant as the bundle of myrrh she carries
in her bosom, as the henna-flowers that bloom in the
vineyards of far-off Engedi.
Clearly Solomon has made a clumsy move. This
shy bird is not of the common species with which he
is familiar. He must aim higher if he would bring
down his quarry. She is not to be classed with the
wares of the matrimonial market that are only waiting
to be assigned to the richest bidder. She cannot be
bought even by the wealth of a king's treasury. But
if there is a woman who can resist the charms of finery,
is there one who can stand against the admiration of
her personal beauty? A man of Solomon's experience
would scarcely believe that such was to be found.
Nevertheless now the sex he estimates too lightly is
to be vindicated, while the king himself is to be taught
a wholesome lesson. He may call her fair; he may
praise her dove-like eyes.i. 15.
His flattery is lost upon
her. She only thinks of the beauty of her shepherd
lad, and pictures to herself the green bank on which
they used to sit, with the cedars and firs for the beams
and roof of their trysting-place.i. 16, 17.
Her language carries
us away from the gilded splendour and close, perfumed
atmosphere of the royal palace to scenes such
as Shakespeare presents in the forest of Arden and the
haunts of Titania, and Milton in the Mask of Comus.
Here is a Hebrew lady longing to escape from the
clutches of one who for all his glory is not without
some of the offensive traits of the monster Comus.
She thinks of herself as a wild flower, like the
crocus that grows on the plains of Sharon or the
lily (literally the anemone) that is sprinkled so freely
over the upland valleys.ii. 1.
The open country is the
natural habitat of such a plant, not the stifling court.
Solomon catches at her beautiful imagery. Compared
with other maidens she is like a lily among thorns.ii. 2.
And now these scenes of nature carry the persecuted
girl away in a sort of reverie. If she is like the tender
flower, her lover resembles the apple tree at the foot
of which it nestles, a tree the shadow of which is
delightful and its fruit sweet.ii. 3.
She remembers how
he brought her to his banqueting house; that rustic
bower was a very different place from the grand divan
on which she had seen Solomon sitting at his table.
No purple hangings like those of the king's palace there
screened her from the sun. The only banner her
shepherd could spread over her was love, his own
love.ii. 4.
But what could be a more perfect shelter?
She is fainting. How she longs for her lover to
comfort her! She has just compared him to an apple
tree; now the refreshment she hungers for is the fruit
of this tree; that is to say, his love.ii. 5.
Oh that he
would put his arms round her and support her, as
in the old happy days before she had been snatched
away from him!ii. 6.
Next follows a verse which is repeated later, and so
serves as a sort of refrain.ii. 7.
The Shulammite adjures
the daughters of Jerusalem not to awaken love. This
verse is misrendered in the Authorised Version, which
inserts the pronoun "my" before "love" without any
warrant in the Hebrew text. The poor girl has spoken
of apples. But the court ladies must not misunderstand
her. She wants none of their love apples,See Gen. xxx. 14.
no
philtre, no charm to turn her affections away from her
shepherd lover and pervert them to the importunate
royal suitor. The opening words of the poem which
celebrated the charms of Solomon had been aimed in
that direction. The motive of the work seems to be
the Shulammite's resistance to various attempts to move
her from loyalty to her true love. It is natural, therefore,
that an appeal to desist from all such attempts
should come out emphatically.
The poem takes a new turn. In imagination the
Shulammite hears the voice of her beloved. She
pictures him standing at the foot of the lofty rock on
which the harem is built, and crying,—
"Oh, my dove, that art in the clefts of the rock, in the cover of the steep place,
Let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice;
For sweet is thy voice, and thy countenance is comely."ii. 14.
He is like a troubadour singing to his imprisoned
lady-love; and she, in her soliloquys, though not by any
means a "high-born maiden," may call to mind the
simile in Shelley's Skylark:—
"Like a high-born maiden
In a palace tower,
Soothing her love-laden
Soul in secret hour,
With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower."
She remembers how her lover had come to her
bounding over the hills "like a roe or a young hart,"ii. 9.
and peeping in at her lattice; and she repeats the song
with which he had called her out—one of the sweetest
songs of spring that ever was sung.ii. 11-13.
In our own
green island we acknowledge that this is the most
beautiful season of all the round year; but in Palestine
it stands out in more strongly pronounced contrast to
the three other seasons, and it is in itself exceedingly
lovely. While summer and autumn are there parched
with drought, barren and desolate, and while winter
is often dreary with snow-storms and floods of rain,
in spring the whole land is one lovely garden, ablaze
with richest hues, hill and dale, wilderness and farmland
vying in the luxuriance of their wild flowers, from
the red anemone that fires the steep sides of the
mountains to the purple and white cyclamen that nestles
among the rocks at their feet. Much of the beauty of
this poem is found in the fact that it is pervaded by
the spirit of an eastern spring. This makes it possible
to introduce a wealth of beautiful imagery which would
not have been appropriate if any other season had
been chosen. Even more lovely in March than England
is in May, Palestine comes nearest to the appearance
of our country in the former month; so that this poem,
that is so completely bathed in the atmosphere of early
spring, calls up echoes of the exquisite English garden
pictures in Shelley's Sensitive Plant and Tennyson's
Maud. But it is not only beauty of imagery that our
poet gains by setting his work in this lovely season.
His ideas are all in harmony with the period of the
year he describes so charmingly. It is the time of youth
and hope, of joy and love—especially of love, for,
"In the spring a young man's fancy
Lightly turns to thoughts of love."
There is even a deeper association between the ideas
of the poem and the season in which it is set. None
of the freshness of spring is to be found about Solomon
and his harem, but it is all present in the Shulammite
and her shepherd; and spring scenes and thoughts
powerfully aid the motive of the poem in accentuating
the contrast between the tawdry magnificence of the
court and the pure, simple beauty of the country life
to which the heroine of the poem clings so faithfully.
The Shulammite answers her lover in an old ditty
about "the little foxes that spoil the vineyards."ii. 15.
He
would recognise that, and so discover her presence. We
are reminded of the legend of Richard's page finding
his master by singing a familiar ballad outside the walls
of the castle in the Tyrol where the captive crusader
was imprisoned. This is all imaginary. And yet the
faithful girl knows in her heart that her beloved is hers
and that she is his, although in sober reality he is now
feeding his flocks in the far-off flowery fields of her
old home.ii. 16.
There he must remain till the cool of
the evening, till the shadows melt into the darkness
of night, when she would fain he returned to her,
coming over the rugged mountains "like a roe or a
young hart."ii. 17.
Now the Shulammite tells a painful dream.iii. 1-4.
She
dreamed that she had lost her lover, and that she rose
up at night and went out into the streets seeking him.
At first she failed to find him. She asked the watchmen
whom she met on their round, if they had seen
him whom her soul loved. They could not help her
quest. But a little while after leaving them she discovered
the missing lover, and brought him safely into
her mother's house.
After a repetition of the warning to the daughters
of Jerusalem not to awaken love,iii. 5.
we are introduced
to a new scene.iii. 6-11.
It is by one of the gates of Jerusalem,
where the country maiden has been brought
in order that she may be impressed by the gorgeous
spectacle of Solomon returning from a royal progress.
The king comes up from the wilderness in clouds of
perfume, guarded by sixty men-at-arms, and borne in
a magnificent palanquin of cedar-wood, with silver posts,
a floor of gold, and purple cushions, wearing on his
head the crown with which his mother had crowned
him. Is the mention of the mother of Solomon intended
to be specially significant? Remember—she was Bathsheba!The allusion to such a woman would not be
likely to conciliate the pure young girl who was not
in the least degree moved by this attempt to charm her
with a scene of exceptional magnificence.
Solomon now appears again, praising his captive in
extravagant language of courtly flattery. He praises
her dove-like eyes, her voluminous black hair, her
rosy lips, her noble brow (not even disguised by her
veil), her towering neck, her tender bosom—lovely as
twin gazelles that feed among the lilies. Like her lover,
who is necessarily away with his flock, Solomon will
leave her till the cool of the evening, till the shadows
melt into night; but he has no pastoral duties to
attend to, and though the delicate balancing and
assimilation of phrase and idea is gracefully manipulated,
there is a change. The king will go to
"mountains of myrrh" and "hills of frankincense,"iv. 6.
to make his person more fragrant, and so, as he hopes,
more welcome.
If we adopt the "shepherd hypothesis" the next
section of the poem must be assigned to the rustic
lover.iv. 8-15.
It is difficult to believe that this peasant would
be allowed to speak to a lady in the royal harem.
We might suppose that here and perhaps also in the
earlier scene the shepherd is represented as actually
present at the foot of the rock on which the palace
stands. Otherwise this also must be taken as an
imaginary scene, or as a reminiscence of the dreamy
girl. Although a thread of unity runs through the
whole poem, Goethe was clearly correct in calling it
"a medley." Scenes real and imaginary melting one
into another cannot take their places in a regular
drama. But when we grant full liberty to the imaginary
element there is less necessity to ask what is subjective
and what objective, what only fancied by the Shulammite
and what intended to be taken as an actual
occurrence. Strictly speaking, nothing is actual; the
whole poem is a highly imaginative series of fancy
pictures illustrating the development of its leading
ideas.
Next—whether we take it as in imagination or in
fact—the shepherd lover calls his bride to follow him
from the most remote regions. His language is entirely
different from that of the magnificent monarch. He
does not waste his breath in formal compliments,
high-flown imagery, wearisome lists of the charms of
the girl he loves. That was the clumsy method of the
king; clumsy, though reflecting the finished manners
of the court, in comparison with the genuine outpourings
of the heart of a country lad. The shepherd is
eloquent with the inspiration of true love; his words
throb and glow with genuine emotion; there is a fine,
wholesome passion in them. The love of his bride
has ravished his heart. How beautiful is her love!
He is intoxicated with it more than with wine. How
sweet are her words of tender affection, like milk and
honey! She is so pure, there is something sisterly
in her love with all its warmth. And she is so near
to him that she is almost like part of himself, as his
own sister. This holy and close relationship is in
startling contrast to the only thing known as love in the
royal harem. It is as much more lofty and noble as it
is more strong and deep than the jaded emotions of the
court. The sweet pure maiden is to the shepherd like
a garden the gate of which is barred against trespassers,
like a spring shut off from casual access, like
a sealed fountain—sealed to all but one, and, happy
man, he is that one. To him she belongs, to him
alone. She is a garden, yes, a most fragrant garden,
an orchard of pomegranates full of rich fruit, crowded
with sweet-scented plants—henna and spikenard and
saffron, calamus and cinnamon and all kinds of frankincense,
myrrh and aloes and the best of spices. She is
a fountain in the garden, sealed to all others, but not
stinted towards the one she loves. To him she is as
a well of living waters, like the full-fed streams that
flow from Lebanon.
The maiden is supposed to hear the song of love.
She replies in fearless words of welcome, bidding the
north wind awake, and the south wind too, that the
fragrance of which her lover has spoken so enthusiastically
may flow out more richly than ever. For his
sake she would be more sweet and loving. All she
possesses is for him. Let him come and take possession
of his own.iv. 16.
What lover could turn aside from such a rapturous
invitation? The shepherd takes his bride; he enters
his garden, gathers his myrrh and spice, eats his
honey and drinks his wine and milk, and calls on his
friends to feast and drink with him.v. 1.
This seems to
point to the marriage of the couple and their wedding
feast; a view of the passage which interpreters who
regard Solomon as the lover throughout for the most
part take, but one which has this fatal objection, that
it leaves the second half of the poem without a motive.
On the hypothesis of the shepherd lover it is still more
difficult to suppose the wedding to have occurred at
the point we have now reached, for the distraction of
the royal courtship still proceeds in subsequent passages
of the poem. It would seem, then, that we must
regard this as quite an ideal scene. It may, however,
be taken as a reminiscence of an earlier passage in the
lives of the two lovers. It is not impossible that it
refers to their wedding, and that they had been married
before the action of the whole story began. In that
case we should have to suppose that Solomon's officers
had carried off a young bride to the royal harem. The
intensity of the love and the bitterness of the separation
apparent throughout the poem would be the more intelligible
if this were the situation. It is to be remembered
that Shakespeare ascribes the climax of the love and
grief of Romeo and Juliet to a time after their marriage.
But the difficulty of accepting this view lies in the
improbability that so outrageous a crime would be
attributed to Solomon, although it must be admitted that
the guilty conduct of his father and mother had gone
a long way in setting an example for the violation of
the marriage tie. In dealing with vague and dreamy
poetry such as that of the Song of Solomon, it is not
possible to determine a point like this with precision;
nor is it necessary to do so. The beauty and force of
the passage now before us centre in the perfect mutual
love of the two young hearts that here show themselves
to be knit together as one, whether already actually
married or not yet thus externally united.
CHAPTER III
LOVE UNQUENCHABLE
Chapter v. 1-viii
We have seen how this strange poem mingles fact
and fancy, memory and reverie, in what would
be hopeless confusion if we could not detect a common
prevailing sentiment and one aim towards which the
whole is tending, with all its rapidly shifting scenes and
all its perplexingly varying movements. The middle
of the poem attains a perfect climax of love and rapture.
Then we are suddenly transported to an entirely different
scene. The Shulammite recites a second dream,
which somewhat resembles her former dream, but is
more vivid and intense, and ends very painfully.v. 2-7.
The
circumstances of it will agree most readily with the
idea that she is already married to the shepherd.
Again it is a dream of the loss of her lover, and of her
search for him by night in the streets of Jerusalem.
But in the present case he was first close to her, and
then he deserted her most unaccountably; and when
she went to look for him this time she failed to
find him, and met with cruel ill-treatment. In her
dream she fancies she hears the bridegroom knocking
at her chamber door and calling upon her as his sister,
his love, his dove, his undefiled, to open to him. He
has just returned from tending his flock in the night,
and his hair is wet with the dew. The bride coyly
excuses herself, on the plea that she has laid aside her
mantle and washed her feet; as though it would vex
her to put her feet to the ground again. This is but
the playful reluctance of love; for no sooner is her
beloved really lost than she undertakes the greatest
trouble in the search for him. When he puts in his
hand to lift the latch, her heart is moved towards him,
and she rises to open the door. On touching the lock
she finds it covered with liquid myrrh. It has been
ingeniously suggested that we have here a reference to
the construction of an eastern lock, with a wooden pin
dropped into the bolt, which is intended to be lifted by
a key, but which may be raised by a man's finger if
he is provided with some viscid substance, such as
the ointment here mentioned, to adhere to the pin.
The little detail shews that the lover or bridegroom had
come with the deliberate intention of entering. How
strange, then, that when the bride opens the door he
is not to be seen! Why has he fled? The shock of
this surprise quite overwhelms the poor girl, and she
is on the point of fainting. She looks about for her
vanished lover, and calls him by name; but there is
no answer. She goes out to seek for him in the streets,
and there the watchmen cuff and bruise her, and the
sentry on the city walls rudely tear off her veil.
Returning from the distressing recollection of her
dream to the present condition of affairs, the sorrowful
Shulammite adjures the daughters of Jerusalem to tell
her if they have found her love.v. 8.
They respond by
asking, what is her beloved more than any other
beloved?v. 9.
This mocking question of the harem women
rouses the Shulammite, and affords an opportunity for
descanting on the beauty of her love.v. 10-16.
He is both fair
and ruddy, the chiefest among ten thousand. For this
is what he is like: a head splendid as finest gold;
massive, curling, raven locks; eyes like doves by water
brooks, and looking as though they had been washed
in milk—an elaborate image in which the soft iris and
the sparkling light on the pupils suggest the picture
of the gentle birds brooding on the bank of a flashing
stream, and the pure, healthy eyeballs a thought of the
whiteness of milk; cheeks fragrant as spices; lips
red as lilies (the blood-red anemones); a body like
ivory, with blue veins as of sapphire; legs like marble
columns on golden bases. The aspect of him is like
great Lebanon, splendid as the far-famed cedars; and
when he opens his lips his voice is ravishingly sweet.
Yes, he is altogether lovely. Such is her beloved, her
dearest one.
The mocking ladies ask their victim where then has
this paragon gone?vi. 1.
She would have them understand
that he has not been so cruel as really to desert
her. It was only in her dream that he treated her
with such unaccountable fickleness. The plain fact is
that he is away at his work on his far-off farm, feeding
his flock, and perhaps gathering a posy of flowers
for his bride.vi. 2.
He is far away,—that sad truth cannot
be denied; and yet he is not really lost, for love laughs
at time and distance; the poor lonely girl can say still
that she is her beloved's and that he is hers.vi. 3.
The
reappearance of this phrase suggests that it is intended
to serve as a sort of refrain. Thus it comes in with
admirable fitness to balance the other refrain to which
reference has been made earlier.Page 20.
In the first refrain
the daughters of Jerusalem are besought not to attempt
to awaken the Shulammite's love for Solomon; this
is well balanced by the refrain in which she declares
the constancy of the mutual love that exists between
herself and the shepherd.
Now Solomon reappears on the scene, and resumes
his laudation of the Shulammite's beauty.vi. 4-7.
But there
is a marked change in his manner. This most recent
capture is quite unlike the sort of girls with whom
his harem was stocked from time to time. He had
no reverence for any of them; they all considered themselves
to be highly honoured by his favour, all adored
him with slavish admiration, like that expressed by
one of them in the first line of the poem. But he is
positively afraid of the Shulammite. She is "terrible
as an army with banners." He cannot bear to look
at her eyes; he begs her to turn them away from him,
for they have overcome him. What is the meaning
of this new attitude on the part of the mighty monarch?
There is something awful in the simple peasant girl.
The purity, the constancy, the cold scorn with which
she regards the king, are as humiliating as they are
novel in his experience. Yet it is well for him that
he is susceptible to their influence. He is greatly
injured and corrupted by the manners of a luxurious
oriental court. But he is not a seared profligate. The
vision of goodness startles him; then there is a better
nature in him, and its slumbering powers are partly
roused by this unexpected apparition.
We have now reached a very important point in the
poem. It is almost impossible to reconcile this with
the theory that Solomon is the one and only lover
referred to throughout. But on the "shepherd hypothesis"
the position is most significant. The value
of constancy in love is not only seen in the steadfast
character of one who is sorely tempted to yield to
other influences; it is also apparent in the effects on
a spectator of so uncongenial a nature as king Solomon.
Thus the poet brings out the great idea of his work
most vividly. He could not have done so more forcibly
than by choosing the court of Solomon for the scene
of the trial, and shewing the startling effect of the
noble virtue of constancy on the king himself.
Here we are face to face with one of the rescuing
influences of life, which may be met in various forms.
A true woman, an innocent child, a pure man, coming
across the path of one who has permitted himself to
slide down towards murky depths, arrests his attention
with a painful shock of surprise. The result is a
revelation to him, in the light of which he discovers,
to his horror, how far he has fallen. It is a sort of
incarnate conscience warning him of the still lower
degradation towards which he is sinking. Perhaps
it strikes him as a beacon light, shewing the path up
to purity and peace; an angel from heaven sent to help
him retrace his steps and return to his better self.
Few men are so abandoned as never to be visited by
some such gleam from higher regions. To many, alas,
it comes but as the temporary rift in the clouds through
which for one brief moment the blue sky becomes
visible even on a wild and stormy day, soon to be lost
in deeper darkness. Happy are they who obey its
unexpected message.
The concluding words of the passage which opens
with Solomon's praises of the Shulammite present
another of the many difficulties with which the poem
abounds. Mention is made of Solomon's sixty queens,
his eighty concubines, his maidens without number;
and then the Shulammite is contrasted with this vast
seraglio as "My dove, my undefiled," who is "but
one"—"the only one of her mother."vi. 8, 9.
Who is speaking
here? If this is a continuation of Solomon's
speech, as the flow of the verses would suggest, it must
mean that the king would set his newest acquisition
quite apart from all the ladies of the harem, as his
choice and treasured bride. Those who regard Solomon
as the lover, think they see here what they call his
conversion, that is to say, his turning away from
polygamy to monogamy. History knows of no such
conversion; and it is hardly likely that a poet of the
northern kingdom would go out of his way to whitewash
the matrimonial reputation of a sovereign from
whom the house of Judah was descended. Besides,
the occurrence here represented bears a very dubious
character when we consider that all the existing
denizens of the harem were to be put aside in favour
of a new beauty. It would have been more like a
genuine conversion if Solomon had gone back to the
love of his youth, and confined his affections to his
neglected first wife.
On the shepherd hypothesis it is most natural to
attribute the passage to the shepherd himself. But
since it is difficult to imagine him present at this scene
between Solomon and the Shulammite, it seems that we
must fall back on the idealising character of the poem.
In this figurative way the true lover expresses his contempt
for the monstrous harem at the palace. He is
content with his one ewe lamb; nay, she is more to him
than all Solomon's bevy of beauties; even these ladies
of the court are now constrained to praise the noble
qualities of his bride.
Solomon's expression of awe for the terrible purity
and constancy of the Shulammite is repeated,vi. 10.
and then
she tells the story of her capture.Vers. 11, 12.
She had gone
down to the nut garden to look at the fresh green on
the plants, and to see whether the vines were budding
and the pomegranates putting forth their lovely scarlet
blossoms, when suddenly, and all unawares, she was
pounced upon by the king's people and whisked away
in one of his chariots. It is a vivid scene, and, like
other scenes in this poem, the background of it is the
lovely aspect of nature in early spring.
The Shulammite now seems to be attempting a retreat,
and the ladies of the court bid her return; they would
see the performance of a favourite dance, known as
"The Dance of Mahanaim."vi. 13. This is obscured in the Authorised Version.
Thereupon we have a
description of the performer, as she was seen during
the convolutions of the dance, dressed in a transparent
garment of red gauze,—perhaps such as is represented
in Pompeian frescoes,—so that her person could be compared
to pale wheat surrounded by crimson anemones.vii. 1-9.
It is quite against the tenor of her conduct to suppose
that the modest country girl would degrade herself by
ministering to the amusement of a corrupt court in this
shameless manner. It is more reasonable to conclude
that the entertainment was given by a professional
dancer from among the women of the harem. We
have a hint that this is the case in the title applied to
the performer, in addressing whom Solomon exclaims,
"O prince's daughter,"vii 1.
] an expression never used for
the poor Shulammite, and one from which we should
gather that she was a captive princess who had been
trained as a court dancer. The glimpse of the manners
of the palace helps to strengthen the contrast of the
innocent, simple country life in which the Shulammite
delights.
It has been suggested, with some degree of probability,
that the Shulammite is supposed to make her
escape while the attention of the king and his court
is diverted by this entrancing spectacle. It is to be
observed, at all events, that from this point onwards
to the end of the poem, neither Solomon nor the
daughters of Jerusalem take any part in the dialogue,
while the scene appears to be shifted to the Shulammite's
home in the country, where she and the shepherd
are now seen together in happy companionship. The
bridegroom has come to fetch his bride. Again she
owns that she is his, and delights in the glad thought
that his heart goes out to her.vii. 10.
She bids him come
with her into the field, and lodge in the villages. They
will get them early into the vineyards and see whether
the vines are blooming, and whether the pomegranates
are in blossom.vii. 11-13.
It is still early spring. It was early
spring when she was snatched away. Unless she had
been a whole year at the palace,—an impossible situation
with the king continuing his ineffectual courtship for
so long a time,—we have no movement of time. But
the series of events from the day when the Shulammite
was seized in her nut garden, till she found herself
back again in her home in the north country, after the
trying episode of her temporary residence in the royal
palace, must have occupied some weeks. And yet the
conclusion of the story is set in precisely the same
stage of spring, the time when people look for the first
buds and blossoms, as the opening scenes. It has
been proposed to confine the whole action to the
northern district, where Solomon might have had a
country house adjoining his vineyard.viii. 11.
The presence
of the "daughters of Jerusalem," and allusions to the
streets of the city, its watchmen, and the guard upon
the walls, are against this notion. It is better to
conclude that we have here another instance of the
idealism of the poem. Since early spring is the season
that harmonises most perfectly with the spirit of the
whole work, the author does not trouble himself with
adapting its scenes in a realistic manner to the rapidly
changing aspects of nature.
The shepherd has addressed the Shulammite as his
sister;viii. 1.
she now reciprocates the title by expressing
her longing that he had been as her brother.viii. 1.
This
singular mode of courtship between two lovers who
are so passionately devoted to one another that we
might call them the Hebrew Romeo and Juliet, is not
without significance. Its recurrence, now on the lips
of the bride, helps to sharpen still more the contrast
between what passes for love in the royal harem, and
the true emotion experienced by a pair of innocent
young people, unsullied by the corruptions of the
court—illustrating,
as it does at once, its sweet intimacy and
its perfect purity.
The proud bride would now lead her swain to her
mother's house.viii. 2.
There is no mention of her father;
apparently he is not living. But the fond way in
which this simple girl speaks of her mother reveals
another lovely trait in her character. She has witnessed
the wearisome magnificence of Solomon's palace. It
was impossible to associate the idea of home with such
a place. We never hear the daughters of Jerusalem,
those poor degraded women of the harem, speaking of
their mothers. But to the Shulammite no spot on
earth is so dear as her mother's cottage. There her
lover shall have spiced wine and pomegranate juice—simple
home-made country beverages.viii. 2.
Repeating one
of the early refrains of the poem, the happy bride is
not afraid to say that there too her husband shall
support her in his strong embrace.viii. 3.
She then repeats
another refrain, and for the last time—surely one would
say now, quite superfluously—she adjures the daughters
of Jerusalem not to awaken any love for Solomon in
her, but to leave love to its spontaneous course.viii. 4.
Now the bridegroom is seen coming up from the
wilderness with his bride leaning upon him, and telling
how he first made love to her when he found her asleep
under an apple tree in the garden of the cottage where
she was born.viii. 5.
As they converse together we reach
the richest gem of the poem, the Shulammite's impassioned
eulogy of love.viii. 6, 7.
She bids her husband set her
as a seal upon his heart in the inner sanctuary of his
being, and as a seal upon his arm—always owning her,
always true to her in the outer world. She is to be his
closely, his openly, his for ever. She has proved her
constancy to him; now she claims his constancy to
her. The foundation of this claim rests on the very
nature of love. The one essential characteristic here
dwelt upon is strength—"Love is strong as death."
Who can resist grim death? who escape its iron
clutches? Who can resist mighty love, or evade its
power? The illustration is startling in the apparent
incompatibility of the two things drawn together for
comparison. But it is a stern and terrible aspect of
love to which our attention is now directed. This is
apparent as the Shulammite proceeds to speak of
jealousy which is "hard as the grave." If love is
treated falsely, it can flash out in a flame of wrath ten
times more furious than the raging of hatred—"a
most vehement flame of the Lord." This is the only
place in which the name of God appears throughout
the whole poem. It may be said that even here it
only comes in according to a familiar Hebrew idiom,
as metaphor for what is very great. But the Shulammite
has good reason for claiming God to be on her
side in the protection of her love from cruel wrong and
outrage. Love as she knows it is both unquenchable
and unpurchasable. She has tested and proved these
two attributes in her own experience. At the court
of Solomon every effort was made to destroy her love
for the shepherd, and all possible means were employed
for buying her love for the king. Both utterly failed.
All the floods of scorn which the harem ladies poured
over her love for the country lad could not quench it;
all the wealth of a kingdom could not buy it for Solomon.
Where true love exists, no opposition can destroy it;
where it is not, no money can purchase it. As for
the second idea—the purchasing of love—the Shulammite
flings it away with the utmost contempt. Yet
this was the too common means employed by a king
such as Solomon for replenishing the stock of his harem.
Then the monarch was only pursuing a shadow; he
was but playing at love-making; he was absolutely
ignorant of the reality.
The vigour, one might say the rigour, of this passage
distinguishes it from nearly all other poetry devoted
to the praises of love. That poetry is usually soft and
tender; sometimes it is feeble and sugary. And yet
it must be remembered that even the classical Aphrodite
could be terribly angry. There is nothing morbid or
sentimental in the Shulammite's ideas. She has discovered
and proved by experience that love is a mighty
force, capable of heroic endurance, and able, when
wronged, to avenge itself with serious effect.
Towards the conclusion of the poem fresh speakers
appear in the persons of the Shulammite's brothers,
who defend themselves from the charge of negligence
in having permitted their little sister to be snatched
away from their keeping, explaining how they have
done their best to guard her. Or perhaps they mean
that they will be more careful in protecting a younger
sister. They will build battlements about her. The
Shulammite takes up the metaphor. She is safe now,
as a wall well embattled; at last she has found peace
in the love of her husband. Solomon may have
a vineyard in her neighbourhood, and draw great
wealth from it with which to buy the wares in which
he delights.viii. 11.
It is nothing to her. She has her own
vineyard. This reference to the Shulammite's vineyard
recalls the mention of it at the beginning of the poem,
and suggests the idea that in both cases the image
represents the shepherd lover. In the first instance
she had not kept her vineyard,i. 6.
for she had lost her
lover. Now she has him, and she is satisfied.viii. 12.
He
calls to her in the garden, longing to hear her voice
there,viii. 13.
and she replies, bidding him hasten and come
to her as she has described him coming before,—
"Like to a roe or a young hart
Upon the mountains of spices."viii. 14.
And so the poem sinks to rest in the happy picture
of the union of the two young lovers.
CHAPTER IV
MYSTICAL INTERPRETATIONS
Thus far we have been considering the bare, literal
sense of the text. It cannot be denied that,
if only to lead up to the metaphorical significance of
the words employed, those words must be approached
through their primary physical meanings. This is
essential even to the understanding of pure allegory
such as that of The Faerie Queen and The Pilgrim's
Progress; we must understand the adventures of the
Red Cross Knight and the course of Christian's journey
before we can learn the moral of Spenser's and Bunyan's
elaborate allegories. Similarly it is absolutely necessary
for us to have some idea of the movement of the Song
of Solomon as a piece of literature, in its external form,
even if we are persuaded that beneath this sensuous
exterior it contains the most profound ideas, before we
can discover any such ideas. In other words, if it is to
be considered as a mass of symbolism the symbols must
be understood in themselves before their significance
can be drawn out of them.
But now we are confronted with the question
whether the book has any other meaning than that
which meets the eye. The answers to this question
are given on three distinct lines:—First, we have the
allegorical schemes of interpretation, according to which
the poem is not to be taken literally at all, but is to
be regarded as a purely metaphorical representation
of national or Church history, philosophical ideas, or
spiritual experiences. In the second place, we meet
with various forms of double interpretation, described
as typical or mystical, in which a primary meaning is
allowed to the book as a sort of drama or idyl, or as
a collection of Jewish love-songs, while a secondary
signification of an ideal or spiritual character is added.
Distinct as these lines of interpretation are in themselves,
they tend to blend in practice, because even when two
meanings are admitted the symbolical signification is
considered to be of so much greater importance than
the literal that it virtually occupies the whole field. In
the third place there is the purely literal interpretation,
that which denies the existence of any symbolical or
mystical intention in the poem.
Allegorical interpretations of the Song of Solomon
are found among the Jews early in the Christian era.
The Aramaic Targum, probably originating about the
sixth century A.D., takes the first half of the poem as
a symbolical picture of the history of Israel previous to
the captivity, and the second as a prophetic picture of
the subsequent fortunes of the nation. The recurrence
of the expression "the congregation of Israel" in this
paraphrase wherever the Shulammite appears, and other
similar adaptations, entirely destroy the fine poetic
flavour of the work, and convert it into a dreary, dry-as-dust
composition.
Symbolical interpretations were very popular among
Christian Fathers—though not with universal approval,
as the protest of Theodore of Mopsuestia testifies.
The great Alexandrian Origen is the founder and
patron of this method of interpreting the Song of
Solomon in the Church. Jerome was of opinion that
Origen "surpassed himself" in his commentary on
the poem—a commentary to which he devoted ten
volumes. According to his view, it was originally
an epithalamium celebrating the marriage of Solomon
with Pharaoh's daughter; but it has secondary mystical
meanings descriptive of the relation of the Redeemer
to the Church or the individual soul. Thus "the little
foxes that spoil the grapes" are evil thoughts in the
individual, or heretics in the Church. Gregory the
Great contributes a commentary of no lasting interest.
Very different is the work of the great mediæval monk
St. Bernard of Clairvaux, who threw himself into it
with all the passion and rapture of his enthusiastic soul,
and in the course of eighty-six homilies only reached
the beginning of the third chapter in this to him inexhaustible
mine of spiritual wealth, when he died,
handing on the task to his faithful disciple Gilbert Porretanus,
who continued it on the same portentous scale,
and also died before he had finished the fifth chapter.
Even while reading the old monkish Latin in this late
age we cannot fail to feel the glowing devotion that
inspires it. Bernard is addressing his monks, to whom
he says he need not give the milk for babes, and whom
he exhorts to prepare their throats not for this milk
but for bread. As a schoolman he cannot escape from
metaphysical subtleties—he takes the kiss of the bridegroom
as a symbol of the incarnation. But throughout
there burns the perfect rapture of love to Jesus Christ
which inspires his well-known hymns. Here we are
at the secret of the extraordinary popularity of mystical
interpretations of the Song of Solomon. It has seemed
to many in all ages of the Christian Church to afford
the best expression for the deepest spiritual relations
of Christ and His people. Nevertheless, the mystical
method has been widely disputed since the time of
the Reformation. Luther complains of the "many
wild and monstrous interpretations" that are attached
to the Song of Solomon, though even he understands
it as symbolical of Solomon and his state. Still, not a
few of the most popular hymns of our own day are
saturated with ideas and phrases gathered from this
book, and fresh expositions of what are considered to
be its spiritual lessons may still be met with.
It is not easy to discover any justification for the
rabbinical explanation of the Song of Solomon as a
representation of successive events in the history of
Israel, an explanation which Jewish scholars have
abandoned in favour of simple literalism. But the
mystical view, according to which the poem sets forth
spiritual ideas, has pleas urged in its favour that
demand some consideration. We are reminded of the
analogy of Oriental literature, which delights in parable
to an extent unknown in the West. Works of a kindred
nature are produced in which an allegorical signification
is plainly intended. Thus the Hindoo Gilagovinda
celebrates the loves of Chrishna and Radha in verses
that bear a remarkable resemblance to the Song of
Solomon. Arabian poets sing of the love of Joseph
for Zuleikha, which mystics take as the love of God
towards the soul that longs for union with Him. There
is a Turkish mystical commentary on the Song of Hafiz.
The bible itself furnishes us with suggestive analogies.
Throughout the Old Testament the idea of a marriage
union between God and His people occurs repeatedly,
and the most frequent metaphor for religious apostasy
is drawn from the crime of adultery.E.g. Exod. xxxiv. 15, 16; Numb. xv. 39; Psalm lxxiii. 27;
Ezek. xvi. 23, etc.
This symbolism
is especially prominent in the writings of JeremiahE.g. Jer. iii. 1-11.
and Hosea.Hosea ii. 2.; iii. 3.
The forty-fifth psalm is an epithalamium
commonly read with a Messianic signification. John
the Baptist describes the coming Messiah as the
Bridegroom,John iii. 29.
and Jesus Christ accepts the title for
Himself.Mark. ii. 19.
Our Lord illustrates the blessedness of the
Kingdom of Heaven in a parable of a wedding feast.Matt. xxii. 1-14.
With St. Paul the union of husband and wife is an
earthly copy of the union of Christ and his Church.Eph. v. 22-33.
The marriage of the Lamb is a prominent feature in
the Book of the Revelation.Rev. xxi. 9.
Further, it may be maintained that the experience
of Christians has demonstrated the aptness of the
expression of the deepest spiritual truths in the imagery
of the Song of Solomon. Sad hearts disappointed in
their earthly hopes have found in the religious reading
of this poem as a picture of their relation to their
Saviour the satisfaction for which they have hungered,
and which the world could never give them. Devout
Christians have read in it the very echo of their own
emotions. Samuel Rutherford's Letters, for example,
are in perfect harmony with the religious interpretation
of the Song of Solomon; and these letters stand in the
first rank of devotional works. There is certainly some
force in the argument that a key which seems to fit the
lock so well must have been designed to do so.
On the other hand, the objections to a mystical,
religious interpretation are very strong. In the first
place, we can quite account for its appearance apart
from any justification of it in the original intention of
the author. Allegory was in the air at the time when,
as far as we know, secondary meanings were first
attached to the ideas of the Song of Solomon. They
sprang from Alexandria, the home of allegory. Origen,
who was the first Christian writer to work out a
mystical explanation of this book, treated other books
of the Old Testament in exactly the same way; but
we never dream of following him in his fantastical
interpretations of those works. There is no indication
that the poem was understood allegorically or mystically
as early as the first century of the Christian era.
Philo is the prince of allegorists; but while he explains
the narratives of the Pentateuch according to his
favourite method, he never applies that method to this
very tempting book, and never even mentions the work
or makes any reference to its contents. The Song of
Solomon is not once mentioned or even alluded to in
the slightest way by any writer of the New Testament.
Since it is never noticed by Christ or the Apostles, of
course we cannot appeal to their authority for reading
it mystically; and yet it was undoubtedly known to
them as one of the books in the canon of the sacred
Scriptures to which they were in the habit of appealing
repeatedly. Consider the grave significance of this
fact. All secondary interpretations of which we know
anything, and, as far as we can tell, all that ever
existed, had their origin in post-apostolic times. If we
would justify this method by authority it is to the
Fathers that we must go, not to Christ and or his apostles,
not to the sacred Scriptures. It is a noteworthy fact,
too, that the word Eros, the Greek name for the love
of man and woman, as distinguished from Agape, which
stands for love in the widest sense of the word, is first
applied to our Lord by Ignatius. Here we have the
faint beginning of the stream of erotic religious fancies
which sometimes manifests itself most objectionably in
subsequent Church history. There is not a trace of it
in the New Testament.
If the choice spiritual ideas which some people think
they see in the Song of Solomon are not imported by
the reader, but form part of the genuine contents of the
book, how comes it that this fact was not recognised
by one of the inspired writers of the New Testament?
or, if privately recognised, that it was never utilised?
In the hands of the mystical interpreter this work is
about the most valuable part of the Old Testament.
He finds it to be an inexhaustible mine of the most
precious treasures. Why, then, was such a remunerative
lode never worked by the first authorities in Christian
teaching? It may be replied that we cannon prove
much from a bare negative. The apostles may have
had their own perfectly sufficient reasons for leaving to
the Church of later ages the discovery of this valuable
spiritual store. Possibly the converts of their day
were not ripe for the comprehension of the mysteries
here expounded. Be that as it may, clearly the onus
probandi rests with those people of a later age who
introduce a method of interpretation for which no
sanction can be found in Scripture.
Now the analogies that have been referred to are
not sufficient to establish any proof. In the case of
the other poems mentioned above there are distinct
indications of symbolical intentions. Thus in the
Gitagovinda the hero is a divinity whose incarnations
are acknowledged in Hindoo mythology; and the concluding
verse of that poem points the moral by a
direct assertion of the religious meaning of the whole
composition. This is not the case with the Song of
Solomon. We must not be misled by the chapter-headings
in our English Bibles, which of course are
not to be found in the original Hebrew text. From
the first line to the last there is not the slightest hint
in the poem itself that it was intended to be read in
any mystical sense. This is contrary to the analogy
of all allegories. The parable may be difficult to
interpret, but at all events it must suggest that it is
a parable; otherwise it defeats its own object. If the
writer never drops any hint that he has wrapped up
spiritual ideas in the sensuous imagery of his poetry,
what right has he to expect that anybody will find
them there, so long as his poem admits of a perfectly
adequate explanation in a literal sense? We need not
be so dense as to require the allegorist to say to us in
so many words: "This is a parable." But we may
justly expect him to furnish us with some hint that his
utterance is of such a character. Æsop's fables carry
their lessons on the surface of them, so that we can
often anticipate the concluding morals that are attached
to them. When Tennyson announced that the Idyls of
the King constituted an allegory most people were taken
by surprise; and yet the analogy of The Faerie Queen,
and the lofty ethical ideas with which the poems are
inspired, might have prepared us for the revelation.
But we have no similar indications in the case of the
Song of Solomon. If somebody were to propound a
new theory of The Vicar of Wakefield, which should
turn that exquisite tale into a parable of the Fall,
it would not be enough for him to exercise his ingenuity
in pointing out resemblances between the
eighteenth-century romance and the ancient narrative
of the serpent's doings in the Garden of Eden. Since
he could not shew that Goldsmith had the slightest
intention of teaching anything of the kind, his exploit
could be regarded as nothing but a piece of literary
trifling.
The Biblical analogies already cited, in which the
marriage relation between God or Christ and the Church
or the soul are referred to, will not bear the strain that
is put upon them when they are brought forward in
order to justify a mystical interpretation of the Song
of Solomon. At best they simply account for the
emergence of this view of the book at a later time, or
indicate that such a notion might be maintained if there
were good reasons for adopting it. They cannot prove
that in the present case it should be adopted. Moreover,
they differ from it on two important points. First,
in harmony with all genuine allegories and metaphors,
they carry their own evidence of a symbolical meaning,
which as we have seen the Song of Solomon fails to
do. Second, they are not elaborate compositions of a
dramatic or idyllic character in which the passion of
love is vividly illustrated. Regarded in its entirety,
the Song of Solomon is quite without parallel in
Scripture. It may be replied that we cannot disprove
the allegorical intention of the book. But this is not
the question. That intention requires to be proved;
and until it is proved, or at least until some very good
reasons are urged for adopting it, no statement of bare
possibilities counts for anything.
But we may push the case further. There is a
positive improbability of the highest order that the
spiritual ideas read into the Song of Solomon by some
of its Christian admirers should have been originally
there. This would involve the most tremendous
anachronism in all literature. The Song of Solomon
is dated among the earlier works of the Old Testament.
But the religious ideas now associated with it represent
what is regarded as the fruit of the most advanced
saintliness ever attained in the Christian Church.
Here we have a flat contradiction to the growth of
revelation manifested throughout the whole course of
Scripture history. We might as well ascribe the
Sistine Madonna to the fresco-painters of the catacombs;
or, what is more to the point, our Lord's
discourse with his disciples at the paschal meal to
Solomon or some other Jew of his age.
No doubt the devoted follower of the mystical
method will not be troubled by considerations such as
these. To him the supposed fitness of the poem to
convey his religious ideas is the one sufficient proof
of an original design that it should serve that end.
So long as the question is approached in this way, the
absence of clear evidence only delights the prejudiced
commentator with the opportunity it affords for the
exercise of his ingenuity. To a certain school of
readers the very obscurity of a book is its fascination.
The less obvious a meaning is, the more eagerly do they
set themselves to expound and defend it. We could
leave them to what might be considered a very
harmless diversion if it were not for other considerations.
But we cannot forget that it is just this
ingenious way of interpreting the Bible in accordance
with preconceived opinions that has encouraged the
quotation of the Sacred Volume in favour of absolutely
contradictory propositions, an abuse which in its turn
has provoked an inevitable reaction leading to contempt
for the Bible as an obscure book which speaks with no
certain voice.
Still, it may be contended, the analogy between the
words of this poem and the spiritual experience of
Christians is in itself an indication of intentional
connection. Swedenborg has shewn that there are
correspondences between the natural and the spiritual,
and this truth is illustrated by the metaphorical
references to marriage in the Bible which have been
adduced for comparison with the Song of Solomon.
But their very existence shows that analogies between
religious experience and the love story of the Shulammite
may be traced out by the reader without any
design on the part of the author to present them. If
they are natural they are universal, and any love song
will serve our purpose. On this principle, if the Song
of Solomon admits of mystical adaptation, so do Mrs.
Browning's Sonnets from the Portuguese.
We have no alternative, then, but to conclude that
the mystical interpretation of this work is based on a
delusion. Moreover, it must be added that the delusion
is a mischievous one. No doubt to many it has been
as meat and drink. They have found in their reading
of the Song of Solomon real spiritual refreshment, or
they believe they have found it. But there is another
side. The poem has been used to minister to a morbid,
sentimental type of religion. More than any other
influence, the mystical interpretation of this book has
imported an effeminate element into the notion of the
love of Christ, not one trace of which can be detected
in the New Testament. The Catholic legend of the
marriage of St. Catherine is somewhat redeemed by
the high ascetic tone that pervades it; and yet it indicates
a decline from the standpoint of the apostles.
Not a few unquestionable revelations of immorality in
convents have shed a ghastly light on the abuse of
erotic religious fervour. Among Protestants it cannot
be said that the most wholesome hymns are those
which are composed on the model of the Song of
Solomon. In some cases the religious use of this book
is perfectly nauseous, indicating nothing less than a
disease of religion. When—as sometimes happens—frightful
excesses of sensuality follow close on seasons
of what has been regarded as the revival of religion,
the common explanation of these horrors is that in
some mysterious way spiritual emotion lies very near
to sensual appetite, so that an excitement of the one
tends to rouse the other. A more revolting hypothesis,
or one more insulting to religion, cannot be imagined.
The truth is, the two regions are separate as the poles.
The explanation of the phenomena of their apparent
conjunction is to be found in quite another direction.
It is that their victims have substituted for religion
a sensuous excitement which is as little religious as the
elation that follows indulgence in alcoholism. There is
no more deadly temptation of the devil than that which
hoodwinks deluded fanatics into making this terrible
mistake. But it can scarcely be denied that the mystical
reading of the Song of Solomon by unspiritual
persons, or even by any persons who are not completely
fortified against the danger, may tend in this
fatal direction.
CHAPTER V
CANONICITY
It is scarcely to be expected that the view of the
Song of Solomon expounded in the foregoing pages
will meet with acceptance from every reader. A
person who has been accustomed to resort to this
book in search of the deepest spiritual ideas cannot
but regard the denial of their presence with aversion.
While, however, it is distressing to be compelled to give
pain to a devout soul, it may be necessary. If there
is weight in the considerations that have been engaging
our attention, we cannot shut our eyes to them simply
because they may be disappointing. The mystical interpreter
will be shocked at what he takes for irreverence.
But, on the other hand, he should be on his guard
against falling into this very fault from the opposite side.
Reverence for truth is a primary Christian duty. The
iconoclast is certain to be charged with irreverence by
the devotee of the popular idol which he feels it his
duty to destroy; and yet, if his action is inspired by
loyalty to truth, reverence for what he deems highest
and best may be its mainspring.
If the Song of Solomon were not one of the books
of the Bible, questions such as these would never arise.
It is its place in the sacred canon that induces people to
resent the consequences of the application of criticism
to it. It is simply owing to its being a part of the
Bible that it has come to be treated mystically at all.
Undoubtedly this is why it was allegorised by the Jews.
But, then, the secondary signification thus acquired
reacted upon it, and served as a sort of buoy to float
it over the rocks of awkward questions. The result
was that in the end the book attained to an exceptionally
high position in the estimation of the rabbis. Thus
the great Rabbi Akiba says: "The course of the ages
cannot vie with the day on which the Song of Songs
was given to Israel. All the Kethubim (i.e., the Hagiographa)
are holy, but the Song of Songs is a holy of
holies."
Such being the case, it is manifest that the rejection
of the mystical signification of its contents must revive
the question of the canonicity of the book. We have
not, however, to deal with the problem of its original
insertion in the canon. We find it there. Some doubts
as to its right to the place it holds seem to have been
raised among the Jews during the first century of the
Christian era; but these doubts were effectually borne
down. As far as we know, the Song of Solomon has
always been a portion of the Hebrew Scriptures from
the obscure time when the collection of those Scriptures
was completed. It stands as the first of the five
Megilloth, or sacred rolls—the others being Ruth,
Lamentations, Esther, and Ecclesiastes. We are not
now engaged in the difficult task of constructing a new
canon. The only possibility is that of the expulsion
of a book already in the old canon. But the attempt
to disturb in any way such a volume as the Old Testament,
with all its incomparable associations, is not one
to be undertaken lightly or without adequate reason.
In order to justify this radical measure it would not
be enough to shew that the specific religious meanings
that some have attached to the Song of Solomon do
not really belong to it. If it is said that the secular
tone it acquires under the hands of criticism shews it
to be unworthy of a place in the sacred Scriptures,
this assertion goes upon an unwarrantable assumption.
We have no reason to maintain that all the books of
the Old Testament must be of equal value. The Book
of Esther does not reach a very high level of moral or
religious worth; the pessimism of Ecclesiastes is not
inspiring; even the Book of Proverbs contains maxims
that cannot be elevated to a first place in ethics. If
we could discover no distinctively enlightening or
uplifting influence in the Song of Solomon, this would
not be a sufficient reason for raising a cry against it;
because if it were simply neutral in character, like
nitrogen in the atmosphere, it would do no harm, and
we could safely let it be. The one justification for a
radical treatment of the question would be the discovery
that the book was false in doctrine or deleterious in
character. As to doctrine, it does not trench on that
region at all. It would be as incongruous to associate
it with the grave charge of heresy as to bring a similar
accusation against the Essays of Elia or Keats's poetry.
And if the view expressed in these pages is at all correct,
it certainly cannot be said that the moral tendency of
the book is injurious; the very reverse must be
affirmed.
Since there is no reason to believe that the Song
of Solomon had received any allegorical interpretation
before the commencement of the Christian era, we must
conclude that it was not on the ground of some such
interpretation that it was originally admitted into the
Hebrew collection of Scripture. It was placed in the
canon before it was allegorised. It was only allegorised
because it had been placed in the canon. Then why
was it set there? The natural conclusion to arrive at
under these circumstances is that the scribes who ventured
to put it first among the sacred Megilloth saw
that there was a distinctive value in it. Perhaps; however,
it is too much to say this of them. The word
"Solomon" being attached to the book would seem to
justify its inclusion with other literature which had
received the hall-mark of that great name. Still we
can learn to appreciate it on its own merits, and in so
doing perceive that there is something in it to justify
its right to a niche in the glorious temple of scripture.
Assuredly it was much to make clear in the days of
royal polygamy among the Jews that this gross imitation
of the court life of heathen monarchies was a despicable
and degrading thing, and to set over against it an
attractive picture of true love and simple manners. The
prophets of Israel were continually protesting against a
growing dissoluteness of morals: the Song of Solomon
is a vivid illustration of the spirit of their protest.
If the two nations had been content with the rustic
delight so beautifully portrayed in this book, they
might not have fallen into ruin as they did under the
influence of the corruptions of an effete civilisation. If
their people had cherished the graces of purity and
constancy that shine so conspicuously in the character
of the Shulammite they might not have needed to pass
through the purging fires of the captivity.
But while this can be said of the book as it first
appeared among the Jews, a similar estimate of its
function in later ages may also be made. An ideal
representation of fidelity in love under the greatest
provocation to surrender at discretion has a message for
every age. We need not shrink from reading it in
the pages of the Bible. Our Lord teaches us that next
to the duty of love to God comes that of love to one's
neighbour. But a man's nearest neighbour is his wife.
Therefore after his God his wife has the first claim
upon him. But the whole conception of matrimonial
duty rests on the idea of constancy in the love of man
and woman.
If this book had been read in its literal signification
and its wholesome lesson absorbed by Christendom in
the Middle Ages, the gloomy cloud of asceticism that
then hung over the Church would have been somewhat
lightened, not to give place to the outburst of
licentiousness that accompanied the Renaissance, but
rather to allow of the better establishment of the
Christian home. The absurd legends that follow the
names of St. Anthony and St. Dunstan would have
lost their motive. Hildebrand would have had no
occasion to hurl his thunderbolt. The Church was
making the huge mistake of teaching that the remedy
for dissoluteness was unnatural celibacy. This book
taught the lesson—truer to nature, truer to experience,
truer to the God who made us—that it was to be found
in the redemption of love.
Can it be denied that the same lesson is needed in
our own day? The realism that has made itself a
master of a large part of popular literature reveals a
state of society that perpetuates the manners of the
court of Solomon, though under a thin veil of decorum.
The remedy for the awful dissoluteness of large portions
of society can only be found in the cultivation of such
lofty ideas on the relation of the sexes that this abomination
shall be scouted with horror. It is neither
necessary, nor right, nor possible to contradict nature.
What has to be shewn is that man's true nature is not
bestial, that satyrs and fauns are not men, but degraded
caricatures of men. We cannot crush the strongest
passion of human nature. The moral of the Song of
Solomon is that there is no occasion to attempt to crush
it, because the right thing is to elevate it by lofty ideals
of love and constancy.
This subject also deserves attention on its positive
side. The literature of all ages is a testimony to the
fact that nothing in the world is so interesting as love.
What is so old as love-making? and what so fresh?
At least ninety-nine novels out of a hundred have
a love-story for plot; and the hundredth is always
regarded as an eccentric experiment. The pedant may
plant his heel on the perennial flower; but it will spring
up again as vigorous as ever. This is the poetry of
the most commonplace existence. When it visits a
dingy soul the desert blossoms as the rose. Life may
be hard, and its drudgery a grinding yoke; but with
love "all tasks are sweet." "And Jacob served seven
years for Rachel; and they seemed unto him but a few
days, for the love he had to her."Gen. xxix. 20.
That experience of
the patriarch is typical of the magic power of true love
in every age, in every clime. To the lover it is always
"the time of the singing of birds." Who shall tell the
value of the boon that God has given so freely to
mankind, to sweeten the lot of the toiler and shed music
into his heart? But this boon requires to be jealously
guarded and sheltered from abuse, or its honey will be
turned into gall. It is for the toiler—the shepherd
whose locks are wet with the dew that has fallen upon
him while guarding his flock by night, the maiden who
has been working in the vineyard; it is beyond the
reach of the pleasure-seeking monarch and the indolent
ladies of his court. This boon is for the pure in heart;
it is utterly denied to the sensual and dissolute. Finally,
it is reserved for the loyal and true as the peculiar
reward of constancy.
But while a poem that contains these principles must
be allowed to have an important mission in the world,
it does not follow that it is suitable for public or indiscriminate
reading. The fact that the key to it is not
easily discovered is a warning that it is liable to be
misunderstood. When it is read superficially, without
any comprehension of its drift and motive, it may be
perverted to mischievous ends. The antique Oriental
pictures with which it abounds, though natural to the
circumstances of its origin, are not in harmony with the
more reserved manners of our own conditions of society.
As all the books of the Bible are not of the same
character, so also they are not all to be used in the
same way.
THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEREMIAH
CHAPTER I
HEBREW ELEGIES
The book which is known by the title "The
Lamentations of Jeremiah" is a collection of five
separate poems, very similar in style, and all treating
of the same subject—the desolation of Jerusalem and
the sufferings of the Jews after the overthrow of their
city by Nebuchadnezzar. In our English Bible it is
placed among the prophetical works of the Old Testament,
standing next to the acknowledged writings of
the man whose name it bears. This arrangement
follows the order in the Septuagint, from which it was
accepted by Josephus and the Christian Fathers. And
yet the natural place for such a book would seem to be
in association with the Psalms and other poetical compositions
of a kindred character. So thought the
Rabbis who compiled the Jewish canon. In the
Hebrew Bible the Book of Lamentations is assigned
to the third collection, that designated Hagiographa,
not to the part known as the Prophets.
In form as well as in substance this book is a
remarkable specimen of a specific order of poetry. The
difficulty of recovering the original pronunciation of
the language has left our conception of Hebrew metres
in a state of obscurity. It has been generally supposed
that the rhythm was more of sight than of sound, but
that it consisted essentially in neither, depending mainly
on the balance of ideas. The metre, it has been stated,
might strike the eye in the external aspect of the
sentences; it was designed much more to charm the
mind by the harmony and music of the thoughts. But
while these general principles are still acknowledged,
some further progress has been made in the examination
of the structure of the verses, with the result that
both more regularity of law and more variety of metre
have been discovered. The elegy in particular is found
to be shaped on special lines of its own. It has been
pointed out that a peculiar metre is reserved for poems
of mournful reflection.
The first feature of this metre to be noted is the
unusual length of the line. In Hebrew poetry, according
to the generally accepted pronunciation, the lines
vary from about six syllables to about twelve. In the
elegy the line most frequently runs to the extreme
limit, and so acquires a slow, solemn movement.
A second feature of elegiac poetry is the breaking of
the lengthy line into two unequal parts—the first part
being about as long as a whole line in an average
Hebrew lyric, and the second much shorter, reading
like another line abbreviated, and seeming to suggest
that the weary thought is waking up and hurrying to
its conclusion. Sometimes this short section is a thin
echo of the fuller conception that precedes, sometimes
the completion of that conception. In the English
version, of course, the effect is frequently lost; still occasionally
it is very marked, even after passing through
this foreign medium. Take, for example, the lines,
"Her princes are become like harts—that find no pasture,
And they are gone without strength—before the pursuer;"i. 6.
or again the very long line,
"It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed—because His compassions fail not."iii. 22.
Now although this is only a structural feature it
points to inferences of deeper significance. It shews
that the Hebrew poets paid special attention to the
elegy as a species of verse to be treated apart, and
therefore that they attached a peculiar significance to
the ideas and feelings it expresses. The ease with
which the transition to the elegiac form of verse is
made whenever an occasion for using it occurs is a
hint that this must have been familiar to the Jews.
Possibly it was in common use at funerals in the dirge.
We meet with an early specimen of this verse in Amos,
when, just after announcing that he is about to utter
a lamentation over the house of Israel, the herdsman
of Tekoa breaks into elegiacs with the words,
"The virgin daughter of Israel is fallen—she shall no more rise:
She is cast down upon her land—there is none to raise her up."Amos v. 2.
Similarly constructed elegiac pieces are scattered
over the Old Testament scriptures from the eighth
century B.C. onwards. Several illustrations of this
peculiar kind of metre are to be found in the Psalms. It
is employed ironically with terrible effect in the Book of
Isaiah, where the mock lament over the death of the king
of Babylon is constructed in the form of a true elegy.
When the prophet made a sudden transition from his
normal style to sombre funereal measures his purpose
would be at once recognised, for his words would sound
like the tolling bell and the muffled drums that announce
the march of death; and yet it would be known that
this solemn pomp was not really a demonstration of
mourning or a symbol of respect, but only the pageantry
of scorn and hatred and vengeance. The sarcasm
would strike home with the more force since it fell on
men's ears in the heavy, lingering lines of the elegy,
as the exultant patriot exclaimed,
"How hath the oppressor ceased—the golden city ceased!
The Lord hath broken the staff of the wicked—the sceptre of the rulers," etc.Isa. xiv. 4 ff.
A special characteristic of the five elegies that make
up the Book of Lamentations is their alphabetical arrangement.
Each elegy consists of twenty-two verses,
the same number as that of the letters in the Hebrew
alphabet. All but the last are acrostics, the initial
letter of each verse following the order of the alphabet.
In the third elegy every line in the verse begins
with the same letter. According to another way of
reckoning, this poem consists of sixty-six verses
arranged in triplets, each of which not only follows
the order of the alphabet with its first letter, but also
has this initial letter repeated at the beginning of each
of its three verses. Alphabetical acrostics are not
unknown elsewhere in the Old Testament; there are
several instances of them in the Psalms.E.g., Psalms ix., x., xxv., xxxiv., xxxvii., cxix., cxlv.
The method
is generally thought to have been adopted as an
expedient to assist the memory. Clearly it is a somewhat
artificial arrangement, cramping the imagination
of the poet; and it is regarded by some as a sign of
literary decadence. Whatever view we may take of it
from the standpoint of purely artistic criticism, we can
derive one important conclusion concerning the mental
attitude of the writer from a consideration of the
elaborate structure of the verse. Although this poetry
is evidently inspired by deep emotion—emotion so
profound that it cannot even be restrained by the stiffest
vesture—still the author is quite self-possessed: he is
not at all over-mastered by his feelings; what he says
is the outcome of deliberation and reflection.
Passing from the form to the substance of the elegy,
our attention is arrested on the threshold of the more
serious enquiry by another link of connection between
the two. In accordance with a custom of which we
have other instances in the Hebrew Bible, the first
word in the text is taken as the title of the book.
The haphazard name is more appropriate in this case
than it sometimes proves to be, for the first word of
the first chapter—the original Hebrew for which is the
Jewish title of the book—is "How." Now this is a
characteristic word for the commencement of an elegy.
Three out of the five elegies in Lamentations begin
with it; so does the mock elegy in Isaiah. Moreover,
it is not only suggestive of the form of a certain kind
of poetry; it is a hint of the spirit in which that
poetry is conceived; it strikes the key-note for all
that follows. Therefore it may not be superfluous
for us to consider the significance of this little word
in the present connection.
In the first place, it is a sort of note of exclamation
prefixed to the sentence it introduces. Thus it infuses
an emotional element into the statements which follow
it. The word is a relic of the most primitive form
of language. Judging from the sounds produced by
animals and the cries of little children, we should
conclude that the first approach to speech would be
a simple expression of excitement—a scream of pain, a
shout of delight, a yell of rage, a shriek of surprise.
Next to the mere venting of feeling comes the utterance
of desire—a request, either for the possession of some
coveted boon, or for deliverance from something objectionable.
Thus the dog barks for his bone, or barks
again to be freed from his chain; and the child cries
for a toy, or for protection from a terror. If this is
correct it will be only at the third stage of speech that
we shall reach statements of fact pure and simple.
Conversely, it may be argued that as the progress of
cultivation develops the perceptive and reasoning
faculties and corresponding forms of speech, the
primitive emotional and volitional types of language
must recede. Our phlegmatic English temperament
predisposes us to take this view. It is not easy for us
to sympathise with the expressiveness of an excitable
Oriental people. What to them is perfectly natural
and not at all inconsistent with true manliness strikes
us as a childish weakness. Is not this a trifle insular?
The emotions constitute as essential a part of human
nature as the observing and reasoning faculties, and
it cannot be proved that to stifle them beneath a calm
exterior is more right and proper than to give them a
certain adequate expression. That this expression may
be found even among ourselves is apparent from the
singular fact that the English, who are the most
prosaic people in their conduct, have given the world
more good poetry than any other nation of modern
times; a fact which, perhaps, may be explained on
the principle that the highest poetry is not the rank
outgrowth of irregulated passions, but the cultivated
fruit of deep-rooted ideas. Still these ideas must
be warmed with feeling before they will germinate.
Much more, when we are not merely interested in poetic
literature, when we are in earnest about practical
actions, an artificial restraint of the emotions must
be mischievous. No doubt the unimpassioned style
has its mission—in allaying a panic, for example.
But it will not inspire men to attempt a forlorn hope.
Society will never be saved by hysterics; but neither
will it ever be saved by statistics. It may be that the
exclamation how is a feeble survival of the savage
howl. Nevertheless the emotional expression, when
regulated as the taming of the sound suggests, will
always play a very real part in the life of mankind,
even at the most highly developed stage of civilisation.
In the second place, it is to be observed that this
word introduces a tone of vagueness into the sentences
which it opens. A description beginning as these
elegies begin would not serve the purpose of an
inventory of the ruins of Jerusalem such as an insurance
society would demand in the present day. The
facts are viewed through an atmosphere of feeling, so
that their chronological order is confused and their
details melt one into another. That is not to say that
they are robbed of all value. Pure impressionism may
reveal truths which no hard, exact picture can render
clear to us. These elegies make us see the desolation
of Jerusalem more vividly than the most accurate
photographs of the scenes referred to could have done,
because they help us to enter into the passion of the
event.
With this idea of vagueness, however, there is joined
a sense of vastness. The note of exclamation is also
a note of admiration. The language is indefinite in
part for the very reason that the scene beggars description.
The cynical spirit which would reduce all life to
the level of a Dutch landscape is here excluded by the
overwhelming mass of the troubles bewailed. The
cataract of sorrow awes us with the greatness of its
volume and the thunder of its fall.
From suggestions thus rising out of a consideration
of the opening word of the elegy we may be led on to
a perception of similar traits in the body of this poetry.
It is emotional in character; it is vague in description;
and it sets before us visions of vast woe.
But now it is quite clear that poetry such as this
must be something else than the wild expression of
grief. It is a product of reflection. The acute stage
of suffering is over. The writer is musing upon a sad
past; or if at times he is reflecting on a present state
of distress, still he is regarding this as the result of
more violent scenes, in the midst of which the last
thing a man would think of doing would be to sit down
and compose a poem. This reflective poetry will give
us emotion, still warm, but shot with thought.
The reflectiveness of the elegy does not take the
direction of philosophy. It does not speculate on the
mystery of suffering. It does not ask such obstinate
questions, or engage in such vexatious dialectics, as
circle about the problem of evil in the Book of Job.
Leaving those difficult matters to the theologians who
care to wrestle with them, the elegist is satisfied to
dwell on his theme in a quiet, meditative mood, and
to permit his ideas to flow on spontaneously as in a
reverie. Thus it happens that, artificial as is the form
of his verse, the underlying thought seems to be natural
and unforced. In this way he represents to us the
afterglow of sunset which follows the day of storm
and terror.
The afterglow is beautiful—that is what the elegy
makes evident. It paints the beauty of sorrow. It is
able to do so only because it contemplates the scene
indirectly, as portrayed in the mirror of thought. An
immediate vision of pain is itself wholly painful. If the
agony is intense, and if no relief can be offered, we instinctively
turn aside from the sickening sight. Only
a brutalised people could find amusement in the ghastly
spectacle of the Roman amphitheatre. It is cited as a
proof of Domitian's diabolical cruelty that the emperor
would have dying slaves brought before him in order
that he might watch the facial expression of their last
agonies. Such scenes are not fit subjects for art.
The famous group of the Laocoon is considered by
many to have passed the boundaries of legitimate
representation in the terror and torment of its subject;
and Ecce Homos and pictures of the crucifixion can
only be defended from a similar condemnation when
the profound spiritual significance of the subjects is
made to dominate the bare torture. Faced squarely, in
the glare of day, pain and death are grim ogres, the
ugliness of which no amount of sentiment can disguise.
You can no more find poetry in a present Inferno than
flowers in the red vomit of a live volcano. Men who
have seen war tell us they have discovered nothing
attractive in its dreadful scenes of blood and anguish
and fury. What could be more revolting to contemplate
than the sack of a city,—fire and sword in every
street, public buildings razed to the ground, honoured
monuments defaced, homes ravaged, children torn from
the arms of their parents, young girls dragged away
to a horrible fate, lust, robbery, slaughter rampant
without shame or restraint, the wild beast in the conquerors
let loose, and a whole army, suddenly freed
from all rules of discipline, behaving like a swarm of
demons just escaped from hell. To think of cultivating
art or poetry in the presence of such scenes would be
as absurd as to attempt a musical entertainment among
the shrieks of lost souls.
The case assumes another aspect when we pass from
the region of personal observation to that of reflection.
There is no beauty in the sight of a captured castle
immediately after the siege which ended in its fall, its
battlements shattered, its walls seamed with cracks,
here and there a breach, rough and ragged, and strewn
with stones and dust. And yet, by slow degrees and
in imperceptible ways, time and nature will transform
the scene until moss-grown walls and ivy-covered
towers acquire a new beauty only seen among ruins.
Nature heals and time softens, and between them they
throw a mantle of grace over the scars of what were
once ugly, gaping wounds. Pain as it recedes into
memory is transmuted into pathos; and pathos always
fascinates us with some approach to beauty. If it is
true that
"Poets learn in sorrow what they teach in song,"
must it not be also the fact that sorrow while inspiring
song is itself glorified thereby? To use suffering
merely as the food of æstheticism would be to
degrade it immeasurably. We should rather put the
case the other way. Poetry saves sorrow from becoming
sordid by revealing its beauty, and in epic
heroism even its sublimity. It helps us to perceive
how much more depth there is in life than was apparent
under the glare and glamour of prosperity. Some of us
may recollect how shallow and shadowy our own lives
were felt to be in the simple days before we had tasted
the bitter cup. There was a hunger then for some
deeper experience which seemed to lie beyond our
reach. While we naturally shrank from entering the
via dolorosa, we were dimly conscious that the pilgrims
who trod its rough stones had discovered a secret that
remained hidden from us, and we coveted their attainment,
although we did not envy the bitter experience
by which it had been acquired. This feeling may have
been due in part to the foolish sentimentality that is
sometimes indulged in by extreme youth; but that is
not the whole explanation of it, for when our path
conducts us from the flat, monotonous plain of ease
and comfort into a region of chasms and torrents, we
do indeed discover an unsuspected depth in life. Now
it is the mission of the poetry of sorrow to interpret
this discovery to us. At least it should enable us to
read the lessons of experience in the purest light. It
is not the task of the poet to supply a categorical
answer to the riddle of the universe; stupendous as
that task would be, it must be regarded as quite a
prosaic one. Poetry will not fit exact answers to set
questions, for poetry is not science; but poetry will
open deaf ears and anoint blind eyes to receive the
voices and visions that haunt the depths of experience.
Thus it leads on to—
"that blessed mood,
In which the burden of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world
Is lightened."
It may not be obvious to the reader of an elegy
that this function is discharged by such a poem, for elegiac
poetry seems to aim at nothing more than the thoughtful
expression of grief. Certainly it is neither didactic nor
metaphysical. Nevertheless in weaving a wreath of
imagination round the sufferings it bewails it cannot
but clothe them with a rich significance. It would
seem to be the mission of the five inspired elegies
contained in the Book of Lamentations thus to interpret
the sorrows of the Jews, and through them the sorrows
of mankind.
CHAPTER II
THE ORIGIN OF THE POEMS
As we pass out of Jerusalem by the Damascus Gate,
and follow the main north road, our attention
is immediately arrested by a low hill of grey rock
sprinkled with wild flowers, which is now attracting
peculiar notice because it has been recently identified
with the "Golgotha" on which our Lord was crucified.
In the face of this hill a dark recess—faintly suggestive
of the eye-socket, if we may suppose the title "Place
of a skull" to have arisen from a fancied resemblance
to a goat's skull—is popularly known as "Jeremiah's
grotto," and held by current tradition to be the retreat
where the prophet composed the five elegies that constitute
our Book of Lamentations. Clambering with
difficulty over the loose stones that mark the passage
of winter torrents, and reaching the floor of the cave,
we are at once struck by the suspicious aptness of the
"sacred site." In a solitude singularly retired, considering
the proximity of a great centre of population,
the spectator commands a full view of the whole city,
its embattled walls immediately confronting him, with
clustered roofs and domes in the rear. What place
could have been more suitable for a poetic lament over
the ruins of fallen Jerusalem? Moreover, when we
take into account the dread associations derived from
the later history of the Crucifixion, what could be
more fitting than that the mourning patriot's tears for
the woes of his city should have been shed so near to
the very spot where her rejected Saviour was to suffer?
But unfortunately history cannot be constructed on the
lines of harmonious sentiments. When we endeavour
to trace the legend that attributes the Lamentations to
Jeremiah back to its source we lose the stream some
centuries before we arrive at the time of the great
prophet. No doubt for ages the tradition was undisputed;
it is found both in Jewish and in Christian
literature—in the Talmud and in the Fathers. Jerome
popularised it in the Church by transferring it to the
Vulgate, and before this Josephus set it down as an
accepted fact. It is pretty evident that each of these
parallel currents of opinion may have been derived
from the Septuagint, which introduces the book with
the sentence, "And it came to pass, after Israel had
been carried away captive, and Jerusalem had become
desolate, that Jeremiah sat weeping, and lamented with
this lamentation over Jerusalem, and said," etc. Here
our upward progress in tracking the tradition is stayed;
no more ancient authority is to be found. Yet we are
still three hundred years from the time of Jeremiah!
Of course it is only reasonable to suppose that the
translators of the Greek version did not make their
addition to the Hebrew text at random, or without
what they deemed sufficient grounds. Possibly they
were following some documentary authority, or, at least,
some venerable tradition. Of this we know nothing.
Meanwhile, it must be observed that no such statement
exists in the Hebrew Bible; and it would never have
been omitted if it had been there originally.
One other witness has been adduced, but only to
furnish testimony of an obscure and ambiguous character.
In 2 Chron. xxxv. 25 we read, "And Jeremiah lamented
for Josiah; and all the singing men and singing women
spake of Josiah in their lamentations, unto this day;
and they made them an ordinance in Israel; and,
behold, they are written in the lamentations." Josephus,
and Jerome after him, appear to assume that the
chronicler is here referring to our Book of Lamentations.
That is very questionable; for the words describe an
elegy on Josiah, and our book contains no such elegy.
Can we suppose that the chronicler assumed that inasmuch
as Jeremiah was believed to have written a lament
for the mourners to chant in commemoration of Josiah,
this would be one of the poems preserved in the collection
of Jerusalem elegies familiar to readers of his day?
Be that as it may, the chronicler wrote in the Grecian
period, and therefore his statements come some long
time after the date of the prophet.
In this dearth of external testimony we turn to the
book itself for indications of origin and authorship.
The poems make no claim to have been the utterances
of Jeremiah; they do not supply us with their
author's name. Therefore there can be no question of
genuineness, no room for an ugly charge of "forgery,"
or a delicate ascription of "pseudonymity," The case
is not comparable to that of 2 Peter, or even to
that of Ecclesiastes—the one of which directly claims
apostolic authority, and the other a "literary" association
with the name of Solomon. It is rather to be
paralleled with the case of the Epistle to the Hebrews,
a purely anonymous work. Still there is much which
seems to point to Jeremiah as the author of these
intensely pathetic elegies. They are not like MacPherson's
Ossian; nobody can question their antiquity. If they
were not quite contemporaneous with the
scenes they describe so graphically they cannot have
originated much later; for they are like the low wailings
with which the storm sinks to rest, reminding us how
recently the thunder was rolling and the besom of
destruction sweeping over the land. Among the
prophets of Israel Jeremiah was the voice crying in the
wilderness of national ruin; it is natural to suppose
that he too was the poet who poured out sad thoughts
of memory in song at a later time when sorrow had
leisure for reflection. His prophecies would lead us
to conclude that no Jew of those dark days could have
experienced keener pangs of grief at the incomparable
woes of his nation. He was the very incarnation of
patriotic mourning. Who then would be more likely
to have produced the national lament? Here we seem
to meet again none other than the man who exclaimed,
"Oh that I could comfort myself against sorrow! my
heart is faint within me"Jer. viii. 18.
and again, "Oh that my
head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears,
that I might weep day and night for the slain of the
daughter of my people."Jer. ix. 1.
Many points of resemblance
between the known writings of Jeremiah and these poems
may be detected. Thus Jeremiah's "Virgin daughter"
of God's people reappears as the "Virgin daughter of
Judah." In both the writer is oppressed with fear
as well as grief; in both he especially denounces clerical
vices, the sins of the two rival lines of religious leaders,
the priests and the prophets; in both he appeals to
God for retribution. There is a remarkable likeness in
tone and temper throughout between the two series
of writings. It would be possible to adduce many
purely verbal marks of similarity; the commentator on
Lamentations most frequently illustrates the meaning
of a word by referring to a parallel usage in Jeremiah.
On the other hand, several facts raise difficulties in
the way of our accepting of the hypothesis of a common
authorship. The verbal argument is precarious
at best; it can only be fully appreciated by the specialist,
and if accepted by the general reader, it must be taken
on faith. Of course this last point is no valid objection
to the real worth of the argument in itself; it cannot
be maintained that nothing is true which may not be
reduced to the level of the meanest intelligence, or
the "differential calculus" would be a baseless fable.
But when the specialists disagree, even the uninitiated
have some excuse for holding the case to be not
proved for either side; and it is thus with the resemblances
and the differences between Jeremiah and
Lamentations, long lists of phrases used in common
being balanced with equally long lists of peculiarities
found in one only of the two books in question. The
strongest objection to the theory that Jeremiah was
the author of the Lamentations, however, is one that
can be more readily grasped. These poems are most
elaborately artistic in form, not to say artificial. Now
the objection which is roused by that fact is not simply
due to the loose and less shapely construction of the
prophecies; for it may justly be urged that the literary
designs entertained by the prophet in the leisure of his
later years may have led him to cultivate a style which
would have been quite unsuitable for his practical
preaching or for the political pamphlets he used to fling
off in the heat of conflict. It originates in deeper
psychological contradictions. Is it possible that the
man who had shed bitterest tears, as from his very
heart, in the dismal reality of misery, could play with
his troubles in fanciful acrostics? Can we imagine
a leading actor in the tragedy turning the events
through which he had passed into materials for æsthetic
treatment? Can we credit this of so intense a soul
as Jeremiah? The composition of In Memoriam may
be cited as an instance of the production of highly
artistic poetry under the influence of keen personal
sorrow. But the case is not parallel; for Tennyson
was a passive mourner over the loss of a friend under
circumstances with which he had no connection, while
Jeremiah had contended strenuously for years on the
field of action. Could a man with such a history have
set himself to work up its most doleful experiences into
the embroidery of a peculiarly artificial form of versification?
That is the gravest difficulty. Other objections
of minor weight follow. In the third elegy
Jeremiah would seem to be giving more prominence to
his own personality than we should have expected of
the brave, unselfish prophet. In the fourth the writer
appears to associate himself with those Jews who were
disappointed in expecting deliverance from an Egyptian
alliance, when he complains—
"Our eyes do yet fail in looking for our vain help:
In watching we have watched for a nation that could not save."iv. 17.
Would Jeremiah, who bade the Jews bow to the scourge
of Jehovah's chastisement and look for no earthly deliverer,
thus confess participation in the worldly policy
which he, in common with all the true prophets, had
denounced as faithless and disobedient? Then, while
sharing Jeremiah's condemnation of the priests and
prophets, the writer appears to have only commiseration
for the fate of the poor weak king Zedekiah.iv. 20.
This is
very different from Jeremiah's treatment of him.Jer. lii. 2, 3.
It is not a serious objection that our poet says of
Zion,
"Yea, her prophets find no vision from the Lord,"ii. 9.
while we know that Jeremiah had visions after the
destruction of Jerusalem,E.g. Jer. xlii. 7.
because the general condition
may still have been one characterised by the
silencing of the many prophets with whose oracles the
Jews had been accustomed to solace themselves in view
of threatened calamities; nor that he exclaims,
"Shall the priest and the prophet be slain in the sanctuary of the Lord?"ii. 20.
although Jeremiah makes no mention of this twofold
assassination, because we have no justification for the
assumption that he recorded every horror of the great
tragedy; nor, again, that the author is evidently familiar
with the Book of Deuteronomy, and refers frequently
to the "Song of Moses" in particular, for this is
just what we might have expected of Jeremiah; and yet
these and other similar but even less conclusive points
have been brought forward as difficulties. Perhaps
it is a more perplexing in view of the traditional
hypothesis, that the poet appears to have made use
of the writings of Ezekiel. Thus the allusion to the
prophets who have "seen visions ... of vanity and foolishness,"ii. 14.
points to the fuller description of these men
in the writings of the prophet of the exile, where the
completeness of the picture shews that the priority is
with Ezekiel.E.g. Ezek. xii. 24, xiii. 6, 7, xxii. 28.
Similarly the "perfection of beauty"
ascribed to the daughter of Jerusalem in the second
elegyLam. ii. 15.
reminds us of the similar phrase that occurs
more than once in Ezekiel.Ezek. xxvii. 3, xxviii. 12.
Still, that prophet wrote
before the time to which the Lamentations introduce
us, and it cannot be affirmed that Jeremiah could not
have seen his writings, or would not have condescended
to echo a phrase from them. A difficulty of a broader
character must be felt in the fact that the poems themselves
give us no hint of Jeremiah. The appearance
of the five elegies in the Hagiographa without any
introductory notice is a grave objection to the theory
of a Jeremiah authorship. If so famous a prophet
had composed them, would not this have been recorded?
Even in the Septuagint, where they are
associated with Jeremiah, they are not translated by
the same hand as the version of the prophet's acknowledged
works. It may be that none of the objections
which have been adduced against the later tradition
can be called final; nor when regarded in their total
force do they absolutely forbid the possibility that
Jeremiah was the author of the Lamentations. But
then the question is not so much one of possibility as
one of probability. We must remember that we are
dealing with anonymous poems that make no claim
upon any particular author, and that we have no pleas
whatever, special or more general, on which to defend
the guesses of a much later and quite uncritical age,
when people cultivated a habit of attaching every shred
of literature that had come down from their ancestors
to some famous name.
Failing Jeremiah, it is not possible to hit upon any
other known person with the least assurance. Some
have followed Bunsen in his conjecture that Baruch
the scribe may have been the author of the poems.
Others have suggested a member of the family of
Shaphan, in which Jeremiah found his most loyal
friends.See Jer. xxvi. 24, xxix. 3ff, xl. 5.
It is much questioned whether the five elegies are
the work of one man. The second, the third, and
the fourth follow a slightly different alphabetical
arrangement from that which is employed in the first—in
reversing the order of two letters,ע
and פ.
while the internal
structure of the verses in the third shews another
variation—the threefold repetition of the acrostic.
Then the personality of the poet emerges more distinctly
in the third elegy as the centre of interest—a
marked contrast to the method of the other
poems. Lastly, the fifth differs from its predecessors in
several respects. Its lines are shorter; it is not an
acrostic; it is chiefly devoted to the insults heaped
upon the Jews by their enemies; and it seems to
belong to a later time, for while the four previous
poems treat of the siege of Jerusalem and its accompanying
troubles, this one is concerned with the
subsequent state of servitude, and reflects on the ruin
of the nation across some interval of time. Thus the
poet cries—
"Wherefore doest thou forget us for ever,
And forsake us so long time?"v. 20.
A recent attempt to assign the last two elegies to the
age of the Maccabees has entirely broken down. The
points of agreement with that age which have been
adduced will fit the Babylonian period equally well,
and the most significant marks of the later time are
entirely absent. Is it conceivable that a description
of the persecution by Antiochus Epiphanes would contain
no hint of the martyr fidelity of the devout Jews
to their law which was so gloriously maintained under
the Maccabees? The fourth and fifth elegies are as
completely silent on this subject as the earlier elegies.
The evidence that points to any diversity of authorship
is very feeble. The fifth elegy may have been
written years later than the rest of the book, and yet it
may have come from the same source, for the example
of Tennyson shews that the gift of poetry is not always
confined to but a brief interval in the poet life. The
other distinctions are not nearly so marked as some
that may be observed in the recognised poems of a single
author—for example, the amazing differences between
the smooth style of The Idylls of the King and the quaint
dialect of The Northern Farmer. Though some differences
of vocabulary have been discovered, the resemblances
between all the five poems are much more
striking. In motive and spirit and feeling they are
perfectly agreed. While therefore in our ignorance
of the origin of the Lamentations, and in recognition
of the variations that have been indicated, we cannot
deny that they may have been collected from the
utterances of two or even three inspired souls, neither
are we by any means forced to assent to this opinion;
and under these circumstances it will be justifiable as
well as convenient to refer to the authorship of Lamentations
in terms expressive of a single individual. One
thing is fairly certain. The author was a contemporary,
an eye-witness of the frightful calamities he bewailed.
With all their artificiality of structure these elegies are
the outpourings of a heart moved by a near vision of
the scenes of the Babylonian invasion. The swift,
vivid pictures of the siege and its accompanying
miseries force upon our minds the conclusion that the
poet must have moved in the thick of the events he
narrates so graphically, although, unlike Jeremiah, he
does not seem to have been a leading actor in them.
Children cry to their mothers for bread, and faint
with hunger at every street corner; the ghastly
rumour goes forth that a mother has boiled her baby;
elders sit on the ground in silence; young maidens
hang their heads despairing; princes tremble in their
helplessness; the enemy break through the walls,
carry havoc into the city, insolently trample the sacred
courts of the temple; even the priest and the prophet
do not escape in the indiscriminate carnage; wounded
people are seen, with blood upon their garments,
wandering aimlessly like blind men; the temple is
destroyed, its rich gold bedimmed with smoke, and
the city herself left waste and desolate, while the
exultant victors pour ridicule over the misery of their
prey. A later generation would have blurred the outline
of these scenes, regarding them through the shifting
mists of rumour, with more or less indistinctness.
Besides, the motive for the composition of such elegies
would vanish with the lapse of time. Still some few
years must be allowed for the patriot's brooding over
the scenes he had witnessed, until the memory of them
had mellowed sufficiently for them to become the
subjects of song. The fifth elegy, at all events, implies
a considerable interval. Jerusalem was destroyed
in the year B.C. 587; therefore we may safely date the
poems from about B.C. 550 onwards—i.e., at some time
during the second half of the sixth century. What is
of more moment for us to know is that we have here
no falsetto notes, such as we may sometimes detect in
Virgil's exquisite descriptions of the siege of Troy, for
the poet has witnessed the fiery ordeal the recollection
of which now inspires his song. Thus out of the
unequalled woes of Jerusalem destroyed he has provided
for all ages the typical, divinely inspired expression
of sorrow—primarily the expression of sorrow—and
then associated with this some pregnant hints both
of its dark relationship to sin and of its higher connection
with the purposes of God.
CHAPTER III
THE THEME
No more pathetic subject ever inspired a poet than
that which became the theme of the Lamentations.
Wave after wave of invasion had swept over Jerusalem,
until at length the miserable city had been reduced to
a heap of ruins. After the decisive defeat of the
Egyptians at the great battle of Carchemish during the
reign of Jehoiakim, Nebuchadnezzar broke into Jerusalem
and carried off some of the sacred vessels from the
temple, leaving a disorganised country at the mercy of
the wild tribes of Bedouin from beyond the Jordan.
Three months after the accession of Jehoiakin, the son
of Jehoiakim, the Chaldæans again visited the city,
pillaged the temple and the royal palace, and sent the
first band of captives, consisting of the very élite of the
citizens, with Ezekiel among them, into captivity at
Babylon. This was only the beginning of troubles.
Zedekiah, who was set up as a mere vassal king,
intrigued with Pharaoh Hophra, a piece of folly which
called down upon himself and his people the savage
vengeance of Nebuchadnezzar. Jerusalem now suffered
all the horrors of a siege, which lasted for a year and a
half. Famine and pestilence preyed upon the inhabitants;
and yet the Jews were holding out with a stubborn
resistance, when the invaders effected an entrance
by night, and were encamped in the temple court before
the astonished king was aware of their presence. Zedekiah
then imitated the secrecy of his enemies. With a
band of followers he crept out of one of the eastern
gates, and fled down the defile towards the Jordan;
but he was overtaken near Jericho, and conveyed a
prisoner to Riblah; his sons were killed in his very
presence, his eyes were burnt out, and the wretched
man sent in chains to Babylon. The outrages perpetrated
against the citizens at Jerusalem as well as the
sufferings of the fugitives were such as are only possible
in barbarous warfare. Finally the city was razed to
the ground and her famous temple burnt.
The Lamentations bewail the fall of a city. In this
respect they are unlike the normal type of elegiac poetry.
As a rule, the elegy is personal in character and individualistic,
mourning the untimely death of some one
beloved friend of the writer. It is the revelation of a
private grief, although with a poet's privilege its author
calls upon his readers to share his sorrow. In the
classic model of this order of verse Milton justifies the
intrusion of his distress upon the peace of nature by
exclaiming—
"For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime,
Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer.
Who would not sing for Lycidas?"
And Shelley, while treating his theme in an ethereal,
fantastic way, still represents Alastor, the Spirit of
Solitude, in the person of one who has just died, when
he cries—
"But thou art fled,
Like some frail exhalation which the dawn
Robes in its golden beams,—ah! thou hast fled!
The brave, the gentle, and the beautiful,
The child of grace and genius."
Gray's well-known elegy, it is true, is not confined to
the fate of a single individual; the churchyard suggests
the pathetic reflections of the poet on the imaginary
lives and characters of many past inhabitants of the
village. Nevertheless these cross the stage one by one;
the village itself has not been destroyed, like Goldsmith's
"Sweet Auburn." Jeremiah's lamentation on the death
of Josiah must have been a personal elegy; so was the
scornful lament over the king of Babylon in Isaiah.
But now we have a different kind of subject in the Book
of Lamentations. Here it is the fate of Jerusalem, the
fate of the city itself as well as that of its citizens, that
is deplored. To rouse the imagination and awaken the
sympathy of the reader Zion is personified, and thus
the poetry is assimilated in form to the normal elegy.
Still it is important for us to take note of this distinguishing
trait of the Lamentations; they bewail the
ruin of a city.
Poetry inspired with this intention must acquire a
certain breadth not found in more personal effusions.
Too much indulgence in private grief cannot but produce
a narrowing effect upon the mind. Intense pain is as
selfish as intense pleasure. We may mourn our dead
until we have no room left in our sympathies for the
great ocean of troubles among the living that surges
round the little island of our personal interests.
This misfortune is escaped in the Lamentations.
Close as is the poet's relations with the home of his
childhood, there is still some approach to altruism in
his lament over the desolation of Jerusalem viewed as
a whole, rather than over the death of his immediate
friends alone. There is a largeness, too, in it. We
find it difficult to recover the ancient feeling for the
city. Our more important towns are so huge and
shapeless that the inhabitants fail to grasp the unity,
the wholeness of the wilderness of streets and houses;
and yet they so effectually overshadow the smaller
towns that these places do not venture to assume much
civic pride. Besides, one general tendency of modern
life is individualistic. Even the more recent attempts
to rouse interest in comprehensive social questions are
conceived in a spirit of sympathy for the individual
rights and needs of the people, and do not spring from
any great concern for the prosperity of the corporation
as such. No doubt this is an indication of a movement
in a right direction. The old civic idea was too
abstract; it sacrificed the citizens to the city, beautifying
the public buildings in the most costly manner,
while the people were crowded in miserable dens to
rot and die unseen and unpitied. We substitute
sanitation for splendour. This is more sensible, more
practical, more humane, if it is more prosaic; for life
is something else than poetry. Still it may be worth
while asking whether in aiming at a useful, homely
object it is so essential to abandon the old ideal
altogether, because it cannot be denied that the price
we pay is seen in a certain dinginess and commonness
of living. Is it necessary that philanthropy should
always remain Philistine?
The largeness of view which breaks upon us when
we begin to think of the city as a whole rather than
only of a number of isolated individuals is more than
a perception of mass and magnitude. The city is an
organism; and not like an animal of the lower orders,
such as the anelids or centipedes, in which every
segment is simply a replica of its neighbour, it is an
organism maintained in efficiency by means of a great
variety of mutual ministeries. Thus it is a unit in
itself more elaborately differentiated, and therefore in a
sense higher in the scale of being than its constituent
elements, the individual inhabitants. The destruction
of a city constituted in this way is a serious loss to
the world. Even if no one inhabitant is killed, and
quite apart from the waste of property and the ruin
of commerce, the dissolution of the organism leaves
a tremendous gap. The scattered people may acquire
a new prosperity in the land of their exile, but
still the city will have vanished. The Jews survived
the destruction of Jerusalem; yet who shall
estimate the loss that this destruction of their national
capital involved?
Then the city being a definite organic unit has its
own history, a history which is immensely more than
the sum of the biographies of its inhabitants—stretching
down from remote ages, and joining the distant
past with present days. Here, then, time adds to the
largeness of the city idea. The brevity of life seems
to assign a petty part to the individual. But that
brevity vanishes in the long, continuous story of an
ancient city. A man may well be proud of his connection
with such a record, unless it be one of
wickedness and shame; and even in that case his
relations to a great city deepen and widen his life,
though the result may be, as it was with the devout
Jew, to induce grief and humiliation. But Jerusalem
had her records of glory as well as her tales of shame.
The city of David and Solomon held garnered stores
of legend and history, in the rich memories of which
each of her children had a heritage. The overthrow of
Jerusalem was the dissipation of a great inheritance.
And this is not all. The city has its own peculiar
character—a character which is not only more than
a summary of the morals and manners of the men and
women who live in it, but also unique when compared
with other cities. Every city that can boast of real
civic life has its distinctive individuality; and often this
is as striking as the individuality of any private person.
Birmingham is very unlike Manchester; nobody could
mistake Glasgow for Edinburgh. London, Paris,
Berlin, Rome, Melbourne, New York—each of these
cities is unique. The particular city may be said to be
the only specimen of its kind. If one is blotted out
the type is lost; there is no duplicate. Athens and
Sparta, Rome and Carthage, Florence and Venice, were
rivals which could never take the place of one another.
Most assuredly Jerusalem stood alone, stamped with
a character which no other place in the world approached,
and charged with a perfectly unique mission.
For such a city to vanish off the face of the earth was
the impoverishment of the world in the loss of what
no nation in all the four continents could ever supply.
In saying this we must be careful to avoid the
anachronism of reading into the present situation the
after history of the sacred city and the character therein
evolved. In the days before the exile Jerusalem was
not the holy place that Ezra and Nehemiah subsequently
laboured to make of it. Still looking back
across the centuries we can see what perhaps the
contemporaries could not discover, that the peculiar
destiny of Jerusalem was already shaping itself in history.
At the time, to the patriotic devotion of the
mourning Jews, she was their old home, the happy
dwelling-place of their childhood, the shrine of their
fathers' sepulchres—Nehemiah's thought about the city
even at a later date;Neh. ii. 3.
in a word, the ancient centre
of national life and union, strength and glory. But
another and a higher meaning was beginning to gather
about the word Jerusalem, a meaning which has come
in course of time to give this city a place quite
solitary and unrivalled in all history. Jerusalem is
now revered as the religious centre of the world's
life. Even in this early age she was beginning to
earn her lofty character. Josiah's reformation had so
far succeeded that the temple of Solomon had been
pronounced the centre of the worship of Jehovah.
Then these elegies bear witness to the importance of
the national festivals, which were all held at the capital,
and which were all of a religious nature. It is impossible
to conjecture what would have been the course
of the religious history of the world if Jerusalem had
been blotted out for ever at this period of the life of
the city. More than five centuries later Jesus Christ
declared that the time had come when neither at the
Samaritan mountain nor at Jerusalem should men
worship the Father, because God is spirit and can only
be worshipped in spirit and in truth. Thus the possibility
of this spiritual worship which was independent
of the sanctity of any place was a question of time.
The time for it had only just arrived when our Lord
made His great declaration. Of course the calendar
could not rule this matter; it was not essentially an
affair of dates. But the world required all those intervening
ages to ripen into fitness for the lofty act of
purely spiritual worship; and even then the great
advance was not made by a process of simple development.
It was necessary for Christ to come, both to
reveal the higher nature of worship by revealing the
higher nature of Him who was the object of worship,
and also to bestow the spiritual grace through which
men and women could practise the true worship.
Therefore these very words of our Lord which proclaim
the absolute spirituality of worship for those who have
attained to His teaching most plainly imply that such
worship must have been beyond the reach of average
people, at all events, in earlier ages. Jerusalem, then,
was needed to serve as the cradle of the religion
revealed through her prophets. When her wings had
grown religion could dispense with the nest; but in
her unfledged condition the destruction of the local
shelter threatened the death of the broodling.
There is a hopeful side to these reflections. A city
with such a character may be said to bear the seeds of
her own revival. Her individuality has that within
it which fights against extinction. To put it another
way, the idea of the city is too marked and too attractive
for its privileged custodians to let it fade out of
their minds, or to rest satisfied without attempting once
more to have it realised in visible form. Carthage
might perish; for Carthage had few graces wherewith
to stir the enthusiasm of her citizens. Rome, on the
other hand, had developed a character and a corresponding
destiny of her own; and therefore she could
not be blotted out by savage Huns or Vandal hosts.
The genius for government, unapproached by any other
city, could not be suppressed by the worst ravages of
the invader. Even when political supremacy had passed
away in consequence of the vices and weakness of the
degenerate citizens, the power that had ruled the world
simply took another shape and ruled the Church, the
supremacy of Rome in the papacy succeeding to the
supremacy of Rome in the empire. So was it with
Jerusalem. There was immortality in this wonderful
city.
We may look at the subject from two points of view.
First, faith in God encourages the hope that such a
destiny as is here foreshadowed should not be allowed
to fail. So felt the prophets who were permitted to
read the counsels of God by inspired insight into the
eternal principles of His nature. These men were sure
that Jerusalem must rise again from her ashes because
they knew for a certainty that her Lord would not let
His purposes concerning her be frustrated.
Then even with the limited vision which is all that
can be attained from the lower platform of historical
criticism, we may see that Jerusalem had acquired such
an immortal place in the estimation of the Jews, that
the people must have clung to the idea of a restoration
till it was realised. To say this is to shew that
the realisation could not but be accomplished. Such
passionate regrets as those of the Lamentations are
seeds of hope.
May we go one step further? Is not every true and
deep regret a prophecy of restoration? There is an
irrecoverable past, it must be owned. That is to say,
the days that are gone cannot return, nor can deeds
once done ever be undone; the future will never be an
exact repetition of the past. But all this does not
forbid the assurance that there may be genuine restoration.
Jerusalem restored was very unlike the
city whose fate the elegist bewailed; nevertheless she
was restored, and that with her essential characteristics
more pronounced than ever. Henceforth she was to
be most completely what her earlier history had only
faintly adumbrated—the typical seat of religion. Thus,
though the Lamentations are not at all cheering or
prophetic in tone, or even in intention, but the very
reverse, wholly mournful and despondent, we may
still detect, in the very intensity and persistence of the
sorrow they portray, gleams of hope for better days.
There is no hope in stolid indifference; it is in the
penitent's tears that we discover the prospect of his
amendment. Repentance weeps for the past, but at
the same time it looks forward with a changed mind
that is the promise of better things to come. Why
should not we apply these ideas that spring from a
consideration of the five Hebrew elegies to other
elegies—to the dirges that mourn the loved and dead?
If we could willingly let the departed drop out of
thought we might have little ground for believing we
should ever see them again. But sorrow for the dead
immortalises them in memory. In a materialistic view
of the universe that might mean nothing but the perpetuity
of a sentiment. But then it may by itself help
us to perceive the superficiality, the utter falseness of
such a view. Thus Tennyson sees the answer to the
crushing doubts of materialism and the assurance of
immortality for the departed in the strength of the love
with which they are cherished:
"What is it all if we all of us end but in being our own corpse coffins at last,
Swallowed in Vastness, lost in Silence, drowned in the deeps of a meaningless Past!
What but a murmur of gnats in the gloom, or a moment's anger of bees in their hive?
. . . .
. . . .
Peace, let it be! for I loved him, and love him for ever. The dead are not dead, but alive."
CHAPTER IV
DESOLATION
i. 1-7.
The first elegy is devoted to moving pictures of
the desolation of Jerusalem and the sufferings of
her people. It dwells upon these disasters themselves,
with fewer references to the causes of them or the hope
of any remedy than are to be found in the subsequent
poems, simply to express the misery of the whole story.
Thus it is in the truest sense of the word a "Lamentation."
It naturally divides itself into two parts—one
with the poet speaking in his own person,i. 1-11.
the other
representing the deserted city herself appealing to
passing strangers and neighbouring nations, and lastly
to God, to take note of her woes.i. 12-22.
The poem opens with a very beautiful passage
in which we have a comparison of Jerusalem to a
widow bereft of her children, sitting solitary in the
night, weeping sorely. It would not be just to read
into the image of widowhood ideas collected from
utterances of the prophets about the wedded union of
Israel and her Lord; we have no hint of anything
of the sort here. Apparently the image is selected in
order to express the more vividly the utter lonesomeness
of the city. It is clear that the attribute "solitary"
has no bearing on the external relations of
Jerusalem—her isolation among the Syrian hills, or the
desertion of her allies, mentioned a little later;i. 2.
it
points to a more ghostly solitude, streets without traffic,
tenantless houses. The widow is solitary because she
has been robbed of her children. And in this, her
desolation, she sits. The attitude, so simple and natural
and easy under ordinary circumstances, here suggests
a settled continuance of wretchedness; it is helpless
and hopeless. The first wild agony of the severance
of the closest natural ties has passed, and with it the
stimulus of conflict; now there has supervened the
dull monotony of despair. This is the lowest depth
of misery, because it allows leisure when leisure is least
welcome, because it gives the reins to the imagination to
roam over regions of heart-rending memory or sombre
apprehension, above all because there is nothing to
be done, so that the whole range of consciousness is
abandoned to pain. Many a sufferer has been saved
by the healing ministry of active duties, sometimes
resented as an intrusion. It is a fearful thing simply
to sit in sorrow.
The mourner sits in the night, while the world
around lies in the peace of sleep. The darkness has
fallen, yet she does not stir, for day and night are
alike to her—both dark. She is statuesque in sorrow,
petrified by pain, and yet unhappily not dead; benumbed,
but alive in every sensitive fibre of her being
and terribly awake. In this dread night of misery her
one occupation is weeping. The mourner knows how
the hidden fountains of tears which have been sealed
to the world for the day will break out in the silent
solitude of night; then the bravest will "wet his couch
with his tears." The forlorn woman "weepeth sore";
to use the expressive Hebraism, "weeping she weepeth."
"Her tears are on her cheeks"; they are continually
flowing; she has no thought of drying them;
there is no one else to wipe them away. This is not
the frantic torrent of youthful tears, soon to be forgotten
in sudden sunshine, like a spring shower; it
is the dreary winter rain, falling more silently, but
from leaden clouds that never break. The Hebrew
poet's picture is illustrated with singular aptness by a
Roman coin, struck off in commemoration of the destruction
of Jerusalem by the army of Titus, which
represents a woman seated under a palm tree with the
legend Judæa capta. Is it too much to imagine that
some Greek artist attached to the court of Vespasian
may have borrowed the idea for the coin from the
Septuagint version of this very passage?
The woe of Jerusalem is intensified by reason of its
contrast with the previous splendour of the proud city.
She had not always appeared as a lonely widow.
Formerly she had held a high place among the neighbouring
nations—for did she not cherish memories of
the great days of her shepherd king and Solomon the
magnificent? Then she ruled provinces; now she is
herself tributary. She had lovers in the old times—a
fact which points to faults of character not further
pursued at present. How opposite is the utterly deserted
state into which she is now sunk! This thought of a
tremendous fall gives the greatest force to the portrait.
It is Rembrandtesque; the black shadows on the foreground
are the deeper because they stand sharply out
against the brilliant radiance that streams in from the
sunset of the past. The pitiableness of the comfortless
present lies in this, that there had been lovers whose
consolations would now have been a solace; the bitterness
of the enmity now experienced is its having been
distilled from the dregs of poisoned friendship. Against
the protests of her faithful prophets Jerusalem had
courted alliance with her heathen neighbours, only to
be cruelly deserted in her hour of need. It is the
old story of friendship with the world, keenly accentuated
in the life of Israel, because this favoured people
had already seen glimpses of a rich, rare privilege,
the friendship of Heaven. This is the irony of the
situation; it is the tragic irony of all Hebrew history.
Why were these people so blindly infatuated that they
would be perpetually forsaking the living waters, and
hewing out to themselves broken cisterns that could
hold no water? The question is only surpassed by
that of the similar folly on the part of those of us who
follow their example in spite of the warning their fate
affords, failing to see that true friendship is too exacting
for ties spun from mere convenience or superficial
pleasantness to bear the strain of its more serious
claims.
Passing on from the poetic image to a more direct
view of the drear facts of the case, the author describes
the hardships of the fugitives—people who had fled to
Egypt, the retreat of Jeremiah and his companions.
This must be the bearing of the passage which our
translators render—
"Judah is gone into captivity because of affliction, and because of great servitude."
For if the topic were the captivity at Babylon it would
be difficult to see how "affliction" and "great servitude"
could be treated as the causes of that disaster; were
they not rather its effects? Two solutions of this
difficulty have been proposed. It has been suggested
that the captivity is here presented as a consequence
of the misconduct of the Jews in oppressing peoples
subject to them. But the abstract words will not
readily bear any such meaning; we should have expected
some more explicit charge. Then it has been
proposed to read the words "out of affliction," etc., in
place of the phrase "because of affliction," etc., as
though in escaping from trouble at home the Jews had
only passed into a new misfortune abroad. This is not
so simple an explanation of the poet's language as that
at which we arrive by the perfectly legitimate substitution
of the word "exile" for "captivity." It may
seem strange that the statement should be affirmed of
"Judah," as though the whole nation had escaped to
Egypt; but it would be equally inexact to say that
"Judah" was carried captive to Babylon, seeing that
only a selection from the upper classes was deported,
while the majority of the people was probably left in
the land. But so many of the Jews, especially those
best known to the poet, were in voluntary exile, that it
was quite natural for him to regard them as virtually
the nation. Now upon these refugees three troubles
fall. First, the asylum is a heathen country, abominable
to pious Israelites. Second, even here the fugitives
have no rest; they are not allowed to settle down; they
are perpetually molested. Third, on the way thither
they are harassed by the enemy. They are overtaken
by pursuers "within the straits," a statement which
may be read literally; bands of Chaldæans would hover
about the mountains, ready to pounce upon the disorganised
groups of fugitives as they made their way
through the narrow defiles that led out of the hill
country to the southern plains. But the phrase is a
familiar Hebraism for difficulties generally. No doubt
it was true of the Jews in this larger sense that their
opponents took advantage of their straitened circumstances
to vex them in every possible way. This is
just in accordance with the common experience of
mankind all the world over. But while the fact of the
experience is obvious, the inference to which it points
like an arrow is obstinately eluded. Thus a commercial
man in financial straits loses his credit at the very
moment when he most needs it. We cannot say that
this is a proof of spite, or even a sign of cynical indifference;
because the needy person is really most untrustworthy,
though his moral integrity may be unshaken,
seeing that his circumstances make it probable that he
will be unable to fulfil his obligations. But now it is
the deeper significance of this fact that is so persistently
ignored. There is perceptible at times in nature a law
of compensation by the operation of which misfortune
is mitigated; but that merciful law is frequently thwarted
by the overbearing influence of the terrible law of the
"survival of the fittest," the gospel of the fortunate,
but the death-knell for all failures. If this is so in
nature, much more does it obtain in human society so
long as selfish greed is unchecked by higher principles.
Then the world, the Godless world, can be no asylum
for the miserable and unfortunate, because it will be
hard upon them in exact proportion to the extremity
of their necessities. Moreover, the perception that this
bitter truth is not a fruit of temporary passions which
may be restrained by education, but the outcome of
certain persistent principles which cannot be set aside
while society retains its present constitution, gives to it
the adamantine strength of destiny.x
Coming nearer to the city in his mental vision, the
poet next bewails deserted roads; "those ways of Zion"
up which the holiday folks used to troop, clad in gay
garments, with songs of rejoicing, are left so lonely
that it seems as though they themselves must be mourning.
It is in keeping with the imagery of these poems
which personify the city, to endow the very roads
with fancied consciousness. This is a natural result
of intense emotion, and therefore a witness to its
very intensity. It seems as though the very earth
must share in the feelings of the man whose heart is
stirred to its depths; as though all things must be filled
with the passion the waves of which flow out to the
horizon of his consciousness, till the very stones cry
out.
As he approaches the city, the poet is struck with
a strange, sad sight. There are no people about the
gates; yet here, if anywhere, we should expect to meet
not only travellers passing through, but also groups of
men, merchants at their traffic, arbitrators settling disputes,
friends exchanging confidences, idlers lounging
about and chewing the cud of the latest gossip, beggars
winning for alms; for by the gates are markets, al fresco
tribunals, open spaces for public meetings. Formerly
the life of the city was here concentrated; now no trace
of life is to be seen even at these social ganglia. The
desertion and silence of the gateways gives a shock of
distress to the visitor on entering the ruined city.
More disappointments await him within the walls. Still
keeping in mind the idea of the national festivals, and
accompanying the course of them in imagination, the
poet goes up to the temple. No services are proceeding;
any priests who may be found still haunting the
precincts of the charred ruins can only sigh over their
enforced idleness; the girl-choristers whose voices
would ring through the porticoes in the old times, are
silent and desolate, for their mother, Jerusalem, is herself
"in bitterness."
In this part of the elegy our attention is directed to
the cessation of the happy national assemblies with
their accompaniment of public worship in songs of praise
for harvest and vintage and in the awful symbolism of
the altar. The name "Zion" was associated with two
things, festivity and worship. It was a happy privilege
for Israel to have had the inspired insight as well as the
courage of faith to realise the conjunction. Even with
the fuller light and larger liberty of Christianity it is
rarely acknowledged among us. Our services have too
much of the funeral dirge about them. The devout
Israelite reserved his dirge for the death of his worship.
It does not seem to have occurred to the poet that
anybody could come to regard worship as an irksome
duty from which he would gladly be liberated. Are we,
then, to suppose that the Israelites who practised the
crude cult that was prevalent before the Exile, even
among the true servants of Jehovah, were indeed more
devout than Christians who enjoy the privileges of their
richer revelation? Scarcely so; for it must be remembered
that we are called to a more spiritual and therefore
a more difficult worship. Inward sincerity is here
of supreme importance; if this is missing there is no
worship, and without it the miserable unreality becomes
inexpressibly wearisome. No doubt it is the failure to
reach the rare altitude of its lofty ideal that makes
Christian worship to appear in the eyes of many to be a
melancholy performance. But this explanation should
not be permitted to obscure the fact that true, living,
spiritual worship must be a very delightful exercise
of the soul. Perhaps one reason why this truth is
not sufficiently appreciated may be found in the very
facility with which the outward means of worship are
presented to us. People who are seldom out of the
sound of church bells are inclined to grow deaf to
their significance. The Roman Christian hunted in the
catacombs, the Waldensian hiding in his mountain
cave, the Covenanter meeting his fellow members of
the kirk in a remote highland glen, the backwoodsman
walking fifty miles to attend Divine service once in six
months, are led by difficulty and deprivation to perceive
the value of public worship in a degree which is surprising
to people among whom it is merely an incident
of every-day life. When Zion was in ashes the memory
of her festivals was encircled with a halo of regret.
In accordance with the principle of construction
which he follows throughout—the heightening of the
effect of the picture by presenting a succession of contrasts—the
poet next sets the prosperity of the enemies
of Jerusalem in close juxtaposition to the misery of those
of her people in whom it is most pitiable and startling,
the children and the princes. Men with any heart in
them would wish above all things that the innocent
young members of their families should be spared; yet
the captives carried off to Babylon consisted principally
of boys and girls torn from their homes, conveyed hundreds
of miles across the desert, many of them dragged
down to hideous degradation by the vices that luxuriated
in the corrupt empire of the Euphrates. The other
class of victims specially commented on is that of the
princes. Not only is the present humiliation of the
nobility in sharp contrast to their former elevation of
rank, and therefore their sufferings the more acute, but
it is also to be observed that their old position of leadership
has been completely reversed. The reference must
be to Zedekiah and his courtiers.Jer. xxxix. 4, 5.
These proud princes
who formerly exercised command over the multitude
have become a shameful flock of fugitives. In the
expressive image of the poet, they are compared to
"harts that find no pasture"; they are like fleet wild
deer, so cowed by hunger that they meekly permit
themselves to be driven by their enemies just as if
they were a herd of tame cattle.
In the middle of this comparison between the success
of the conquerors and the fate of their victims the poet
inserts a pregnant sentence which suddenly carries us
off to regions of far more profound reflection, touching
upon the two sources of the ruin of Jerusalem that lie
behind the visible hand of Nebuchadnezzar and his
hosts, her own sin and the consequent wrath of her
God. It flashes out as a momentary thought, and then
retires with equal suddenness, permitting the previous
current of reflections to be resumed as though unaffected
by the startling interruption. This thought will reappear,
however, with increasing fulness, shewing that
it is always present to the mind of the poet and ready
to come to the surface at any moment, even when it
would seem to be inappropriate, although it can never
be really inappropriate, because it is the key to the
mystery of the whole tragedy.
Lastly, while the sense of a strong contrast is excited
objectively by a comparison of the placid security of
the invaders with the degradation of the fugitives,
subjectively it is most vividly realised by the sufferers
themselves when they call to mind their former happiness.
Jerusalem is supposed to fall into a reverie in
which she follows the recollection of the whole series
of her pleasant experiences from far-off bygone times
through an the succeeding ages flown to the present
era of calamities. This is to indulge in the pains of
memory—pains which are decidedly more acute than
the corresponding pleasures celebrated by Samuel
Rogers. These pains are doubly intense owing to
the inevitable fact that the contrast is unnaturally
strained. Viewed in the softened lights of memory,
the past is strangely simplified, its mixed character
is forgotten, and many of its unpleasant features
are smoothed out, so that an idyllic charm hovers
over the dream, and lends it an unearthly beauty. This
is why so many people foolishly damp the hopes of
children, who, if they are healthily constituted, ought
to be anticipating the future with eagerness, by solemnly
exhorting them to make hay while the sun shines, with
the gloomy warning that the sunny season must soon
pass. Their application of the motto carpe diem is not
only pagan in spirit; it is founded on an illusion.
Happily there is some unreality about most of our
yearning regrets for the days that have gone. That
sweet, fair past was not so radiant as its effigy in the
dreamland of memory now appears to be; nor is the
hard present so free from mitigating circumstances as
we suppose. And yet, when all is said, we cannot find
the consolation we hunger after in hours of darkness
among bare conclusions of common-sense. The grave
is not an illusion, at least when only viewed in the
light of the past though even this chill, earthy reality
begins to melt into a shadow immediately the light of
the eternal future falls upon it. The melancholy that
laments the lost past can only be perfectly mastered
by that Christian grace, the hope which presses forward
to a better future.
CHAPTER V
SIN AND SUFFERING
i. 8-11
The doctrinaire rigour of Judaism in its uncompromising
association of moral and physical evils
has led to an unreasonable disregard for the solid
truth which lies behind this mistake. It can scarcely
be said that men are now perplexed by the problem
that inspired the Book of Job. The fall of the tower
of Siloam or the blindness of a man from his birth
would not start among us the vexatious questions
which were raised in the days of our Lord. We have
not accepted the Jewish theory that the punishment of
sin always overtakes the sinner in this life, much less
have we assented to the by no means necessary corollary
that all calamities are the direct penalties of the misconduct
of the sufferers, and therefore sure signs of
guilt. The modern tendency is in the opposite direction;
it goes to ignore the existence of any connection
whatever between the course of the universe and human
conduct. No interference with the uniformity of the
laws of nature for retributive or disciplinary purposes
can be admitted. The machinery runs on in its grooves
never deflected by any regard for our good or bad
deserts. If we dash ourselves against its wheels they
will tear us to pieces, grind us to powder; and we may
reasonably consider this treatment to be the natural
punishment of our folly. But here we are not beyond
physical causation, and the drift of thought is towards
holding the belief in anything more to be a simple
survival from primitive anthropomorphic ideas of nature,
a pure superstition. Is it a pure superstition? It is
time we turned to another side of the question.
Every strong conviction that has obtained wide recognition,
however erroneous and mischievous it may
be, can be traced back to the abuse of some solid truth.
It is not the case that the universe is constructed without
any regard for moral laws. Even the natural
punishment of the violation of natural laws contains
a certain ethical element. Other considerations apart,
clearly it is wrong to injure one's health or endanger
one's life by rushing headlong against the constituted
order of the universe; therefore the consequences of
such conduct may be taken as signs of its condemnation.
In the case of the sufferings of the Jews lamented
by our poet the calamities were not primarily of a
physical origin; they grew out of human acts—the
accompaniments of the Chaldæan invasion. When we
come to the evolution of history we are introduced to
a whole world of moral forces that are not at work in
the material universe. Nebuchadnezzar did not know
that he was the instrument of a Higher Power for the
chastisement of Israel; but the corruptions of the Jews,
so ruthlessly exposed by their prophets, had undermined
the national vigour which is the chief safeguard of a
state, as surely as at a later time the corruptions of
Rome opened her gates to devastating hosts of Goths
and Huns. May we not go further, and, passing beyond
the region of common observation, discover richer indications
of the ethical meanings of events in the application
to them of a real faith in God? It was his
profound theism that lay at the base of the Jew's
conception of temporal retribution, crude, hard, and
narrow as this was. If we believe that God is supreme
over nature and history as well as over individual lives,
we must conclude that He will use every province of
His vast dominion so as to further His righteous
purposes. If the same Spirit reigns throughout there
must be a certain harmony between all parts of His
government. The mistake of the Jew was his claim
to interpret the details of this Divine administration
with a sole regard for the minute fraction of the universe
that came under his own eyes, with blank indifference
to the vast realm of facts and principles of which he
could know nothing. His idea of Providence was too
shortsighted, too parochial, in every respect too small;
yet it was true in so far as it registered the conviction
that there must be an ethical character in the government
of the world by a righteous God, that the divinely
ordered course of events cannot be out of all relation to
conduct.
It does not fall in with the plan of the Lamentations
for this subject to be treated so fully in these poems
as it is in the stirring exhortations of the great prophets.
Yet it comes to the surface repeatedly. In the fifth
verse of the first elegy the poet attributes the affliction
of Zion to "the multitude of her transgressions"; and
he introduces the eighth verse with the clear declaration—
"Jerusalem hath grievously sinned; therefore she has become an unclean thing."
The powerful Hebrew idiom according to which the
cognate substance follows the verb is here employed.
Rendered literally, the opening phrase is, "sinned sin."
The experience of the chastisement leads to a keen
perception of the guilt that precedes it. This is more
than a consequence of the application of the accepted
doctrine of the connection of sin with suffering to a
particular case. No intellectual theory is strong enough
by itself to awaken a slumbering conscience. The
logic may be faultless; and yet even though the point
of the syllogism is not evaded it will be coolly ignored.
Trouble arouses a torpid conscience in a much more
direct and effectual way. In the first place, it shatters
the pride which is the chief hindrance to the confession
of sin. Then it compels reflection; it calls a halt, and
makes us look back over the path we may have been
following too heedlessly. Sometimes it seems to exercise
a distinctly illuminating influence. It is as though
scales had fallen from the sufferer's eyes; he sees all
things in a new light, and some ugly facts which had
been lying at his side for years disregarded suddenly
glare upon him as horrible discoveries. Thus the
"Prodigal Son" perceives that he has sinned both
against Heaven and against his father when he is in
the lowest depths of misery, not so much because he
recognises a penal character in his troubles, but more
on account of the fact that he has come to himself.
This subjective, psychological connection between suffering
and sin is independent of any dogma of retribution;
for the ends of practical discipline it is the most important
connection. We may waive all discussion of
the ancient Jewish problem, and still be thankful to
recognise the Elijah-like ministry of adversity.
The immediate effect of this vision of sin is that a
new colour is given to the picture of the desolation of
Jerusalem. The image of a miserable woman is preserved,
but the dignity of the earlier scene is missing
here. Pathos and poetry gather round the picture of
the forlorn widow weeping for the loss of her children.
Neglected and humbled as she is in worldly estate,
the tragic vastness of her sorrow has exalted her to
an altitude of moral sublimity. Such suffering breaks
through those barriers of conventional experience which
make many lives look mean and trivial. It is so awful
that we cannot but regard it with reverence. But all
this is altered in the aspect of Jerusalem which follows
the confession of her great sin. In the freedom of
ancient language the poet ventures on an illustration
that would be regarded as too gross for modern literature.
The limits of our art exclude subjects which
excite a sensation of disgust; but this is just the
sensation the author of the elegy deliberately aims
at producing. He paints a picture which is simply
intended to sicken his readers. The utter humiliation
of Jerusalem is exhibited in the unavoidable exposure
of a condition which natural modesty would conceal at
any cost. Another contrast between the reserve of our
modern style and the rude bluntness of antiquity is
here apparent. It is not only that we have grown
more refined in language—a very superficial change
which might be no better than the whitewashing of
sepulchres; over and above this civilising of mere
manners, the effect of Teutonic habits, strengthened by
Christian sentiments, has been to develop a respect for
woman undreamed of in the old Eastern world. It may
be added that the scientific temper of recent times has
taught us that there is nothing really dishonouring in
purely natural processes. The ancient world could not
distinguish between delicacy and shame. We should
regard a poor suffering woman whose modesty had
been grievously wounded with simple commiseration;
the ancient Jews treated such a person with disgust
as an unclean creature, quite unable to see that their
conduct was simply brutal.
The new aspect of the misery of Jerusalem is thus
set forth as one of degradation and ignominy. The
vision of sin is immediately followed by a scene of
shame. Commentators have been divided over the
question whether this picture of the humiliated woman
is intended to apply to the sin of the city or only to her
misfortunes. In favour of the former view, it may be
remarked that uncleanness is distinctly associated with
moral corruption: the connection is the more appropriate
here inasmuch as a confession of sin immediately
precedes. On the other hand, the attendant circumstances
point to the second interpretation. It is the
humiliation of the condition of the sufferer, rather than
that condition itself, which is dwelt upon. Jerusalem is
despised, "she sigheth," "is come down wonderfully,"
"hath no comforter," and is generally afflicted and
oppressed by her enemies. But while we are led to
regard the pitiable picture as a representation of the
woful plight into which the proud city has fallen, we cannot
conclude it to be an accident that this particular phase
of her misery succeeds the mention of her great guilt.
After all, it is only the underlying guilt that can justify
a verdict which carries disgrace as well as suffering for
its penalty. Even when the judgments of men are too
confused to recognise this truth with regard to other
people, it should be apparent to the conscience of the
humiliated person himself. The humiliation which
follows nothing worse than a fall into external misfortunes
is but a superficial trouble, and the consciousness
of innocence can enable one to submit to it without
any sense of inward shame. The sting of contempt
lies in the miserable consciousness that it is deserved.
Thus we see the punishment of sin consisting in
exposure. The exposure which simply hurts natural
modesty is acutely painful to a refined, sensitive spirit;
and yet the very dignity which it outrages is a shield
against the point of the insult. But where the exposure
follows sin this shield is absent. In that case the degradation
of it is without any mitigation. Nothing more
may be necessary to constitute a very severe punishment.
When the secrets of all hearts are revealed
the very revelation will be a penal process. To lay
bare the quivering nerves of memory to the searching
sunlight must be to torture the guilty soul with inconceivable
horrors. Nevertheless it is a matter for
profound thankfulness that there is no question of
a surprising revelation of the sinner's guilt being made
to God at some future time, some shocking discovery
which might turn His lovingkindness into wrath or
contempt. We cannot have a firmer ground of joy and
hope than the fact that God knows everything about
us, and yet loves us at our worst, patiently waiting for
repentance with His offer of unlimited forgiveness.
Exposure before God is like a surgical examination;
the hope of a cure, if it does not dispel the sense of
humiliation—and that is impossible in the case of
guilt, the disgrace of which to a healthy conscience is
more intense before the holiness of God than before
the eyes of fellow-sinners—still encourages confidence.
The recognition of a moral lapse at the root of the
shame of Jerusalem, though not perhaps in the shame
itself, is confirmed by a phrase which reflects on the
culpable heedlessness of the Jews. The elegy deplores
how the city has "come down wonderfully" on account
of the fact that "she remembered not her latter end."
It is quite confusing and incorrect to render this expression
in the present tense as it stands in the Authorised
English Version. The poet cannot mean that the Jews
in exile and captivity have already forgotten the recent
horrors of the siege of Jerusalem. This would be flatly
contrary to the motive of the elegy, which is to give
tongue to the sufferings of the Jews flowing out of
that disaster. It would be impossible to say that the
calamity that inspired the elegy was no longer even
remembered by its victims. What an anti-climax this
would be! Clearly the poet is bewailing the culpable
folly of the people in not giving a thought to the certain
consequences of such a course as they were following;
a course that had been denounced by the faithful
prophets of Jehovah, who, alas! had been but voices
crying in the wilderness, unnoted, or even scouted and
suppressed, like the stormy petrels hated by sailors as
birds of ill-omen. In her ease and prosperity, her self-indulgence
and sin, the doomed city had failed to
recollect what must be the end of such things. The
idea of remembrance is peculiarly apt and forcible in
this connection, although it has a relation to the future,
because the Jews had been through experiences which
should have served as warnings if they had duly
reflected on them. This was not a matter for wild
guesses or vague apprehensions. Not only were there
the distinct utterances of Jeremiah and his predecessors
to rouse the thoughtless; events had been speaking
louder than words. Jerusalem was already a city with
a history, and that history had even by this time accumulated
some tragic lessons. These were subjects for
memory. Thus memory can become prophecy, because
the laws which are revealed in the past will govern
the future. We are none of us so wholly inexperienced
but that in the knowledge of what we have already
been through we may gain wisdom to anticipate the
consequences of our present actions. The heedless
person is one who forgets, or at all events one who
will not attend to his own memories. Such recklessness
is its own condemnation; it cannot plead the
excuse of ignorance.
But now it may be objected that this reference to
the mere thought of consequences suggests considerations
that are too low to furnish the reasons for the
ruin of Jerusalem. Would the city have been spared
if only her inhabitants had been a little more foreseeing?
It should be observed that though mere
prudence is never a very lofty virtue, imprudence is
sometimes a very serious fault. It cannot be right
to be simply reckless, to ignore all lessons of the past
and fling oneself blindly into the future. The hero
who is sure that he is inspired by a lofty motive may
walk straight into the very jaws of death, and be all
the stronger for his noble indifference to his fate; but
he who is no hero, he who is not influenced by any
great or unselfish ideas, has no excuse for neglecting
the warnings of common prudence. All wise actions
must be more or less guided with a view to their
issues in the future, although in the case of the best
of them the aims will be pure and unselfish. It is
our prerogative to "look before and after"; and just
in proportion as we take long views do our deeds
acquire gravity and depth. Our Lord characterised
the two ways by their ends. While the example of
the careless Jews is followed on all sides—and who of
us can deny that he has ever fallen into the negligence?—is
it not a little superfluous to discuss abstract,
unpractical problems about a remote altruism?
Intermingled with his painful picture of the humiliation
and shame of the fallen city, the poet supplies
indications of the effect of all this on the suffering
citizens. Despised by all who had formerly honoured
her, Jerusalem sighs and longs to retire into obscurity,
away from the rude gaze of her oppressors.
In particular, two further signs of her distress are
here given.
The first is spoliation. Her enemies have laid hands
on "all her pleasant things." It may strike us that,
after the miseries just narrated, this is but a minor
trouble. Job's calamities began with the loss of his
property, and rose from this by degrees to the climax
of agony. If his first trouble had been the sudden
death of all his children, stunned by that awful blow,
he would have cared little about the fate of his flocks
and herds. It is not according to the method of the
Lamentations, however, to move on to any climax. The
thoughts are set forth as they well up in the mind of
the poet, now passionate and intense, then again of a
milder cast, yet altogether combining to colour one
picture of intolerable woe. But there is an aspect of
this idea of the robbery of the "pleasant things" which
heightens the sense of misery. It is another instance
of the force of contrast so often manifested in these
elegies. Jerusalem had been a home of wealth and
luxury in the merry old days. But hoarded money,
precious jewellery, family heirlooms, products of art
and skill, accumulated during generations of prosperity
and treated as necessaries of life—all had been swept
away in the sack of the city, and scattered among
strangers who could not prize them as they had been
prized by their owners; and now these victims of
spoliation, stripped of everything, were in want of
daily bread. Even what little could be saved from the
wreck they had to give up in exchange for common
food, bought dearly in the market of necessity.
The second sign of the great distress here noted is
desecration. Gentiles invade the sacred precincts of
the temple. Considering that the sanctuary had been
already much more effectually desecrated by the blood-stained
hands and lustful hearts of impious worshippers,
such as those "rulers of Sodom" denounced by Isaiah
for "trampling" the courts of Jehovah with their
"vain oblations,"Isa. i. 10-17.
we do not find it easy to sympathise
with this horror of a supposed defilement from the
mere presence of heathen persons. Yet it would be
unjust to accuse the shocked Israelites of hypocrisy.
They ought to have been more conscious of the one
real corruption of sin; but we cannot add that therefore
their notions of external uncleanness were altogether
foolish and wrong. To judge the Jews of the age of
the Captivity by a standard of spirituality which few
Christians have yet attained to would be a cruel
anachronism. The Syrian invasion of the temple in
the time of the Maccabees was called by a very late
prophet an "abomination of desolation,"Dan. xi. 31.
and a similar
insult to be offered to the sacred place by the Romans
is described by our Lord in the same terms.Mark xiii. 14.
All of
us must be conscious at times of the sacredness of
associations. To botanise on his mother's grave may
be a proof of a man's freedom from superstition, but
it cannot be taken as an indication of the fineness
of his feelings. The Israelite exclusiveness which
shunned the intrusion of foreigners simply because
they were foreigners was combined both with a patriotic
anxiety to preserve the integrity of the nation, and in
some cases with a religious dread of idolatry. It is
true the nominal contamination of the mere presence
of Gentiles was generally more dreaded than the real
contagion of their corrupt examples. Still the very
idea of desecration, even when it is superficial, together
with a sense of pain at its presence, is higher than
the materialism which despises it not because this
materialism has the grace to sanctify everything, but
for the opposite reason, because it counts nothing holy,
because to it all things are common and unclean.
Before we pass from this portion of the elegy there
is one curious characteristic of it which calls for notice.
The poet suddenly drops the construction in the third
person and writes in the first person. This he does
twice—at the end of the ninth verse, and again at the
end of the eleventh. He might be speaking in his
own person, but the language points to the personified
city. Yet in each case the outburst is quite abrupt,
sprung upon us without any introductory formula.
Possibly the explanation of this anomaly must be
sought in the liturgical use for which the poem was
designed. If it was to be sung antiphonally we may
conjecture that at these places a second chorus would
break in. The result would be a startling dramatic
effect—as though the city had sat listening to the
lament over her woes until the piteous tale had compelled
her to break her silence and cry aloud. In
each case the cry is directed to heaven. It is an appeal
to God; and it simply prays for His attention—"Behold,
O Lord," "See, O Lord, and behold." In the
first case the Divine attention is called to the insolence
of the enemy, in the second to the degradation of
Jerusalem. Still it is only an appeal for notice. Will
God but look upon all this misery? That is sufficient.
CHAPTER VI
ZION'S APPEAL
i. 12-22
In the latter part of the second elegy Jerusalem
appears as the speaker, appealing for sympathy,
first to stray, passing travellers, then to the larger
circle of the surrounding nations, and lastly to her God.
Already the suffering city has spoken once or twice
in brief interruptions of the poet's descriptions of her
miseries, and now she seems to be too impatient to
permit herself to be represented any longer even by
this friendly advocate; she must come forward in
person and present her case in her own words.
There is much difference of opinion among commentators
about the rendering of the phrase with which
the appeal begins. The Revisers have followed the
Authorised Version in taking it as a question—"Is
it nothing to you, all ye that pass by?"i. 12.
But it may
be treated as a direct negative—"It is nothing," etc.,
or, by a slightly different reading of the Hebrew text,
as a simple call for attention—"O all ye that pass by,"
etc., as in the Vulgate "O vos," etc. The usual rendering
is the finest in literary feeling, and it is in accordance
with a common usage. Although the sign of an
interrogation, which would set this meaning beyond
dispute, is absent, there does not seem to be sufficient
reason for rejecting it in favour of one of the proposed
alternatives. But in any case the whole passage
evidently expresses a deep yearning for sympathy.
Mere strangers, roving Bedouin, any people who may
chance to be passing by Jerusalem, are implored to
behold her incomparable woes. The wounded animal
creeps into a corner to suffer and die in secret, perhaps
on account of the habit of herds, in tormenting a
suffering mate. But among mankind the instinct of
a sufferer is to crave sympathy, from a friend, if
possible; but if such be not available, then even from
a stranger. Now although where it is possible to give
effectual aid, merely to cast a pitying look and pass by
on the other side, like the priest and the Levite in the
parable, is a mockery and a cruelty, although unpretentious
indifference is better than that hypocrisy, it
would be a great mistake to suppose that in those
cases for which no direct relief can be given sympathy
is of no value. This sympathy, if it is real, would help
if it could; and under all circumstances it is the reality
of the sympathy that is most prized, not its issues.
It should be remembered, further, that the first
condition of active aid is a genuine sense of compassion,
which can only be awakened by means of knowledge
and the impressions which a contemplation of
suffering produce. Evil is wrought not only from
want of thought, but also from lack of knowledge; and
good-doing is withheld for the same reason. Therefore
the first requisite is to arrest attention. A royal commission
is the reasonable precursor of a state remedy
for some public wrong. Misery is permitted to flourish
in the dark because people are too indolent to search
it out. No doubt the knowledge of sufferings which
we might remedy implies a grave responsibility; but
we cannot escape our obligations by simply closing our
eyes to what we do not wish to see. We are responsible
for our ignorance and its consequences wherever
the opportunity of knowledge is within our reach.
The appeal to all who pass by is most familiar to us
in its later association with our Lord's sufferings on
the cross. But this is not in any sense a Messianic
passage; it is confined in its purpose to the miseries of
Jerusalem. Of course there can be no objection to
illustrating the grief and pain of the Man of Sorrows
by using the classic language of an ancient lament if
we note that this is only an illustration. There is a
kinship in all suffering, and it is right to consider that
He who was tried in all points as we are tried passed
through sorrows which absorbed all the bitterness even
of such a cup of woe as that which was drunk by
Jerusalem in the extremity of her misfortunes. If
never before there had been sorrow like unto her
sorrow, at length that was matched, nay, surpassed at
Gethsemane and Golgotha. Still it would be a mistake
to confine these words to their secondary application—not
only an exegetical mistake, but one of deeper significance.
Jesus Christ restrained the wailing of the
women who offered Him their compassion on His way
to the cross, bidding them weep not for Him, but for
themselves and their children.Luke xxiii. 28.
Much more when His
passion is long past and He is reigning in glory must
it be displeasing to Him for His friends to be wasting
idle tears over the sufferings of His earthly life. The
morbid sentimentality which broods over the ancient
wounds of Christ, the nail prints and the spear thrust,
but ignores the present wounds of society—the wounds
of the world for which He bled and died, or the wounds
of the Church which is His body now, must be wrong
in His sight. He would rather we gave a cup of cold
water to one of His brethren than an ocean of tears to
the memory of Calvary. If then we would make use of
the ruined city's appeal for sympathy by applying it to
some later object it would be more in agreement with
the mind of Christ to think of the miseries of mankind
in our own day, and to consider how a sympathetic
regard for them may point to some ministry of
alleviation.
In order to impress the magnitude of her miseries on
the minds of the strangers whose attention she would
arrest, the city, now personified as a suppliant, describes
her dreadful condition in a series of brief, pointed
metaphors. Thus the imagination is excited; and the
imagination is one of the roads to the heart. It is not
enough that people know the bald facts of a calamity
as these may be scheduled in an inspector's report.
Although this preliminary information is most important,
if we go no further the report will be replaced in its
pigeon-hole, and lie there till it is forgotten. If it is to
do something better than gather the dust of years it
must be used as a foundation for the imagination to
work upon. This does not imply any departure from
truth, any false colouring or exaggeration; on the
contrary, the process only brings out the truth which
is not really seen until it is imagined. Let us look
at the various images under which the distress of
Jerusalem is here presented.
It is like a fire in the bones.i. 13.
It burns, consumes,
pains with intolerable torment; it is no skin-deep
trouble, it penetrates to the very marrow. This fire is
overmastering; it is not to be quenched, neither does it
die out; it "prevaileth" against the bones. There is
no getting such a fire under.
It is like a net.i. 13.
The image is changed. We see a
wild creature caught in the bush, or perhaps a fugitive
arrested in his flight and flung down by hidden snares
at his feet. Here is the shock of surprise, the humiliation
of deceit, the vexation of being thwarted. The
result is a baffled, bewildered, helpless condition.
It is like faintness.Ibid.
The desolate sufferer is ill. It
is bad enough to have to bear calamities in the strength
of health. Jerusalem is made sick and kept faint all
the day—with a faintness that is not a momentary
collapse, but a continuous condition of failure.
It is like a yokei. 14.
which is wreathed upon the neck—fixed
on, as with twisted withes. The poet is here
more definite. The yoke is made out of the transgressions
of Jerusalem. The sense of guilt does not
lighten its weight; the band that holds it most closely
is the feeling that it is deserved. It is natural that the
sinful sufferer should exclaim that God, who has bound
this terrible yoke upon her, has made her strength to
fail. As there is nothing so invigorating as the
assurance that one is suffering for a righteous cause,
so there is nothing so wretchedly depressing as the
consciousness of guilt.
Lastly, it is like a winepress.i. 15.
This image is
elaborated with more detail, although at the expense of
unity of design. God is said to have called a "solemn
assembly" to oppress the Jews, by an ironical reversal
of the common notion of such an assembly. The
language recalls the idea of one of the great national
festivals of Israel. But now instead of the favoured
people their enemies are summoned, and the object is
not the glad praise of God for his bounties in harvest
or vintage, but the crushing of the Jews. They are to
be victims, not guests as of old. They are themselves
the harvest of judgment, the vintage of wrath. The
wine is to be made, but the grapes crushed to produce
it are the people who were accustomed to feast and
drink of the fruits of God's bounty in the happy days
of their prosperity. So the mighty men are set at
nought, their prowess counting as nothing against the
brutal rush of the enemy; and the young men are
crushed, their spirit and vigour failing them in the
great destruction.
The most terrible trait in these pictures, one that is
common to all of them, is the Divine origin of the
troubles. It was God who sent fire into the bones,
spread the net, made the sufferer desolate and faint.
The yoke was bound by His hands. It was He who
set at nought the mighty men, and summoned the
assembly of foes to crush His people. The poet even
goes so far as to make the daring statement that it
was the Lord Himself who trod the virgin daughter
of Judah as in a winepress. It is a ghastly picture—a
dainty maiden trampled to death by Jehovah as
grapes are trampled to squeeze out their juice! This
horrible thing is ascribed to God! Yet there is no
complaint of barbarity, no idea that the Judge of all
the earth is not doing right. The miserable city does
not bring any railing accusation against her Lord; she
takes all the blame upon herself. We must be careful
to bear in mind the distinction between poetic imagery
and prosaic narrative. Still it remains true that Jerusalem
here attributes her troubles to the will and
action of God. This is vital to the Hebrew faith.
To explain it away is to impoverish the religion of
Israel, and with it the Old Testament revelation. That
revelation shews us the absolute sovereignty of God,
and at the same time it brings out the guilt of man, so
that no room is allowed for complaints against the Divine
justice. The grief is all the greater because there is no
thought of rebellion. The daring doubts that struggle
into expression in Job never obtrude themselves here
to check the even flow of tears. The melancholy is
profound, but comparatively calm, since it does not
once give place to anger. It is natural that the succession
of images of misery conceived in this spirit
should be followed by a burst of tears. Zion weeps
because the comforter who should refresh her soul is
far away, and she is left utterly desolate.i. 16.
Here the supposed utterance of Jerusalem is broken
for the poet to insert a description of the suppliant
making her piteous appeal.i. 17.
He shews us Zion
spreading out her hands, that is to say, in the well-known
attitude of prayer. She is comfortless, oppressed
by her neighbours in accordance with the will of her God,
and treated as an unclean thing; she who had despised
the idolatrous Gentiles in her pride of superior sanctity
has now become foul and despicable in their eyes!
The semi-dramatic form of the elegy is seen in the
reappearance of Jerusalem as speaker without any
formula of introduction. After the poet's brief interjection
describing the suppliant, the personified city
continues her plaintive appeal, but with a considerable
enlargement of its scope. She makes the most distinct
acknowledgment of the two vital elements of the case—God's
righteousness and her own rebellion.i. 18.
These
carry us beneath the visible scenes of trouble so
graphically illustrated earlier, and fix our attention on
deep-seated principles. It cannot be supposed that
the faith and penitence unreservedly confessed in the
elegy were truly experienced by all the fugitive citizens
of Jerusalem, though they were found in the devout
"remnant" among whom the author of the poem must
be reckoned. But the reasonable interpretation of
these utterances is that which accepts them as the
inspired expressions of the thoughts and feelings which
Jerusalem ought to possess, as ideal expressions, suitable
to those who rightly appreciate the whole situation.
This fact gives them a wide applicability. The ideal
approaches the universal. Although it cannot be said
that all trouble is the direct punishment of sin, and
although it is manifestly insincere to make confession
of guilt one does not inwardly admit, to be firmly
settled in the conviction that God is right in what he
does even when it all looks most wrong, that if there
is a fault it must be on man's side, is to have reached
the centre of truth. This is very different from the admission
that God has the right of an absolute sovereign
to do whatever He chooses, like mad Caligula when
intoxicated with his own divinity; it even implies a
denial of that supposed right, for it asserts that He
acts in accordance with something other than His will,
viz., righteousness.
Enlarging the area of her appeal, no longer content
to snatch at the casual pity of individual travellers on
the road, Jerusalem now calls upon all the "peoples"—i.e.,
all neighbouring tribes—to hear the tale of her woes.i. 18.
This is too huge a tragedy to be confined to private
spectators; it is of national proportions, and it claims
the attention of whole nations. It is curious to observe
that foreigners, whom the strict Jews sternly exclude
from their privileges, are nevertheless besought to
compassionate their distresses. These uncircumcised
heathen are not now thrust contemptuously aside; they
are even appealed to as sympathisers. Perhaps this
is meant to indicate the vastness of the misery of
Jerusalem by the suggestion that even aliens should be
affected by it; when the waves spread far in all directions
there must have been a most terrible storm at the centre
of disturbance. Still it is possible to find in this widening
outlook of the poet a sign of the softening and enlarging
effects of trouble. The very need of much sympathy
breaks down the barriers of proud exclusiveness, and
prepares one to look for gracious qualities among people
who have been previously treated with churlish indifference
or positive animosity. Floods and earthquakes
tame savage beasts. On the battlefield wounded men
gratefully accept relief from their mortal enemies.
Conduct of this sort may be self-regarding, perhaps
weak and cowardly; still it is an outcome of the natural
brotherhood of all mankind, any confession of which,
however reluctant, is a welcome thing.
The appeal to the nations contains three particulars.
It deplores the captivity of the virgins and young men;
the treachery of allies—"lovers" who have been called
upon for assistance, but in vain; and the awful fact that
men of such consequence as the elders and priests, the
very aristocracy of Jerusalem, had died of starvation after
an ineffectual search for food—a lurid picture of the
horrors of the siege.i. 18, 19.
The details repeat themselves
with but very slight variations. It is natural for a great
sufferer to revolve his bitter morsel continuously. The
action is a sign of its bitterness. The monotony of the
dirge is a sure indication of the depth of the trouble
that occasions it. The theme is only too interesting to
the mourner, however wearisome it may become to the
listener.
In drawing to a close the appeal goes further, and,
rising altogether above man, seeks the attention of God.i. 20-2.
It is not enough that every passing traveller is arrested,
nor even that the notice of all the neighbouring nations
is sought; this trouble is too great for human shoulders
to bear. It will absorb the largest mass of sympathy,
and yet thirst for more. Twice before in the first part
of the elegy the language of the poet speaking in his
own person was interrupted by an outcry of Jerusalem
to God.i. 9, 11.
Now the elegy closes with a fuller appeal to
Heaven. This is an utterance of faith where faith is
tried to the uttermost. It is distinctly recognised that
the calamities bewailed have been sent by God; and
yet the stricken city turns to God for consolation.
And the appeal is not at all in the form of a cry to a
tormentor for mercy; it seeks friendly sympathy and
avenging actions. Nothing could more clearly prove
the consciousness that God is not doing any wrong to
His people. Not only is there no complaint against
the justice of His acts; in spite of them all He is still
regarded as the greatest Friend and Helper of the
victims of His wrath.
This apparently paradoxical position issues in what
might otherwise be a contradiction of thought. The
ruin of Jerusalem is attributed to the righteous judgment
of God, against which no shadow of complaint is raised;
and yet God is asked to pour vengeance on the heads
of the human agents of His wrath! These people have
been acting from their own evil, or at all events their
own inimical motives. Therefore it is not held that
they deserve punishment for their conduct any the less
on account of the fact that they have been the unconscious
instruments of Providence. The vengeance here
sought for cannot be brought into line with Christian
principles; but the poet had never heard the Sermon
on the Mount. It would not have occurred to him that
the spirit of revenge was not right, any more than it
occurred to the writers of maledictory Psalms.
There is one more point in this final appeal to God
which should be noticed, because it is very characteristic
of the elegy throughout. Zion bewails her friendless
condition, declaring, "there is none to comfort
me."i. 21.
This is the fifth reference to the absence of
a comforter.See i. 2, 9, 16, 17, 21.
The idea may be merely introduced in
order to accentuate the description of utter desolation.
And yet when we compare the several allusions to it
the conclusion seems to be forced upon us that the poet
has a more specific intention. In some cases, at least,
he seems to have one particular comforter in mind, as,
for example, when he says, "The comforter that should
refresh my soul is far from me."i. 16.
Our thoughts instinctively
turn to the Paraclete of St. John's Gospel. It
would not be reasonable to suppose that the elegist had
attained to any definite conception of the Holy Spirit
such as that of the ripe Christian revelation. But we
have his own words to witness that God is to him
the supreme Comforter, is the Lord and Giver of
life who refreshes his soul. It would seem, then, that
the poet's thought is like that of the author of the
twenty-second Psalm, which was echoed in our Lord's
cry of despair on the cross.Mark xv. 34.
When God our Comforter
hides the light of His countenance the night is most
dark. Yet the darkness is not always perceived, or its
cause recognised. Then to miss the consolations of
God consciously, with pain, is the first step towards
recovering them.
CHAPTER VII
GOD AS AN ENEMY
ii. 1-9
The elegist, as we have seen, attributes the
troubles of the Jews to the will and action of
God. In the second poem he even ventures further,
and with daring logic presses this idea to its ultimate
issues. If God is tormenting His people in fierce
anger it must be because He is their enemy—so the
sad-hearted patriot reasons. The course of Providence
does not shape itself to him as a merciful chastisement,
as a veiled blessing; its motive seems to be distinctly
unfriendly. He drives his dreadful conclusion home
with great amplitude of details. In order to appreciate
the force of it let us look at the illustrative passage
in two ways—first, in view of the calamities inflicted on
Jerusalem, all of which are here ascribed to God, and
then with regard to those thoughts and purposes of their
Divine Author which appear to be revealed in them.
First, then, we have the earthly side of the process.
The daughter of Zion is covered with a cloud.ii. 1.
The
metaphor would be more striking in the brilliant East
than it is to us in our habitually sombre climate.
There it would suggest unwonted gloom—the loss of
the customary light of heaven, rare distress, and excessive
melancholy. It is a general, comprehensive
image intended to overshadow all that follows. Terrible
disasters cover the aspect of all things from zenith to
horizon. The physical darkness that accompanied the
horrors of Golgotha is here anticipated, not indeed by
any actual prophecy, but in idea.
But there is more than gloom. A mere cloud may
lift, and discover everything unaltered by the passing
shadow. The distress that has fallen on Jerusalem
is not thus superficial and transient. She herself has
suffered a fatal fall. The beauty of Israel has been
cast down from heaven to earth. The language is now
varied; instead of "the daughter of Zion" we have
"the beauty of Israel."ii. 1.
The use of the larger title,
"Israel," is not a little significant. It shews that the
elegist is alive to the idea of the fundamental unity of his
race, a unity which could not be destroyed by centuries
of inter-tribal warfare. Although in the ungracious
region of politics Israel stood aloft from Judah, the
two peoples were frequently treated as one by poets
and prophets when religious ideas were in mind. Here
apparently the vastness of the calamities of Jerusalem
has obliterated the memory of jealous distinctions.
Similarly we may see the great English race—British
and American—forgetting national divisions in pursuit
of its higher religious aims, as in Christian missions; and
we may be sure that this blood-unity would be felt most
keenly under the shadow of a great trouble on either
side of the Atlantic. By the time of the destruction of
Jerusalem the northern tribes had been scattered, but
the use of the distinctive name of these people is a sign
that the ancient oneness of all who traced back their
pedigree to the patriarch Jacob was still recognised.
It is some compensation for the endurance of trouble
to find it thus breaking down the middle wall of
partition between estranged brethren.
It has been suggested with probability that by the
expression "the beauty of Israel" the elegist intended
to indicate the temple. This magnificent pile of
buildings, crowning one of the hills of Jerusalem, and
shining with gold in "barbaric splendour," was the
central object of beauty among all the people who
revered the worship it enshrined. Its situation would
naturally suggest the language here employed. Jerusalem
rises among the hills of Judah, some two thousand
feet above the sea-level; and when viewed from the
wilderness in the south she looks indeed like a city
built in the heavens. But the physical exaltation of
Jerusalem and her temple was surpassed by exaltation
in privilege, and prosperity, and pride. Capernaum,
the vain city of the lake that would raise herself to
heaven, is warned by Jesus that she shall be cast down
to Hades.Matt. xi. 23.
Now not only Jerusalem, but the glory of
the race of Israel, symbolised by the central shrine
of the national religion, is thus humiliated.
Still keeping in mind the temple, the poet tells us
that God has forgotten His footstool. He seems to be
thinking of the Mercy-Seat over the ark, the spot at
which God was thought to shew Himself propitious to
Israel on the great Day of Atonement, and which
was looked upon as the very centre of the Divine
presence. In the destruction of the temple the holiest
places were outraged, and the ark itself carried off or
broken up, and never more heard of. How different
was this from the story of the loss of the ark in the
days of Eli, when the Philistines were constrained to
send it home of their own accord! Now no miracle
intervenes to punish the heathen for their sacrilege.
Yes, surely God must have forgotten His footstool!
So it seems to the sorrowful Jew, perplexed at the
impunity with which this crime has been committed.
But the mischief is not confined to the central shrine.
It has extended to remote country regions and simple
rustic folk. The shepherd's hut has shared the fate of
the temple of the Lord. All the habitations of Jacob—a
phrase which in the original points to country cottages—have
been swallowed up.ii. 2.
The holiest is not spared
on account of its sanctity, neither is the lowliest on
account of its obscurity. The calamity extends to all
districts, to all things, to all classes.
If the shepherd's cot is contrasted with the temple
and the ark because of its simplicity, the fortress may
be contrasted with this defenceless hut because of its
strength. Yet even the strongholds have been thrown
down. More than this, the action of the Jews' army
has been paralysed by the God who had been its
strength and support in the glorious olden time. It
is as though the right hand of the warrior had been
seized from behind and drawn back at the moment
when it was raised to strike a blow for deliverance. The
consequence is that the flower of the army, "all that
were pleasant to the eye,"ii. 4.
are slain. Israel herself
is swallowed up, while her palaces and fortresses are
demolished.
The climax of this mystery of Divine destruction
is reached when God destroys His own temple. The
elegist returns to the dreadful subject as though
fascinated by the terror of it. God has violently taken
away His tabernacle.ii. 6.
The old historic name of the
sanctuary of Israel recurs at this crisis of ruin; and
it is particularly appropriate to the image which follows,
an image which possibly it suggested. If we are to
understand the metaphor of the sixth verse as it is
rendered in the English Authorised and Revised Versions,
we have to suppose a reference to some such
booth of boughs as people were accustomed to put up
for their shelter during the vintage, and which would
be removed as soon as it had served its temporary
purpose. The solid temple buildings had been swept
away as easily as though they were just such flimsy
structures, as though they had been "of a garden."
But we can read the text more literally, and still find
good sense in it. According to the strict translation of
the original, God is said to have violently taken away
His tabernacle "as a garden." At the siege of a city
the fruit gardens that encircle it are the first victims of
the destroyer's axe. Lying out beyond the walls they
are entirely unprotected, while the impediments they
offer to the movements of troops and instruments of
war induce the commander to order their early demolition.
Thus Titus had the trees cleared from the Mount
of Olives, so that one of the first incidents in the Roman
siege of Jerusalem must have been the destruction of
the Garden of Gethsemane. Now the poet compares
the ease with which the great, massive temple—itself
a powerful fortress, and enclosed within the city walls—was
demolished, with the simple process of scouring the
outlying gardens. So the place of assembly disappears,
and with it the assembly itself, so that even the sacred
Sabbath is passed over and forgotten. Then the two
heads of the nation—the king, its civil ruler, and the
priest, its ecclesiastical chief—are both despised in the
indignation of God's anger.
The central object of the sacred shrine is the altar,
where earth seems to meet heaven in the high mystery
of sacrifice. Here men seek to propitiate God; here
too God would be expected to shew Himself gracious to
men. Yet God has even cast off His altar, abhorring
His very sanctuary.ii. 7.
Where mercy is most confidently
anticipated, there of all places nothing but wrath and
rejection are to be found. What prospect could be
more hopeless?
The deeper thought that God rejects His sanctuary
because His people have first rejected Him is not
brought forward just now. Yet this solution of the
mystery is prepared by a contemplation of the utter
failure of the old ritual of atonement. Evidently that is
not always effective, for here it has broken down
entirely; then can it ever be inherently efficacious?
It cannot be enough to trust to a sanctuary and ceremonies
which God Himself destroys. But further, out
of this scene which was so perplexing to the pious Jew,
there flashes to us the clear truth that nothing is so
abominable in the sight of God as an attempt to worship
Him on the part of people who are living at enmity
with Him. We can also perceive that if God shatters
our sanctuary, perhaps He does so in order to prevent
us from making a fetich of it. Then the loss of shrine
and altar and ceremony may be the saving of the
superstitious worshipper who is thereby taught to turn
to some more stable source of confidence.
This, however, is not the line of reflections followed
by the elegist in the present instance. His mind is
possessed with one dark, awful, crushing thought. All
this is God's work. And why has God done it? The
answer to that question is the idea that here dominates
the mind of the poet. It is because God has become an
enemy! There is no attempt to mitigate the force of
this daring idea. It is stated in the strongest possible
terms, and repeated again and again at every turn—Israel's
cloud is the effect of God's anger; it has come
in the day of His anger; God is acting with fierce
anger, with a flaming fire of wrath. This must mean
that God is decidedly inimical. He is behaving as an
adversary; He bends His bow; He manifests violence.
It is not merely that God permits the adversaries of
Israel to commit their ravages with impunity; God
commits those ravages; He is Himself the enemy. He
shews indignation, He despises, He abhors. And this
is all deliberate. The destruction is carried out with
the same care and exactitude that characterise the
erection of a building. It is as though it were done
with a measuring line. God surveys to destroy.
The first thing to be noticed in this unhesitating
ascription to God of positive enmity is the striking
evidence it contains of faith in the Divine power, presence,
and activity. These were no more visible to the
mere observer of events in the destruction of Jerusalem
than in the shattering of the French empire at Sedan.
In the one case as in the other all that the world could
see was a crushing military defeat and its fatal consequences.
The victorious army of the Babylonians
filled the field as completely in the old time as that of
the Germans in the modern event. Yet the poet simply
ignores its existence. He passes it with sublime indifference,
his mind filled with the thought of the unseen
Power behind. He has not a word for Nebuchadnezzar,
because he is assured that this mighty monarch is
nothing but a tool in the hands of the real Enemy of
the Jews. A man of smaller faith would not have
penetrated sufficiently beneath the surface to have conceived
the idea of Divine enmity in connection with a
series of occurrences so very mundane as the ravages
of war. A heathenish faith would have acknowledged
in this defeat of Israel a triumph of the might of Bel or
Nebo over the power of Jehovah. But so convinced is
the elegist of the absolute supremacy of his God that no
such idea is suggested to him even as a temptation of
unbelief. He knows that the action of the true God is
supreme in everything that happens, whether the event
be favourable or unfavourable to His people. Perhaps
it is only owing to the dreary materialism of current
thought that we should be less likely to discover an
indication of the enmity of God in some huge national
calamity.
Still, although this idea of the elegist is a fruit of his
unshaken faith in the universal sway of God, it startles
and shocks us, and we shrink from it almost as though
it contained some blasphemous suggestion. Is it ever
right to think of God as the enemy of any man? It
would not be fair to pass judgment on the author of the
Lamentations on the ground of a cold consideration of
this abstract question. We must remember the terrible
situation in which he stood—his beloved city destroyed,
the revered temple of his fathers a mass of charred
ruins, his people scattered in exile and captivity, tortured,
slaughtered; these were not circumstances to
encourage a course of calm and measured reflection.
We must not expect the sufferer to carry out an exact
chemical analysis of his cup of woe before uttering an
exclamation on its quality; and if it should be that
the burning taste induces him to speak too strongly of
its ingredients, we who only see him swallow it without
being required to taste a drop ourselves should be slow
to examine his language too nicely. He who has never
entered Gethsemane is not in a position to understand
how dark may be the views of all things seen beneath
its sombre shade. If the Divine sufferer on the cross
could speak as though His God had actually deserted
Him, are we to condemn an Old Testament saint when
he ascribes unspeakably great troubles to the enmity
of God?
Is this, then, but the rhetoric of misery? If it be
no more, while we seek to sympathise with the feelings
of a very dramatic situation, we shall not be called
upon to go further and discover in the language of the
poet any positive teaching about God and His ways
with man. But are we at liberty to stop short here?
Is the elegist only expressing his own feelings? Have
we a right to affirm that there can be no objective truth
in the awful idea of the enmity of God?
In considering this question we must be careful to
dismiss from our minds the unworthy associations that
only too commonly attach themselves to notions of
enmity among men. Hatred cannot be ascribed to
One whose deepest name is Love. No spite, malignity,
or evil passion of any kind can be found in the heart
of the Holy God. When due weight is given to these
negations very much that we usually see in the practice
of enmity disappears. But this is not to say that the
idea itself is denied, or the fact shown to be impossible.
In the first place, we have no warrant for asserting
that God will never act in direct and intentional opposition
to any of His creatures. There is one obvious
occasion when He certainly does this. The man who
resists the laws of nature finds those laws working
against Him. He is not merely running his head
against a stone wall; the laws are not inert obstructions
in the path of the transgressor; they represent forces
in action. That is to say, they resist their opponent
with vigorous antagonism. In themselves they are
blind, and they bear him no ill-will. But the Being
who wields the forces is not blind or indifferent. The
laws of nature are, as Kingsley said, but the ways of
God. If they are opposing a man God is opposing
that man. But God does not confine His action to the
realm of physical processes. His providence works
through the whole course of events in the world's
history. What we see evidently operating in nature
we may infer to be equally active in less visible regions.
Then if we believe in a God who rules and works in the
world, we cannot suppose that His activity is confined
to aiding what is good. It is unreasonable to imagine
that He stands aside in passive negligence of evil.
And if He concerns Himself to thwart evil, what is
this but manifesting Himself as the enemy of the
evildoer?
It may be contended, on the other side, that there is
a world of difference between antagonistic actions and
unfriendly feelings, and that the former by no means
imply the latter. May not God oppose a man who is
doing wrong, not at all because He is his Enemy, but
just because He is his truest Friend? Is it not an act
of real kindness to save a man from himself when his
own will is leading him astray? This of course must
be granted, and being granted, it will certainly affect
our views of the ultimate issues of what we may be
compelled to regard in its present operation as nothing
short of Divine antagonism. It may remind us that
the motives lying behind the most inimical action on
God's part may be merciful and kind in their aims.
Still, for the time being, the opposition is a reality, and
a reality which to all intents and purposes is one of
enmity, since it resists, frustrates, hurts.
Nor is this all. We have no reason to deny that
God can have real anger. Is it not right and just
that He should be "angry with the wicked every
day"?Psalm vii. 11.
Would He not be imperfect in holiness,
would He not be less than God if He could behold
vile deeds springing from vile hearts with placid indifference?
We must believe that Jesus Christ was
as truly revealing the Father when He was moved
with indignation as when He was moved with compassion.
His life shows quite clearly that He was
the enemy of oppressors and hypocrites, and He
plainly declared that He came to bring a sword.Matt. x. 34.
His
mission was a war against all evil, and therefore,
though not waged with carnal weapons, a war against
evil men. The Jewish authorities were perfectly right
in perceiving this fact. They persecuted Him as their
enemy; and He was their enemy. This statement is
no contradiction to the gracious truth that He desired
to save all men, and therefore even these men. If
God's enmity to any soul were eternal it would conflict
with His love. It cannot be that He wishes the
ultimate ruin of one of His own children. But if He
is at the present time actively opposing a man, and if
He is doing this in anger, in the wrath of righteousness
against sin, it is only quibbling with words to deny that
for the time being He is a very real enemy to that
man.
The current of thought in the present day is not in
any sympathy with this idea of God as an Enemy,
partly in its revulsion from harsh and un-Christlike
conceptions of God, partly also on account of the
modern humanitarianism which almost loses sight of
sin in its absorbing love of mercy. But the tremendous
fact of the Divine enmity towards the sinful
man so long as he persists in his sin is not to be
lightly brushed aside. It is not wise wholly to forget
that "our God is a consuming fire."Heb. xii. 29.
It is in consideration
of this dread truth that the atonement
wrought by His Son according to His own will of love
is discovered to be an action of vital efficacy, and not
a mere scenic display.
CHAPTER VIII
THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN
ii. 10-17
Passion and poetry, when they fire the imagination,
do more than personify individual material
things. By fusing the separate objects in the crucible
of a common emotion which in some way appertains
to them all, they personify this grand unity, and so
lift their theme into the region of the sublime. Thus
while in his second elegy the author of the Lamentations
first dwells on the desolation of inanimate objects,—the
temple, fortresses, country cottages,—these are
all of interest to him only because they belong to Jerusalem,
the city of his heart's devotion, and it is the
city herself that moves his deepest feelings; and when
in the second part of the poem he proceeds to describe
the miserable condition of living persons—men, women,
and children—profoundly pathetic as the picture he now
paints appears to us in its piteous details, it is still
regarded by its author as a whole, and the people's
sufferings are so very terrible in his eyes because they
are the woes of Jerusalem.
Some attempt to sympathise with the large and lofty
view of the elegist may be a wholesome corrective to
the intense individualism of modern habits of thought.
The difficulty for us is to see that this view is not
merely ideal, that it represents a great, solid truth, the
truth that the perfect human unit is not an individual,
but a more or less extensive group of persons, mutually
harmonised and organised in a common life, a society
of some sort—the family, the city, the state, mankind.
By bearing this in mind we shall be able to perceive
that sufferings which in themselves might seem sordid
and degrading can attain to something of epic dignity.
It is in this spirit that the poet deplores the exile of
the king and the princes. He is not now concerned with
the private troubles of these exalted persons. Judah
was a limited monarchy, though not after the pattern
of government familiar to us, but rather in the style of
the Plantagenet rule, according to which the sovereign
shared his authority with a number of powerful barons,
each of whom was lord over his own territory. The men
described as "the princes of Israel" were not, for the
most part, members of the royal family; they were the
heads of tribes and families. Therefore the banishment
of these persons, together with the king, meant for the
Jews who were left behind the loss of their ruling authorities.
Then it seems most reasonable to connect the
clause which follows the reference to the exile with the
sufferings of Jerusalem rather than with the hardships
of the captives, because the whole context is concerned
with the former subject. This phrase read literally is,
"The law is not."ii. 9.
Our Revisers have followed the
Authorised Version in connecting it with the previous
expression, "among the nations," which describes the
place of exile, so as to lead us to read it as a statement
that the king and the princes were enduring the hardship
of residence in a land where their sacred Torah was
not observed. If, however, we take the words in harmony
with the surrounding thoughts, we are reminded
by them that the removal of the national rulers involved
to the Jews the cessation of the administration of their
law. The residents still left in the land were reduced
to a condition of anarchy; or, if the conquerors had
begun to administer some sort of martial law, this was
totally alien to the revered Torah of Israel. Josiah had
based his reformation on the discovery of the sacred
law-book. But the mere possession of this was little
consolation if it was not administered; for the Jews had
not fallen to the condition of the Samaritans of later
times who came to worship the roll of the Pentateuch
as an idol. They were not even like the scribes and
Talmudists among their own descendants, to whom the
law itself was a religion, though only read in the cloister
of the student. The loss of good government was to
them a very solid evil. In a civilised country, in times
of peace and order, we breathe law as we breathe air,
unconsciously, too familiar with it to appreciate the
immeasurable benefits it confers upon us.
With the banishment of the custodians of law the
poet associates the accompanying silence of the voice
of prophecy. This, however, is so important and
significant a fact, that it must be reserved for separate
and fuller treatment.See next chapter.
Next to the princes come the elders, to whom was
intrusted the administration of justice in the minor
courts. These were not sent into captivity; for at first
only the aristocracy was considered sufficiently important
to be carried off to Babylon. But though the
elders were left in the land, the country was too
disorganised for them to be able to hold their local
tribunals. Perhaps these were forbidden by the invaders;
perhaps the elders had no heart to decide
cases when they saw no means of getting their decisions
executed. Accordingly instead of appearing in dignity
as the representatives of law and order among their
neighbours the most respected citizens sit in silence on
the ground, girded in sackcloth, and casting dust over
their heads, living pictures of national mourning.ii. 10.
The virgins of Jerusalem are named immediately
after the elders. Their position in the city is very
different from that of the "grave and reverend signiors";
but we are to see that while the dignity of age and
rank affords no immunity from trouble, the gladsomeness
of youth and its comparative irresponsibility are
equally ineffectual as safeguards. The elders and the
virgins have one characteristic in common. They are
both silent. These young girls are the choristers
whose clear, sweet voices used to ring out in strains of
joy at every festival. Now both the grave utterances
of magistrates and the blithe singing of maidens are
hushed into one gloomy silence. Formerly the girls
would dance to the sound of song and cymbal. How
changed must things be that the once gay dancers sit
with their heads bowed to the ground, as still as the
mourning elders!
But now, like Dante when introduced by his guide to
some exceptionally agonising spectacle in the infernal
regions, the poet bursts into tears, and seems to feel his
very being melting away at the contemplation of the most
heart-rending scene in the many mournful tableaux of
the woes of Jerusalem. Breaking off from his recital
of the facts to express his personal distress in view of
the next item, he prepares us for some rare and dreadful
exhibition of misery; and the tale that he has
to tell is quite enough to account for the start of
horror with which it is ushered in. The poet makes
us listen to the cry of the children. There are babies
at the breast fainting from hunger, and older children,
able to speak, but not yet able to comprehend the
helpless circumstances in which their miserable parents
are placed, calling to their mothers for food and
drink—a piercing appeal, enough to drive to the madness
of grief and despair. Crying in vain for the
first necessaries of life, these poor children, like the
younger infants, faint in the streets, and cast themselves
on their mothers' bosoms to die.ii. 11, 12.
This, then, is the
picture in contemplation of which the poet completely
breaks down—children swooning in sight of all the
people, and dying of hunger in their mothers' arms!
He must be recalling scenes of the late siege. Then
the fainting little ones, as they sank down pale and ill,
resembled the wounded men who crept back from the
fight by the walls to fall and die in the streets of the
beleaguered city.
This is just the sharpest sting in the sufferings of the
children. They share the fearful fate of their seniors,
and yet they have had no part in the causes that led
to it. We are naturally perplexed as well as distressed
at this piteous spectacle of childhood. The
beauty, the simplicity, the weakness, the tenderness,
the sensitiveness, the helplessness of infancy appeal
to our sympathies with peculiar force. But over
and above these touching considerations there is a
mystery attaching to the whole subject of the presence
of pain and sorrow in young lives that battles all
reasoning. It is not only hard to understand why the
bud should be blighted before it has had time to open
to the sunshine: this haste in the march of misery to
meet her victims on the threshold of life is to our minds
a very amazing sight. And yet it is not the most
perplexing part of the problem raised by the mystery
of the suffering of children.
When we turn to the moral elements of the case we
encounter its most serious difficulties. Children may
not be accounted innocent in the absolute sense of the
word. Even unconscious infants come into the world
with hereditary tendencies to the evil habits of their
ancestors; but then every principle of justice resists the
attachment of guilt or responsibility to an unsought
and undeserved inheritance. And although children
soon commit offences on their own account, it is not
the consequences of these youthful follies that here
trouble us. The cruel wrongs of childhood that overshadow
the world's history with its darkest mystery
have travelled on to their victims from quite other
regions—regions of which the poor little sufferers are
ignorant with the ignorance of perfect innocence. Why
do children thus share in evils they had no hand in
bringing upon the community?
It is perhaps well that we should acknowledge quite
frankly that there are mysteries in life which no ingenuity
of thought can fathom. The suffering of childhood
is one of the greatest of these apparently insoluble
riddles of the universe. We have to learn that in view
of such a problem as is here raised we too are but
infants crying in the night.
Still there is no occasion for us to aggravate the riddle
by adding to it manufactured difficulties; we may even
admit such mitigation of its severity as the facts of the
case suggest. When little children suffer and die in
their innocence they are free at least from those agonies
of remorse for the irrecoverable past, and of apprehension
concerning the doom of the future, that haunt
the minds of guilty men, and frequently far exceed the
physical pains endured. Beneath their hardest woes
they have a peace of God that is the counterpart of the
martyr's serenity.
Nevertheless, when we have said all that can be said in
this direction, there remains the sickening fact that children
do suffer and pine and die. Still though this cannot
be explained away, there are two truths that we should set
beside it before we attempt to form any judgment on the
whole subject. The first is that taught so emphatically
by our Lord when He declared that the victims of an
accident or the sufferers in an indiscriminate slaughter
were not to be accounted exceptional sinners.Luke xiii 1-5.
But if
suffering is by no means a sign of sin in the victim we
may go further, and deny that it is in all respects an
evil. It may be impossible for us to accept the Stoic
paradox in the case of little children whom even the
greatest pedant would scarcely attempt to console with
philosophic maxims. In the endurance of them, the
pain and sorrow and death of the young cannot but
seem to us most real evils, and it is our plain duty to
do all in our power to check and stay everything of the
kind. We must beware of the indolence that lays upon
Providence the burden of troubles that are really due
to our own inconsiderateness. In pursuing the policy
that led to the disastrous siege of their city the Jews
should have known how many innocent victims would
be dragged into the vortex of misery if the course they
had chosen were to fail. The blind obstinacy of the
men who refused to listen to the warnings so emphatically
pronounced by the great prophets of Jehovah, the
desperate self-will of these men, pitted against the
declared counsel of God, must bear the blame. It is
monstrous to charge the providence of God with the
consequences of actions that God has forbidden.
A second truth must be added, for there still remains
the difficulty that children are placed, by no choice of
their own, in circumstances that render them thus liable
to the effects of other people's sins and follies. We can
never understand human life if we persist in considering
each person by himself. That we are members one of
another, so that if one member suffers all the members
suffer, is the law of human experience as well as the
principle of Christian churchmanship. Therefore we
must regard the wrongs of children that so disturb us
as part of the travail and woe of mankind. Bad as it
is in itself that these innocents should be thus involved
in the consequences of the misconduct of their elders, it
would not be any improvement for them to be cut off
from all connection with their predecessors in the great
family of mankind. Taken on the whole, the solidarity
of man certainly makes more for the welfare of childhood
than for its disadvantage. And we must not think
of childhood alone, deeply as we are moved at the sight
of its unmerited sufferings. If children are part of the
race, whatever children endure must be taken as but
one element in the vast experience that goes to make
up the life-history of mankind.
All this is very vague, and if we offer it as a consolation
to a mother whose heart is torn with anguish at
the sight of her child's pain, it is likely she will think
our balm no better than the wormwood of mockery.
It would be vain for us to imagine that we have solved
the riddle, and vainer to suppose that any views of life
could be set against the unquestionable fact that innocent
children suffer, as though they in the slightest
degree lessened the amount of this pain or made it
appreciably easier to endure. But then, on the other
hand, the mere existence of all this terrible agony
does not justify us in bursting out into tremendous
denunciations of the universe. The thoughts that rise
from a consideration of the wider relations of the facts
should teach us lessons of humility in forming our
judgment on so vast a subject. We cannot deny the
existence of evils that cry aloud for notice; we cannot
explain them away. But at least we can follow the
example of the elders and virgins of Israel, and be
silent.
The portrait of misery that the poet has drawn in
describing the condition of Jerusalem during the siege
is painful enough when viewed by itself; and yet he
proceeds further, and seeks to deepen the impression
he has already made by setting the picture in a suitable
frame. So he directs attention to the behaviour of
surrounding peoples. Jerusalem is not permitted to
hide her grief and shame. She is flung into an arena
while a crowd of cruel spectators gloat over her agonies.
These are to be divided into two classes, the unconcerned
and the known enemies. There is not any
great difference between them in their treatment of the
miserable city. The unconcerned "hiss and wag their
heads";ii. 15.
the enemies "hiss and gnash their teeth."ii. 16.
That is to say, both add to the misery of the Jews—the
one class in mockery, the other in hatred. But
what are these men at their worst? Behind them is
the real Power that is the source of all the misery.
If the enemy rejoices it is only because God has given
him the occasion. The Lord has been carrying out
His own deliberate intentions; nay, these events are
but the execution of commands He issued in the days
of old.ii. 17.
This reads like an anticipation of the Calvinistic
decrees. But perhaps the poet is referring to the
solemn threatening of Divine Judgment pronounced
by a succession of prophets. Their message had been
unheeded by their contemporaries. Now it has been
verified by history. Remembering what that message
was—how it predicted woes as the punishment of
sins, how it pointed out a way of escape, how it threw
all the responsibility upon those people who were
so infatuated as to reject the warning—we cannot
read into the poet's lines any notion of absolute predestination.
In the midst of this description of the miseries of
Jerusalem the elegist confesses his own inability to
comfort her. He searches for an image large enough
for a just comparison with such huge calamities as he
has in view. His language resembles that of our Lord
when He exclaims, "Whereunto shall I liken the
kingdom of God?"Luke xiii. 20.
a similarity which may remind us
that if the troubles of man are great beyond earthly
analogy, so also are the mercies of God. Compare
these two, and there can be no question as to which
way the scale will turn. Where sin and misery abound
grace much more abounds. But now the poet is concerned
with the woes of Jerusalem, and he can only
find one image with which these woes are at all comparable.
Her breach, he says, "is great like the sea,"ii. 13.
meaning that her calamities are vast and terrible as the
sea; or perhaps that the ruin of Jerusalem is like that
produced by the breaking in of the sea—a striking
image in its application to an inland mountain city;
for no place was really safer from any such cataclysm
than Jerusalem. The analogy is intentionally far-fetched.
What might naturally happen to Tyre, but
could not possibly reach Jerusalem, is nevertheless the
only conceivable type of the events that have actually
befallen this ill-fated city. The Jews were not a
maritime people. To them the sea was no delight such
as it is to us. They spoke of it with terror, and shuddered
to hear from afar of its ravages. Now the
deluge of their own troubles is compared to the great
and terrible sea.
The poet can offer no comfort for such misery as
this. His confession of helplessness agrees with what
we must have perceived already, namely, that the Book
of Lamentations is not a book of consolations. It is
not always easy to see that the sympathy which mourns
with the sufferer may be quite unable to relieve him.
The too common mistake of the friend who comes to
show sympathy is Bildad's and his companions' notion
that he is called upon to offer advice. Why should
one who is not in the school of affliction assume the
function of pedagogue to a pupil of that school, who
by reason of the mere fact of his presence there should
rather be deemed fit to instruct the outsider?
If he cannot comfort Jerusalem, however, the elegist
will pray with her. His latest reference to the Divine
source of the troubles of the Jews leads him on to a
cry to God for mercy on the miserable people. Though
he may not yet see the gospel of grace which is the only
thing greater than the sin and misery of man, he can
point towards the direction in which that glorious gospel
is to dawn on the eyes of weary sufferers. Here, if anywhere,
is the solution of the mystery of misery.
CHAPTER IX
PROPHETS WITHOUT A VISION
ii. 9, 14
In deploring the losses suffered by the daughter of
Zion the elegist bewails the failure of her prophets
to obtain a vision from Jehovah. His language implies
that these men were still lingering among the ruins of
the city. Apparently they had not been considered by
the invaders of sufficient importance to require transportation
with Zedekiah and the princes. Thus they
were within reach of inquirers, and doubtless they were
more than ever in request at a time when many perplexed
persons were anxious for pilotage through a sea
of troubles. It would seem, too, that they were trying
to execute their professional functions. They sought
light; they looked in the right direction—to God.
Yet their quest was vain; no vision was given to
them; the oracles were dumb.
To understand the situation we must recollect the
normal place of prophecy in the social life of Israel.
The great prophets whose names and works have come
down to us in Scripture were always rare and exceptional
men—voices crying in the wilderness. Possibly
they were not more scarce at this time than at other
periods. Jeremiah had not been disappointed in his
search for a Divine message.See Jer. xlii. 4, 7.
The greatest seer of
visions ever known to the world, Ezekiel, had already
appeared among the captives by the waters of Babylon.
Before long the sublime prophet of the restoration was
to sound his trumpet blast to awaken courage and hope
in the exiles. Though pitched in a minor key, these
very elegies bear witness to the fact that their gentle
author was not wholly deficient in prophetic fire.
This was not an age like the time of Samuel's youth,
barren of Divine voices.See 1 Sam. iii. 1.
It is true that the inspired
voices were now scattered over distant regions far
from Jerusalem, the ancient seat of prophecy. Yet
the idea of the elegist is that the prophets who might
be still seen at the site of the city were deprived of
visions. These must have been quite different men.
Evidently they were the professional prophets, officials
who had been trained in music and dancing to
appear as choristers on festive occasions, the equivalent
of the modern dervishes; but who were also sought
after like the seer of Ramah, to whom young Saul
resorted for information about his father's lost asses,
as simple soothsayers. Such assistance as these men
were expected to give was no longer forthcoming at
the request of troubled souls.
The low and sordid uses to which every-day prophecy
was degraded may incline us to conclude that the
cessation of it was no very great calamity, and perhaps
to suspect that from first to last the whole business was
a mass of superstition affording large opportunities for
charlatanry. But it would be rash to adopt this extreme
view without a fuller consideration of the subject.
The great messengers of Jehovah frequently speak of
the professional prophets with the contempt of Socrates
for the professional sophists; and yet the rebukes
which they administer to these men for their unfaithfulness
show that they accredit them with important
duties and the gifts with which to execute them.
Thus the lament of the elegist suggests a real loss—something
more serious than the failure of assistance
such as some Roman Catholics try to obtain from
St. Anthony in the discovery of lost property. The
prophets were regarded as the media of communication
between heaven and earth. It was because of the low
and narrow habits of the people that their gifts were
often put to low and narrow uses which savoured rather
of superstition than of devotion. The belief that God
did not only reveal His will to great persons and on
momentous occasions helped to make Israel a religious
nation. That there were humble gifts of prophecy within
the reach of the many, and that these gifts were for the
helping of men and women in their simplest needs, was
one of the articles of the Hebrew faith. The quenching
of a host of smaller stars may involve as much loss of
life as that of a few brilliant ones. If prophecy fades
out from among the people, if the vision of God is no
longer perceptible in daily life, if the Church, as a whole,
is plunged into gloom, it is of little avail to her that a
few choice souls here and there pierce the mists like
solitary mountain peaks so as to stand alone in the
clear light of heaven. The perfect condition would be
that in which "all the Lord's people were prophets."
If this is not yet attainable, at all events we may
rejoice when the capacity for communion with heaven
is widely enjoyed, and we must deplore it as one of the
greatest calamities of the Church that the quickening
influence of the prophetic spirit should be absent from
her assemblies. The Jews had not fallen so low that
they could contemplate the cessation of communications
with heaven unmoved. They were far from the practical
materialism which leads its victims to be perfectly
satisfied to remain in a condition of spiritual paralysis—a
totally different thing from the theoretical materialism
of Priestley and Tyndall. They knew that "man
shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that
proceedeth out of the mouth of God"; and therefore
they understood that a famine of the word of God must
result in as real a starvation as a famine of wheat.
When we have succeeded in recovering this Hebrew
standpoint we shall be prepared to recognise that
there are worse calamities than bad harvests and
seasons of commercial depression; we shall be brought
to acknowledge that it is possible to be starved in the
midst of plenty, because the greatest abundance of such
food as we have lacks the elements requisite for our
complete nourishment. According to reports of sanitary
authorities, children in Ireland are suffering from
the substitution of the less expensive and sweeter diet
of maize for the more wholesome oatmeal on which their
parents were brought up. Must it not be confessed
that a similar substitution of cheap and savoury soul
pabulum—in literature, music, amusements—for the
"sincere milk of the word" and the "strong meat"
of truth is the reason why so many of us are not
growing up to the stature of Christ? The "liberty
of prophesying" for which our fathers contended and
suffered is ours. But it will be a barren heritage if
in cherishing the liberty we lose the prophesying.
There is no gift enjoyed by the Church for which she
should be more jealous than that of the prophetic
spirit.
As we look across the wide field of history we must
perceive that there have been many dreary periods in
which the prophets could find no vision from the Lord.
At first sight it would even seem that the light of
heaven only shone on a few rare luminous spots,
leaving the greater part of the world and the longer
periods of time in absolute gloom. But this pessimistic
view results from our limited capacity to perceive the
light that is there. We look for the lightning. But
inspiration is not always electric. The prophet's vision
is not necessarily startling. It is a vulgar delusion to
suppose that revelation must assume a sensational
aspect. It was predicted of the Word of God incarnate
that He should not "strive, or cry, or lift up His
voice";Isa. xlii. 1.
and when He came He was rejected because
He would not satisfy the wonder-seekers with a flaring
portent—a "sign from heaven." Still it cannot be
denied that there have been periods of barrenness.
They are found in what might be called the secular
regions of the operation of the Spirit of God. A
brilliant epoch of scientific discovery, artistic invention,
or literary production is followed by a time of torpor,
feeble imitation, or meretricious pretence. The Augustan
and Elizabethan ages cannot be conjured back at will.
Prophets of nature, poets, and artists can none of them
command the power of inspiration. This is a gift
which may be withheld, and which, when denied, will
elude the most earnest pursuit. We may miss the
vision of prophecy when the prophets are as numerous
as ever, and unfortunately as vocal. The preacher
possesses learning and rhetoric. We only miss one
thing in him—inspiration. But, alas! that is just the
one thing needful.
Now the question forces itself upon our attention,
what is the explanation of these variations in the
distribution of the spirit of prophecy? Why is the
fountain of inspiration an intermittent spring, a
Bethesda? We cannot trace its failure to any shortness
of supply, for this fountain is fed from the infinite
ocean of the Divine life. Neither can we attribute
caprice to One whose wisdom is infinite, and whose
will is constant. It may be right to say that God
withholds the vision, withholds it deliberately; but it
cannot be correct to assert that this fact is the final
explanation of the whole matter. God must be believed
to have a reason, a good and sufficient reason, for
whatever He does. Can we guess what His reason
may be in such a case as this? It may be conjectured
that it is necessary for the field to lie fallow for a season
in order that it may bring forth a better crop subsequently.
Incessant cultivation would exhaust the soil.
The eye would be blinded if it had no rest from visions.
We may be overfed; and the more nutritious our diet
is the greater will be the danger of surfeit. One of
our chief needs in the use of revelation is that we
should thoroughly digest its contents. What is the
use of receiving fresh visions if we have not yet
assimilated the truth that we already possess? Sometimes,
too, no vision can be found for the simple reason
that no vision is needed. We waste ourselves in the
pursuit of unprofitable questions when we should be
setting about our business. Until we have obeyed
the light that has been given us it is foolish to complain
that we have not more light. Even our present
light will wane if it is not followed up in practice.
But while considerations such as these must be
attended to if we are to form a sound judgment on the
whole question, they do not end the controversy, and
they scarcely apply at all to the particular illustration
of it that is now before us. There is no danger of
surfeit in a famine; and it is a famine of the word
that we are now confronted with. Moreover, the
elegist supplies an explanation that sets all conjectures
at rest.
The fault was in the prophets themselves. Although
the poet does not connect the two statements together,
but inserts other matter between them, we cannot fail
to see that his next words about the prophets bear
very closely on his lament over the denial of visions.
He tells us that they had seen visions of vanity and
foolishness.ii. 14.
This is with reference to an earlier period.
Then they had had their visions; but these had been
empty and worthless. The meaning cannot be that
the prophets had been subject to unavoidable delusions,
that they had sought truth, but had been rewarded
with deception. The following words show that the
blame was attributed entirely to their own conduct.
Addressing the daughter of Zion the poet says: "Thy
prophets have seen visions for thee." The visions were
suited to the people to whom they were declared—manufactured,
shall we say?—with the express purpose
of pleasing them. Such a degradation of sacred
functions in gross unfaithfulness deserved punishment;
and the most natural and reasonable punishment was
the withholding for the future of true visions from
men who in the past had forged false ones. The very
possibility of this conduct proves that the influence of
inspiration had not the hold upon these Hebrew
prophets that it had obtained over the heathen prophet
Balaam, when he exclaimed, in face of the bribes and
threats of the infuriated king of Moab: "If Balak
would give me his house full of silver and gold, I
cannot go beyond the word of the Lord, to do either
good or bad of mine own mind; what the Lord speaketh,
that will I speak."Numb. xxiv. 13.
It must ever be that unfaithfulness to the light we
have already received will bar the door against the
advent of more light. There is nothing so blinding
as the habit of lying. People who do not speak truth
ultimately prevent themselves from perceiving truth,
the false tongue leading the eye to see falsely. This
is the curse and doom of all insincerity. It is
useless to enquire for the views of insincere persons;
they can have no distinct views, no certain convictions,
because their mental vision is blurred by their long-continued
habit of confounding true and false. Then
if for once in their lives such people may really desire
to find a truth in order to assure themselves in
some great emergency, and therefore seek a vision of
the Lord, they will have lost the very faculty of
receiving it.
The blindness and deadness that characterise so
much of the history of thought and literature, art and
religion, are to be attributed to the same disgraceful
cause. Greek philosophy decayed in the insincerity
of professional sophistry. Gothic art degenerated into
the florid extravagance of the Tudor period when it
had lost its religious motive, and had ceased to be
what it pretended. Elizabethan poetry passed through
euphuism into the uninspired conceits of the sixteenth
century. Dryden restored the habit of true speech,
but it required generations of arid eighteenth century
sincerity in literature to make the faculty of seeing
visions possible to the age of Burns and Shelley and
Wordsworth.
In religion this fatal effect of insincerity is terribly
apparent. The formalist can never become a prophet.
Creeds which were kindled in the fires of passionate
conviction will cease to be luminous when the faith
that inspired them has perished; and then if they
are still repeated as dead words by false lips the
unreality of them will not only rob them of all
value, it will blind the eyes of the men and women
who are guilty of this falsehood before God, so that
no new vision of truth can be brought within their
reach. Here is one of the snares that attach themselves
to the privilege of receiving a heritage of teaching from
our ancestors. We can only avoid it by means of
searching inquests over the dead beliefs which a foolish
fondness has permitted to remain unburied, poisoning
the atmosphere of living faith. So long as the fact
that they are dead is not honestly admitted it will be
impossible to establish sincerity in worship; and the
insincerity, while it lasts, will be an impassable barrier
to the advent of truth.
The elegist has laid his finger on the particular form
of untruth of which the Jerusalem prophets had been
guilty. They had not discovered her iniquity to the
daughter of Zion.ii. 14.
Thus they had hastened her ruin
by keeping back the message that would have urged
their hearers to repentance. Some interpreters have
given quite a new turn to the last clause of the fourteenth
verse. Literally this states that the prophets have
seen "drivings away"; and accordingly it has been
taken to mean that they pretended to have had visions
about the captivity when this was an accomplished
fact, although they had been silent on the subject, or
had even denied the danger, at the earlier time when
alone their words could have been of any use; or,
again, the words have been thought to suggest that
these prophets were now at the later period predicting
fresh calamities, and were blind to the vision of hope
which a true prophet like Jeremiah had seen and
declared. But such ideas are over-refined, and they
give a twist to the course of thought that is foreign to
the form of these direct, simple elegies. It seems better
to take the final clause of the verse as a repetition
of what went before, with a slight variety of form.
Thus the poet declares that the burdens, or prophecies,
which these unfaithful men have presented to the people
have been causes of banishment.
The crying fault of the prophets is their reluctance
to preach to people of their sins. Their mission
distinctly involves the duty of doing so. They should
not shun to declare the whole counsel of God. It is
not within the province of the ambassador to make
selections from among the despatches with which he
has been entrusted in order to suit his own convenience.
There is nothing that so paralyses the work of the
preacher as the habit of choosing favourite topics and
ignoring less attractive subjects. Just in proportion
as he commits this sin against his vocation he ceases
to be the prophet of God, and descends to the level of
one who deals in obiter dicta, mere personal opinions to
be taken on their own merits. One of the gravest
possible omissions is the neglect to give due weight
to the tragic fact of sin. All the great prophets have
been conspicuous for their fidelity to this painful and
sometimes dangerous part of their work. If we would
can up a typical picture of a prophet in the discharge
of his task, we should present to our minds Elijah
confronting Ahab, or John the Baptist before Herod, or
Savonarola accusing Lorenzo de Medici, or John Knox
preaching at the court of Mary Stuart. He is Isaiah
declaring God's abomination of sacrifices and incense
when these are offered by blood-stained hands, or
Chrysostom seizing the opportunity that followed the
mutilation of the imperial statues at Antioch to preach
to the dissolute city on the need of repentance, or
Latimer denouncing the sins of London to the citizens
assembled at Paul's Cross.
The shallow optimism that disregards the shadows
of life is trebly faulty when it appears in the pulpit.
It falsifies facts in failing to take account of the stern
realities of the evil side of them; it misses the grand
opportunity of rousing the consciences of men and
women by forcing them to attend to unwelcome truths,
and thus encourages the heedlessness with which
people rush headlong to ruin; and at the same time
it even renders the declaration of the gracious truths
of the gospel, to which it devotes exclusive attention,
ineffectual, because redemption is meaningless to those
who do not recognise the present slavery and the
future doom from which it brings deliverance. On
every account the rose-water preaching that ignores
sin and flatters its hearers with pleasant words is thin,
insipid, and lifeless. It tries to win popularity by echoing
the popular wishes; and it may succeed in lulling the
storm of opposition with which the prophet is commonly
assailed. But in the end it must be sterile. When,
"through fear or favour," the messenger of heaven
thus prostitutes his mission to suit the ends of a low,
selfish, worldly expediency, the very least punishment
with which his offence can be visited is for him to be
deprived of the gifts he has so grossly abused. Here,
then, we have the most specific explanation of the
failure of heavenly visions; it comes from the neglect
of earthly sin. This is what breaks the magician's
wand, so that he can no longer summon the Ariel of
inspiration to his aid.x
CHAPTER X
THE CALL TO PRAYER
ii. 18-22
It is not easy to analyse the complicated construction
of the concluding portion of the second elegy.
If the text is not corrupt its transitions are very abrupt.
The difficulty is to adjust the relations of three sections.
First we have the sentence, "Their heart cried unto
the Lord." Next comes the address to the wall. "O
wall of the daughter of Zion," etc. Lastly, there is the
prayer which extends from verse 20 to the end of the
poem.
The most simple grammatical arrangement is to take
the first clause in connection with the preceding verse.
The last substantive was the word "adversaries."
Therefore in the rigour of grammar the pronoun should
represent that word. Read thus, the sentence relates
an action of the enemies of Israel when their horn has
been exalted. The word rendered "cried" is one
that would designate a loud shout, and that translated
"Lord" here is not the sacred name Jehovah but
Adonai, a general term that might very well be used
in narrating the behaviour of the heathen towards
God. Thus the phrase would seem to describe the
insolent shout of triumph which the adversaries of the
Jews fling at the God of their victims.
On the other hand, it is to be observed that the
general title "Lord" (Adonai) is also employed in
the very next verse in the direct call to prayer. The
heart, too, is mentioned again there as it is here, and
that to express the inner being and deepest feelings of
the afflicted city. It seems unlikely that the elegist
would mention a heart-cry of the enemies and describe
this as addressed to "The Lord."
Probably then we should apply this opening clause
to the Jews, although they had not been named in the
near context, a construction favoured by the abrupt
transitions in which the elegist indulges elsewhere.
It is the heart of the Jews that cried unto the Lord.
Now the question arises, How shall we take this assertion
in view of the words that follow? The common
reading supposes that it introduces the immediately
succeeding sentences. The heart of the Jews calls to
the wall of the daughter of Zion, and bids it arise and
pray. But with this construction we should look for
another word (such as "saying") to introduce the
appeal, because the Hebrew word rendered "cried"
is usually employed absolutely, and not as the preface
to quoted speech. Besides, the ideas would be strangely
involved. Some people, indefinitely designated "they,"
exhort the wall to weep and pray! How can this
exhortation to a wall be described as a calling to the
Lord? The complication is increased when the prayer
follows sharply on the anonymous appeal without a
single connecting or explanatory clause.
A simpler interpretation is to follow Calvin in
rendering the first clause absolutely, but still applying
it to the Jews, who, though they are not named here,
are supposed to be always in mind. We may not
agree with the stern theologian of Geneva in asserting
that the cry thus designated is one of impatient grief
flowing not "from a right feeling or from the true fear
of God, but from the strong and turbid impulse of
nature." The elegist furnishes no excuse for this
somewhat ungracious judgment. After his manner,
already familiar to us, the poet interjects a thought—viz.,
that the distressed Jews cried to God. This
suggests to him the great value of the refuge of
prayer, a topic on which he forthwith proceeds to
enlarge first by making an appeal to others, and then by
himself breaking out into the direct language of petition.
This is not the first occasion on which the elegist
has shown his faith in the efficacy of prayer. But
hitherto he has only uttered brief exclamations in the
middle of his descriptive passages. Now he gives a
solemn call to prayer, and follows this with a deliberate,
full petition, addressed to God. We must feel that the
elegy is lifted to a higher plane by the new turn that
the thought of its author takes at this place. Grief is
natural; it is useless to pretend to be impassive; and,
although our Teutonic habits of reserve may make it
difficult for us to sympathise with the violent outbursts
that an Oriental permits himself without any sense of
shame, we must admit that a reasonable expression
of the emotions is good and wholesome. Tennyson
recognises this in the well-known lyric where he says
of the dead warrior's wife—
"She must weep or she will die."
Nevertheless, an unchecked rush of feeling, not
followed by any action, cannot but evince weakness;
it has no lifting power. Although, if the emotion is
distressful, such an expression may give relief to its
subject, it is certainly very depressing to the spectator.
For this reason the Book of Lamentations strikes us as
the most depressing part of the Bible—would it not be
just to say, as the only part that can be so described?
But it would not be fair to this Book to suppose that it
did nothing beyond realising the significance of its
title. It contains more than a melancholy series of
laments. In the passage before us the poet raises his
voice to a higher strain.
This new and more elevated turn in the elegy is
itself suggestive. The transition from lamentation to
prayer is always good for the sufferer. The first
action may relieve his pent-up emotions; it cannot
destroy the source from which they flow. But prayer
is more practical, for it aims at deliverance. That,
however, is its least merit. In the very act of seeking
help from God the soul is brought into closer relations
with Him, and this condition of communion is a better
thing than any results that can possibly follow in the
form of answers to the prayer, great and helpful as
these may be. The trouble that drives us to prayer
is a blessing because the state of a praying soul is a
blessed state.
Like the muezzin on his minaret, the elegist calls to
prayer. But his exhortation is addressed to a strange
object—to the wall of the daughter of Zion. This
wall is to let its tears flow like a river. It is so far
personified that mention is made of the apple of its
eye; it is called upon to arise, to pour out its heart,
to lift up its hands. The license of Eastern poetry
permits the unflinching application of a metaphor to
an extent that would be considered extravagant and
even absurd in our own literature. It is only in a
travesty of melodrama that Shakespeare permits the
Thisbe of A Midsummer Night's Dream to address a
wall. Browning has an exquisitely beautiful little
poem apostrophising an old wall; but this is not
done so as to leave out of account the actual form and
nature of his subject. Walls can not only be beautiful
and even sublime, as Mr. Ruskin has shewn in his
Stones of Venice; they may also wreathe their severe
outlines in a multitude of thrilling associations. This
is especially so when, as in the present instance, it is
the wall of a city that we are contemplating. Not a
new piece of builder's work, neat and clean and bald,
bare of all associations, as meaningless as in too many
cases it is ugly, but an old wall, worn by the passing
to and fro of generations that have turned to dust long
years ago, bearing the bruises of war on its battered
face, crumbling to powder, or perhaps half buried in
weeds—such a wall is eloquent in its wealth of associations,
and there is pathos in the thought of its mere
age when this is considered in relation to the many
men and women and children who have rested beneath
its shadow at noon, or sheltered themselves behind
its solid masonry amid the terrors of war. The walls
that encircle the ancient English city of Chester and
keep alive memories of mediæval life, the bits of the
old London wall that are left standing among the
warehouses and offices of the busy mart of modern
commerce, even the remote wall of China for quite
different reasons, and many another famous wall,
suggest to us multitudinous reflections. But the walls
of Jerusalem surpass them all in the pathos of the
memories that cling to their old grey stones. It does
not require a great stretch of imagination to picture
these walls as once glowing and throbbing with an
intense life, and now dreaming over the unfathomable
depths of age-long memories.
In personifying the wall of Zion, however, the Hebrew
poet does not indulge in reflections such as these, which
are more in harmony with the mild melancholy of
Gray's Elegy than with the sadder mood of the mourning
patriot. He names the wall to give unity and
concreteness to his appeal, and to clothe it in an
atmosphere of poetic fancy. But his sober thought
in the background is directed towards the citizens
whom that historic wall once enclosed. Herein is his
justification for carrying his personification so far. This
is more than a wild apostrophe, the outburst of an
excited poet's fancy. The imaginative conceit wings
the arrow of a serious purpose.
Let us look at the appeal in detail. First the elegist
encourages a free outflow of grief, that tears should run
like a river, literally, like a torrent—the allusion being
to one of those steep watercourses which, though dry
in summer, become rushing floods in the rainy season.
This introduction shews that the call to prayer is not
intended in any sense as a rebuke for the natural
expression of grief, nor as a denial of its existence.
The sufferers cannot say that the poet does not sympathise
with them. It might seem needless to give this
assurance. But anybody who has attempted to offer
exhortation to a person in trouble must have discovered
how delicate his task is. Let him approach the subject
as carefully as he may, it is almost certain that he will
chafe the quivering nerves he desires to soothe, so
sensitive is the soul in pain to any interference from
without. Under these circumstances, the one method
by which it is at all possible to smooth the way of
approach is an expression of genuine sympathy.
There may be a deeper reason for this encouragement
of the expression of grief as a preliminary to a
call to prayer. The helplessness which it so eloquently
proclaims is just the condition in which the soul is
most ready to cast itself on the mercy of God. Calm
fortitude must always be better than an undisciplined
abandonment to grief. But before this has been attained
there may come an apathy of despair, under the
influence of which the feelings are simply benumbed.
That apathy is the very opposite to drying up the
fountain of grief as it may be dried in the sunshine
of love; it is freezing it. The first step towards
deliverance will be to melt the glacier. The soul must
feel before it can pray. Therefore the tears are encouraged
to run like torrents, and the sufferer to give
himself no respite, nor let the apple of his eye cease
from weeping.
Next the poet exhorts the object of his sympathy—this
strange personification of the "wall of the daughter
of Zion," under the image of which he is thinking of
the Jews—to arise. The weeping is but a preliminary
to more promising acts. The sufferer is not to spend
the long night in an unbroken flow of grief, like the
psalmist "watering his couch with his tears."Psalm vi. 6.
The
very opposite attitude is now suggested. Grief must not
be treated as a normal condition, to be acquiesced in
or even encouraged. The victim is tempted to cherish
his sorrow as a sacred charge, to feel hurt if any
mitigation of it is suggested, or ashamed of confessing
that relief has been received. When he has reached
this condition it is obvious that the substance of grief
has passed; the ghost of it that remains is fast becoming
a harmless sentiment. If, however, the trouble
should be still maintaining the tightness of its grip on
the heart, there is positive danger in permitting it to
be indulged without intermission. The sufferer must
be roused if he is to be saved from the disease of
melancholia.
He must be roused also if he would pray. True
prayer is a strenuous effort of the soul, requiring the
most wakeful attention and taxing the utmost energy
of will. The Jew stood up to pray with hands outstretched
to heaven. The relaxed and feeble devotions
of a somnolent worshipper must fall flat and fruitless.
There is no value in the length of a prayer, but there
is much in its depth. It is the weight of its earnestness,
not the comprehensiveness of its topics, that gives
it efficacy. Therefore we must gird up our loins to
pray just as we would to work, or run, or fight.
Now the awakened soul is urged to cry out in the
night, and in the beginning of the night watches—that
is to say, not only at the commencement of the night,
for this would require no rousing, but at the beginning
of each of the three watches into which the Hebrews
divided the hours of darkness—at sunset, at ten o clock,
and at two in the morning. The sufferer is to keep
watch with prayer—observing his vespers, his nocturns,
and his matins, not of course to fulfil forms, but because,
since his grief is continuous, his prayer also must
not cease. This is all assigned to the night, perhaps
because that is a quiet, solemn season for undisturbed
reflection, when therefore the grief that requires the
prayer is most acutely felt; or perhaps because the
time of sorrow is naturally pictured as a night, as a
season of darkness.
Proceeding with our consideration of the details of
this call to prayer, we come upon the exhortation to
pour out the heart like water before the face of the
Lord. The image here used is not without parallel in
scripture. Thus a psalmist exclaims—
"I am poured out like water,
And all my bones are out of joint;
My heart is like wax;
It is melted in the midst of my bowels."Psalm xxii. 14.
But the ideas are not just the same in the two cases.
While the psalmist thinks of himself as crushed and
shattered, as though his very being were dissolved, the
thought of the elegist has more action about it, with a
deliberate intention and object in view. His image
suggests complete openness before God. Nothing is to
be withheld. It is not so much that the secrets of the
soul are to be disclosed. The end aimed at is not
confession, but confidence. Therefore what the writer
would urge is that the sufferer should tell the whole tale
of his grief to God, quite freely, without any reserve,
trusting absolutely to the Divine sympathy.
This confidence is a primary requisite in prayer.
Until we can trust our Father it is useless to petition
for his aid; we could not avail ourselves of it if it
were offered us. Indeed, the soul must come into
relations of sympathy with God before any real prayer
is at all possible.
We may go further. The attitude of soul that is
here recommended is in itself the very essence of
prayer. The devotions that consist in a series of
definite petitions are of secondary worth, and superficial
in comparison with this outpouring of the heart
before God. To enter into relations of sympathy and
confidence with God is to pray in the truest, deepest
way possible, or even conceivable. Prayer in the heart
of it is not petition; that is the beggar's resort. It
is communion—the child's privilege. We must often
be as beggars, empty of everything before God; yet
we may also enjoy the happier relationship of sonship
with our Father. Even in the extremity of need
perhaps the best thing we can do is to spread out the
whole case before God. It will certainly relieve our
own minds to do so, and everything will appear changed
when viewed in the light of the Divine presence.
Perhaps we shall then cease to think ourselves aggrieved
and wronged; for what are our deserts before
the holiness of God? Passion is allayed in the stillness
of the sanctuary, and the indignant protest dies upon
our lips as we proceed to lay our case before the eyes
of the All-Seeing. We cannot be impatient any longer;
He is so patient with us, so fair, so kind, so good.
Thus when we cast our burden upon the Lord we may
be surprised with the discovery that it is not so heavy
as we supposed. There are times when it is not
possible for us to go any further. We do not know
what relief to ask for, or even whether we should
request to be in any way delivered from a load which
it may be our duty to bear, or the endurance of which
may be a most wholesome discipline for us. These possibilities
must always put a restraint upon the utterance
of positive petitions. But they do not apply to the
prayer that is a simple act of confidence in God. The
secret of failure in prayer is not that we do not
ask enough; it is that we do not pour out our hearts
before God, the restraint of confidence rising from fear or
doubt simply paralysing the energies of prayer. Jesus
teaches us to pray not only because He gives us a
model prayer, but much more because He is in Himself
so true and full and winsome a revelation of God,
that as we come to know and follow Him our lost
confidence in God is restored. Then the heart that
knows its own bitterness, and that shrinks from permitting
the stranger even to meddle with its joy—how
much more then with its sorrow?—can pour itself
out quite freely before God, for the simple reason that
He is no longer a stranger, but the one perfectly
intimate and absolutely trusted Friend.
It is to be noted that the elegist points to a definite
occasion for the outpouring of the heart before God.
He singles out specifically the sufferings of the starving
children—a terrible subject that appears more than
once in this elegy, shewing how the horror of it has
fastened on the imagination of the poet. This was
the most heart-rending and mysterious ingredient in
the bitter cup of the woes of Jerusalem. If we may
bring any trouble to God we may bring the worst
trouble. So this becomes the main topic of the prayer
that follows. Here the cases of the principal victims
are cited. Priest and prophet, notwithstanding the
dignity of office, young man and maiden, old man
and little child—all alike have fallen victims. The
ghastly incident of a siege, where hunger has reduced
human beings to the level of savage beasts, women
devouring their own children, is here cited, and its
cause, as well as that of all the other scenes of the
great tragedy, boldly ascribed to God. It is God who
has summoned His Terrors as at other times He had
summoned His people to the festivals of the sacred
city. But if God mustered the whole army of calamities
it seems right to lay the story of the havoc they have
wrought before His face; and the prayer reads almost
like an accusation, or at least an expostulation, a
remonstrance. It is not such, however; for we have
seen that elsewhere the elegist makes full confession of
the guilt of Jerusalem and admits that the doom of
the wretched city was quite merited. Still if the dire
chastisement is from the hand of God it is God alone
who can bring deliverance. That is the final point
to be reached.
CHAPTER XI
THE MAN THAT HATH SEEN AFFLICTION
iii. 1-21
Whether we regard it from a literary, a speculative,
or a religious point of view, the third and
central elegy cannot fail to strike us as by far the best
of the five. The workmanship of this poem is most
elaborate in conception and most finished in execution,
the thought is most fresh and striking, and the spiritual
tone most elevated, and, in the best sense of the word,
evangelical. Like Tennyson, who is most poetic when
he is most artistic, as in his lyrics, and like all the
great sonneteers, the author of this exquisite Hebrew
melody has not found his ideas to be cramped by the
rigorous rules of composition. It would seem that to
a master the elaborate regulations that fetter an inferior
mind are no hindrances, but rather instruments fitted
to his hand, and all the more serviceable for their
exactness. Possibly the artistic refinement of form
stimulates thought and rouses the poet to exert his
best powers; or perhaps—and this is more probable—he
selects the richer robe for the purpose of clothing
his choicer conceptions. Here we have the acrostics
worked up into triplets, so that they now appear at
the beginning of every line, each letter occurring three
times successively as an initial, and the whole poem
falling into sixty-six verses or twenty-two triplets.
Yet none of the other four poems have any approach
to the wealth of thought or the uplifting inspiration
that we meet with in this highly finished product of
literary art.
This elegy differs from its sister poems in another
respect. It is composed, for the most part, in the first
person singular, the writer either speaking of his own
experience or dramatically personating another sufferer.
Who is this "man that hath seen affliction?" On
the understanding that Jeremiah is the author of the
whole book, it is commonly assumed that the prophet
is here revealing his own feelings under the multitude
of troubles with which he has been overwhelmed. But
if, as we have seen, this hypothesis is, to say the least,
extremely dubious, of course the assumption that has
been based upon it loses its warranty. No doubt
there is much in the touching picture of the afflicted
person that agrees with what we know of the experience
of the great prophet. And yet, when we look into it,
we do not find anything of so specific a character as
to settle us in the conclusion that the words could
have been spoken by no one else. There is just the
possibility that the poet is not describing himself at
all; he may be representing somebody well known to
his contemporaries—perhaps even Jeremiah, or just
a typical character, in the manner of Browning's
Dramatis Personæ.
While some mystery hangs over the personality of
this man of sorrows the power and pathos of the poem
are certainly heightened by the concentration of our
attention upon one individual. Few persons are moved
by general statements. Necessarily the comprehensive
is all outline. It is by the supply of the particular
that we fill up the details; and it is only when these
details are present that we have a full-bodied picture.
If an incident is typical it is illustrative of its kind.
To know one such fact is to know all. Thus the
science lecturer produces his specimen, and is satisfied
to teach from it without adding a number of duplicates.
The study of abstract reports is most important to
those who are already interested in the subjects of
these dreary documents; but it is useless as a means
of exciting interest. Philanthropy must visit the office
of the statistician if it would act with enlightened judgment,
and not permit itself to become the victim of
blind enthusiasm; but it was not born there, and the
sympathy which is its parent can only be found among
individual instances of distress.
In the present case the speaker who recounts his
own misfortunes is more than a casual witness, more
than a mere specimen picked out at random from the
heap of misery accumulated in this age of national ruin.
He is not simply a man who has seen affliction, one
among many similar sufferers; he is the man, the
well-known victim, one pre-eminent in distress even
in the midst of a nation full of misery. Yet he is not
isolated on a solitary peak of agony. As the supreme
sufferer, he is also the representative sufferer. He is
not selfishly absorbed in the morbid occupation of
brooding over his private grievances. He has gathered
into himself the vast and terrible woes of his people.
Thus he foreshadows our Lord in His passion. We
cannot but be struck with the aptness of much in this
third elegy when it is read in the light of the last
scenes of the gospel history. It would be a mistake
to say that these outpourings from the heart of the
Hebrew patriot were intended to convey a prophetic
meaning with reference to another Sufferer in a far-distant
future. Nevertheless the application of the
poem to the Man of Sorrows is more than a case of
literary illustration; for the idea of representative
suffering which here emerges, and which becomes
more definite in the picture of the servant of Jehovah
in Isa. liii., only finds its full realisation and perfection
in Jesus Christ. It is repeated, however, with more or
less distinctness wherever the Christ spirit is revealed.
Thus in a noble interpretation of St. Paul, the Apostle
is represented as experiencing—
"Desperate tides of the whole world's anguish
Forced through the channel of a single heart."St. Paul, by Frederick Myers.
The portrait of himself drawn by the author of this
elegy is the more graphic by reason of the fact that the
present is linked to the past. The striking commencement,
"I am the man," etc., sets the speaker in
imagination before our eyes. The addition "who has
seen" (or rather, experienced) "affliction" connects him
with his present sufferings. The unfathomable mystery
of personal identity here confronts us. This is more
than memory, more than the lingering scar of a previous
experience; it is, in a sense, the continuance of
that experience, its ghostly presence still haunting the
soul that once knew it in the glow of life. Thus we
are what we have thought and felt and done, and our
present is the perpetuation of our past. The man who
has seen affliction does not only keep the history of his
distresses in the quiet chamber of memory. His own
personality has slowly acquired a depth, a fulness, a
ripeness that remove him far from the raw and superficial
character he once was. We are silenced into
awe before Job, Jeremiah, and Dante, because these
men grew great by suffering. Is it not told even of
our Lord Jesus Christ that He was made perfect by
the things that He suffered?Heb. v. 8, 9.
Unhappily it cannot
be said that every hero of tragedy climbs to perfection
on the rugged steps of his terrible life-drama; some
men are shattered by discipline which proves to be too
severe for their strength. Christ rose to His highest
glory by means of the cruelty of His enemies and the
treason of one of His trusted disciples; but cruel
wrongs drove Lear to madness, and a confidant's
treachery made a murderer of Othello. Still all who
pass through the ordeal come out other than they
enter, and the change is always a growth in some
direction, even though in many cases we must admit
with sorrow that this is a downward direction.
It is to be observed that here in his self-portraiture—just
as elsewhere when describing the calamities
that have befallen his people—the elegist attributes
the whole series of disastrous events to God. This
characteristic of the Book of Lamentations throughout
is nowhere more apparent than in the third chapter.
So close is the thought of God to the mind of the
writer, he does not even think it necessary to mention
the Divine name. He introduces his pronouns without
any explanation of their objects, saying "His wrath"
and "He hath led me," and so on through the succeeding
verses. This quiet assumption of a recognised
reference of all that happens to one source, a source
that is taken to be so well known that there is no
occasion to name it, speaks volumes for the deep-seated
faith of the writer. He is at the antipodes of the too
common position of those people who habitually forget
to mention the name of God because He is never in
their thoughts. God is always in the thoughts of the
elegist, and that is why He is not named. Like Brother
Lawrence, this man has learnt to "practise the presence
of God."
In amplifying the account of his sufferings, after
giving a general description of himself as the man who
has experienced affliction, and adding a line in which
this experience is connected with its cause—the rod
of the wrath of Him who is unnamed, though ever in
mind—the stricken patriot proceeds to illustrate and
enforce his appeal to sympathy by means of a series
of vivid metaphors. This is the most crisp and pointed
writing in the book. It hurries us on with a breathless
rush of imagery, scene after scene flashing out in bewildering
speed like the whirl of objects we look at
from the windows of an express train.
Let us first glance at the successive pictures in this
rapidly moving panorama of similes, and then at the
general import and unit of the whole.
The afflicted man was under the Divine guidance;
he was not the victim of blind self-will; it was not
when straying from the path of right that he fell into
this pit of misery. The strange thing is that God led
him straight into it—led him into darkness, not into
light as might have been expected with such a Guide.iii. 2.
The first image, then, is that of a traveller misled.
The perception of the terrible truth that is here suggested
prompts the writer at once to draw an inference
as to the relation in which God stands to him, and the
nature and character of the Divine treatment of him
throughout. God, whom he has trusted implicitly,
whom he has followed in the simplicity of ignorance,
God proves to be his Opponent! He feels like one
duped in the past, and at length undeceived as he
makes the amazing discovery that his trusted Guide
has been turning His hand against him repeatedly all
the day of his woful wanderings.iii. 3.
For the moment
he drops his metaphors, and reflects on the dreadful
consequences of this fatal antagonism. His flesh and
skin, his very body is wasted away; he is so crushed
and shattered, it is as though God had broken his
bones.iii. 4.
Now he can see that God has not only acted
as an enemy in guiding him into the darkness; God's
dealings have shewn more overt antagonism. The
helpless sufferer is like a besieged city, and God, who
is conducting the assault, has thrown up a wall round
him. With that daring mixture of metaphors, or, to
be more precise, with that freedom of sudden transition
from the symbol to the subject symbolised which we
often meet with in this Book, the poet calls the rampart
with which he has been girdled "gall and travail,"The Authorised Version has "travel," a mere variation in spelling.
The word means painful labour, toil.
for he has felt himself beset with bitter grief and weary
toil.iii. 4.
Then the scene changes. The victim of Divine wrath
is a captive languishing in a dungeon, which is as dark
as the abodes of the dead, as the dwellings of those
who have been long dead.iii. 6.
The horror of this metaphor
is intensified by the idea of the antiquity of Hades.
How dismal is the thought of being plunged into
a darkness that is already aged—a stagnant darkness,
the atmosphere of those who long since lost the
last rays of the light of his life! There the prisoner is
bound by a heavy chain.iii. 7.
He cries for help; but he
is shut down so low that his prayer cannot reach his
Captor.iii. 8.
Again we see him still hampered, though in altered
circumstances. He appears as a traveller whose way
is blocked, and that not by some accidental fall of rock,
but of set purpose, for he finds the obstruction to be
of carefully prepared masonry, "hewn stones."iii. 9.
Therefore
he has to turn aside, so that his paths become
crooked. Yet more terrible does the Divine enmity
grow. When the pilgrim is thus forced to leave the
highroad and make his way through the adjoining
thickets his Adversary avails Himself of the cover to
assume a new form, that of a lion or a bear lying in
ambush.iii. 10.
The consequence is that the hapless man
is torn as by the claws and fangs of beasts of prey.iii. 11.
But now these wild regions in which the wretched
traveller is wandering at the peril of his life suggest
the idea of the chase. The image of the savage animals
is defective in this respect, that man is their superior
in intelligence, though not in strength. But in the
present case the victim is in every way inferior to his
Pursuer. So God appears as the Huntsman, and the
unhappy sufferer as the poor hunted game. The bow
is bent, and the arrow directed straight for its mark.iii. 12.
Nay, arrow after arrow has already been let fly, and
the dreadful Huntsman, too skilful ever to miss His
mark, has been shooting "the sons of His quiver"
into the very vitals of the object of His pursuit.iii. 13.
Here the poet breaks away from his imagery for a
second time to tell us that he has become an object of
derision to all his people, and the theme of their mocking
songs.iii. 14.
This is a striking statement. It shews
that the afflicted man is not simply one member of the
smitten nation of Israel, sharing the common hardships
of the race whose "badge is servitude." He not merely
experiences exceptional sufferings. He meets with no
sympathy from his fellow-countrymen. On the contrary,
these people so far dissociate themselves from
his case that they can find amusement in his misery.
Thus, while even a misguided Don Quixote is a noble
character in the rare chivalry of his soul, and while
his very delusions are profoundly pathetic, many people
can only find material for laughter in them, and pride
themselves in their superior sanity for so doing, although
the truth is, their conduct proves them to be incapable
of understanding the lofty ideals that inspire the object
of their empty derision; thus Jeremiah was mocked
by his unthinking contemporaries, when, whether in
error, as they supposed, or wisely, as the event shewed,
he preached an apparently absurd policy; and thus a
greater than Jeremiah, One as supreme in reasonableness
as in goodness, was jeered at by men who thought
Him at best a Utopian dreamer, because they were
grovelling in earthly thoughts far out of reach of the
spiritual world in which He moved.
Returning to imagery, the poet pictures himself as
a hardly used guest at a feast. He is fed, crammed,
sated; but his food is bitterness, the cup has been
forced to his lips, and he has been made drunk—not
with pleasant wine, however, but with wormwood.iii. 15.
Gravel has been mixed with his bread, or perhaps
the thought is that when he has asked for bread
stones have been given him. He has been compelled
to masticate this unnatural diet, so that his teeth have
been broken by it. Even that result he ascribes to
God, saying, "He hath broken my teeth."iii. 16.
It is
difficult to think of the interference with personal
liberty being carried farther than this. Here we reach
the extremity of crushed misery.
Reviewing the whole course of his wretched sufferings
from the climax of misery, the man who has seen all
this affliction declares that God has cast him on from
peace.iii. 17.
The Christian sufferer knows what a profound
consolation there is in the possession of the peace of
God, even when he is passing through the most acute
agonies—a peace which can be maintained both amid
the wildest tempests of external adversity and in the
presence of the fiercest paroxysms of personal anguish.
Is it not the acknowledged secret of the martyrs'
serenity? Happily many an obscure sufferer has
discovered it for himself, and found it better than any
balm of Gilead. This most precious gift of heaven
to suffering souls is denied to the man who here
bewails his dismal fate. So too it was denied to Jesus
in the garden, and again on the cross. It is possible
that the dark day will come when it will be denied to
one or another of His people. Then the experience
of the moment will be terrible indeed. But it will be
brief. An angel ministered to the Sufferer in Gethsemane.
The joy of the resurrection followed swiftly
on the agonies of Calvary. In the elegy we are now
studying a burst of praise and glad confidence breaks
out almost immediately after the lowest depths of
misery have been sounded, shewing that, as Keats
declares in an exquisite line—
"There is a budding morrow in midnight."
It is not surprising, however, that, for the time being,
the exceeding blackness of the night keeps the hope
of a new day quite out of sight. The elegist exclaims
that he has lost the very idea of prosperity. Not only
has his strength perished, his hope in God has perished
also.iii. 18.
Happily God is far too good a Father to deal
with His children according to the measure of their
despair. He is found by those who are too despondent
to seek Him, because He is always seeking His lost
children, and not waiting for them to make the first
move towards Him.
When we come to look at the series of pictures of
affliction as a whole we shall notice that one general
idea runs through them. This is that the victim is
hindered, hampered, restrained. He is led into darkness,
besieged, imprisoned, chained, driven out of his
way, seized in ambuscade, hunted, even forced to eat
unwelcome food. This must all point to a specific
character of personal experience. The troubles of
the sufferer have mainly assumed the form of a
thwarting of his efforts. He has not been an indolent,
weak, cowardly creature, succumbing at the first sign
of opposition. To an active man with a strong will
resistance is one of the greatest of troubles, although
it will be accepted meekly, as a matter of course, by a
person of servile habits. If the opposition comes from
God, may it not be that the severity of the trouble is
just caused by the obstinacy of self-will? Certainly
it does not appear to be so here; but then we must
remember the writer is stating his own case.
Two other characteristics of the whole passage may
be mentioned. One is the persistence of the Divine
antagonism. This is what makes the case look so hard.
The pursuer seems to be ruthless; He will not let
his victim alone for a moment. One device follows
sharply on another. There is no escape. The second
of these characteristics of the passage is a gradual
aggravation in the severity of the trials. At first God
is only represented as a guide who misleads; then He
appears as a besieging enemy; later like a destroyer.
And correspondingly the troubles of the sufferer grow
in severity, till at last he is flung into the ashes,
crushed and helpless.
All this is peculiarly painful reading to us with our
Christian thoughts of God. It seems so utterly contrary
to the character of our Father revealed in Jesus
Christ. But then it is not a part of the Christian
revelation, nor was it uttered by a man who had
received the benefits of that highest teaching. That,
however, is not a complete explanation. The dreadful
thoughts about God that are here recorded are almost
without parallel even in the Old Testament. How contrary
they are to such an idea as that of the pitiful Father
in Psalm ciii.! On the other hand, it should be remembered
that if ever we have to make allowance for the
personal equation we must be ready to do so most
liberally when we are listening to the tale of his
wrongs as this is recounted by the sufferer himself.
The narrator may be perfectly honest and truthful,
but it is not in human nature to be impartial under
such circumstances. Even when, as in the present
instance, we have reason to believe that the speaker
is under the influence of a Divine inspiration, we have
no right to conclude that this gift would enable him to
take an all-round vision of truth. Still, can we deny
that the elegist has presented to our minds but one
facet of truth? If we do not accept it as intended for a
complete picture of God, and if we confine it to an
account of the Divine action under certain circumstances
as this appears to one who is most painfully affected
by it, without any assertion concerning the ultimate
motives of God—and this is all we have any justification
for doing—it may teach us important lessons which
we are too ready to ignore in favour of less unpleasant
notions. Finally it would be quite unfair to the elegist,
and it would give us a totally false impression of his
ideas, if we were to go no further than this. To understand
him at all we must hear him out. The contrast
between the first part of this poem and the second is
startling in the extreme, and we must not forget that
the two are set in the closest juxtaposition, for it is
plain that the one is intended to balance the other.
The harshness of the opening words could be permitted
with the more daring, because a perfect corrective
to any unsatisfactory inferences that might be
drawn from it was about to be immediately supplied.
The triplet of verses 19 to 21 serves as a transition
to the picture of the other side of the Divine action.
It begins with prayer. Thus a new note is struck.
The sufferer knows that God is not at heart his enemy.
So he ventures to beseech the very Being concerning
whose treatment of him he has been complaining so
bitterly, to remember his affliction and the misery it
has brought on him, the wormwood, the gall of his
hard lot. Hope now dawns on him out of his own
recollections. What are these? The Authorised
Version would lead us to think that when he uses the
expression, "This I recall to my mind,"iii. 21.
the poet is
referring to the encouraging ideas of the verses that
immediately follow in the next section. But it is not
probable that the last line of a triplet would thus point
forward to another part of the poem. It is more consonant
with the method of the composition to take this
phrase in connection with what precedes it in the same
triplet, and a perfectly permissible change in the translation
of the 20th verse gives good sense in that
connection. We may read this:
"Thou (O God) wilt surely remember, for my soul is bowed down within me."
Thus the recollection that God too has a memory
and that He will remember His suffering servant
becomes the spring of a new hope.
CHAPTER XII
THE UNFAILING GOODNESS OF GOD
iii. 22-4
Although the elegist has prepared us for brighter
scenes by the more hopeful tone of an intermediate
triplet, the transition from the gloom and bitterness of
the first part of the poem to the glowing rapture of
the second is among the most startling effects in literature.
It is scarcely possible to conceive of darker views
of Providence, short of a Manichæan repudiation of the
God of the physical universe as an evil being, than
those which are boldly set forth in the opening verses
of the elegy; we shudder at the awful words, and
shrink from repeating them, so near to the verge of
blasphemy do they seem to come. And now those
appalling utterances are followed by the very choicest
expression of confidence in the boundless goodness of
God! The writer seems to leap in a moment out of
the deepest, darkest pit of misery into the radiance
of more than summer sunlight. How can we account
for this extraordinary change of thought and temper?
It is not enough to ascribe the sharpness of the contrast
either to the clumsiness of the author in giving
utterance to his teeming fancies just as they occur to
him, without any consideration for their bearings one
upon another; or to his art in designedly preparing an
awakening shock. We have still to answer the question,
How could a man entertain two such conflicting currents
of thought in closest juxtaposition?
In their very form and structure these touching
elegies reflect the mental calibre of their author. A
wooden soul could never have invented their movements.
They reveal a most sensitive spirit, a spirit
that resembles a finely strung instrument of music,
quivering in response to impulses from all directions.
People of a mercurial temperament live in a state of
perpetual oscillation between the most contrary moods,
and the violence of their despair is always ready to
give place to the enthusiasm of a new hope. We call
them inconsistent; but their inconsistency may spring
from a quick-witted capacity to see two sides of a
question in the time occupied by slower minds with
the contemplation of one. As a matter of fact, however,
the revulsion in the mind of the poet may not have
been so sudden as it appears in his work. We can
scarcely suppose that so elaborate a composition as
this elegy was written from beginning to end at a
single sitting. Indeed, here we seem to have the
mark of a break. The author composes the first part
in an exceptionally gloomy mood, and leaves the poem
unfinished, perhaps for some time. When he returns
to it on a subsequent occasion he is in a totally different
frame of mind, and this is reflected in the next stage of
his work. Still the point of importance is the possibility
of the very diverse views here recorded.
Nor is this wholly a matter of temperament. Is it
not more or less the case with all of us, that since
absorption with one class of ideas entirely excludes
their opposites, when the latter are allowed to enter
the mind they will rush in with the force of a pent-up
flood? Then we are astonished that we could ever
have forgotten them. We build our theories in disregard
of whole regions of thought. When these
occur to us it is with the shock of a sudden discovery,
and in the flash of the new light we begin at once to
take very different views of our universe. Possibly
we have been oblivious of our own character, until
suddenly we are awakened to our true state, to be
overwhelmed with shame at an unexpected revelation
of sordid meanness, of despicable selfishness. Or
perhaps the vision is of the heart of another person,
whose quiet, unassuming goodness we have not appreciated,
because it has been so unvarying and
dependable that we have taken it as a matter of course,
like the daily sunrise, never perceiving that this very
constancy is the highest merit. We have been more
grateful for the occasional lapses into kindness with
which habitually churlish people have surprised us.
Then there has come the revelation, in which we have
been made to see that a saint has been walking by our
side all the day. Many of us are very slow in reaching
a similar discovery concerning God. But when we
begin to take a right view of His relations to us we
are amazed to think that we had not perceived them
before, so rich and full and abounding are the proofs of
His exceeding goodness.
Still it may seem to us a strange thing that this most
perfect expression of a joyous assurance of the mercy
and compassion of God should be found in the Book of
Lamentations of all places. It may well give heart to
those who have not sounded the depths of sorrow, as
the author of these sad poems had done, to learn that
even he had been able to recognise the merciful kindness
of God in the largest possible measure. A little
reflection, however, should teach us that it is not so
unnatural a thing for this gem of grateful appreciation
to appear where it is. We do not find, as a rule, that
the most prosperous people are the foremost to recognise
the love of God. The reverse is very frequently the
case. If prosperity is not always accompanied by
callous ingratitude—and of course it would be grossly
unjust to assert anything so harsh—at all events it is
certain that adversity is far from blinding our eyes to
the brighter side of the revelation of God. Sometimes
it is the very means by which they are opened. In
trouble the blessings of the past are best valued, and
in trouble the need of God's compassion is most acutely
felt. But this is not all. The softening influence of
sorrow seems to have a more direct effect upon our
sense of Divine goodness. Perhaps, too, it is some
compensation for melancholy, that persons who are
afflicted with it are most responsive to sympathy. The
morbid, despondent poet Cowper has written most
exquisitely about the love of God. Watts is enthusiastic
in his praise of the Divine grace; but a deeper
note is sounded in the Olney hymns, as, for example, in
that beginning with the line—
"Hark, my soul, it is the Lord."
While reading this hymn to-day we cannot fail to feel
the peculiar thrill of personal emotion that still quivers
through its living words, revealing the very soul of their
author. This is more than joyous praise; it is the
expression of a personal experience of the compassion
of God in times of deepest need. The same sensitive
poet has given us a description of the very condition
that is illustrated by the passage in the Hebrew elegist
we are now considering, in lines which, familiar as
they are, acquire a fresh meaning when read in this
association—the lines—
"Sometimes a light surprises
The Christian while he sings:
It is the Lord who rises
With healing in His wings.
When comforts are declining,
He grants the soul, again,
A season of clear shining,
To cheer it after rain."
We may thank the Calvinistic poet for here touching
on another side of the subject. He reminds us that
it is God who brings about the unexpected joy of
renewed trust in His unfailing mercy. The sorrowful
soul is, consciously or unconsciously, visited by the
Holy Spirit, and the effect of contact with the Divine
is that scales fall from the eyes of the surprised
sufferer. If it is right to say that one portion of
Scripture is more inspired than another we must feel
that there is more Divine light in the second part of
this elegy than in the first. It is this surprising light
from Heaven that ultimately accounts for the sudden
revolution in the feelings of the poet.
In his new consciousness of the love of God the
elegist is first struck by its amazing persistence. Probably
we should follow the Targum and the Syriac
version in rendering the twenty-second verse thus—
"The Lord's mercies, verily they cease not," etc.,
instead of the usual English rendering—
"It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed," etc.
There are two reasons for this emendation. First,
the momentary transition to the plural "we" is harsh
and improbable. It is true the author makes a somewhat
similar change a little later;iii. 40-8.
but there it is in
an extended passage, and one in which he evidently
wishes to represent his people with ideas that are
manifestly appropriate to the community at large.
Here, on the other hand, the sentence breaks into the
midst of personal reflections. Second—and this is the
principal consideration—the balance of the phrases,
which is so carefully observed throughout this elegy,
is upset by the common rendering, but restored by the
emendation. The topic of the triplet in which the
disputed passage occurs is the amazing persistence
of God's goodness to His suffering children. The
proposed alteration is in harmony with this.
The thought here presented to us rests on the truth
of the eternity and essential changelessness of God.
We cannot think of Him as either fickle or failing;
to do so would be to cease to think of Him as God.
If He is merciful at all He cannot be merciful only spasmodically,
erratically, or temporarily. For all that, we
need not regard these heart-stirring utterances as the
expressions of a self-evident truism. The wonder and
glory of the idea they dilate upon are not the less for
the fact that we should entertain no doubt of its truth.
The certainty that the character of God is good and
great does not detract from His goodness or His greatness.
When we are assured that His nature is not
fallible our contemplation of it does not cease to be an
act of adoration. On the contrary, we can worship
the immutable perfection of God with fuller praises
than we should give to fitful gleams of less abiding
qualities.
As a matter of fact, however, our religious experience
is never the simple conclusion of bare logic.
Our feelings, and not these only, but also our faith,
need repeated assurances of the continuance of God's
goodness, because it seems as though there were so
much to absorb and quench it. Therefore the perception
of the fact of its continuance takes the form
of a glad wonder that God's mercies do not cease.
Thus it is amazing to us that these mercies are not
consumed by the multitude of the sufferers who are
dependent upon them—the extent of God's family not
in any way cramping His means to give the richest
inheritance to each of his children; nor by the depth
of individual need—no single soul having wants so
extreme or so peculiar that his aid cannot avail
entirely for them; nor by the shocking ill-desert of
the most unworthy of mankind—even sin, while it
necessarily excludes the guilty from any present enjoyment
of the love of God, not really quenching that
love or precluding a future participation in it on condition
of repentance; nor by the wearing of time,
beneath which even granite rocks crumble to powder.
The elegist declares that the reason why God's
mercies are not consumed is that his compassions do
not fail. Thus he goes behind the kind actions of God
to their originating motives. To a man in the condition
of the writer of this poem of personal confidences
the Divine sympathy is the one fact in the universe
of supreme importance. So will it be to every sufferer
who can assure himself of the truth of it. But is this
only a consolation for the sorrowing? The pathos,
the very tragedy of human life on earth, should make
the sympathy of God the most precious fact of existence
to all mankind. Portia rightly reminds Shylock
that "we all do look for mercy"; but if so, the spring
of mercy, the Divine compassion, must be the one
source of true hope for every soul of man. Whether
we are to attribute it to sin alone, or whether there
may be other dark, mysterious ingredients in human
sorrow, there can be no doubt that the deepest need
is that God should have pity on His children. The
worship of heaven among the angels may be one pure
song of joy; but here, even though we are privileged
to share the gladness of the celestial praises, a plaintive
note will mingle with our anthem of adoration, because
a pleading cry must ever go up from burdened spirits;
and when relief is acknowledged our thanksgiving
must single out the compassion of God for deepest
gratitude. It is much, then, to know that God not
only helps the needy—that is to say, all mankind—but
that He feels with His suffering children. The author
of the Epistle to the Hebrews has taught us to see
this reassuring truth most clearly in the revelation of
God in His Son, repeatedly dwelling on the sufferings
of Christ as the means by which He was brought
into sympathetic, helpful relations to the sufferings of
mankind.Heb. ii. 18, iv. 15.
Further, the elegist declares that the special form
taken by these unceasing mercies of God is daily
renewal. The love of God is constant—one changeless
Divine attribute; but the manifestations of that
love are necessarily successive and various according
to the successive and various needs of His children.
We have not only to praise God for His eternal,
immutable goodness, vast and wonderful as that is;
to our perceptions, at all events, his immediate, present
actions are even more significant because they
shew His personal interest in individual men and
women, and His living activity at the very crisis of
need. There is a certain aloofness, a certain chillness,
in the thought of ancient kindness, even though the
effects of it may reach to our own day in full and
abundant streams. But the living God is an active
God, who works in the present as effectually as He
worked in the past. There is another side to this
truth. It is not sufficient to have received the grace
of God once for all. If "He giveth more grace," it
is because we need more grace. This is a stream that
must be ever flowing into the soul, not the storage
of a tank filled once for all and left to serve for a
lifetime. Therefore the channel must be kept constantly
clear, or the grace will fail to reach us, although
in itself it never runs dry.
There is something cheering in the poet's idea of
the morning as the time when these mercies of God
are renewed. It has been suggested that he is thinking
of renewals of brightness after dark seasons of
sorrow, such as are suggested by the words of the
psalmist—
"Weeping may come in to lodge at even,
But joy cometh in the morning."Heb. ii. 18, iv. 15.
This idea, however, would weaken the force of the
passage, which goes to shew that God's mercies do not
fail, are not interrupted. The emphasis is on the
thought that no day is without God's new mercies,
not even the day of darkest trouble; and further,
there is the suggestion that God is never dilatory
in coming to our aid. He does not keep us waiting
and wearying while He tarries. He is prompt and
early with His grace. The idea may be compared
with that of the promise to those who seek God
early, literally, in the morning.Prov. viii. 17.
Or we may think
of the night as the time of repose, when we are
oblivious of God's goodness, although even through the
hours of darkness He who neither slumbers nor sleeps
is constantly watching over His unconscious children.
Then in the morning there dawns on us a fresh perception
of His goodness. If we are to realise the
blessing sought in Sir Thomas Browne's prayer, and
"Awake into some holy thought,"
no more holy thought can be desired than a grateful
recognition of the new mercies on which our eyes open
with the new day. A morning so graciously welcomed
is the herald of a day of strength and happy confidence.
To the notion of the morning renewal of the mercies
of God the poet appends a recognition of His great
faithfulness. This is an additional thought. Faithfulness
is more than compassion. There is a strength
and a stability about the idea that goes further to
insure confidence. It is more than the fact that God
is true to His word, that He will certainly perform
what He has definitely promised. Fidelity is not
confined to compacts—it is not limited to the question
of what is "in the bond"; it concerns persons rather
than phrases. To be faithful to a friend is more than
to keep one's word to him. We may have given him
no pledge; and yet we must confess to an obligation
to be true—to be true to the man himself. Now while
we are called upon to be loyal to God, there is a sense
in which we may venture without irreverence to say
that He may be expected to be faithful to us. He
is our Creator, and He has placed us in this world by
His own will; His relations with us cannot cease
at this point. So Moses pleaded that God, having led
His people into the wilderness, could not desert them
there; and Jeremiah even ventured on the daring
prayer—
"Do not disgrace the throne of Thy glory."Jer. xiv. 21.
It is because we are sure the just and true God could
never do anything so base that His faithfulness becomes
the ground of perfect confidence. It may be
said, on the other hand, that we cannot claim any good
thing from God on the score of merit, because we
only deserve wrath and punishment. But this is not
a question of merit. Fidelity to a friend is not exhausted
when we have treated him according to his
deserts. It extends to a treatment of him in accordance
with the direct claims of friendship, claims which
are to be measured by need rather than by merit.
The conclusion drawn from these considerations is
given in an echo from the Psalms—
"The Lord is my portion."Psalm lxxiii. 26.
The words are old and well-worn; but they obtain
a new meaning when adopted as the expression of a
new experience. The lips have often chanted them
in the worship of the sanctuary. Now they are the
voice of the soul, of the very life. There is no
plagiarism in such a quotation as this, although in
making it the poet does not turn aside to acknowledge
his obligation to the earlier author who coined
the immortal phrase. The seizure of the old words
by the soul of the new writer make them his own
in the deepest sense, because under these circumstances
it is not their literary form, but their spiritual
significance, that gives them their value. This is true
of the most frequently quoted words of Scripture.
They are new words to every soul that adopts them
as the expression of a new experience.
It is to be observed that the experience now reached
is something over and above the conscious reception
of daily mercies. The Giver is greater than His gifts.
God is first known by means of His actions, and then
being thus known He is recognised as Himself the
portion of His people, so that to possess Him is their
one satisfying joy in the present and their one inspiring
hope for the future.
CHAPTER XIII
QUIET WAITING
iii. 25-36
Having struck a rich vein, our author proceeds
to work it with energy. Pursuing the ideas
that flow out of the great truth of the endless goodness
of God, and the immediate inference that He of whom
so wonderful a character can be affirmed is Himself
the soul's best possession, the poet enlarges upon their
wider relations. He must adjust his views of the
whole world to the new situation that is thus opening
out before him. All things are new in the light of the
splendid vision before which his gloomy meditations
have vanished like a dream. He sees that he is not
alone in enjoying the supreme blessedness of the
Divine love. The revelation that has come to him is
applicable to other men if they will but fulfil the
conditions to which it is attached.
In the first place, it is necessary to perceive clearly
what those conditions are on which the happy experience
of God's unfailing mercies may be enjoyed by any
man. The primary requisite is affirmed to be quiet
waiting.iii. 26.
The passivity of this attitude is accentuated
in a variety of expressions. It is difficult for us of the
modern western world to appreciate such teaching.
No doubt if it stood by itself it would be so one-sided
as to be positively misleading. But this is no more
than must be said of any of the best lessons of life.
We require the balancing of separate truths in order
to obtain truth, as we want the concurrence of different
impulses to produce the resultant of a right direction
of life. But in the present case the opposite end of
the scale has been so much overweighted that we sorely
need a very considerable addition on the side to which
the elegist here leans. Carlyle's gospel of work—a
most wholesome message as far as it went—fell on
congenial Anglo-Saxon soil; and this and the like
teaching of kindred minds has brought forth a rich
harvest in the social activity of modern English life.
The Church has learnt the duty of working—which is
well. She does not appear so capable of attaining the
blessedness of waiting. Our age is in no danger of
the dreaminess of quietism. But we find it hard to
cultivate what Wordsworth calls "wise passiveness."
And yet in the heart of us we feel the lack of this
spirit of quiet. Charles Lamb's essay on the "Quakers'
Meeting" charms us, not only on account of its exquisite
literary style, but also because it reflects a phase
of life which we own to be most beautiful.
The waiting here recommended is more than simple
passiveness, however, more than a bare negation of
action. It is the very opposite of lethargy and torpor.
Although it is quiet, it is not asleep. It is open-eyed,
watchful, expectant. It has a definite object of anticipation,
for it is a waiting for God and His salvation;
and therefore it is hopeful. Nay, it has a certain
activity of its own, for it seeks God. Still, this activity
is inward and quiet; its immediate aim is not to get
at some visible earthly end, however much this may
be desired, nor to attain some inward personal experience,
some stage in the soul's culture, such as
peace, or purity, or power, although this may be the
ultimate object of the present anxiety; primarily it
seeks God—all else it leaves in His hands. Thus it
is rather a change in the tone and direction of the
soul's energies than a state of repose. It is the attitude
of the watchman on his lonely tower—calm and still,
but keen-eyed and alert, while down below in the
crowded city some fret themselves with futile toil and
others slumber in stupid indifference.
To this waiting for Him and definite seeking of Him
God responds in some special manifestation of mercy.
Although, as Jesus Christ tells us, our Father in heaven
"maketh His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and
sendeth rain on the just and the unjust,"Matt. v. 45.
the fact
here distinctly implied, that the goodness of God is
exceptionally enjoyed on the conditions now laid down,
is also supported by our Lord's teaching in the exhortations,
"Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and
ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you;
for every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh
findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened."vii. 7, 8.
St. James adds, "Ye have not because ye ask not."James iv. 2.
This, then, is the method of the Divine procedure.
God expects His children to wait on Him as well as
to wait for Him. We cannot consider such an expectation
unreasonable. Of course it would be foolish to
imagine God piquing Himself on His own dignity, so
as to decline aid until He had been gratified by a due
observance of homage. There is a deeper motive for
the requirement. God's relations with men and women
are personal and individual; and when they are most
happy and helpful they always involve a certain reciprocity.
It may not be necessary or even wise to
demand definite things from God whenever we seek
His assistance; for He knows what is good, while we
often blunder and ask amiss. But the seeking here
described is of a different character. It is not seeking
things; it is seeking God. This is always good.
The attitude of trust and expectancy that it necessitates
is just that in which we are brought into a receptive
state. It is not a question of God's willingness to help;
He is always willing. But it cannot be fitting that He
should act towards us when we are distrustful, indifferent,
or rebellious, exactly as He would act if He
were approached in submission and trustful expectation.
Quiet waiting, then, is the right and fitting condition
for the reception of blessing from God. But the elegist
holds more than this. In his estimation the state of
mind he here commends is itself good for a man. It
is certainly good in contrast with the unhappy alternatives—feeble
fussiness, wearing anxiety, indolent
negligence, or blank despair. It is good also as a
positive condition of mind. He has reached a happy
inward attainment who has cultivated the faculty of
possessing his soul in patience. His eye is clear for
visions of the unseen. To him the deep fountains of
life are open. Truth is his, and peace and strength
also. When we add to this calmness the distinct aim
of seeking God we may see how the blessedness of the
condition recommended is vastly enhanced. We are
all insensibly moulded by our desires and aims. The
expectant soul is transformed into the image of the
hope it pursues. When its treasure is in heaven its
heart is there also, and therefore its very nature becomes
heavenly.
To his reflections on the blessedness of quiet waiting
the elegist adds a very definite word about another
experience, declaring that "it is good for a man that
he bear the yoke in his youth."iii. 27.
This interesting
assertion seems to sound an autobiographical note,
especially as the whole poem treats of the writer's
personal experience. Some have inferred that the
author must have been a young man at the time of
writing. But if, as seems probable, he is calling to
mind what he has himself passed through, this may
be a recollection of a much earlier period of his life.
Thus he would seem to be recognising, in the calm of
subsequent reflection, what perhaps he may have been
far from admitting while bearing the burdens, that the
labours and hardships of his youth prove to have been
for his own advantage. This truth is often perceived
in the meditations of mature life, although it is not so
easily acknowledged in the hours of strain and stress.
It is impossible to say what particular yoke the
writer is thinking about. The persecutions inflicted
on Jeremiah have been cited in illustration of this
passage; and although we may not be able to ascribe
the poem to the great prophet, his toils and troubles will
serve as instances of the truth of the words of the
anonymous writer, for undoubtedly his sympathies
were quickened while his strength was ripened by
what he endured. If we will have a definite meaning
the yoke may stand for one of three things—for instruction,
for labour, or for trouble. The sentence is
true of either of these forms of yoke. We are not
likely to dispute the advantages of youthful education
over that which is delayed till adult age; but even if
the acquisition of knowledge is here suggested, we
cannot suppose it to be book knowledge, it must be
that got in the school of life. Thus we are brought to
the other two meanings. Then the connection excludes
the notion of pleasant, attractive work, so that the
yoke of labour comes near to the burden of trouble.
This seems to be the essential idea of the verse.
Irksome work, painful toil, forced labour partaking of
the nature of servitude—these ideas are most vividly
suggested by the image of a yoke. And they are
what we most shrink from in youth. Inactivity is
then by no means sought or desired. The very exercise
of one's energies is a delight at the time of their
fresh vigour. But this exercise must be in congenial
directions, in harmony with one's tastes and inclinations,
or it will be regarded as an intolerable burden.
Liberty is sweet in youth; it is not work that is
dreaded, but compulsion. Youth emulates the bounding
energies of the war horse, but it has a great aversion to
the patient toil of the ox. Hence the yoke is resented
as a grievous burden; for the yoke signifies compulsion
and servitude. Now, as a matter of fact, this
yoke generally has to be borne in youth. People
might be more patient with the young if they would
but consider how vexatious it must be to the shoulders
that are not yet fitted to wear it, and in the most
liberty-loving age. As time passes custom makes the
yoke easier to be borne; and yet then it is usually
lightened. In our earlier days we must submit and
obey, must yield and serve. This is the rule in business,
the drudgery and restraint of which naturally
attach themselves to the first stages. If older persons
reflected on what this must mean at the very time
when the appetite for delight is most keen, and the
love of freedom most intense, they would not press the
yoke with needless harshness.
But now the poet has been brought to see that it
was for his own advantage that he was made to bear
the yoke in his youth. How so? Surely not because
it prevented him from taking too rosy views of life,
and so saved him from subsequent disappointment.
Nothing is more fatal to youth than cynicism. The
young man who professes to have discovered the
hollowness of life generally is in danger of making
his own life a hollow and wasted thing. The elegist
could never have fallen to this miserable condition,
or he would not have written as he has done here.
With faith and manly courage the yoke has the very
opposite effect. The faculty of cherishing hope in
spite of present hardships, which is the peculiar
privilege of youth, may stand a man in stead at a
later time, when it is not so easy to triumph over
circumstances, because the old buoyancy of animal
spirits, which means so much in early days, has
vanished; and then if he can look back and see how
he has been cultivating habits of endurance through
years of discipline without his soul having been soured
by the process, he may well feel profoundly thankful
for those early experiences which were undoubtedly
very hard in their rawness.
The poet's reflections on the blessedness of quiet
waiting are followed by direct exhortations to the
behaviour which is its necessary accompaniment—for
such seems to be the meaning of the next triplet,
verses 28 to 30. The Revisers have corrected this
from the indicative mood, as it stands in the Authorised
Version, to the imperative—"Let him sit alone," etc.,
"Let him put his mouth in the dust," etc., "Let him
give his cheek to him that smiteth him," etc. The
exhortations flow naturally out of the preceding statements,
but the form they assume may strike us as
somewhat singular. Who is the person thus indirectly
addressed? The grammar of the sentences would
invite our attention to the "man" of the twenty-seventh
verse. If it is good for everybody to bear the yoke in
his youth, it might be suggested further that it would be
well for everybody to act in the manner now indicated—that
is to say, the advice would be of universal
application. We must suppose, however, that the poet
is thinking of a sufferer similar to himself.
Now the point of the exhortation is to be found
in the fact that it goes beyond the placid state just
described. It points to solitude, silence, submission,
humiliation, non-resistance. The principle of calm,
trustful expectancy is most beautiful; and if it were
regarded by itself it could not but fascinate us, so that
we should wonder how it would be possible for anybody
to resist its attractions. But immediately we try
to put it in practice we come across some harsh and
positively repellent features. When it is brought
down from the ethereal regions of poetry and set to
work among the gritty facts of real life, how soon it
seems to lose its glamour! It can never become mean
or sordid; and yet its surroundings may be so. Most
humiliating things are to be done, most insulting things
endured. It is hard to sit in solitude and silence—a
Ugolino in his tower of famine, a Bonnivard in his
dungeon; there seems to be nothing heroic in this
dreary inactivity. It would be much easier to attempt
some deed of daring, especially if that were in the heat
of battle. Nothing is so depressing as loneliness—the
torture of a prisoner in solitary confinement. And yet
now there must be no word of complaint because the
trouble comes from the very Being who is to be trusted
for deliverance. There is a call for action, however,
but only to make the submission more complete and
the humiliation more abject. The sufferer is to lay
his mouth in the dust like a beaten slave.iii. 29.
Even
this he might brace himself to do, stifling the last
remnant of his pride because he is before the Lord of
heaven and earth. But it is not enough. A yet more
bitter cup must be drunk to the dregs. He must
actually turn his cheek to the smiter, and quietly
submit to reproach.iii. 30.
God's wrath may be accepted
as a righteous retribution from above. But it is hard
indeed to manifest the same spirit of submission in
face of the fierce malignity or the petty spite of men.
Yet silent waiting involves even this. Let us count
the cost before we venture on the path which looks so
beautiful in idea, but which turns out to be so very
trying in fact.
We cannot consider this subject without being
reminded of the teaching and—a more helpful memory—the
example also of our Lord. It is hard to receive
even from His lips the command to turn the other
cheek to one who has smitten us on the right cheek.
But when we see Jesus doing this very thing the whole
aspect of it is changed. What before looked weak
and cowardly is now seen to be the perfection of true
courage and the height of moral sublimity. By His
own endurance of insult and ignominy our Lord has
completely revolutionised our ideas of humiliation. His
humiliation was His glorification. What a Roman
would despise as shameful weakness He has proved
to be the triumph of strength. Thus, though we may
not be able to take the words of the Lamentations as
a direct prophecy of Jesus Christ, they so perfectly
realise themselves in the story of His Passion, that to
Christendom they must always be viewed in the light
of that supreme wonder of a victory won through
submission; and while they are so viewed they cannot
fail to set before us an ideal of conduct for the sufferer
under the most trying circumstances.
This advice is not so paradoxical as it appears. We
are not called upon to accept it merely on the authority
of the speaker. He follows it up by assigning good
reasons for it. These are all based on the assumption
which runs through the elegies, that the sufferings
therein described come from the hand of God. They
are most of them the immediate effects of man's enmity.
But a Divine purpose is always to be recognised behind
the human instrumentality. This fact at once lifts the
whole question out of the region of miserable, earthly
passions and mutual recriminations. In apparently
yielding to a tyrant from among his fellow-men the
sufferer is really submitting to his God.
Then the elegist gives us three reasons why the
submission should be complete and the waiting quiet.
The first is that the suffering is but temporary. God
seems to have cast off His afflicted servant. If so
it is but for a season.iii. 31, 32
This is not a case of absolute
desertion. The sufferer is not treated as a reprobate.
How could we expect patient submission from a soul
that had passed the portals of a hell over which Dante's
awful motto of despair was inscribed? If they who
entered were to "forsake all hope" it would be a
mockery to bid them "be still." It would be more
natural for these lost souls to shriek with the fury of
madness. The first ground of quiet waiting is hope.
The second is to be found in God's unwillingness to
afflict.iii. 33.
He never takes up the rod, as we might say,
con amore. Therefore the trial will not be unduly
prolonged. Since God Himself grieves to inflict it, the
distress can be no more than is absolutely necessary.
The third and last reason for this patience of submission
is the certainty that God cannot commit an injustice.
So important is this consideration in the eyes of the
elegist that he devotes a complete triplet to it, illustrating
it from three different points of view.iii. 34-6.
We
have the conqueror with his victims, the magistrate in
a case at law, and the private citizen in business.
Each of these instances affords an opportunity for injustice.
God does not look with approval on the
despot who crushes all his prisoners—for Nebuchadnezzar's
outrages are by no means condoned, although
they are utilised as chastisements; nor on the judge
who perverts the solemn process of law, when deciding,
according to the Jewish theocratic idea, in place of
God, the supreme Arbitrator, and, as the oath testifies,
in His presence; nor on the man who in a private
capacity circumvents his neighbour. But how can we
ascribe to God what He will not sanction in man?
"Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?"Gen. xviii. 25.
exclaims
the perplexed patriarch; and we feel that his
plea is unanswerable. But if God is just we can afford
to be patient. And yet we feel that while there is
something to calm us and allay the agonising terrors
of despair in this thought of the unswerving justice of
God, we must fall back for our most satisfying assurance
on that glorious truth which the poet finds confirmed
by his daily experience, and which he expresses with
such a glow of hope in the rich phrase, "Yet will He
have compassion according to the multitude of His
mercies."iii. 32.
CHAPTER XIV
GOD AND EVIL
iii. 37-9
The eternal problem of the relation of God to evil
is here treated with the keenest discrimination.
That God is the supreme and irresistible ruler, that no
man can succeed with any design in opposition to His
will, that whatever happens must be in some way an
execution of His decree, and that He, therefore, is to
be regarded as the author of evil as well as good—these
doctrines are so taken for granted that they are
neither proved nor directly affirmed, but thrown into
the form of questions that can have but one answer,
as though to imply that they are known to everybody,
and cannot be doubted for a moment by any one. But
the inference drawn from them is strange and startling.
It is that not a single living man has any valid excuse
for complaining. That, too, is considered to be so
undeniable that, like the previous ideas, it is expressed
as a self-answering question. But we are not left in
this paradoxical position. The evil experienced by the
sufferer is treated as the punishment of his sin. What
right has he to complain of that? A slightly various
rendering has been proposed for the thirty-ninth verse,
so as to resolve into a question and its answer. Read in
this way, it asks, why should a living man complain?
and then suggests the reply, that if he is to complain
at all it should not be on account of his sufferings,
treated as wrongs. He should complain against himself,
his own conduct, his sin. We have seen, however,
in other cases, that the breaking of a verse in this way
is not in harmony with the smooth style of the elegiac
poetry in which the words occur. This requires us to
take the three verses of the triplet as continuous,
flowing sentences.
Quite a number of considerations arise out of the
curious juxtaposition of ideas in this passage. In
the first place, it is very evident that by the word "evil"
the writer here means trouble and suffering, not wickedness,
because he clearly distinguishes it from the sin
the mention of which follows. That sin is a man's
own deed, for which he is justly punished. The poet,
then, does not attribute the causation of sin to God;
he does not speculate at all on the origin of moral evil.
As far as he goes in the present instance, he would
seem to throw back the authorship of it upon the will
of man. How that will came to turn astray he does
not say. This awful mystery remains unsolved through
the whole course of the revelation of the Old Testament,
and even through that of the New also. It cannot be
maintained that the story of the Fall in Genesis is a
solution of the mystery. To trace temptation back to
the serpent is not to account for its existence, nor for
the facility with which man was found to yield to it.
When, at a later period, Satan appears on the stage, it
is not to answer the perplexing question of the origin
of evil. In the Old Testament he is nowhere connected
with the Fall—his identification with the serpent
first occurring in the Book of Wisdom,Wisdom ii. 23 ff.
from which
apparently it passed into current language, and so was
adopted by St. John in the Apocalypse.Rev. xii. 9.
At first Satan
is the adversary and accuser of man, as in JobJob i. 6-12, ii. 1-7.
and
Zechariah;Zech. iii. 1, 2.
then he is recognised as the tempter, in
Chronicles, for example.1 Chron. xxi. 1.
But in no case is he said
to be the primary cause of evil. No plummet can
sound the depths of that dark pit in which lurks the
source of sin.
Meanwhile a very different problem, the problem of
suffering, is answered by attributing this form of evil
quite unreservedly and even emphatically to God. It is
to be remembered that our Lord, accepting the language
of His contemporaries, ascribes this to Satan, speaking
of the woman afflicted with a spirit of infirmity as one
whom Satan had bound;Luke xiii. 16.
and that similarly St. Paul
writes of his thorn in the flesh as a messenger of
Satan,2 Cor. xii. 7.
to whom he also assigns the hindrance of a
projected journey.1 Thess. ii. 18.
But in these cases it is not in the
least degree suggested that the evil spirit is an irresistible
and irresponsible being. The language only
points to his immediate agency. The absolute supremacy
of God is never called in question. There is no real
concession to Persian dualism anywhere in the Bible.
In difficult cases the sacred writers seem more anxious
to uphold the authority of God than to justify His
actions. They are perfectly convinced that those actions
are all just and right, and not to be called in question,
and so they are quite fearless in attributing to His
direct commands occurrences that we should perhaps
think more satisfactorily accounted for in some other
way. In such cases theirs is the language of unfailing
faith, even when faith is strained almost to breaking.
The unquestionable fact that good and evil both
come from the mouth of the Most High is based on the
certain conviction that He is the Most High. Since it
cannot be believed that His decrees should be thwarted,
it cannot be supposed that there is any rival to His
power. To speak of evil as independent of God is to
deny that He is God. This is what a system of pure
dualism must come to. If there are two mutually independent
principles in the universe neither of them
can be God. Dualism is as essentially opposed to the
idea we attach to the name "God" as polytheism.
The gods of the heathen are no gods, and so also are
the imaginary twin divinities that divide the universe
between them, or contend in a vain endeavour to suppress
one another. "God," as we understand the title,
is the name of the Supreme, the Almighty, the King of
kings and Lord of lords. The Zend-Avesta escapes
the logical conclusion of atheism by regarding its two
principles, Ormuzd and Ahriman, as two streams
issuing from a common fountain, or as two phases of
one existence. But then it saves its theism at the
expense of its dualism. In practice, however, this is
not done. The dualism, the mutual antagonism of the
two powers, is the central idea of the Parsee system;
and being so, it stands in glaring contrast to the lofty
monism of the Bible.
Nevertheless, it may be said, although it is thus
necessary to attribute evil as well as good to God if
we would not abandon the thought of His supremacy,
a thought that is essential to our conception of His
very nature, this is a perplexing necessity, and not one
to be accepted with any sense of satisfaction. How
then can the elegist welcome it with acclamation and
set it before us with an air of triumph? That he does
so is undeniable, for the spirit and tone of the poem
here become positively exultant.
We may reply that the writer appears as the champion
of the Divine cause. No attack on God's supremacy
is to be permitted. Nothing of the kind, however,
has been suggested. The writer is pursuing another
aim, for he is anxious to still the murmurs of discontent.
But how can the thought of the supremacy
of God have that effect? One would have supposed
the ascription to God of the trouble complained of
would deepen the sense of distress and turn the complaint
against Him. Yet it is just here that the elegist
sees the unreasonableness of a complaining spirit.
Of course the uselessness of complaining, or rather
the uselessness of attempting resistance, may be impressed
upon us in this way. If the source of our
trouble is nothing less than the Almighty and Supreme
Ruler of all things it is stupid to dream of thwarting
His purposes. If a man will run his head like a
battering-ram against a granite cliff the most he can
effect by his madness will be to bespatter the rock
with his brains. It may be necessary to warn the
rebel against Providence of this danger by shewing
him that what he mistakes for a flimsy veil or a
shadowy cloud is an immovable wall. But what will
he find to exult over in the information? The hopelessness
of resistance is no better than the consolation
of pessimism, and its goal is despair. Our author, on
the other hand, evidently intends to be reassuring.
Now, is there not something reassuring in the thought
that evil and good come to us from one and the same
source? For, consider the alternative. Remember,
the evil exists as surely as the good. The elegist does
not attempt to deny this, or to minimise the fact. He
never calls evil good, never explains it away. There
it stands before us, in all its ugly actuality, speculations
concerning its origin neither aggravating the severity
of its symptoms nor alleviating them. Whence, then,
did this perplexing fact arise? If we postulate some
other source than the Divine origin of good, what is
it? A dreadful mystery here yawns at our feet. If
evil came from an equally potent origin it would contend
with good on even terms, and the issue would always
hang in the balance. There could be nothing reassuring
in that tantalising situation. The fate of the universe
would be always quivering in uncertainty. And meanwhile
we should have to conclude, that the most awful
conflict with absolutely doubtful issues was raging
continually. We could only contemplate the idea of
this vast schism with terror and dismay. But now
assuredly there is something calming in the thought of
the unity of the power that distributes our fortunes;
for this means that a man is in no danger of being
tossed like a shuttlecock between two gigantic rival
forces. There must be a singleness of aim in the whole
treatment of us by Providence, since Providence is
one. Thus, if only as an escape from an inconceivably
appalling alternative, this doctrine of the common source
of good and evil is truly reassuring.
We may pursue the thought further. Since good
and evil spring from one and the same source, they
cannot be so mutually contradictory as we have been
accustomed to esteem them. They are two children of
a common parent; then they must be brothers. But
if they are so closely related a certain family likeness
may be traced between them. This does not destroy
the actuality of evil. But it robs it of its worst features.
The pain may be as acute as ever in spite of all our
philosophising. But the significance of it will be wholly
changed. We can now no longer treat it as an accursed
thing. If it is so closely related to good, we may not
have far to go in order to discover that it is even
working for good.
Then if evil and good come from the same source
it is not just to characterise that source by reference to
one only of its effluents. We must not take a rose-coloured
view of all things, and relapse into idle complacency,
as we might do if we confined our observation
to the pleasant facts of existence, for the unpleasant
facts—loss, disappointment, pain, death—are equally
real, and are equally derived from the very highest
Authority. Neither are we justified in denying the
existence of the good when overwhelmed with a sense
of the evil in life. At worst we live in a very mixed
world. It is unscientific, it is unjust to pick out the
ills of life and gibbet them as specimens of the way
things are going. If we will recite the first part of
such an elegy as that we are now studying, at least
let us have the honesty to read on to the second part,
where the surpassingly lovely vision of the Divine
compassion so much more than counterbalances the
preceding gloom. Is it only by accident that the poet
says "evil and good," and not, as we usually put the
phrase, "good and evil"? Good shall have the last
word. Evil exists; but the finality and crown of
existence is not evil, but good.
The conception of the primary unity of causation
which the Hebrew poet reaches through his religion
is brought home to us to-day with a vast accumulation
of proof by the discoveries of science. The uniformity
of law, the co-relation of forces, the analyses of the
most diverse and complex organisms into their common
chemical elements, the evidence of the spectroscope to
the existence of precisely the same elements among the
distant stars, as well as the more minute homologies of
nature in the animal and vegetable kingdoms, are all
irrefutable confirmations of this great truth. Moreover,
science has demonstrated the intimate association of
what we cannot but regard as good and evil in the
physical universe. Thus, while carbon and oxygen
are essential elements for the building up of all living
things, the effect of perfectly healthy vital functions
working upon them is to combine them into carbonic
acid, which is a most deadly poison; but then this
noxious gas becomes the food of plants, from which the
animal life in turn derives its nourishment. Similarly
microbes, which we commonly regard as the agents
of corruption and disease, are found to be not only
nature's scavengers, but also the indispensable ministers
of life, when clustering round the roots of plants in
vast crowds they convert the organic matter of the soil,
such as manure, into those inorganic nitrates which
contain nitrogen in the form suitable for absorption by
vegetable organisms. The mischief wrought by germs,
great as it is, is infinitely outweighed by the necessary
service existences of this kind render to all life by
preparing some of its indispensable conditions. The
inevitable conclusion to be drawn from facts such
as these is that health and disease, and life and
death, interact, are inextricably blended together, and
mutually transformable—what we call disease and
death in one place being necessary for life and health
in another. The more clearly we understand the processes
of nature the more evident is the fact of her
unity, and therefore the more impossible is it for us
to think of her objectionable characteristics as foreign
to her being—alien immigrants from another sphere.
Physical evil itself looks less dreadful when it is seen
to take its place as an integral part of the complicated
movement of the whole system of the universe.
But the chief reason for regarding the prospect with
more than satisfaction has yet to be stated. It is
derived from the character of Him to whom both the
evil and the good are attributed. We can go beyond
the assertion that these contrarieties spring from one
common origin to the great truth that this origin is to
be found in God. All that we know of our Father in
heaven comes to our aid in reflecting upon the character
of the actions thus attributed to Him. The account of
God's goodness that immediately precedes this ascription
of the two extreme experiences of life to Him would be
in the mind of the writer, and it should be in the mind
of the reader also. The poet has just been dwelling
very emphatically on the indubitable justice of God.
When, therefore, he reminds us that both evil and
good come from the Divine Being, it is as though he
said that they both originated in justice. A little
earlier he was expressing the most fervent appreciation
of the mercy and compassion of God. Then these
gracious attributes should be in our thoughts while we
hear that the mixed experiences of life are to be traced
back to Him of whom so cheering a view can be
taken.
We know the love of God much more fully since it
has been revealed to us in Jesus Christ. Therefore
we have a much better reason for building our faith
and hope on the fact of the universal Divine origin of
events. In itself the evil exists all the same whether
we can trace its cause or not, and the discovery of the
cause in no way aggravates it. But this discovery
may lead us to take a new view of its issues. If it
comes from One who is as just and merciful as He is
mighty we may certainly conclude that it will lead to
the most blessed results. Considered in the light of
the assured character of its purpose, the evil itself must
assume a totally different character. The child who
receives a distasteful draught from the hand of the
kindest of parents knows that it cannot be a cup of
poison, and has good reason for believing it to be a
necessary medicine.
The last verse of the triplet startles the reader with
an unexpected thought. The considerations already
adduced are all meant to check any complaint against
the course of Providence. Now the poet appends a
final argument, which is all the more forcible for not
being stated as an argument. At the very end of the
passage, when we are only expecting the language to
sink into a quiet conclusion, a new idea springs out
upon us, like a tiger from its lair. This trouble about
which a man is so ready to complain, as though it were
some unaccountable piece of injustice, is simply the
punishment of his sin! Like the other ideas of the
passage, the notion is not tentatively argued; it is
boldly taken for granted. Once again we see that
there is no suspicion in the mind of the elegist of the
perplexing problem that gives its theme to the Book of
Job. But do we not sometimes press that problem too
far? Can it be denied that, to a large extent, suffering
is the direct consequence and the natural punishment
of sin? Are we not often burnt for the simple reason
that we have been playing with fire? At all events,
the whole course of previous prophecy went to shew
that the national sins of Israel must be followed by
some dreadful disasters; and when the war-cloud was
hovering on the horizon Jeremiah saw in it the herald
of approaching doom. Then the thunderbolt fell; and
the wreck it caused became the topic of this Book of
Lamentations. After such a preparation, what was
more natural, and reasonable, and even inevitable, than
that the elegist should calmly assume that the trouble
complained of was no more than was due to the afflicted
people? This is clear enough when we think of the
nation as a whole. It is not so obvious when we turn
our attention to individual cases; but the bewildering
problem of the sufferings of innocent children, which
constitutes the most prominent feature in the poet's
picture of the miseries of the Jews, is not here
revived.
We must suppose that he is thinking of a typical
citizen of Jerusalem. If the guilty city merited severe
punishment, such a man as this would also merit
it; for the deserts of the city are only the deserts
of her citizens. It will be for everybody to say for
himself how far the solution of the mystery of his own
troubles is to be looked for in this direction. A humble
conscience will not be eager to repudiate the possibility
that its owner has not been punished beyond his
deserts, whatever may be thought of other people,
innocent children in particular. There is one word
that may bring out this aspect of the question with
more distinctness—the word "living." The poet asks,
"Wherefore doth a living man complain?" Why does
he attach this attribute to the subject of his question?
The only satisfactory explanation that has been offered
is that he would remind us that while the sufferer has
his life preserved to him he has no valid ground of
complaint. He has not been overpaid; he has not
even been paid in full; for it is an Old Testament
doctrine which the New Testament repeats when it
declares that "the wages of sin is death."Rom. vi. 23.
CHAPTER XV
THE RETURN
iii. 40-42
When prophets, speaking in the name of God,
promised the exiles a restoration to their land
and the homes of their fathers, it was always understood
and often expressly affirmed that this reversal of
their outward fortunes must be preceded by an inner
change, a return to God in penitent submission. Expulsion
from Canaan was the chastisement of apostasy
from God; it was only right and reasonable that the
discipline should be continued as long as the sin that
necessitated it remained. It would be a mistake,
however, to relegate the treatment of this deadly sin
to a secondary place, as only the cause of a more serious
trouble. There could be no more serious trouble. The
greatest evil from which Israel suffered was not the
Babylonian exile; it was her self-inflicted banishment
from God. The greatest blessing to be sought for her
was not liberty to return to the hills and cities of
Palestine; it was permission and power to come back
to God. It takes us long to learn that sin is worse
than punishment, and that to be brought home to our
Father in heaven is a more desirable good than any
earthly recovery of prosperity. But the soul that can
say with the elegist, "The Lord is my portion," has
reached the vantage ground from which the best things
can be seen in their true proportions; and to such a
soul no advent of temporal prosperity can compare
with the gaining of its one prized possession. In the
triplet of verses that follows the pointed phrase which
rebukes complaint for suffering by attributing it to sin
the poet conducts us to those high regions where the
more spiritual truth concerning these matters can be
appreciated.
The form of the language here passes into the plural.
Already we have been made to feel that the man who
has seen affliction is a representative sufferer, although
he is describing his own personal distresses. The
immediately preceding clause seems to point to the
sinful Israelite generally, in its vague reference to a
"living man."iii. 39.
Now there is a transition in the movement
of the elegy, and the solitary voice gives place to
a chorus, the Jews as a body appearing before God
to pour out their confessions in common. According
to his usual method the elegist makes the transition
quite abruptly, without any explanatory preparation.
The style resembles that of an oratorio, in which solo
and chorus alternate with close sequence. In the
present instance the effect is not that of dramatic
variety, because we feel the vital sympathy that the
poet cherishes for his people, so that their experience
is as his experience. It is a faint shadow of the
condition of the great Sin-bearer, of whom it could be
said, "In all their affliction He was afflicted."Isa. lxiii. 9.
Before it is possible to return to God, before the
desire to return is even awakened, a much less inviting
action must be undertaken. The first and greatest
hindrance to reconciliation with our Father is our
failure to recognise that any such reconciliation is
necessary. The most deadening effect of sin is seen
in the fact that it prevents the sinner from perceiving
that he is at enmity with God at all, although by everything
he does he proclaims his rebellion. The Pharisee
of the parable cannot be justified, cannot really approach
God at all, because he will not admit that he needs any
justification, or is guilty of any conduct that separates
him from God. Just as the most hopeless state of ignorance
is that in which there is a serene unconsciousness
of any deficiency of knowledge, so the most abandoned
condition of guilt is the inability to perceive the very
existence of guilt. The sick man who ignores his
disease will not resort to a physician for the cure of it.
If the soul's quarrel with her Lord is ever to be ended
it must be discovered. Therefore the first step will be
in the direction of self-examination.
We are led to look in this direction by the startling
thought with which the previous triplet closes. If the
calamities bewailed are the chastisements of sin it is
necessary for this sin to be sought out. The language
of the elegist suggests that we are not aware of the
nature of our own conduct, and that it is only
by some serious effort that we can make ourselves
acquainted with it, for this is what he implies when he
represents the distressed people resolving to "search
and try" their ways. Easy as it may seem in words,
experience proves that nothing is more difficult in
practice than to fulfil the precept of the philosopher,
"Know thyself." The externalism in which most of
our lives are spent makes the effort to look within
a painful contradiction of habit. When it is attempted
pride and prejudice face the inquirer, and too often
quite hide the true self from view. If the pursuit is
pushed on in spite of these hindrances the result may
prove to be a sad surprise. Sometimes we see ourselves
unexpectedly revealed, and then the sight of so
great a novelty amazes us. The photographer's proof
of a portrait dissatisfies the subject, not because it
is a bad likeness, but rather because it is too faithful
to be pleasing. A wonderful picture of Rossetti's
represents a young couple who are suddenly confronted
in a lonely forest by the apparition of their
two selves as simply petrified with terror at the
appalling spectacle.
Even when the effort to acquire self-knowledge is
strenuous and persevering, and accompanied by an
honest resolution to accept the results, however unwelcome
they may be, it often fails for lack of a
standard of judgment. We compare ourselves with
ourselves—our present with our past, or at best
our actual life with our ideals. But this is a most
illusory process, and its limits are too narrow. Or we
compare ourselves with our neighbours—a possible
advance, but still a most unsatisfactory method; for we
know so little of them, all of us dwelling more or less
like stars apart, and none of us able to sound the
abysmal depths of another's personality. Even if we
could fix this standard it too would be very illusory,
because those people with whom we are making the
comparison, quite as much as we ourselves, may be
astray, just as a whole planetary system, though perfectly
balanced in the mutual relations of its own constituent
worlds, may yet be out of its orbit, and rushing
on all together towards some awful common destruction.
A more trustworthy standard may be found in the
heart-searching words of Scripture, which prove to be
as much a revelation of man to himself as one of God
to man. This Divine test reaches its perfection in the
historical presentation of our Lord. We discover our
actual characters most effectually when we compare
our conduct with the conduct of Jesus Christ. As the
Light of the world, He leads the world to see itself.
He is the great touchstone of character. During His
earthly life hypocrisy was detected by His searching
glance; but that was not admitted by the hypocrite.
It is when He comes to us spiritually that His promise
is fulfilled, and the Comforter convinces of sin as well
as of righteousness and judgment. Perhaps it is not
so eminently desirable as Burns would have us believe,
that we should see ourselves as others see us; but it
is supremely important to behold ourselves in the pure,
searching light of the Spirit of Christ.
We may be reminded, on the other hand, that too
much introspection is not wholesome, that it begets
morbid ways of thought, paralyses the energies, and
degenerates into insipid sentimentality. No doubt it
is best that the general tendency of the mind should
be towards the active duties of life. But to admit this
is not to deny that there may be occasions when the
most ruthless self-examination becomes a duty of first
importance. A season of severe chastisement, such as
that to which the Book of Lamentations refers, is one
that calls most distinctly for the exercise of this rare
duty. We cannot make our daily meal of drugs; but
drugs may be most necessary in sickness. Possibly
if we were in a state of perfectly sound spiritual health
it might be well for us never to spare a thought for
ourselves from our complete absorption with the happy
duties of a full and busy life. But since we are far
from being thus healthy, since we err and fail and
sin, time devoted to the discovery of our faults may be
exceedingly well spent.
Then while a certain kind of self-study is always
mischievous—the sickly habit of brooding over one's
feelings, it is to be observed that the elegist does not
recommend this. His language points in quite another
direction. It is not emotion but action that he is concerned
with. The searching is to be into our "ways,"
the course of our conduct. There is an objectivity in
this inquiry, though it is turned inward, that contrasts
strongly with the investigation of shadowy sentiments.
Conduct, too, is the one ground of the judgment of God.
Therefore the point of supreme importance to ourselves
is to determine whether conduct is right or wrong.
With this branch of self-examination we are not in so
much danger of falling into complete delusions as when
we are considering less tangible questions. Thus this
is at once the most wholesome, the most necessary,
and the most practicable process of introspection.
The particular form of conduct here referred to
should be noted. The word "ways" suggests habit
and continuity. These are more characteristic than
isolated deeds—short spasms of virtue or sudden falls
before temptation. The final judgment will be according
to the life, not its exceptional episodes. A man
lives his habits. He may be capable of better things,
he may be liable to worse; but he is what he does
habitually. The world will applaud him for some outburst
of heroism in which he rises for the moment above
the sordid level of his every-day his, or execrate him
for his shameful moment of self-forgetfulness; and the
world will have this amount of justice in its action, that
the capacity for the occasional is itself a permanent attribute,
although the opportunity for the active working
of the latent good or evil is rare. The startling outburst
may be a revelation of old but hitherto hidden
"ways." It must be so to some extent; for no man
wholly belies his own nature unless he is mad—beside
himself, as we say. Still it may not be so entirely, or
even chiefly; the surprised self may not be the normal
self, often is not. Meanwhile our main business in
self-examination is to trace the course of the unromantic
beaten track, the long road on which we travel from
morning to evening through the whole day of life.
The result of this search into the character of their
ways on the part of the people is that it is found to
be necessary to forsake them forthwith; for the next
idea is in the form of a resolution to turn out of them,
nay, to turn back, retracing the footsteps that have
gone astray, in order to come to God again. These
ways are discovered, then, to be bad—vicious in themselves,
and wrong in their direction. They run downhill,
away from the home of the soul, and towards the
abodes of everlasting darkness. When this fact is
perceived it becomes apparent that some complete
change must be made. This is a case of ending our
old ways, not mending them. Good paths may be
susceptible of improvement. The path of the just
should "shine more and more unto the perfect day."
But here things are too hopelessly bad for any attempt
at amelioration. No engineering skill will ever transform
the path that points straight to perdition into one
that conducts us up to the heights of heaven. The
only chance of coming to walk in the right way is
to forsake the wrong way altogether, and make an
entirely new start. Here, then, we have the Christian
doctrine of conversion—a doctrine which always appears
extravagant to people who take superficial views of
sin, but one that will be appreciated just in proportion
to the depth and seriousness of our ideas of its guilt.
Nothing contributes more to unreality in religion than
strong language on the nature of repentance apart
from a corresponding consciousness of the tremendous
need of a most radical change. This deplorable
mischief must be brought about when indiscriminate
exhortations to the extreme practice of penitence are
addressed to mixed congregations. It cannot be right
to press the necessity of conversion upon young children
and the carefully sheltered and lovingly trained youth
of Christian homes in the language that applies to their
unhappy brothers and sisters who have already made
shipwreck of life. This statement is liable to misapprehension;
doubtless to some readers it will savour
of the light views of sin deprecated above, and point
to the excuses of the Pharisee. Nevertheless it must
be considered if we would avoid the characteristic
sin of the Pharisee, hypocrisy. It is unreasonable to
suppose that the necessity of a complete conversion
can be felt by the young and comparatively innocent
as it should be felt by abandoned profligates, and the
attempt of the preacher to force it on their relatively
pure consciences is a direct incentive to cant. The
fifty-first Psalm is the confession of his crime by a
murderer; Augustine's Confessions are the outpourings
of a man who feels that he has been dragging his
earlier life through the mire; Bunyan's Grace Abounding
reveals the memories of a rough soldier's shame
and folly. No good can come of the unthinking application
of such utterances to persons whose history
and character are entirely different from those of the
authors.
On the other hand, there are one or two further
considerations which should be borne in mind. Thus
it must not be forgotten that the greatest sinner is
not necessarily the man whose guilt is most glaringly
apparent; nor that sins of the heart count with God
as equivalent to obviously wicked deeds committed in
the full light of day; nor that guilt cannot be estimated
absolutely, by the bare evil done, without regard to
the opportunities, privileges, and temptations of the
offender. Then, the more we meditate upon the true
nature of sin, the more deeply must we be impressed
with its essential evil even when it is developed only
slightly in comparison with the hideous crimes and
vices that blacken the pages of history—as, for example,
in the careers of a Nero or a Cæsar Borgia. The
sensitive conscience does not only feel the exact guilt
of its individual offences, but also, and much more,
"the exceeding sinfulness of sin." When we consider
their times and the state of the society in which they
lived, we must feel that neither Augustine nor Bunyan
had been so wicked as the intensity of the language of
penitence they both employed might lead us to suppose.
It is quite foreign to the nature of heartfelt repentance
to measure degrees of guilt. In the depth of its shame
and humiliation no language of contrition seems to be
too strong to give it adequate expression. But this
must be entirely spontaneous; it is most unwise to
impose it from without in the form of an indiscriminate
appeal to abject penitence.
Then it is also to be observed that while the fundamental
change described in the New Testament as a
new birth cannot well be regarded as a thing of repeated
occurrence, we may have occasion for many conversions.
Every time we turn into the wrong path we put ourselves
under the necessity of turning back if ever we
would walk in the right path again. What is that but
conversion? It is a pity that we should be hampered
by the technicality of a term. This may lead to another
kind of error—the error of supposing that if we are
once converted we are converted for life, that we have
crossed our Rubicon, and cannot recross it. Thus
while the necessity of a primary conversion may be
exaggerated in addresses to the young, the greater
need of subsequent conversions may be neglected in
the thoughts of adults. The "converted" person who
relies on the one act of his past experience to serve as
a talisman for all future time is deluding himself in a
most dangerous manner. Can it be asserted that Peter
had not been "converted," in the technical sense, when
he fell through undue self-confidence, and denied his
Master with "oaths and curses?"
Again—a very significant fact—the return is described
in positive language. It is a coming back to God, not
merely a departure from the old way of sin. The
initial impulse towards a better life springs more
readily from the attraction of a new hope than from the
repulsion of a loathed evil. The hopeful repentance is
exhilarating, while that which is only born of the
disgust and horror of sin is dismally depressing. Lurid
pictures of evil rarely beget penitence. The Newgate
Calendar is not to be credited with the reformation of
criminals. Even Dante's Inferno is no gospel. In
prosecuting his mission as the prophet of repentance
John the Baptist was not content to declare that the
axe was laid at the root of the tree; the pith of his
exhortation was found in the glad tidings that "the
kingdom of heaven is at hand." St. Paul shows that
it is the goodness of God that leads us to repentance.
Besides, the repentance that is induced by this means
is of the best character. It escapes the craven slavishness
of fear; it is not a merely selfish shrinking from the
lash; it is inspired by the pure love of a worthy end.
Only remorse lingers in the dark region of regrets for
the past. Genuine repentance always turns a hopeful
look towards a better future. It is of little use to
exorcise the spirit of evil if the house is not to be
tenanted by the spirit of good. Thus the end and
purpose of repentance is to be reunited to God.
Following up his general exhortation to return to
God, the elegist adds a particular one, in which the
process of the new movement is described. It takes
the form of a prayer from the heart. The resolution is
to lift up the heart with the hands. The erect posture,
with the hands stretched out to heaven, which was the
Hebrew attitude in prayer, had often been assumed in
meaningless acts of formal worship before there was
any real approach to God or any true penitence. Now
the repentance will be manifested by the reality of the
prayer. Let the heart also be lifted up. The true
approach to God is an act of the inner life, to which
in its entirety—thought, affection, and will—the Jewish
metaphor of the heart points.
Lastly, the poet furnishes the returning penitents
with the very language of the heart's prayer, which is
primarily confession. The doleful fact that God has
not pardoned His people is directly stated, but not in
the first place. This statement is preceded by a clear
and unreserved confession of sin. Repentance must
be followed by confession. It is not a private matter
concerning the offender alone. Since the offence was
directed against another, the amendment must begin
with a humble admission of the wrong that has been
done. Thus, immediately the prodigal son is met by
his father he sobs out his confession;Luke xv. 21.
and St. John
assigns confession as an essential preliminary to forgiveness,
saying: "If we confess our sins, He is
faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins, and to
cleanse us from all unrighteousness."1 John i. 9.
CHAPTER XVI
GRIEVING BEFORE GOD
iii. 43-54
As might have been expected, the mourning patriot
quickly forsakes the patch of sunshine which lights
up a few verses of this elegy. But the vision of it
has not come in vain; for it leaves gracious effects to
tone the gloomy ideas upon which the meditations of the
poet now return like birds of the night hastening back
to their darksome haunts. In the first place, his grief
is no longer solitary. It is enlarged in its sympathies
so as to take in the sorrows of others. Purely selfish
trouble tends to become a mean and sordid thing. If
we are not yet freed from our own pain some element
of a nobler nature will be imported into it when we can
find room for the larger thoughts that the contemplation
of the distresses of others arouses. But a greater
change than this has taken place. The "man who
hath seen affliction" now feels himself to be in the
presence of God. Speaking for others as well as for
himself he pours out his lamentations before God. In
the first part of the elegy he had only mentioned the
Divine name as that of his great Antagonist; now it
is the name of his close Confidant.
Then the elegist is here giving voice to the people's
penitent confession and prayer. This is another
feature of the changed situation. An unqualified
admission of the truth that the sufferings of Israel are
just the merited punishment of the people's sin has
come between the complaints with which the poem
opens, and the renewed expressions of grief.
Still, when all due allowance is made for these improvements,
the renewed outburst of grief is sufficiently
dismal. The people are supposed to represent themselves
as being hunted down like helpless fugitives, and
slain without pity by God, who has wrapped Himself
in a mantle of anger, which is as a cloud impenetrable to
the prayers of His miserable victims.iii. 44.
This description
of their helpless state follows immediately after an outpouring
of prayer. It would seem, therefore, that the
poet conceived that this particular utterance was
hindered from reaching the ear of God. Now in many
cases it may be that a feeling such as is here expressed
is purely subjective and imaginary. The soul's cry
of agony passes out into the night, and dies away into
silence, without eliciting a whisper of response. Yet
it is not necessary to conclude that the cry is not
heard. The closest attention may be the most silent.
But, it may be objected, this possibility only aggravates
the evil; for it is better not to hear at all than to hear
and not to heed. Will any one attribute such stony
indifference to God? God may attend, and yet He
may not speak to us—speech not being the usual
form of Divine response. He may be helping us
most effectually in silence, unperceived by us, at the
very moment when we imagine that He has completely
deserted us. If we were more keenly alive to
the signs of His coming we should be less hasty to
despair at the failure of our prayers. The priests of
Baal may scream, "O Baal, hear us!" from morning
to night till their phrensy sinks into despair; but that
is no reason why men and women who worship a
spiritual God should come to the conclusion that their
inability to wrest a sign from Heaven is itself a sign
of desertion by Him to whom they call. The oracle
may be dumb; but the God whom we worship is not
limited to the utterance of prophetic voices for the
expression of His will. He hears, even if in silence;
and, in truth, He also answers, though we are too deaf
in our unbelief to discern the still small voice of His
Spirit.
But can we say that the idea of the Divine disregard
of prayer is always and only imaginary? Are the
clouds that come between us and God invariably earthborn?
Does He never really wrap Himself in the
garment of wrath? Surely we dare not say so much.
The anger of God is as real as His love. No being
can be perfectly holy and not feel a righteous indignation
in the presence of sin. But if God is angry,
and while He is so, He cannot at the same time
be holding friendly intercourse with the people who
are provoking His wrath. Then the Divine anger
must be as a thick, impervious curtain between the
prayers of the sinful and the gracious hearing of God.
The universal confession of the need of an atonement
is a witness to the perception of this condition by mankind.
Whether we are dealing with the crude notions
of ancient sacrifice, or with the high thoughts that
circle about Calvary, the same spiritual instinct presses
for recognition. We may try to reason it down, but
it persistently reasserts itself. Most certainly it is not
the teaching of Scripture that the only condition of
salvation is prayer. The Gospel is not to the effect
that we are to be saved by our own petitions. The
penitent is taught to feel that without Christ and the
cross his prayers are of no avail for his salvation.
Even if they knew no respite still they would never
atone for sin. Is not this an axiom of evangelical
doctrine? Then the prayers that are offered in the
old unreconciled condition must fall back on the head
of the vain petitioner unable to penetrate the awful
barrier that he has himself caused to be raised between
his cries and the heavens where God dwells.
Turning from the contemplation of the hopeless
failure of prayer the lament naturally falls into an
almost despairing wail of grief. The state of the Jews
is painted in the very darkest colours. God has made
them as no better than the refuse people cast out of
their houses, or the very sweepings of the streets—not
fit even to be trampled under foot of men.iii. 45.
This is
their position among the nations. The poet seems to
be alluding to the exceptional severity with which the
obstinate defenders of Jerusalem had been treated by
their exasperated conquerors. The neighbouring tribes
had been compelled to succumb beneath the devastating
wave of the Babylonian invasion; but since none of
them had offered so stubborn a resistance to the armies
of Nebuchadnezzar none of them had been punished
by so severe a scourge of vengeance. So it has been
repeatedly with the unhappy people who have encountered
unparalled persecutions through the long weary
ages of their melancholy history. In the days of Antiochus
Epiphanes the Jews were the most insulted and
cruelly outraged victims of Syrian tyranny. When their
long tragedy reached a climax at the final siege of Jerusalem
by Titus, the more liberal-minded Roman government
laid on them harsh punishments of exile, slavery,
torture, and death, such as it rarely inflicted on a fallen
foe—for with statesmanlike wisdom the Romans preferred,
as a rule, conciliation to extermination; but in
the case of this one unhappy city of Jerusalem the
almost unique fate of the hated and dreaded city of
Carthage was repeated. So it was in the Middle Ages,
as Ivanhoe vividly shows; and so it is to-day in the
East of Europe, as the fierce Juden-hetze is continually
proving. The irony of history is nowhere more apparent
than in the fact that the "favoured" people,
the "chosen" people of Jehovah, should have been
treated so continuously as "the offscouring and refuse
in the midst of the peoples." As privilege and responsibility
always go hand in hand, so also do blessing
and suffering—the Jew hated, the Church persecuted,
the Christ crucified. We cannot say that this paradox
is simply "a mysterious dispensation of Providence;"
because in the case of Israel, at all events in the early
ages, the unparalleled misery was traced to the abuse
of unparalleled favour. But this does not exhaust the
mystery, for in the most striking instances innocence
suffers. We can have no satisfaction in our view of
these contradictions till we see the glory of the martyr's
crown and the even higher glory of the triumph of
Christ and His people over failure, agony, insult, and
death; but just in proportion as we are able to lift up
the eyes of faith to the blessedness of the unseen world,
we shall be able also to discover that even here and
now there is a pain that is better than pleasure, and
a shame that is truest glory.
These truths, however, are not readily perceived at
the time of endurance, when the iron is entering into
the soul. The elegist feels the degradations of his
people most keenly, and he represents them complaining
how their enemies rage at them as with open
mouths—belching forth gross insults, shouting curses,
like wild beasts ready to devour their hapless victims.iii. 46.
There seems to be nothing in store for them but the
terrors of death, the pit of destruction.iii. 47.
At the contemplation of this extremity of hopeless
misery the poet drops the plural number, in which
he has been personating his people, as abruptly as he
assumed it a few verses earlier, and bewails the dread
calamities in his own person.iii. 48 ff.
Then, in truly Jeremiah-like
fashion, he describes his incessant weeping for the
woes of the wretched citizens of Jerusalem and the
surrounding villages. The reference to "the daughters
of my city"iii. 51.
seems to be best explained as a figurative
expression for the neighbouring places, all of which it
would seem had shared in the devastation produced by
the great wave of conquest which had overwhelmed the
capital. But the previous mention of "the daughter
of my people,"iii. 48.
followed as it is by this phrase about
"the daughters of my city," strikes a deeper note of
compassion. These places contained many defenceless
women, the indescribable cruelty of whose fate when
they fell into the hands of the brutal heathen soldiery
was one of the worst features of the whole ghastly
scene; and the wretchedness of the once proud city
and its dependencies when they were completely overthrown
is finely represented so as to appeal most
effectually to our sympathy by a metaphor that pictures
them as hapless maidens, touching us like Spenser's
piteous picture of the forlorn Una, deserted in the
forest and left a prey to its savage denizens. Like
Una, too, the daughters in this metaphor claim the
chivalry which our English poet has so exquisitely
portrayed as awakened even in the breast of a wild
animal. The woman of Europe is far removed from
her sister in the East, who still follows the ancient
type in submitting to the imputation of weakness as a
claim for consideration. But this is because Europe
has learnt that strength of character—in which woman
can be at least the equal of man—is more potent in a
community civilised in the Christian way than strength
of muscle. Where the more brutal forces are let loose
the duties of chivalry are always in requisition. Then
it is apparent that deference to the claims of women
for protection produces a civilising effect in softening
the roughness of men. It is difficult to say it to-day
in the teeth of the just claims that women are making,
and still more difficult in face of what women are now
achieving, in spite of many relics of barbarism in the
form of unfair restrictions, but yet it must be asserted
that the feebleness of femininity—in the old-fashioned
sense of the word—pervades these poems, and is their
most touching characteristic, so that much of the pathos
and beauty of poetry such as that of these elegies is
to be traced to representations of woman wronged and
suffering and calling for the sympathy of all beholders.
The poet is moved to tears—quite unselfish tears,
tears of patriotic grief, tears of compassion for helpless
suffering. Here again the modern Anglo-Saxon
habit makes it difficult for us to appreciate his conduct
as it deserves. We think it a dreadful thing for
a man to be seen weeping; and a feeling of shame
accompanies such an outburst of unrestrained distress.
But surely there are holy tears, and tears which it is
an honour for any one to be capable of shedding. If
mere callousness is the explanation of dry eyes in view
of sorrow, there can be no credit for such a condition.
This is not the restraint of tears. Nothing is easier
than for the unfeeling not to weep. Nor can it be
maintained that it is always necessary to restrain the
outward expression of sympathy in accordance with
its most natural impulses. Our Lord was strong; yet
we could never wish that the evangelist had not had
occasion to write the ever memorable sentence, "Jesus
wept." Sufferers lose much, not only from lack of
sympathy, but also from a shy concealment of the
fellow-feeling that is truly experienced. There are
seasons of keenest agony, when to weep with those
who weep is me only possible expression of brotherly
kindness; and this may be a very real act of love,
appreciably alleviating suffering. A little courage on
the part of Englishmen in daring to weep would knit
the ties of brotherhood more closely. At present a
chill reserve rather than any actual coldness of heart
separates people who might be much more helpful to
one another if they could but bring themselves to
break down this barrier.
But while the poet is thus expressing his large
patriotic grief he cannot forget his own private sorrows.
They are all parts of one common woe. So he returns
to his personal experience, and adds some graphic
details that enable us to picture him in the midst of his
misery.iii. 52 ff.
Though he had never provoked the enemy,
he was chased like a bird, flung into a dungeon,
where a stone was hurled down upon him, and where
the water was lying so deep that he was completely
submerged. There is no reason to question that
definite statements such as these represent the exact
experience of the writer. At the first glance they call
to our minds the persecutions inflicted on Jeremiah by
his own people. But the allusion would be peculiarly
inappropriate, and the cases do not quite fit together.
The poet has been bewailing the sufferings of the Jews
at the hands of the Chaldæans, and he seems to identify
his own troubles in the closest way with the general
flood of calamities that swept over his nation. It
would be quite out of place for him to insert here a
reminder of earlier troubles which his own people had
inflicted upon him. Besides, the particulars do not
exactly agree with what we learn of the prophet's hardships
from his own pen. The dungeon into which he
was flung was very foul, and he sank in the mire, but
it is expressly stated that there was no water in it, and
there is no mention of stoning.Jer. xxxviii. 6.
There were many
sufferers in that dark time of tumult and outrage whose
fate was as hard as that of Jeremiah.
A graphic picture like this helps us to imagine the
fearful accompaniments of the destruction of Jerusalem
much better than any general summary. As we gaze
at this one scene among the many miseries that followed
the siege—the poet hunted out and run down, his
capture and conveyance to the dungeon, apparently
without a shadow of a trial, the danger of drowning and
the misery of standing in the water that had gathered
in a place so utterly unfit for human habitation, the
needless additional cruelty of the stone-throwing—there
rises before us a picture which cannot but impress our
minds with the unutterable wretchedness of the sufferers
from such a calamity as the siege of Jerusalem. Of
course there must have been some special reason for the
exceptionally severe treatment of the poet. What this
was we cannot tell. If the same patriotic spirit burned
in his soul in the midst of the war as we now find at
the time of later reflection, it would be most reasonable
to conjecture that the ardent lover of his country had
done or said something to irritate the enemy, and possibly
that as he devoted his poetic gifts at a subsequent
time to lamenting the overthrow of his city, he may have
employed them with a more practical purpose among
the battle scenes to write some inspiring martial ode in
which we may be sure he would not have spared the
ruthless invader. But then he says his persecution
was without a cause. He may have been undeservedly
suspected of acting as a spy. It is only by chance that
now and again we get a glimpse of the backwaters of
a great flood such as that which was now devastating
the land of Judah; most of the dreary scene is shrouded
in gloom.
Lastly, we must not fail to remember, in reading
these expressions of patriotic and personal grief, that
they are the outpourings of the heart of the poet
before God. They are all addressed to God's ear; they
are all part of a prayer. Thus they illustrate the way
in which prayer takes the form of confiding in God.
It is a great relief to be able simply to tell Him everything.
Perhaps, however, here we may detect a note
of complaint; but if so it is not a note of rebellion or
of unbelief. Although the evils from which the elegist
and his people are suffering so grievously are attributed
to God in the most uncompromising manner, the writer
does not hesitate to look to God for deliverance. Thus
in the very midst of his lamentations he says that his
weeping is to continue "till the Lord look down, and
behold from heaven."iii. 50.
He will not cease weeping
until this happens; but he does not expect to have
to spend all the remainder of his days in tears. He
is assured that God will hear, and answer, and deliver.
The time of the Divine response is quite unknown to
him; it may be still far off, and there may be much
weary waiting to be endured first. But it will come,
and if no one can tell how long the interval of trial
may be, so also no one can say but that the deliverance
may arrive suddenly and with a surprise of mercy.
Thus the poet weeps on, but in undying hope.
This is the right attitude of the Christian mourner.
We cannot penetrate the mystery of God's times; but
that they are in His own hands is not to be denied.
Therefore the test of faith is often given in the necessity
for indefinite waiting. To the man who trusts
God there is always a future. Whatever such a man
may have to endure he should find a place in his plaint
for the word "until." He is not plunged into everlasting
night. He has but to endure until the day
dawn.
CHAPTER XVII
DE PROFUNDIS
iii. 55-66
As this third elegy—the richest and the most
elaborate of the five that constitute the Book of
Lamentations—draws to a close it retains its curious
character of variability, not aiming at any climax, but
simply winding on till its threefold acrostics are completed
by the limits of the Hebrew alphabet, like a
river that is monotonous in the very succession of its
changes, now flowing through a dark gorge, then
rippling in clear sunlight, and again plunging into
gloomy caverns. The beauty and brightness of this
very variegated poem is found at its centre. Sadder
thoughts follow. But these are not so wholly complaining
as the opening passages had been. There is
one thread of continuity that may be traced right
through the series of changes which occupy the latter
part of the poem. The poet having once turned to the
refuge of prayer never altogether forsakes it. The
meditations as much as the petitions that here occur
are all directed to God.
A peculiarity of the last portion of the elegy that
claims special attention is the interesting reminiscence
with which the poet finds encouragement for his
present prayers. He is recalling the scenes of that
most distressing period of his life, the time when he
had been cast into a flooded dungeon. If ever he had
come near to death it must have been then; though
his life was spared the misery of his condition had
been extreme. While in this most wretched situation
the persecuted patriot cried to God for help, and as he
now recollects for his present encouragement, he received
a distinct and unmistakable answer. The scene
is most impressive. As it shapes itself to his memory,
the victim of tyranny is in the lowest dungeon. This
phrase suggests the thought of the awful Hebrew Sheol.
So dark was his experience, and so near was the
sufferer to death, it seems to him as though he had
been indeed plunged down into the very abode of the
dead. Yet here he found utterance for prayer. It was
the prayer of utter extremity, almost the last wild cry
of a despairing soul, yet not quite, for that is no prayer
at all, all prayer requiring some real faith, if only as a
grain of mustard seed. Moreover, the poet states that
he called upon the name of God. Now in the Bible
the name always stands for the attributes which it
connotes. To call on God's name is to make mention
of some of His known and revealed characteristics.
The man who will do this is more than one "feeling
after God;" he has a definite conception of the
nature and disposition of the Being to whom he is
addressing himself. Thus it happens that old, familiar
ideas of God, as He had been known in the days
of light and joy, rise up in the heart of the miserable
man, and awaken a longing desire to seek the
help of One so great and good and merciful. Just in
proportion to the fulness of the meaning of the name
of God as it is conceived by us, will our prayers win
definiteness of aim and strength of wing. The altar
to "an unknown god" can excite but the feeblest and
vaguest devotion. Inasmuch as our Lord has greatly
enriched the contents of the name of God by His full
revelation of the Divine Father, to us Christians there
has come a more definite direction and a more powerful
impulse for prayer. Even though this is a prayer
de profundis it is an enlightened prayer. We may
believe that, like a star seen from the depths of a well
which excludes the glare of day, the significance of the
sacred Name shone out to the sufferer with a beauty
never before perceived when he looked up to heaven
from the darkness of his pit of misery.
It has been suggested that in this passage the elegist
is following the sixty-ninth psalm, and that perhaps
that psalm is his own composition and the expression
of the very prayer to which he is here referring. At
all events, the psalm exactly fits the situation; and
therefore it may be taken as a perfect illustration of
the kind of prayer alluded to. The psalmist is "in
deep mire, where there is no standing;" he has "come
into deep waters, where the floods overthrow" him;
he is persecuted by enemies who hate him "without a
cause;" he has been weeping till his eyes have failed.
Meanwhile he has been waiting for God, in prayers
mingled with confessions. It is his zeal for God's
house that has brought him so near to death. He
beseeches God that the flood may not be allowed to
overwhelm him, nor "the pit shut her mouth upon
him." He concludes with an invocation of curses
upon the heads of his enemies. All these as well as
some minor points agree very closely with our poet's
picture of his persecutions and the prayer he here
records.
Read in the light of the elegist's experience, such a
prayer as that of the psalm cannot be taken as a model
for daily devotion. It is a pity that our habitual use
of the Psalter should encourage this application of
it. The result is mischievous in several ways. It
tends to make our worship unreal, because the experience
of the psalmist, even when read metaphorically,
as it was probably intended to be read, is by no means
a type of the normal condition of human life. Besides,
in so far as we bring ourselves to sympathise with this
piteous outcry of a distressed soul, we reduce our
worship to a melancholy plaint, when it should be a
joyous anthem of praise. At the same time, we unconsciously
temper the language we quote with the
less painful feelings of our own experience, so that its
force is lost upon us.
Yet the psalm is of value as a revelation of a soul's
agony relieved by prayer; and there are occasions
when its very words can be repeated by men and
women who are indeed overwhelmed by trouble. If
we do not spoil the occasional by attempting to make
it habitual it is wonderful to see how rich the Bible is
in utterances to suit all cases and all conditions. Such
an outpouring of a distressed heart as the elegist hints
at and the psalmist illustrates, is itself full of profound
significance. The stirring of a soul to its depths is a
revelation of its depths. This revelation prevents us
from taking petty views of human nature. No one
can contemplate the Titanic struggle of Laocoon or the
immeasurable grief of Niobe without a sense of the
tragic greatness of which human life is capable. We
live so much on the surface that we are in danger of
forgetting that life is not always a superficial thing.
But when a volcano bursts out of the quiet plain of
everyday existence, we are startled into the perception
that there must be hidden fires which we may not have
suspected before. And, further, when the soul in its
extremity is seen to be turning for refuge to God,
the revelation of its Gethsemane gives a new meaning
to the very idea of prayer. Here is prayer indeed, and
at the sight of such a profound reality we are shamed
into doubting whether we have ever begun to pray
at all, so stiff and chill do our utterances to the Unseen
now appear to be in comparison with this Jacob-like
wrestling.
Immediately after mentioning the fact of his prayer
the elegist adds that this was heard by God. His cry
rose up from "the lowest dungeon" and reached the
heights of heaven. And yet we cannot credit this to
the inherent vigour of prayer. If a petition can thus
wing its way to heaven, that is because it is of heavenly
origin. There is no difficulty in making air to rise
above water; the difficulty is to sink it; and if any
could be taken to the bottom of the sea, the greater
the depth descended the swifter would it shoot up.
Since all true prayer is an inspiration it cannot spend
itself until it has, so to speak, restored the equilibrium
by returning to its natural sphere. But the elegist
puts the case another way. In His great condescension
God stoops to the very lowest depths to find one of
His distressed children. It is not hard to make the
prayer of the dungeon reach the ear of God, because
God is in the dungeon. He is most near when He is
most needed.
The prayer was more than heard; it was answered—there
was a Divine voice in response to this cry to
God, a voice that reached the ear of the desolate
prisoner in the silence of his dungeon. It consisted
of but two words, but those two words were clear and
unmistakable, and quite sufficient to satisfy the listener.
The voice said, "Fear not."iii. 57.
That was enough.
Shall we doubt the reality of the remarkable experience
that the elegist here records? Or can we
explain it away by reference to the morbid condition
of the mind of a prisoner enduring the punishment of
solitary confinement? It is said that this unnatural
punishment tends to develop insanity in its miserable
victims. But the poet is now reviewing the occurrence,
which made so deep an impression on his mind at the
time, in the calm of later reflection; and evidently he
has no doubt of its reality. It has nothing in it of
the wild fancy of a disordered brain. Lunacy raves;
this simple message is calm. And it is just such a
message as God might be expected to give if He spoke
at all—just like Him, we may say. To this remark
some doubting critic may reply, "Exactly; and therefore
the more likely to have been imagined by the expectant
worshipper." But such an inference is not psychologically
correct. The reply is not in harmony with
the tone of the prayer, but directly opposed to it.
Agony and terror cannot generate an assurance of
peace and safety. The poison does not secrete its
own antidote. Here is an indication of the presence of
another voice, because the words breathe another spirit.
Besides, this is not an unparalleled experience.
Most frequently, no doubt, the answer to prayer is
not vocal, and yet the reality of it may not be any
the less certain to the seeking soul. It may be most
definite, although it comes in a deed rather than in
a word. Then the grateful recipient can exclaim with
the psalmist—
"This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him,
And saved him out of all his troubles."Psalm xxxiv. 6.
Here is an answer, but not a spoken one, only an
action, in saving from trouble. In other cases, however,
the reply approaches nearer the form of a message
from heaven. When we remember that God is our
Father the wonder is not that at rare intervals these
voices have been heard, but rather that they are so
infrequent. It is so easy to become the victim of delusions
that some caution is requisite to assure ourselves
of the existence of Divine utterances. The very idea
of the occurrence of such phenomena is discredited by
the fact that those persons who profess most eagerly
to have heard supernatural voices are commonly the
subjects of hysteria; and when the voices become
frequent this fact is taken by physicians as a symptom
of approaching insanity. Among semi-civilised people
madness is supposed to be closely allied to inspiration.
The mantis is not far from the mad man. Such a man
is not the better off for the march of civilisation. The
ancients would have honoured him as a prophet; we
shut him up in a lunatic asylum. But these discouraging
considerations do not exhaust the question.
Delusions are not in themselves disproofs of the
existence of the occurrences they emulate. Each case
must be taken on its own merits; and when, as in
that which is now under our consideration, the character
of the incident points to a conviction of its solid reality,
it is only a mark of narrowness of thought to refuse to
lift it out of the category of idle fancies.
But, quite apart from the question of the sounding
of Divine voices in the bodily ear, the more important
truth to be considered is that in some way, if only by
spiritual impression, God does most really speak to
His children, and that He speaks now as surely as He
spoke in the days of Israel. We have no new prophets
and apostles who can give us fresh revelations in the
form of additions to our Bible. But that is not what
is meant. The elegist did not receive a statement of
doctrine in answer to his prayer, nor, on this occasion,
even help for the writing of his inspired poetry. The
voice to which he here alludes was of quite a different
character.
This was in the olden times; but if then, why not
also now? Evidently the elegist regarded it as a rare
and wonderful occurrence—a single experience to which
he looked back in after years with the interest one
feels in a vivid recollection which rises like a mountain,
clean cut against the sky, above the mists that so
quickly gather on the low plains of the uneventful past.
Perhaps it is only in one of the crises of life that such
an indubitable message is sent—when the soul is in
the lowest dungeon, in extremis, crying out of the darkness,
helpless if not yet hopeless, overwhelmed, almost
extinguished. But if we listened for it, who can tell
but that the voice might not be so rare? We do not
believe in it; therefore we do not hear it. Or the
noise of the world's great loom and the busy thoughts
of our own hearts drown the music that still floats
down from heaven to ears that are tuned to catch its
notes; for it does not come in thunder, and we must
ourselves be still if we would hear the still small voice,
inwardly still, still in soul, stifling the chatter of self,
stopping our ears to the din of the world. There are
those to-day who tell us with calm assurance, not at
all in the visionary's falsetto notes, that they have
known just what is here described by the poet—in the
silence of a mountain valley, in the quiet of a sick
chamber, even in the noisy crowd at a railway station.
When this is granted it is still well for us to
remember that we are not dependent for Divine
consolation on voices which to many must ever be as
dubious as they are rare. This short message of two
words is in effect the essence of teachings that can be
gathered as freely from almost every page of the Bible
as flowers from a meadow in May. We have the
"more sure word of prophecy," and the burden of it
is the same as the message of the voice that comforted
the poet in his dungeon.
That message is wholly reassuring—"Fear not."
So said God to the patriarch: "Fear not, Abram; I
am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward;"Gen. xv. 1.
and
to His people through the prophet of the restoration:
"Fear not, thou worm Jacob;"Isa. xli. 14.
and Jesus to His
disciples in the storm: "Be of good cheer: it is I: be
not afraid";Mark vi. 50.
and our Lord again in His parting
address: "Let not your heart be troubled, neither let
it be fearful";John xiv. 27.
and the glorified Christ to His terrified
friend John, when He laid His right hand on him with
the words: "Fear not; I am the first and the last,
and the Living One; and I was dead, and behold, I am
alive for ever more, and I have the keys of death and
of Hades."Rev. i. 17, 18.
This is the word that God is continually
speaking to His faint-hearted children. When "the
burthen of the mystery," and
"the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world"
oppress, when the greater sorrows threaten to crush
outright, listening for the voice of God, we may hear
the message of love from a Father's heart as though
spoken afresh to each of us; for we have but to
acquaint ourselves with Him to be at peace.
The elegist does not recall this scene from his past
life merely in order to indulge in the pleasures of
memory—generally rather melancholy pleasures, and
even mocking if they are in sharp contrast to the
present. His object is to find encouragement for
renewed hope in the efficacy of prayer. In the complaint
that he has put into the mouth of His people
He has just been depicting the failure of prayer. But
now he feels that if for a time God has wrapped Himself
in a mantle of wrath this cannot be for ever, for
He who was so gracious to the cry of His servant on
that ever-memorable occasion will surely attend again
to the appeal of distress. This is always the greatest
encouragement for seeking help from God. It is
difficult to find much satisfaction in what is called with
an awkward inconsequence of diction the "philosophy
of prayer"; the spirit of philosophy is so wholly
different from the spirit of prayer. The great justification
for prayer is the experience of prayer. It is only
the prayerless man who is wholly sceptical on this
subject. The man of prayer cannot but believe in
prayer; and the more he prays and the oftener he
turns to this refuge in all times of need the fuller is
his assurance that God hears and answers him.
Considering how God acted as his advocate when he
was in danger in the earlier crisis, and then redeemed
his life, the poet points to this fact as a plea in his
new necessity.iii. 58.
God will not desert the cause He has
adopted. Men feel a peculiar interest in those whom
they have already helped, an interest that is stronger
than the sense of gratitude, for we are more attracted
to our dependants than to our benefactors. If God
shares this feeling, how strongly must He be drawn
to us by His many former favours! The language of
the elegist gains a great enrichment of meaning when
read in the light of the Christian Gospel. In a deep
sense, of which he could have had but the least glimmering
of apprehension, we can appeal to God as the
Redeemer of our life, for we can take the Cross of
Christ as our plea. St. Paul makes use of this strongest
of all arguments when He urges that if God gave His
Son, and if Christ died for us, all other needful blessings,
since they cannot involve so great a sacrifice,
will surely follow. Accordingly, we can pray in the
language of the Dies Iræ—
"Wearily for me Thou soughtest,
On the Cross my life Thou boughtest,
Lose not all for which Thou wroughtest."
Rising from the image of the advocate to that of the
magistrate the distressed man begs God to judge his
cause.iii. 59.
He would have God look at his enemies—how
they wrong him, insult him, make him the theme of
their jesting songs.iii. 60-3.
It would have been more to our taste if the poem
had ended here, if there had been no remaining letters
in the Hebrew alphabet to permit the extension of the
acrostics beyond the point we have now reached. We
cannot but feel that its tone is lowered at the close.
The writer here proceeds to heap imprecations on
the heads of his enemies. It is vain for some commentator
to plead the weak excuse that the language is
"prophetic." This is certainly more than the utterance
of a prediction. No unprejudiced reader can deny that
it reveals a desire that the oppressors may be blighted
and blasted with ruin, and even if the words were only
a foretelling of a divinely-decreed fate they would
imply a keen sense of satisfaction in the prospect,
which they describe as something to be gloated over.
We cannot expect this Jewish patriot to anticipate our
Lord's intercession and excuse for His enemies. Even
St. Paul so far forgot himself as to treat the High
Priest in a very different manner from his Master's
behaviour. But we may see here one of the worst
effects of tyranny—the dark passion of revenge that it
rouses in its victims. The provocation was maddening,
and not only of a private nature. Think of the situation—the
beloved city sacked and destroyed, the sacred
temple a heap of smouldering ruins, village homesteads
all over the hills of Judah wrecked and deserted;
slaughter, outrage, unspeakable wrongs endured by
wives and maidens, little children starved to death. Is
it wonderful that the patriot's temper was not the
sweetest when he thought of the authors of such
atrocities? There is no possibility of denying the fact—the
fierce fires of Hebrew hatred for the oppressors
of the much-suffering race here burst into a flame, and
towards the end of this finest of elegies we read the
dark imprecation, "Thy curse upon them!"iii. 65.
CHAPTER XVIII
CONTRASTS
iv. 1-12
IN form the fourth elegy is slightly different from
each of its predecessors. Following the characteristic
plan of the Book of Lamentations, it is an
acrostic of twenty-two verses arranged in the order
of the Hebrew alphabet. In it we meet with the same
curious transposition of two letters that is found in
the second and third elegies; it has also the peculiar
metre of Hebrew elegiac poetry—the very lengthy line,
broken into two unequal parts. But, like the first and
second, it differs from the third elegy, which repeats
the acrostic letters in three successive lines, in only
using each acrostic once—at the beginning of a fresh
verse; and it differs from all the three first elegies,
which are arranged in triplets, in having only two lines
in each verse.
This poem is very artistically constructed in the
balancing of its ideas and phrases. The opening section
of it, from the beginning to the twelfth verse, consists
of a pair of duplicate passages—the first from verse
one to verse six, the second from verse seven to verse
eleven, the twelfth verse bringing this part of the poem
to a close by adding a reflection on the common subject
of the twin passages. Thus the parallelism which we
usually meet with in individual verses is here extended
to two series of verses, we might perhaps say, two
stanzas, except that there is no such formal division.
In each of these elaborately-wrought sections the
elegist brings out a rich array of similes to enforce the
tremendous contrast between the original condition of
the people of Jerusalem and their subsequent wretchedness.
The details of the two descriptions follow closely
parallel lines, with sufficient diversity, both in idea and
in illustration, though chiefly in illustration, to avoid
tautology and to serve to heighten the general effect by
mutual comparisons. Both passages open with images
of beautiful and costly natural objects to which the élite
of Jerusalem are compared. Next comes the violent
contrast of their state after the overthrow of the city.
Then turning aside to more distant scenes, each of
which is more or less repellent—the lair of wild beasts
in the first case, in the second the battle-field—the poet
describes the much more degraded and miserable condition
of his people. Both passages direct especial
attention to the fate of children—the first to their
starvation, the second to a perfectly ghastly scene. At
this point in each part the previous daintiness of the
upbringing of the more refined classes is contrasted
with the condition of degradation worse than that of
savages to which they have been reduced. Each
passage concludes with a reference to those deeper
facts of the case which make it a sign of the wrath of
heaven against exceptionally guilty sinners.
The elegist begins with an evident allusion to the
consequences of the burning of the temple, which we
learn from the history was effected by the Babylonian
general Nebuzar-adan.2 Kings xxv. 9.
The costly splendour with
which this temple at Jerusalem was decorated allowed
of a rare glitter of gold, such as Josephus describes
when writing of the later temple; gold not like that of
the domes of St. Mark's, mellowed by the climate of
Venice to a sober depth of hue, but all ablaze with
dazzling radiance. The first effect of the smoke of
a great conflagration would be to cloud and soil this
somewhat raw magnificence, so that the choice gold
became dull. That the precious stones stolen from
the temple treasury would be flung carelessly about
the streets, as our Authorised Version would seem to
suggest, is not to be supposed in the case of the sack
of a city by a civilised army, whatever might happen if
a Vandal host swept through it. "The stones of the
sanctuary,"iv. 1.
however, might be the stones with which
the building had been constructed. Still, even with this
interpretation the statement seems very improbable that
the invaders would take the trouble to cart these huge
blocks about the city in order to distribute them in
heaps at all the street corners. We are driven to the
conclusion that the poet is speaking metaphorically,
that he is meaning the Jews themselves, or perhaps the
more favoured classes, "the noble sons of Zion" of
whom he writes openly in the next verse.iv. 2.
This
interpretation is confirmed when we consider the comparison
with the parallel passage, which starts at once
with a reference to the "princes."iv. 7.
It seems likely
then that the gold that has been so sullied also represents
the choicer part of the people. The writer
deplores the destruction of his beloved sanctuary, and
the image of that calamity is in his mind at the present
time; and yet it is not this that he is most deeply
lamenting. He is more concerned with the fate of his
people. The patriot loves the very soil of his native
land, the loyal citizen the very streets and stones of his
city. But if such a man is more than a dreamer or
a sentimentalist, flesh and blood must mean infinitely
more to him than earth and stones. The ruin of a city
is something else than the destruction of its buildings;
an earthquake or a fire may effect this, and yet, like
Chicago, the city may rise again in greater splendour.
The ruin that is most deplorable is the ruin of human
lives.
This somewhat aristocratic poet, the mouthpiece of
an aristocratic age, compares the sons of the Jewish
nobility to purest gold. Yet he tells us that they are
treated as common earthen vessels, perhaps meaning
in contrast to the vessels of precious metal used in the
palaces of the great. They are regarded as of no more
value than potter's work, though formerly they had
been prized as the dainty art of a goldsmith. This
first statement only treats of insult and humiliation.
But the evil is worse. The jackals that he knows must
be prowling about the deserted ruins of Jerusalem
even while he writes suggests a strange, wild image to
the poet's mind.iv. 3.
These fierce creatures suckle their
young, though not in the tame manner of domestic
animals. It is singular that the nurture of princes
amid the refinements of wealth and luxury should be
compared to the feeding of their cubs by scavengers of
the wilderness. But our thoughts are thus directed
to the wide extent, the universal exercise of maternal
instincts throughout the animal world, even among the
most savage and homeless creatures. Startling indeed
is it to think that such instincts should ever fail among
men, or even that circumstances should ever hinder the
natural performance of the functions to which they
point with imperious urgency. Although the second
passage tells of the violent reversal of the natural
feelings of maternity under the maddening influence
of famine, here we read how starvation has simply
stopped the tender ministry which mothers render to
their infants, with a vague hint at some cruelty on the
part of the Jewish mothers. A comparison with the
supposed conduct of ostriches in leaving their eggs
suggests that this is negative cruelty; their hearts
being frozen with agony, the wretched mothers lose all
interest in their children. But then there is not food
for them. The calamities of the times have staunched
the mother's milk; and there is no bread for the older
children.iv. 4.
It is the extreme reversal of their fortunes
that makes the misery of the children of princely homes
most acute; even those who do not suffer the pangs
of hunger are flung down to the lowest depths of
wretchedness. The members of the aristocracy have
been accustomed to live luxuriously; now they wander
about the streets devouring whatever they can pick
up. In the old days of luxury they used to recline on
scarlet couches; now they have no better bed than the
filthy dunghill.iv. 5.
The passage concludes with a reflection on the
general character of this dreadful condition of Israel.iv. 6.
It must be closely connected with the sins of the
people. The drift of the context would lead us to
judge that the poet does not mean to compare the
guilt of Jerusalem with that of Sodom, but rather the
fate of the two cities. The punishment of Israel is
greater than that of Sodom. But this is punishment;
and the odious comparison would not be made unless
the sin had been of the blackest dye. Thus in this
elegy the calamities of Jerusalem are again traced
back to the ill-doings of her people. The awful fate
of the cities of the plain stands out in the ancient
narrative as the exceptional punishment of exceptional
wickedness. But now in the race for a first place in
the history of doom Jerusalem has broken the record.
Even Sodom has been eclipsed in the headlong course
by the city once most favoured by heaven. It seems
well nigh impossible. What could be worse than total
destruction by fire from heaven? The elegist considers
that there are two points in the fate of Jerusalem that
confer a gloomy pre-eminence in misery. The doom
of Sodom was sudden, and man had no hand in it
but Jerusalem fell into the hands of man—a calamity
which David judged to be worse than falling into the
hands of God; and she had to endure a long, lingering
agony.
Passing on to the consideration of the parallel section,
we see that the author follows the same lines,
though with considerable freshness of treatment. Still
directing especial attention to the tremendous change
in the fortunes of the aristocracy, he begins again by
describing the splendour of their earlier state. This
had been advertised to all eyes by the very complexion
of their countenances. Unlike the toilers who were
necessarily bronzed by working under a southern sun,
these delicately nurtured persons had been able to
preserve fair skins in the shady seclusion of their cool
palaces, so that in the hyperbole of the poem they
could be described as "purer than snow" and "whiter
than milk."iv. 7.
Yet they had no sickly pallor. Their
health had been well attended to; so that they were
also ruddy as "corals," while their dark hairiv. 7. "Hair," According to a slight emendation of the text
recommended by recent criticism.
glistened
"like sapphires." But now see them! Their faces
are "darker than blackness."iv. 8.
We need not enquire
after a literal explanation of an expression which is in
harmony with the extravagance of Oriental language,
although doubtless exposure to the weather, and the
grime and smoke of the scenes these children of luxury
had passed through, must have had a considerable
effect on their effeminate countenances. The language
here is evidently figurative. So it is throughout the
passage. The whole aspect of the lives and fortunes
of these delicately nurtured lordlings has been reversed.
They tell their story by the gloom of their countenances
and by the shrivelled appearance of their bodies. They
can no longer be recognised in the streets, so piteous
a change has their misfortunes wrought in them.
Withered and wizen, they are reduced to skin and
bone by sheer famine. Sufferers from such continuous
calamities as these fallen princes are passing through
are treated to a worse fate than that which overtook
their brethren who fell in the war. The sword is
better than hunger. The victims of war, stricken down
in the heat of battle but in the midst of plenty, so that
they leave the fruits of the field behind them untouched
because no longer needed,So perhaps we should understand ver. 9, applying the last clause
to the fallen warriors. In the Revised Version, however,
rendered so as to refer to the famished people who pine away for
lack of the fruits of the earth. Yet another rendering is "fade away
... like the growth of the fields."
are to be counted happy in
being taken from the evil to come.
The gruesome horror of the next scene is beyond
description.iv. 10.
More than once history has had to
record the absolute extinction, nay, we must say the
insane reversal, of maternal instincts under the influence
of hunger. We could not believe it possible if we did
not know that it had occurred. It is a degradation of
what we hold to be most sacred in human nature; perhaps
it is only possible where human nature has been
degraded already, for we must not forget that in the
present case the women who are driven below the level
of she-wolves are not children of nature, but the
daughters of an effete civilisation who have been nursed
in the lap of luxury. This is the climax. Imagination
itself could scarcely go further. And yet according
to his custom throughout, the elegist attributes
these calamities of his people to the anger of God.
Such things seem to indicate a very "fury" of Divine
wrath; the anger must be fierce indeed to kindle such
"a fire in Zion."iv. 11.
But now the very foundations of the
city are destroyed even that terrible thirst for retribution
must be satisfied.
These are thoughts which we as Christians do not
care to entertain; and yet it is in the New Testament
that we read that "our God is a consuming fire;"Heb. xii. 29.
and it is of our Lord that John the Baptist declares:
"He will throughly purge His threshing-floor."Matt. iii. 12.
If
God is angry at all His anger cannot be light; for no
action of His is feeble or ineffectual. The subsequent
restoration of Israel shows that the fires to which the
elegist here calls our attention were purgatorial. This
fact must profoundly affect our view of their character.
Still they are very real, or the Book of Lamentations
would not have been written.
In view of the whole situation so graphically portrayed
by means of the double line of illustrations the
poet concludes this part of his elegy with a device that
reminds us of the function of the chorus in the Greek
drama. We see the kings of all other nations in
amazement at the fate of Jerusalem.iv. 12.
The mountain
city had the reputation of being an impregnable fortress,
at least so her fond citizens imagined. But now she
has fallen. It is incredible! The news of this wholly
unexpected disaster is supposed to send a shock through
foreign courts. We are reminded of the blow that
stunned St. Jerome when a rumour of the fall of Rome
reached the studious monk in his quiet retreat at
Bethlehem. Men can tell that a severe storm has been
raging out in the Atlantic if they see unusually great
rollers breaking on the Cornish crags. How huge a
calamity must that be the mere echo of which can produce
a startling effect in far countries! But could these
kings really be so astonished seeing that Jerusalem had
been captured twice before? The poet's language rather
points to the overweening pride and confidence of the
Jews, and it shows how great the shock to them must
have been since they could not but regard it as a
wonder to the world. Such then is the picture drawn
by our poet with the aid of the utmost artistic skill in
bringing out its striking effects. Now before we turn
away from it let us ask ourselves wherein its true
significance may be said to be. This is a study in
black and white. The very language is such; and
when we come to consider the lessons that language
sets forth with so much sharpness and vigour, we shall
see that they too partake of the same character.
The force of contrasts—that is the first and most
obvious characteristic of the scene. We are very familiar
with the heightening of effects by this means, and it is
needless to repeat the trite lessons that have been
derived from the application of it to life. We know that
none suffer so keenly from adversity as those who
were once very prosperous. Marius in the Mamertine
dungeon, Napoleon at St. Helena, Nebuchadnezzar
among the beasts, Dives in Hell, are but notorious
illustrations of what we may all see on the smaller
canvas of every-day life. Great as are the hardships of
the children of the "slums," it is not to them, but to the
unhappy victims of a violent change of circumstances,
that the burden of poverty is most heavy. We have
seen this principle illustrated repeatedly in the Book
of Lamentations. But now may we not go behind it,
and lay hold of something more than an indubitable
psychological law? While looking only at the reversals
of fortune which may be witnessed on every
hand, we are tempted to hold life to be little better
than a gambling bout with high stakes and desperate
play. Further consideration, however, should teach us
that the stakes are not so high as they appear; that is
to say, that the chances of the world do not so profoundly
affect our fate as surface views would lead us
to suppose. Such things as the pursuit of mere sensation,
the life of external aims, the surrender to the
excitement of the moment, are doubtless subject to the
vicissitudes of contrast; but it is the teaching of our
Lord that the higher pursuits are free from these evils.
If the treasure is in heaven no thief can steal it, no
moth or rust can corrupt it; and therefore since where
the treasure is there will the heart be also, it is
possible to keep the heart in peace even among the
changes that upset a purely superficial life with
earthquake shocks. Sincere as is the lament of the
elegist over the fate of his people, a subtle thread of
irony seems to run through his language. Possibly it
is quite unconscious; but if so it is the more significant,
for it is the irony of fact which cannot be excluded by
the simplest method of statement. It suggests that the
grandeur which could be so easily turned to humiliation
must have been somewhat tawdry at best.
But unhappily the fall of the pampered youth of
Jerusalem was not confined to a reversal of external
fortune. The elegist has been careful to point out that
the miseries they endured were the punishments of
their sins. Then there had been an earlier and much
greater collapse. Before any foreign enemy had
appeared at her gates the city had succumbed to a fatal
foe bred within her own walls. Luxury had undermined
the vigour of the wealthy; vice had blackened
the beauty of the young. There is a fine gold of
character which will be sullied beyond recognition when
the foul vapours of the pit are permitted to break
out upon it. The magnificence of Solomon's temple is
poor and superficial in comparison with the beauty of
young souls endowed with intellectual and moral
gifts, like jewels of rarest worth. Man is not treated
in the Bible as a paltry creature. Was he not
made in the image of God? Jesus would not have
us despise our own native worth. Hope and faith
come from a lofty view of human nature and its possibilities.
Souls are not swine; and therefore by all
the measure of their superiority to swine souls are
worth saving. The shame and sorrow of sin lie just
in this fact, that it is so foul a degradation of so fair
a thing as human nature. Here is the contrast that
heightens the tragedy of lost souls. But then we may
add, in its reversal this same contrast magnifies the
glory of redemption—from so deep a pit does Christ
bring back His ransomed, to so great a height does
He raise them!
CHAPTER XIX
LEPERS
iv. 13-16
Passing from the fate of the princes to that of the
prophets and priests, we come upon a vividly
dramatic scene in the streets of Jerusalem amid the
terror and confusion that precede the final act of the
national tragedy. The doom of the city is attributed
to the crimes of her religious leaders, whose true
characters are now laid bare. The citizens shrink from
the guilty men with the loathing felt for lepers, and
shriek to them to depart, calling them unclean, and
warning them not to touch any one by the way, because
there is blood upon them. Dreading the awful treatment
measured out to the victims of lynch-law, they
stagger through the streets in a state of bewilderment,
and stumble like blind men. Fugitives and vagabonds,
with the mark of Cain upon them, driven out at the
gates by the impatient mob, they can find no refuge
even in foreign lands, for none of the nations will
receive them.
We do not know whether the poet is here describing
actual events, or whether this is an imaginary picture
designed to express his own feelings with regard to the
persons concerned. The situation is perfectly natural,
and what is narrated may very well have happened just
as it is described. But if it is not history it is still
a revelation of character, a representation of what the
writer knows to be the conduct of the moral lepers, and
their deserts; and as such it is most suggestive.
In the first place there is much significance in the
fact that the overthrow of Jerusalem is unhesitatingly
charged to the account of the sins of her prophets and
priests. These once venerated men are not merely
no longer protected by the sanctity of their offices from
the accusations that are brought against the laity; they
are singled out for a charge of exceptionally heinous
wickedness which is regarded as the root cause of
all the troubles that have fallen upon the Jews. The
second elegy had affirmed the failure of the prophets
and the vanity of their visions.ii. 9, 14.
This new and stronger
accusation reads like a reminiscence of Jeremiah, who
repeatedly speaks of the sins of the clerical class and
the mischief resulting therefrom.Jer. vi. 13; viii. 10; xxiii. 11, 14; xxvi. 7 ff.
Evidently the terrible
truth the prophet dwelt upon so much was felt by a disciple
of his school to be of the most serious consequence.
The accusation is of the very gravest character.
These religious leaders are charged with murder. If
the elegist is recording historical occurrences he may
be alluding to riots in which the feuds of rival factions
had issued in bloodshed; or he may have had information
of private acts of assassination. His language
points to a condition in Jerusalem similar to that which
was found in Rome at the Fifteenth Century, when
popes and cardinals were the greatest criminals. The
crimes were aggravated by the fact that the victims
selected were the "righteous," perhaps men of the
Jeremiah party, who had been persecuted by the officials
of the State religion. But quite apart from these dark and
tragic events, the record of which has not been preserved,
if the wicked policy of their clergy had brought down
on the heads of the citizens of Jerusalem the mass of
calamities that accompanied the siege of the city by the
Babylonians, this policy was in itself a cause of great
bloodshed. The men who invited the ruin of their
city were in reality the murderers of all who perished
in that calamity. We know from Jeremiah's statements
on the subject that the false, time-serving, popular
prophets were deceivers of the people, who allayed
alarm by means of lies, saying "peace, peace; when
there was no peace."Jer. vi. 14; viii. 11.
When the deception was discovered
their angry dupes would naturally hold them
responsible for the results of their wickedness.
The sin of these religious leaders of Israel consists
essentially in betraying a sacred trust. The priest
is in charge of the Torah—traditional or written; he
must have been unfaithful to his law or he could not
have led his people astray. If the prophet's claims are
valid this man is the messenger of Jehovah, and therefore
he must have falsified his message in order to
delude his audience; if, however, he has not himself
heard the Divine voice he is no better than a dervish,
and in pretending to speak with the authority of an
ambassador from heaven he is behaving as a miserable
charlatan. In the case now before us the motive for
the practice of deceit is very evident. It is thirst for
popularity. Truth, right, God's will—these imperial
authorities count for nothing, because the favour of the
people is reckoned as everything. No doubt there are
times when the temptation to descend to untruthfulness
in the discharge of a public function is peculiarly
pressing. When party feeling is roused, or when a
mad panic has taken possession of a community, it is
exceedingly difficult to resist the current and maintain
what one knows to be right in conflict with the popular
movement. But in its more common occurrence this
treachery cannot plead any such excuse. That truth
should be trampled under foot and souls endangered
merely to enable a public speaker to refresh his vanity
with the music of applause is about the most despicable
exhibition of selfishness imaginable. If a man who has
been set in a place of trust prostitutes his privileges
simply to win admiration for his oratory, or at most in
order to avoid the discomfort of unpopularity or the
disappointment of neglect, his sin is unpardonable.
The one form of unfaithfulness on the part of these
religious leaders of Israel of which we are specially
informed is their refusal to warn their reckless fellow-citizens
of the approach of danger, or to bring home
to their hearer's consciences the guilt of the sin for
which the impending doom was the just punishment.
They are the prototypes of those writers and preachers
who smooth over the unpleasant facts of life. It is not
easy for any one to wear the mantle of Elijah, or echo
the stern desert voice of John the Baptist. Men who
covet popularity do not care to be reckoned pessimists;
and when the gloomy truth is not flattering to their
hearers they are sorely tempted to pass on to more
congenial topics. This was apparent in the Deistic
optimism that almost stifled spiritual life during the
Eighteenth Century. Our age is far from being
optimistic; and yet the same temptation threatens to
smother religion to-day. In an aristocratic age the
sycophant flatters the great; in a democratic age he
flatters the people—who are then in fact the great.
The peculiar danger of our own day is that the preacher
should simply echo popular cries, and voice the demands
of the majority irrespective of the question of their
justice. Thrust into the position of a social leader
with more urgency than his predecessors of any time
since the age of the Hebrew prophets, it is expected
that he will lead whither the people wish to go, and
if he declines to do so he is denounced as retrograde.
And yet as the messenger of Heaven he should consider
it his supreme duty to reveal the whole counsel of
God, to speak for truth and righteousness, and therefore
to condemn the sins of the democracy equally with
the sins of the aristocracy. Brave labour-leaders have
fallen into disfavour for telling working-men that their
worst enemies were their own vices—such as intemperance.
The wickedness of a responsible teacher
who treasonably neglects thus to warn his brethren
of danger is powerfully expressed by Ezekiel's clear,
antithetical statements concerning the respective guilt of
the watchman and his fellow-citizen, which show conclusively
that the greatest burden of blame must rest
on the unfaithful watchman.Ezek. iii. 16-21.
In the hour of their exposure these wretched prophets
and priests lose all sense of dignity, even lose
their self-possession, and stumble about like blind men,
helpless and bewildered. Their behaviour suggests
the idea that they must be drunk with the blood they
have shed, or overcome by the intoxication of their
thirst for blood; but the explanation is that they cannot
lift up their heads to look a neighbour in the face,
because all their little devices have been torn to shreds,
all their specious lies detected, all their empty promises
falsified. This shame of dethroned popularity is the
greatest humiliation. The unhappy man who has
brought himself to live on the breath of fame cannot
hide his fall in oblivion and obscurity as a private
person may do. Standing in the full blaze of the world's
observation which he has so eagerly focussed on himself,
he has no alternative but to exchange the glory
of popularity for the ignominy of notoriety.
Possibly the confusion consequent on their exposure
is all that the poet is thinking of when he depicts the
blind staggering of the prophets and priests. But it
is not unreasonable to take this picture as an illustration
of their moral condition, especially after the references
to the faults of the prophets in the second elegy have
directed our attention to their spiritual darkness and
the vanity of their visions. When the refuge of lies
in which they had trusted was swept away they would
necessarily find themselves lost and helpless. They
had so long worshipped falsehood, it had become so
much their god that we might say, in it they had lived,
and moved, and had their being. But now they have
lost the very atmosphere of their lives. This is the
penalty of deceit. The man who begins by using it
as his tool becomes in time its victim. At first he lies
with his eyes open; but the sure effect of this conduct
is that his sight becomes dim and blurred, till, if he
persist in the fatal course long enough, he is ultimately
reduced to a condition of blindness. Joy continually
mixing truth and falsehood together he loses the power
of distinguishing between them. It may be supposed
that at an earlier stage of their decline, if the religious
leaders of Israel had been honest with regard to their
own convictions they must have admitted the possible
genuineness of those prophets of ruin whom they had
persecuted in deference to popular clamour. But they
had rejected all such unwelcome thoughts so persistently
that in course of time they had lost the perception of
them. Therefore when the truth was flashed upon
their unwilling minds by the unquestionable revelation
of events they were as helpless as bats and owls
suddenly driven out into the daylight by an earthquake
that has flung down the crumbling ruins in which they
had been sheltering themselves.
The discovery of the true character of these men was
the signal for a yell of execration on the part of the
people by flattering whom they had obtained their livelihood,
or at least all that they most valued in life. This
too must have been another shock of surprise to them.
Had they believed in the essential fickleness of popular
favour, they would never have built their hopes upon
so precarious a foundation, for they might as well have
set up their dwelling on the strand that would be
flooded at the next turn of the tide. History is strewn
with the wreckage of fallen popular reputations of all
degrees of merit, from that of the conscientious
martyr who had always looked to higher ends than the
applause which once encircled him, to that of the
frivolous child of fortune who had known of nothing
better than the world's empty admiration. We see this
both in Savonarola martyred at the stake and in Beau
Nash starved in a garret. There is no more pathetic
scene to be gathered from the story of religion in the
present century than that of Edward Irving, once the
idol of society, subsequently deserted by fashion,
stationing himself at a street corner to proclaim his
message to a chance congregation of idlers; and his
mistake was that of an honest man who had been
misled by a delusion. Incomparably worse is the fate
of the fallen favourite who has no honesty of conviction
with which to comfort himself when frowned at by the
heartless world that had recently fawned upon him.
The Jews show their disgust and horror for their
former leaders by pelting them with the leper call.
According to the law the leper must go with rent
clothes and flowing hair, and his face partly covered,
crying, "Unclean, unclean."Lev. xiii. 45.
It is evident that the
poet has this familiar mournful cry in his mind when
he describes the treatment of the prophets and priests.
And yet there is a difference. The leper is to utter the
humiliating word himself; but in the case now before
us it is flung after the outcast leaders by their pitiless
fellow-citizens. The alteration is not without significance.
The miserable victim of bodily disease could
not hope to disguise his condition. "White as snow,"
his well-known complaint was patent to every eye.
But it is otherwise with the spiritual leprosy, sin.
For a time it may be disguised, a hidden fire in the
breast. When it is evident to others, too often the
last man to perceive it is the offender himself; and
when he himself is inwardly conscious of guilt he is
tempted to wear a cloak of denial before the world.
More especially is this the case with one who has been
accustomed to make a profession of religion, and most
of all with a religious leader. While the publican who
has no character to sustain will smite his breast with
self-reproaches and cry for mercy, the professional
saint is blind to his own sins, partly no doubt because
to admit their existence would be to shatter his
profession.
But if the religious leader is slow to confess or even
perceive his guilt, the world is keen to detect it and
swift to cast it in his teeth. There is nothing that
excites so much loathing; and justly so, for there is
nothing that does so much harm. Such conduct is the
chief provocative of practical scepticism. It matters
not that the logic is unsound; men will draw rough
and ready conclusions. If the leaders are corrupt the
hasty inference is that the cause which is identified
with their names must also be corrupt. Religion suffers
more from the hypocrisy of some of her avowed
champions than from the attacks of all the hosts of
her pronounced foes. Accordingly a righteous indignation
assails those who work such deadly mischief.
But less commendable motives urge men in the same
direction. Evil itself steals a triumph over good in the
downfall of its counterfeit. If they knew themselves
there must have been some hypocrisy on the side of
the persecutors in the demonstrative zeal with which
they hounded to death the once pampered children of
fortune the moment they had fallen from the pedestal of
respectability; for could these indignant champions of
virtue deny that they had been willing accomplices in the
deeds they so loudly denounced? or at least that they
had not been reluctant to be pleasantly deceived, had
not enquired too nicely into the credentials of the
flatterers who had spoken smooth things to them?
Considering what their own conduct had been, their
eagerness in execrating the wickedness of their leaders
was almost indecent. There is a Pecksniffian air about
it. It suggests a sly hope that by thus placing themselves
on the side of outraged virtue they were putting
their own characters beyond the suspicion of criticism.
They seem to have been too eager to make scapegoats of
their clergy. Their action appears to show that they had
some idea that even at the eleventh hour the city might
be spared if it were rid of this plague of the blood-stained
prophets and priests. And yet however various and
questionable the motives of the assailants may have
been, there is no escape from the conclusion that the
wickedness they denounced so eagerly richly deserved
the most severe condemnation. Wherever we meet
with it, this is the leprosy of society. Disguised for
a time, a secret canker in the breast of unsuspected
men, it is certain to break out at length; and when it
is discovered it merits a measure of indignation proportionate
to the previous deception.
Exile is the doom of these guilty prophets and priests.
But even in their banishment they can find no place of
rest. They wander from one foreign nation to another;
they are permitted to stay with none of them. Unlike
our English pretenders who were allowed to take up
their abode among the enemies of their country, these
Jews were suspected and disliked wherever they went.
They had been unfaithful to Jehovah; yet they could
not proclaim themselves devotees of Baal. The heathen
were not prepared to draw fine distinctions between
the various factions in the Israelite camp. The world
only scoffs at the quarrels of the sects. Moreover,
these false, worthless leaders had been the zealots of
national feeling in the old boastful days when Jeremiah
had been denounced by their party as a traitor. Then
they had been the most exclusive of the Jews. As
they had made their bed so must they lie on it. The
poet suggests no term to this melancholy fate. Perhaps
while he was writing his elegy the wretched men
were to his own knowledge still journeying wearily from
place to place. Thus like the fratricide Cain, like the
wandering Jew of mediæval legend, the fallen leaders
of the religion of Israel find their punishment in a
doom of perpetual homelessness. Is it too severe a
penalty for the fatal deceit that wrought death, and so
was equivalent to murder of the worst sort, cold-blooded,
deliberate murder? There is a perfectly Dantesque
appropriateness in it. The Inferno of the popularity-mongers
is a homeless desert of unpopularity. Quiet,
retiring souls and dreamy lovers of nature might derive
rest and refreshment from a hermit life in the wilderness.
Not so these slaves of society. Deprived of the
support of their surrounding element—like jelly-fish
flung on to the beach to shrivel up and perish—in
banishment from city life such men must experience
a total collapse. Just in proportion to the hollowness
and unreality with which a man has made the pursuit
of the world's applause the chief object of his life, is
the dismal fate he will have to endure when, having
sown the wind of vanity, he reaps the whirlwind of
indignation. The ill-will of his fellow-men is hard to
bear; but behind it is the far more terrible wrath of
God, whose judgment the miserable time-server has
totally ignored while sedulously cultivating the favour
of the world.
CHAPTER XX
VAIN HOPES
iv. 17-20
The first part of the fourth elegy was specially
concerned with the fate of the gilded youth of
Jerusalem; the second and closely parallel part with
that of the princes; the third introduced us to the
dramatic scene in which the fallen priests and prophets
were portrayed; now in the fourth part of the elegy
the king and his courtiers are the prominent figures.
While all the rest of the poem is written in the third
person, this short section is composed in the first
person plural. The arrangement is not exactly like
that of the third elegy, in which, after speaking in his
own person, the poet appears as the representative and
spokesman of his people. The more simple form of
the composition now under consideration would lead
us to suppose that the pronoun "we" comes in for
the most natural reason—viz., because the writer was
himself an actor in the scene which he here describes.
We must conclude, then, that he was one of the group
of Zedekiah's personal attendants, or at least a member
of a company of Jews which escaped at the time of the
royal flight and took the same road when the citizens
were scattered by the sack of the city.
The picture, however, is somewhat idealised. Events
that could only have taken place in succession are
described as though they were all occurring in the
present. We have first the anxious watching of the
besieged for the advent of an army of relief; then
the chase of their victims through the streets by the
invaders—which must have been after they had broken
into the city; next the flight and pursuit over the
mountains; and lastly, the capture of the king. This
setting of a succession of events in one scene as though
they were contemporaneous is so far an imaginary
arrangement that we must be on our guard against a
too literal interpretation of the details. Evidently we
have here a poetic picture, not the bare deposition of
a witness.
The burden of the passage is the grievous disappointment
of the court party at the failure of their fond
hopes. But Jeremiah was directly opposed to that
party, and though our author was not the great prophet
himself we have abundant evidence that he was
a faithful disciple who echoed the very thoughts and
shared the deepest convictions of his master. How
then can he now appear as one of the court party?
It is just possible that he was no friend of Jeremiah
at the time he is now describing. He may have been
converted subsequently by the logic of facts, or by the
more potent influence of the discipline of adversity, a
possibility which would give peculiar significance to
the personal confessions contained in the previous
elegy, with its account of "the man who had seen
affliction." But the poetic form of the section dealing
with the court, and the fact that all it describes is
expressed in the present tense, prevent us from pressing
this conjecture to a definite conclusion. It would be
enough if we could suppose, as there is no difficulty
in doing, that in the general confusion our poet found
himself in unexpected companionship with the flying
court. Thus he would witness their experiences.
We have, then, in this place an expression of the
attitude of the court party in the midst of the great
calamities that have overtaken them. It is emphatically
one of profound disappointment. These deluded people
had been sanguine to the last, and proudly sceptical
of danger, with an infatuation almost amounting to
insanity which had blinded them to the palpable lessons
of defeats already endured—for we must not forget
that Jerusalem had been taken twice before this.
Naturally their disappointment was proportionate to
their previous elation.
The hopes that had been thus rudely dashed to the
ground had been based on a feeling of the sacred
inviolability of Jerusalem. This feeling had been
sedulously nurtured by a bastard form of religion.
Like the worship of Rome in Virgil's day, a sort of cult
of Jerusalem had now grown up. Men who had no faith
in Jehovah put their trust in Jerusalem. The starting-point
and excuse of this singular creed are to be traced
to the deep-rooted conviction of the Jews that their
city was the chosen favourite of Jehovah, and that
therefore her God would certainly protect her. But
this idea was treated most inconsistently when people
coolly ignored the Divine will while boldly claiming
Divine favour. In course of time even that position
was abandoned, and Jerusalem became practically a
fetich. Then, while faith in the destiny of the city
was cherished as a superstition, prophets such as
Jeremiah, who directed men's thoughts to God, were
silenced and persecuted. This folly of the Jews has its
counterpart in the exaltation of the papacy during the
Middle Ages. The Pope claimed to be seated on his
throne by the authority of Christ; but the papacy was
really put in the place of Christ. Similarly people
who trust in the Church, their City of God, rather
than in her Lord, have fallen into an error like that
of the Jews, who put confidence in their city rather
than in their God. So have those who confide in their
own election instead of looking to the Divine Sovereign
who, they declare, has named them in His eternal
decrees; and those again who set reliance on their
religion, its rites and creeds; and lastly, those who
trust in their very faith as itself a saving power. In
all these cases, the city, the Pope, the election, the
Church, the religion, the faith are simply idols, no more
able to protect the superstitious people who put them
in the place of God than the ark that was captured in
battle when the Jews tried to use it as a talisman, or
even the fish-god Dagon that lay shattered before it in
the Philistine temple.
But now we find the old-established faith in Jerusalem
so far undermined that it has to be supplemented
by other grounds of hope. In particular there are two
of these—the king and a foreign ally. The ally is
mentioned first because the poet starts from the time
when men still hoped that the Egyptians would espouse
the cause of Israel, and come to the help of the
little kingdom against the hosts of Babylon. There
was much to be said in favour of this expectation.
In the past Egypt had been in alliance with the
people now threatened. The two great kingdoms of
the Nile and the Euphrates were rivals; and the
aggressive policy of Babylon had brought her into
conflict with Egypt. The Pharaohs might be glad to
have Israel preserved as a "buffer state." Indeed,
negotiations had been carried on with that end in view.
Nevertheless the dreams of deliverance built on this
foundation were doomed to disappointment. The poet
shows us the anxious Jews on their city towers straining
their eyes till they are weary in watching for the
relief that never comes. They could look down through
the gap in the hills towards Bethlehem and the south
country, and the dust of an army would be visible from
afar in the clear Syrian atmosphere; but, alas! no
distant cloud promises the approach of the deliverer.
We are reminded of the siege of Lucknow; but in
the hour of the Jews' great need there is no sign
corresponding to the welcome music of the Scotch air
that ravished the ears of the British garrison.
Faithful prophets had repeatedly warned the Jews
against this false ground of hope. In a former generation
Isaiah had cautioned his contemporaries not to
lean on "this broken reed"Isa. xxxvi. 6.
Egypt; and at the
present crisis Jeremiah had followed with similar
advice, predicting the failure of the Egyptian alliance,
and replying to the messengers of Zedekiah who had
come to solicit the prophet's prayers: "Thus saith the
Lord, the God of Israel: Thus shall ye say to the king
of Judah, that sent you unto me to enquire of me;
Behold, Pharaoh's army, which is come forth to help
you, shall return to Egypt into their own land. And
the Chaldæans shall come again, and fight against this
city; and they shall take it, and burn it with fire."Jer. xxxvii. 7, 8.
Though regarded at the time as unpatriotic and even
treasonable, this advice proved to be sound, and the
predictions of the messenger of Jehovah correct. Now
that we can read the events in the light of history we
have no difficulty in perceiving that even as a matter
of state policy the counsel of Isaiah and Jeremiah was
wise and statesmanlike. Babylon was quite irresistible.
Even Egypt could not stand against the powerful empire
that was making itself master of the world. Besides,
alliance with Egypt involved the loss of liberty, for it
had to be paid for, and the weak ally of a great kingdom
was no better than a tributary state. Meanwhile Israel
was embroiled in quarrels from which she should have
tried, as far as possible, to keep herself aloof.
But the prophets shewed that deeper questions than
such as concern political diplomacy were at stake. In
happier days the arm of Providence had been laid bare,
and Jerusalem saved without a blow, when the destroying
angel of pestilence swept through the Assyrian host.
It is true Jerusalem had to submit soon after this; but
the lesson was being taught that her safety really consisted
in submission. This was the kernel of Jeremiah's
unpopular message. Historically and politically that
too was justified. It was useless to attempt to stem
the tide of one of the awful marches of a world-conquering
army. Only the obstinacy of a fanatical
patriotism could have led the Jews of this period to
hold out so long against the might of Babylon, just
as the very same obstinacy encouraged their mad
descendants in the days of Titus to resist the arms
of Rome. But then the prophets were constantly
preaching to heedless ears that there was real safety
in submission, that a humble measure of escape was to
be had by simply complying with the demands of the
irresistible conquerors. Proud patriots might despise
this consolation, preferring to die fighting. But that was
scarcely the case with the fugitives; these people had
neither the relief that is the reward of a quiet surrender,
nor the glory that accompanies death on the battle-field.
To those who could hear the deeper notes of prophetic
teaching the safety of surrender meant a much more
valuable boon. The submission recommended was
not merely to be directed to King Nebuchadnezzar;
primarily it consisted in yielding to the will of God.
People who will not turn to this one true refuge from
all danger and trouble are tempted to substitute a
variety of vain hopes. Most of us have our Egypt to
which we look when the vision of God has become dim
in the soul. The worldly cynicism that echoes and
degrades the words of the Preacher, "Vanity of
vanities; all is vanity," is really the product of the
decay of dead hopes. It would not be so sour if it
had not been disappointed. Yet so persistent is the
habit of castle-building, that the cloudland in which
many previous structures of fancy have melted away is
resorted to again and again by an eager throng of fresh
aerial architects. After experience has confirmed the
warning that riches take to themselves wings and flee
away, and in face of our Lord's advice not to lay up
treasures where thieves break through and steal, and
where moth and rust consume, we see men as eager as
ever to scrape wealth together, as ready to put all their
trust in it when it has come to them, as astonished and
dismayed when it has failed them. Ambition was long
ago proved to be a frail bubble; yet ambition never
wants for slaves. The cup of pleasure has been drained
so often that the world should know by this time how
very nauseous its dregs are; and still feverish hands
are held out to grasp it.
Now this obstinate disregard of the repeated lessons
of experience is too remarkable a habit of life to be
reckoned as a mere accident. There must be some
adequate causes to account for it. In the first place,
it testifies with singular force to the vitality of what we
may call the faculty of hope itself. Disappointment
does not kill the tendency to reach forth to the future,
because this tendency comes from within, and is not
a mere response to impressions. In persons of a
sanguine temperament this may be taken to be a constitutional
peculiarity; but it is too widespread to be
disposed of as nothing more than a freak of nature.
It is rather to be considered an instinct, and as such a
part of the original constitution of man. How then
has it come to be? Must we not attribute the native
hopefulness of mankind to the deliberate will and purpose
of the Creator? But in that case must we not
say of this, as we can say with certainty of most natural
instincts: He who has given the hunger will also
supply the food with which to satisfy it? To reject
that conclusion is to land ourselves in a form of
pessimism that is next door to atheism. Schopenhauer
rests the argument by means of which he thinks to
establish a pessimistic view of the universe largely on
the delusiveness of natural instincts which promise a
satisfaction never attained; but in reasoning in this
way he is compelled to describe the supreme Will that
he believes to be the ultimate principle of all things as
a non-moral power. The mockery of human existence
to which his philosophy reduces us is impossible in
view of the Fatherhood of God revealed to us in Jesus
Christ. Shelley, contrasting our fears and disappointments
with the "clear keen joyance" of the skylark,
bewails the fact that
"We look before and after,
And pine for what is not."
If this is the end of the matter, evolution is a mocking
progress, for it leads to the pit of despair. If the large
vision that takes in past and future only brings sorrow,
it would have been better for us to have retained the
limited range of animal perceptions. But faith sees in
the very experience of disappointment a ground for
fresh hope. The discovery that the height already
attained is not the summit of the mountain, although
it appeared to be when viewed from the plain, is a
proof that the summit is higher than we had supposed.
Meanwhile, the awakening of desires for further climbing
is a sign that the disappointments we have experienced
hitherto are not occasions for despair. If, as Shelley
goes on to say—
"Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought,"
the sadness cannot be without mitigation, for there
must be an element of sweetness in it from the first;
and if so this must point to a future when this sadness
itself shall pass away. The author of the Epistle to
the Hebrews argues on these lines when he draws the
conclusion from the repeated disappointments of the
hopes of Israel in conjunction with the repeated promises
of God that "there remaineth therefore a rest for the
people of God."Heb. iv. 9.
Instincts are God's promises written
in the Book of Nature. Seeing that our deepest instincts
are not satisfied by any of the common experiences of
life, they must point to some higher satisfaction.
Here we are brought to the explanation of the disappointment
itself. We must confess, in the first instance,
that it arises from the perverse habit of looking
for satisfaction in objects that are too low, objects that
are unworthy of human nature. This is one of the
strongest evidences of a fall. The more mind and
heart are corrupted by sin the more will hope be
dragged down to inferior things. But the story does
not end at this point. God is educating us through
illusions. If all our aspirations were fulfilled on earth
we should cease to hope for what was higher than earth.
Hope is purged and elevated by the discovery of the
vanity of its pursuits.
These considerations will be confirmed when we
follow the elegist in his treatment of the disappointment
of the second ground of hope, that which was found
in the royalist's confidence in his sovereign. The poetic
account of the events which ended in the capture of
Zedekiah seems to consist in a blending of metaphor
with history. The image of the chase underlies the
whole description. It has been pointed out that with
the narrowness of eastern streets and the simplicity of
the weapons of ancient warfare, it would be impossible
for the Chaldæans to pick out their victims and shoot
them down from outside the walls. But when they
had effected an entrance they would not simply make
the streets dangerous, for then they would be breaking
into the houses where the people are here supposed
to be hiding. The language seems more fit for the
description of a faction fight, such as often occurred in
Paris at the time of the French Revolution, than an
account of the sack of a city by a foreign enemy. But
the hunting image is in the poet's mind, and the whole
picture is coloured by it. After the siege the fugitives
are pursued over the mountains. Taking the
route across the Mount of Olives and so down to the
Jordan, that which David had followed in his flight
from Absalom, they would soon find themselves in a
difficult wilderness country. They had despaired of
their lives in the city, exclaiming: "Our end is near,
our days are fulfilled; for our end is come."iv. 18.
Now
they are in sore extremities. The swift pursuit suggests
Jeremiah's image of the eagles on the wing overtaking
their quarry. "Behold, he shall come up as clouds,"
said the prophet, "and his chariots shall be as the
whirlwind; his horses are swifter than eagles."Jer. iv. 13
There
was no possibility of escape from such persistent foes.
At the same time, ambuscades were in waiting among
the many caves that honeycomb these limestone mountains—in
the district where the traveller in the parable
of "The good Samaritan" fell among thieves. The king
himself was taken like a hunted animal caught in a
trap, though, as we learn from the history, not till
he had reached Jericho.2 Kings xxv. 4, 5; Jer. xxxix. 4, 5.
The language in which Zedekiah is described is
singularly strong. He is "the breath of our nostrils,
the anointed of the Lord." The hope of the fugitives
had been "to live under his shadow among the
nations."iv. 20.
It is startling to find such words applied to
so weak and worthless a ruler. It cannot be the expression
of sycophancy; for the king and his kingdom
had disappeared before the elegy was written. Zedekiah
was not so bad as some of his predecessors. Like
Louis XVI., he reaped the long accumulating retribution
of the sins of his ancestors. Yet after making
due allowance for the exuberance of the Oriental style,
we must feel that the language is out of proportion to
the possibilities of the most courtly devotion of the
time. Evidently the kingly idea means more than the
prosaic personality of any particular monarch. The
romantic enthusiasm of Cavaliers and Nonjurors for
the Stuarts was not to be accounted for by the merits
and attractions of the various successive sovereigns
and pretenders towards whom it was directed. The
doctrine of the Divine right of kings is always associated
with vague thoughts of power and glory that are
never realised in history. This is most strikingly
evident in the Hebrew conception of the status and
destiny of the line of David. But in that one supreme
case of devotion to royalty the dream of the ages ultimately
came to be fulfilled, and more than fulfilled,
though in a very different manner from the anticipation
of the Jews. There is something pathetic in the last
shred of hope to which the fugitives were clinging.
They had lost their homes, their city, their land; yet
even in exile they clung to the idea that they might
keep together under the protection of their fallen king.
It was a delusion. But the strange faith in the destiny
of the Davidic line that here passes into fanaticism is
the seed-bed of the Messianic ideas which constitute
the most wonderful part of Old Testament prophecy.
By a blind but divinely guided instinct the Jews were
led to look through the failure of their hopes on to the
appointed time when One should come who only could
give them satisfaction.
CHAPTER XXI
THE DEBT OF GUILT EXTINGUISHED
iv. 21, 22
One after another the vain hopes of the Jews
melt in mists of sorrow. But just as the last
of these flickering lights is disappearing a gleam of
consolation breaks out from another quarter, like the
pale yellow streak that may sometimes be seen low on
the western sky of a stormy day just before nightfall,
indicating that the setting sun is behind the clouds,
although its dying rays are too feeble to penetrate them.
Hope is scarcely the word for so faint a sign of comfort
as this melancholy fourth elegy affords in lifting
the curtain of gloom for one brief moment; but the
bare, negative relief which the prospect of an end to
the accumulation of new calamities offers is a welcome
change in itself, besides being a hint that the tide may
be on the turn.
It is quite characteristic of our poet's sombre tones
that even in an attempt to touch on brighter ideas than
usually occupy his thoughts, he should illustrate the
improving prospects of Israel by setting them in contrast
to a sardonic description of the fate of Edom.
This neighbouring nation is addressed in the time of
her elation over the fall of Jerusalem. The extension
of her territory to the land of Uz in Arabia—Job's
country—is mentioned to show that she is in a position
of exceptional prosperity. The poet mockingly encourages
the jealous people to "rejoice and be glad"
at the fate of their rival. The irony of his language is
evident from the fact that he immediately proceeds to
pronounce the doom of Edom. The cup of God's
wrath that Israel has been made to drink shall pass to
her also; and she shall drink deeply of it till she is
intoxicated and, like Noah, makes herself an object of
shame. Thus will God visit the daughter of Edom
with the punishment of her sins. The writer says that
God will discover them. He does not mean by this
phrase that God will find them out. They were never
hidden from God; there are no discoveries for Him to
make concerning any of us, because He knows all
about us every moment of our lives. The phrase
stands in opposition to the common Hebrew expression
for the forgiveness of sins. When sins are forgiven
they are said to be covered; therefore when they are
said to be uncovered it is as though we were told that
God does the reverse of forgiving them—strips them
of every rag of apology, lays them bare. That is their
condemnation. Nothing is more ugly than a naked sin.
The selection of this one neighbour of the Jews for
special attention is accounted for by what contemporary
prophets tell us concerning the behaviour of the
Edomites when Jerusalem fell. They flew like vultures
to a carcass. Ezekiel writes: "Thus saith the Lord
God, Because that Edom hath dealt against the house
of Judah by taking vengeance, and hath greatly offended,
and revenged himself upon them; therefore thus saith
the Lord God, I will stretch out Mine hand upon
Edom, and will cut off man and beast from it, and I
will make it desolate from Teman; even unto Dedan
shall they fall by the sword. And I will lay My
vengeance upon Edom by the hand of My people
Israel, and they shall do in Edom according to Mine
anger and according to My fury, and they shall know
My vengeance, saith the Lord God."Ezek. xxv. 12-14.
Isaiah xxxiv. is
devoted to a vivid description of the coming punishment
of Edom. This race of rough mountaineers had
seldom been on friendly terms with their Hebrew
neighbours. Nations like individuals, do not always
find it easy to avoid quarrels with those who are closest
to them. Neither blood relationship nor commerce
prevents the outbreak of hostilities in a situation that
gives many occasions for mutual jealousy. For centuries
France and England, which should be the best
friends of proximity generated friendship, regarded
one another as natural enemies. Germany is even a
nearer neighbour to France than England is, and the
frontiers of the two great nations are studded with
forts. It does not appear that the extension of the
means of communication among the different countries
is likely to close the doors of the temple of Janus.
The greatest problem of sociology is to discover the
secret of living in crowded communities among a variety
of conflicting interests without any injustice, or any friction
arising from the juxtaposition of different classes.
It is far easier to keep the peace among backwoodsmen
who live fifty miles apart in lonely forests. Therefore
it is not a surprising thing that there were bitter feuds
between Israel and Edom. But at the time of the
Babylonian invasion these had taken a peculiarly odious
turn on the side of the southern people, one that was
doubly offensive. The various tribes whom the huge
Babylonian empire was swallowing up with insatiable
greed should have forgotten their mutual differences
in face of their common danger. Besides, it was a
cowardly thing for Edom to follow the example of the
Bedouin robbers, who hovered on the rear of the great
armies of conquest like scavengers. To settle old
debts by wreaking vengeance on a fallen rival in the
hour of her humiliation was not the way to win the
honours of war. Even to a calm student of history in
later ages this long-past event shews an ugly aspect.
How maddening must it have been to the victims!
Accordingly we are not astonished to see that the doom
of the Edomites is pronounced by Hebrew prophets
with undisguised satisfaction. The proud inhabitants
of the rock cities, the wonderful remains of which amaze
the traveller in the present day, had earned the severe
humiliation so exultingly described.
In all this it is very plain that the author of the
Lamentations, like the Hebrew prophets generally, had
an unhesitating belief in a supremacy of God over
foreign nations that was quite as effective as His supremacy
over Israel. On the other hand, iniquity is
ascribed to Israel in exactly the same terms that are
applied to foreign nations. Jehovah is not imagined
to be a mere tribal divinity like the Moabite Chemosh;
and the Jews are not held to be so much His favourites
that the treatment measured out to them in punishment
of sin is essentially different from that accorded to their
neighbours.
To Israel, however, the doom of Edom is a sign of
the return of mercy. It is not merely that the passion
of revenge is thereby satisfied—a poor consolation,
even if allowable. But in the overthrow of their most
annoying tormentor the oppressed people are at once
liberated from a very appreciable part of their troubles.
At the same time, they see in this event a clear sign
that they are not selected for a solitary example of the
vengeance of heaven against sin; that would have been
indeed a hard destiny. But above all, this occurrence
affords a reassuring sign that God who is thus punishing
their enemies is ending the severe discipline of
the Jews. In the very middle of the description of the
coming doom of Edom we meet with an announcement
of the conclusion of the long penance of Israel. This
singular arrangement cannot be accidental; nor can it
have been resorted to only to obtain the accentuation
of contrast which we have seen is highly valued by
the elegist. Since it is while contemplating the Divine
treatment of the most spiteful of the enemies of Israel
that we are led to see the termination of the chastisement
of the Jews, we may infer that possibly the
process in the mind of the poet took the same course.
If so, the genesis of prophecy which is usually hidden
from view here seems to come nearer the surface.
The language in which the improving prospect of the
Jews is announced is somewhat obscure; but the drift
of its meaning is not difficult to trace. The word
rendered "punishment of iniquity" in our English
versions—Revised as well as Authorised—at the beginning
of the twenty-second verse, is one which in its
original sense means simply "iniquity"; and in fact it
is so translated further down in the same verse, where
it occurs a second time, and where the parallel word
"sins" seems to settle the meaning. But if it has this
meaning when applied to Edom in the later part of the
verse is it not reasonable to suppose that it must also
have it when applied to the daughter of Zion in an
immediately preceding clause? The Septuagint and
Vulgate Versions give it as "iniquity" in both cases.
And so does a suggestion in the margin of the Revised
Version. But if we accept this rendering, which commends
itself to us as verbally most correct, we cannot
reconcile it with the evident intention of the writer.
The promise that God will no more carry His people
away into captivity, which follows as an echo of the
opening thought of the verse, certainly points to a
cessation of punishment. Then the very idea that the
iniquity of the Jews is accomplished is quite out of
place here. What could we take it to mean? To say
that the Jews had sinned to the full, had carried out all
their evil intentions, had put no restraint on their
wickedness, is to give a verdict which should carry the
heaviest condemnation; it would be absurd to bring
this forward as an introduction to a promise of a
reprieve. It would be less incongruous to suppose the
phrase to mean, as is suggested in the margin of the
Revised Version, that the sin has come to an end, has
ceased. That might be taken as a ground for the
punishment to be stayed also. But it would introduce
a refinement of theology out of keeping with the
extreme simplicity of the ideas of these elegies. Moreover,
in another place, as we have seen already,Page 269.
the
word "sins" seems to be used for the punishment of
sins.iii. 39.
We have also met with the idea of the fulfilment,
literally the finishing, of God's word of warning,
with the necessary suggestion that there is to be no
more infliction of the evil threatened.ii. 17.
Therefore, if it
were not for the reappearance of the word in dispute
where the primary meaning of it seems to be necessitated
by the context, we should have no hesitation in
taking it here in its secondary sense, as the punishment
of iniquity. The German word schuld, with its double
signification—debt and guilt—has been suggested as a
happy rendering of the Hebrew original in both places;
and perhaps this is the best that can be proposed.
The debt of the Jews is paid; that of the Edomites has
yet to be exacted.
We are brought then to the conclusion that the
elegist here announces the extinction of the Jews' debt
of guilt. Accordingly they are told that God will no
more carry them away into captivity. This promise
has occasioned much perplexity to people concerned
for the literal exactness of Scripture. Some have tried
to get it applied to the time subsequent to the destruction
of Jerusalem by the Romans, after which, it is
said, the Jews were never again removed from their
land. That is about the most extravagant instance of
all the subterfuges to which literalists are driven when
in a sore strait to save their theory. Certainly the Jews
have not been exiled again—not since the last time.
They could not be carried away from their land once
more, for the simple reason that they have never been
restored to it. Strictly speaking, it may be said indeed,
something of the kind occurred on the suppression of
the revolt under Bar-cochba in the second century of
the Christian era. But all theories apart, it is contrary
to the discovered facts of prophecy to ascribe to the
inspired messengers of God the purpose of supplying
exact predictions concerning the events of history in
far-distant ages. Their immediate message was for
their own day, although we have found that the lessons
it contains are suitable for all times. What consolation
would it be for the fugitives from the ravaging hosts
of Nebuchadnezzar to know that six hundred years
later an end would come to the successive acts of
conquerors in driving the Jews from Jerusalem, even
if they were not told that this would be because at
that far-off time there would commence one long exile
lasting for two thousand years? But if the words of
the elegist are for immediate use as a consolation to
his contemporaries, it is unreasonable to press their
negative statement in an absolute sense, so as to make
it serve as a prediction concerning all future ages. It
is enough for these sufferers to learn that the last of the
series of successive banishments of Jews from their land
by the Babylonian government has at length taken place.
But with this information there comes a deeper
truth. The debt is paid. Yet this is only at the commencement
of the Captivity. Two generations must
live in exile before the restoration will be possible.
There is no reference to that event, which did not
take place till the Babylonian power had been utterly
destroyed by Cyrus. Still the deliverance into exile
following the terrible sufferings of the siege and the
subsequent flight is taken as the final act in the drama
of doom. The long years of the captivity, though
they constituted an invaluable period of discipline,
did not bring any fresh kind of punishment at all
comparable with the chastisements already inflicted.
Thus we are brought face to face with the question
of the satisfaction of punishment. We have no right
to look to a single line of a poem for a final settlement
of the abstract problem itself. Whether, as St.
Augustine maintained, every sin is of infinite guilt
because it is an offence against an infinite Being;
whether, therefore, it would take eternity to pay the
debts contracted during one short life on earth, and
other questions of the same character, cannot be
answered one way or the other from the words before
us. Still there are certain aspects of the problem of
human guilt to which our attention is here drawn.
In the first place, we must make a distinction between
the national punishment of national wickedness and the
personal consequences of personal wrongdoing. The
nation only exists on earth, and it can only be punished
on earth. Then the nation outlasts generations of individual
lives, and so remains on earth long enough for
the harvest of its actions to be reaped. Thus national
guilt may be wiped out while the separate accounts
of individual men and women still remain unsettled.
Next we must remember that the exaction of the uttermost
farthing is not the supreme end of the Divine
government of the world. To suggest any such idea is
to assimilate this perfect government to that of corrupt
Oriental monarchies, the chief object of which in dealing
with their provinces seems to have been to drain them
of tribute. The payment of the debt of guilt in punishment,
though just and necessary, cannot be a matter of
any satisfaction to God. Again, when, as in the case
now before us, the punishment of sin is a chastisement
for the reformation of the corrupt nation on whom it is
inflicted, it may not be necessary to make it exactly
equivalent to the guilt for which it is the remedy rather
than the payment. Lastly, even when we think of the
punishment as direct retribution, we cannot say what
means God may provide for the satisfaction of the due
claims of justice. The second Isaiah saw in the
miseries inflicted upon the innocent at this very time,
a vicarious suffering by the endurance of which pardon
was extended to the guilty;Isa. liii. 4-6.
and from the days of the
Apostles, Christians have recognised in his language
on this subject the most striking prophecy the Bible
contains concerning the atonement wrought by our
Lord in His sufferings and death. When we put all
these considerations together, and also call to our
assistance the New Testament teachings about the
character of God and the object of the work of Jesus
Christ, we shall see that there are various possibilities
lying behind the thought of the end of chastisement
which no bare statement of the abstract relations of sin,
guilt, and doom would indicate.
It may be objected that all such ideas as those just
expressed tend to generate superficial views of sin.
Possibly they may be employed so as to encourage this
tendency. But if so, it will only be by misinterpreting
and abusing them. Certainly the elegist does not belittle
the rigour of the Divine chastisement. It must not
be forgotten that the phrase which gives rise to these
ideas concerning the debt of guilt occurs in the doleful
Book of Lamentations, and at the close of an elegy
that bewails the awful fate of Jerusalem in the strongest
language. But in point of fact it is not the severity
of punishment, beyond a certain degree, but the
certainty of it that most affects the mind when contemplating
the prospect of doom. Not only does the
imagination fail to grasp that which is immeasurably
vast in the pictures presented to it, but even the reason
rises in revolt and questions the possibility of such
torments, or the conscience ventures to protest against
what appears to be unjust. In any of these cases
the effect of the menace is neutralised by its very
extravagance.
On the other hand, we have St. Paul's teaching
about the goodness of God that leads us to repentance.Rom. ii. 4.
Thus we understand how it can be said that
Christ—who is the most perfect revelation of God's
goodness—was raised up to give "repentance to Israel"
as well as "remission of sins."Acts v. 31.
It is at Calvary, not
at Sinai, that sin looks most black. When a man sees
his guilt in the light of his Saviour's love he is in no
mood to apologise for it or to minimise his ill desert.
If he then contemplates the prospect of the full payment
of the debt it is with a feeling of the impossibility
of ever achieving so stupendous a task. The
punishment from which he would revolt as an injustice
if it were held over him in a threat now presents itself
to him of its own accord as something quite right and
reasonable. He cannot find words strong enough to
characterise his guilt, as he lies at the foot of the cross
in absolute self-abasement. There is no occasion to
fear that such a man will become careless about sin
if he is comforted by a vision of hope. This is just
what he needs to enable him to rise up and accept
the forgiveness in the strength of which he may begin
the toilsome ascent towards a better life.
CHAPTER XXII
AN APPEAL FOR GOD'S COMPASSION
v. 1-10
Unlike its predecessors, the fifth and last elegy
is not an acrostic. There is little to be gained
by a discussion of the various conjectures that have
been put forth to account for this change of style: as
that the crescendo movement which reached its climax
in the third elegy was followed by a decrescendo movement,
the conclusion of which became more prosaic;
that the feelings of the poet having been calmed
down during the composition of the main part of
his work, he did not require the restraints of an
exceptionally artificial method any longer; that such
a method was not so becoming in a prayer to God
as it had been in the utterance of a lament. In answer
to these suggestions, it may be remarked that some
of the choicest poetry in the book occurs at the close
of this last chapter, that the acrostic was taken before
as a sign that the writer had his feelings well under
command, and that prayers appear repeatedly in the
alphabetical poems. Is it not enough to say that in
all probability the elegies were composed on different
occasions, and that when they were put together it was
natural that one in which the author had not chosen
to bind himself down to the peculiarly rigorous method
employed in the rest of the book should have been
placed at the end? Even here we have a reminiscence
of the acrostic; for the poem consists of twenty-two
verses—the number of the letters in the Hebrew
alphabet.
It is to be observed, further, as regards the form
of this elegy, that the author now adopts the parallelism
which is the characteristic note of most Hebrew
poetry. The Revisers break up the poem into two-line
verses. But, more strictly considered, each verse
consists of one long line divided into two mutually
balancing parts. Thus, while the third elegy consists
of triplets, and the fourth of couplets, the fifth is still
more brief, with its single line verses. In fact, while
the ideas and sentiments are still elegiac and very
like those found in the rest of the book, in structure
this poem is more assimilated to the poetry contained
in other parts of the Bible.
From beginning to end the fifth elegy is directly
addressed to God. Brief ejaculatory prayers are frequent
in the earlier poems, and the third elegy contains
two longer appeals to God; but this last poem differs
from the others in being entirely a prayer. And yet it
does not consist of a string of petitions. It is a meditation
in the presence of God, or, more accurately described,
an account of the condition of the Jews spread out
before God in order to secure His compassion. In the
freedom and fulness of his utterance the poet reveals
himself as a man who is not unfamiliar with the habit
of prayer. It is of course only the delusion of the
Pharisees to suppose that a prayer is valuable in proportion
to its length. But on the other hand, it is clear
that a person who is unaccustomed to prayer halts and
stumbles because he does not feel at home in addressing
God. It is only with a friend that we can converse
in perfect freedom. One who has treated God as a
stranger will be necessarily stiff and constrained in the
Divine presence. It is not enough to assure such a
person that God is His Father. A son may feel peculiarly
uncomfortable with his own father if he has lived
long in separation and alienation from his home.
Freedom in the expression of confidences is a sure
measure of the extent to which friendship is carried.
Of course some people are more reserved than others;
but still as in the same person his different degrees of
openness or reserve with different people will mark his
relative intimacy of friendship with them, so when a
man has long accustomed himself to believe in the
presence and sympathy of God, and has cultivated the
habit of communing with his Father in heaven, his
prayers will not be confined to set petitions; he will
tell his Father whatever is in his heart. This we
have already seen was what the elegist had learnt to
do. But in the last of his poems he expresses more
explicit and continuous confidences. He will have
God know everything.
The prayer opens with a striking phrase—"Remember,
O Lord," etc. The miserable condition of the
Jews suggests to the imagination, if not to the reason,
that God must have forgotten His people. It cannot
be supposed that the elegist conceived of his God as
Elijah mockingly described their silent, unresponsive
divinity to the frantic priests of Baal, or that he
imagined that Jehovah was really indifferent, after the
manner of the denizens of the Epicurean Olympus.
Nevertheless, neither philosophy nor even theology
wholly determines the form of an earnest man's prayers.
In practice it is impossible not to speak according to
appearances. The aspect of affairs is sometimes such
as to force home the feeling that God must have deserted
the sufferer, or how could He have permitted the misery
to continue unchecked? A dogmatic statement of the
Divine omniscience, although it may not be disputed,
will not remove the painful impression, nor will the
most absolute demonstration of the goodness of God,
of His love and faithfulness; because the overwhelming
influence of things visible and tangible so fully occupies
the mind that it has not room to receive unseen, spiritual
realities. Therefore, though not to the reason still to
the feelings, it is as though God had indeed forgotten
His children in their deep distress.
Under such circumstances the first requisite is the
assurance that God should remember the sufferers
whom He appears to be neglecting. He never really
neglects any of His creatures, and His attention is the
all-sufficient security that deliverance must be at hand.
But this is a truth that does not satisfy us in the bare
statement of it. It must be absorbed, and permitted to
permeate wide regions of consciousness, in order that
it may be an actual power in the life. That, however,
is only the subjective effect of the thought of the Divine
remembrance. The poet is thinking of external actions.
Evidently the aim of his prayer is to secure the attention
of God as a sure preliminary to a Divine interposition.
But even with this end in view the fact that
God remembers is enough.
In appealing for God's attention the elegist first
makes mention of the reproach that has come upon
Israel. This reference to humiliation rather than to
suffering as the primary ground of complaint may be
accounted for by the fact that the glory of God is
frequently taken as a reason for the blessing of His
people. That is done for His "name's sake."For example, Jer. xiv. 7.
Then
the ruin of the Jews is derogatory to the honour of
their Divine Protector. The peculiar relation of Israel
to God also underlies the complaint of the second
verse, in which the land is described as "our inheritance,"
with an evident allusion to the idea that it was
received as a donation from God, not acquired in any
ordinary human fashion. A great wrong has been
done, apparently in contravention of the ordinance of
Heaven. The Divine inheritance has been turned over
to strangers. The very homes of the Jews are in the
hands of aliens. From their property the poet passes
on to the condition of the persons of the sufferers.
The Jews are orphans; they have lost their fathers,
and their mothers are widows. This seems to indicate
that the writer considered himself to belong to the
younger generation of the Jews,—that, at an events, he
was not an elderly man. But it is not easy to determine
how far his words are to be read literally. No
doubt the slaughter of the war had carried off many
heads of families, and left a number of women and
children in the condition here described. But the
language of poetry would allow of a more general
interpretation. All the Jews felt desolate as orphans
and widows. Perhaps there is some thought of the
loss of God, the supreme Father of Israel. Whether
this was in the mind of the poet or not, the cry to God
to remember His people plainly implies that His
sheltering presence was not now consciously experienced.
Our Lord foresaw that His departure would
smite His disciples with orphanage if He did not return
to them.John xiv. 18.
Men who have hardened themselves in a
state of separation from God fail to recognise their forlorn
condition; but that is no occasion for congratulation,
for the family that never misses its father can
never have known the joys of true home life. Children
of God's house can have no greater sorrow than to lose
their heavenly Father's presence.
A peculiarly annoying injustice to which the Jews
were subjected by their harsh masters consisted in
the fact that they were compelled to buy permission to
collect firewood from their own land and to draw water
from their own wells.v. 4.
The elegist deplores this grievance
as part of the reproach of his people. The mere
pecuniary fine of a series of petty exactions is not the
chief part of the evil. It is not the pain of flesh that
rouses a man's indignation on receiving a slap in the
face; it is the insult that stings. There was more than
insult in this grinding down of the conquered nation;
and the indignities to which the Jews were subjected
were only too much in accord with the facts of their
fallen state. This particular exaction was an unmistakable
symptom of the abject servitude into which
they had been reduced.
The series of illustrations of the degradation of Israel
seems to be arranged somewhat in the order of time
and in accordance with the movements of the people.
Thus, after describing the state of the Jews in their
own land, the poet next follows the fortunes of his
people in exile. There is no mercy for them in their
flight. The words in which the miseries of this time
are referred to are somewhat obscure. The phrase in
the Authorised Version, "Our necks are under persecution,"v. 5.
is rendered by the Revisers, "Our pursuers
are upon our necks." It would seem to mean that the
hunt is so close that fugitives are on the point of being
captured; or perhaps that they are made to bow their
heads in defeat as their captors seize them. But a
proposed emendation substitutes the word "yoke" for
"pursuers." If we may venture to accept this as a
conjectural improvement—and later critics indulge
themselves in more freedom in the handling of the text
than was formerly permitted—the line points to the
burden of captivity. The next line favours this idea,
since it dwells on the utter weariness of the miserable
fugitives. There is no rest for them. Palestine is a
difficult country to travel in, and the wilderness south
and east of Jerusalem is especially trying. The hills
are steep and the roads rocky; for a multitude of
famine-stricken men, women, and children, driven out
over this homeless waste, a country that taxes the
strength of the traveller for pleasure could not but be
most exhausting. But the worst weariness is not
muscular. Tired souls are more weary than tired
bodies. The yoke of shame and servitude is more
crushing than any amount of physical labour. On the
other hand the yoke of Jesus is easy not because little
work is expected of Christians, but for the more satisfactory
reason that, being given in exchange for the
fearful burden of sin, it is borne willingly and even
joyously as a badge of honour.
Finally, in their exile the Jews are not free from
molestation. In order to obtain bread they must abase
themselves before the people of the land. The fugitives
in the south must do homage to the Egyptians; the
captives in the east to me Assyrians.v. 6.
Here, then, at
the very last stage of the series of miseries, shame and
humiliation are the principal grievances deplored. At
every point there is a reproach, and to this feature of
the whole situation God's attention is especially directed.
Now the elegist turns aside to a reflection on the
cause of all this evil. It is attributed to the sins of
previous generations. The present sufferers are bearing
the iniquities of their fathers. Here several points
call for a brief notice. In the first place, the very form
of the language is significant. What is meant by the
phrase to bear iniquity? Strange mystical meanings
are sometimes imported into it, such as an actual transference
of sin, or at least a taking over of guilt. This
is asserted of the sin-offering in the law, and then of
the sin-bearing of Jesus Christ on the cross. It would
indicate shallow ways of thinking to say that the simple
and obvious meaning of an expression in one place is
the only signification it is ever capable of conveying.
A common process in the development of language
is for words and phrases that originally contained
only plain physical meanings to acquire in course
of time deeper and more spiritual associations. We
can never fathom all that is meant by the statement
that Christ "His own self bare our sins in His body
upon the tree."1 Peter ii. 24.
Still it is well to observe that there
is a plain sense in which the Hebrew phrase was used.
It is clear in the case now before us, at all events, that
the poet had no mystical ideas in mind. When he said
that the children bore the sins of their fathers he simply
meant that they reaped the consequences of those sins.
The expression can mean nothing else here. It would
be well, then, to remember this very simple explanation
of it when we are engaged with the discussion of other
and more difficult passages in which it occurs.
But if the language is perfectly unambiguous the
doctrine it implies is far from being easy to accept.
On the face of it, it seems to be glaringly unjust.
And yet whether we can reconcile it with our ideas of
what is equitable or not there can be no doubt that it
states a terrible truth; we gain nothing by blinking the
fact. It was perfectly clear to people of the time of the
captivity that they were suffering for the persistent
misconduct of their ancestors during a succession of
generations. Long before this the Jews had been
warned of the danger of continued rebellion against the
will of God. Thus the nation had been treasuring up
wrath for the day of wrath. The forbearance which
permitted the first offenders to die in peace before the
day of reckoning would assume another character for
the unhappy generation on whose head the long-pent-up
flood at length descended. It is not enough to urge
in reply that the threat of the second commandment to
visit the sins of the fathers upon the children to the
third and fourth generation was for them that hate God;
because it is not primarily their own conduct, but the
sins of their ancestors, in which the reason for punishing
the later generations is found. If these sins were exactly
repeated the influence of their parents would make the
personal guilt of the later offenders less, not more,
than that of the originators of the evil line. Besides, in
the case of the Jews there had been some amendment.
Josiah's reformation had been very disappointing; and
yet the awful wickedness of the reign of Manasseh
had not been repeated. The gross idolatry of the
earlier times and the cruelties of Moloch worship had
disappeared. At least, it must be admitted, they were
no longer common practices of court and people. The
publication of so great an inspired work as the Book
of Deuteronomy had wrought a marked effect on the
religion and morals of the Jews. The age which was
called upon to receive the payment for the national
sins was not really so wicked as some of the ages that
had earned it. The same thing is seen in private life.
There is nothing that more distresses the author of
these poems than the sufferings of innocent children in
the siege of Jerusalem. We are frequently confronted
with evidences of the fact that the vices of parents
inflict poverty, dishonour, and disease on their families.
This is just what the elegist means when he writes of
children bearing the iniquities of their fathers. The
fact cannot be disputed.
Often as the problem that here starts up afresh
has been discussed, no really satisfactory solution of
it has ever been forthcoming. We must admit that
we are face to face with one of the most profound
mysteries of providence. But we may detect some
glints of light in the darkness. Thus, as we have
seen on the occasion of a previous reference to this
question,Page 151.
the fundamental principle in accordance with
which these perplexing results are brought about is
clearly one which on the whole makes for the highest
welfare of mankind. That one generation should
hand on the fruit of its activity to another is essential
to the very idea of progress. The law of heredity and
the various influences that go to make up the evil
results in the case before us work powerfully for good
under other circumstances; and that the balance is
certainly on the side of good, is proved by the fact
that the world is moving forward, not backward, as
would be the case if the balance of hereditary influence
was on the side of evil. Therefore it would be disastrous
in the extreme for the laws that pass on the
punishment of sin to successive generations to be
abolished; the abolition of them would stop the chariot
of progress. Then we have seen that the solidarity of
the race necessitates both mutual influences in the
present and the continuance of influence from one age
to another. The great unit Man is far more than
the sum of the little units men. We must endure the
disadvantages of a system which is so essential to the
good of man. This, however, is but to fall back on
the Leibnitzian theory of the best of all possible worlds.
It is not an absolute vindication of the justice of whatever
happens—an attainment quite beyond our reach.
But another consideration may shed a ray of light
on the problem. The bearing of the sins of others
is for the highest advantage of the sufferers. It is
difficult to think of any more truly elevating sorrows.
They resemble our Lord's passion; and of Him it
was said that He was made perfect through suffering.Heb. ii. 10.
Without doubt Israel benefited immensely from
the discipline of the Captivity, and we may be sure
that the better "remnant" was most blessed by this experience
although it was primarily designed to be the
chastisement of the more guilty. The Jews were
regenerated by the baptism of fire. Then they could
not ultimately complain of the ordeal that issued in so
much good.
It is to be observed, however, that there were two
currents of thought with regard to this problem.
While most men held to the ancient orthodoxy, some
rose in revolt against the dogma expressed in the
proverb, "The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and
the children's teeth are set on edge." Just at this time
the prophet Ezekiel was inspired to lead the Jews to
a more just conception, with the declaration: "As I
live, saith the Lord God, ye shall not have occasion
any more to use this proverb in Israel. Behold,
all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also
the soul of the son is mine: the soul that sinneth, it
shall die."Ezek. xviii. 3, 4.
This was the new doctrine. But how
could it be made to square with the facts? By strong
faith in it the disciples of the advanced school might
bring themselves to believe that the course of events
which had given rise to the old idea would be arrested.
But if so they would be disappointed; for the world
goes on in its unvarying way. Happily, as Christians,
we may look for the final solution in a future life,
when all wrongs shall be righted. It is much to know
that in the great hereafter each soul will be judged
simply according to its own character.
In conclusion, as we follow out the course of the
elegy, we find the same views maintained that were presented
earlier. The idea of ignominy is still harped upon.
The Jews complain that they are under the rule of
servants.v. 8.
Satraps were really the Great King's slaves,
often simply household favourites promoted to posts of
honour. Possibly the Jews were put in the power of
inferior servants. The petty tyranny of such persons
would be all the more persistently annoying, if, as
often happens, servility to superiors had bred insolence
in bullying the weak; and there was no appeal from the
vexatious tyranny. This complaint would seem to
apply to the people left in the land, for it is the method
of the elegist to bring together scenes from different
places as well as scenes from different times in one
picture of concentrated misery. The next point is
that food is only procured at the risk of life "because
of the sword of the wilderness;"v. 9.
which seems to mean
that the country is so disorganised that hordes of
Bedouins hover about and attack the peasants when
they venture abroad to gather in their harvest. The
fever of famine is seen on these wretched people; their
faces burn as though they had been scorched at an
oven.v. 10.
Such is the general condition of the Jews,
Such is the scene on which God is begged to look
down!
CHAPTER XXIII
SIN AND SHAME
v. 11-18
The keynote of the fifth elegy is struck in its
opening verse when the poet calls upon God to
remember the reproach that has been cast upon His
people. The preceding poems dwelt on the sufferings
of the Jews; here the predominant thought is that of
the humiliations to which they have been subjected.
The shame of Israel and the sin which had brought it
on are now set forth with point and force. If, as some
think, the literary grace of the earlier compositions is
not fully sustained in the last chapter of Lamentations—although
in parts of it the feeling and imagination
and art all touch the high-water mark—it cannot be
disputed that the spiritual tone of this elegy indicates
an advance on the four earlier poems. We have
sometimes met with wild complaints, fierce recriminations,
deep and terrible curses that seem to require
some apology if they are to be justified. Nothing of
the kind ruffles the course of this faultless meditation.
There is not a single jarring note from beginning
to end, not one phrase calling for explanation by
reference to the limited ideas of Old Testament times or
to the passion excited by cruelty, insult, and tyranny,
not a line that reads painfully even in the clear light
of the teachings of Jesus Christ. The vilest outrages
are deplored; and yet, strange to say, no word of vindictiveness
towards the perpetrators escapes the lips of
the mourning patriot! How is this? The sin of the
people has been confessed before as the source of all
their misery; but since with it shame is now associated
as the principal item in their affliction, we can see in
this fresh development a decided advance towards
higher views of the whole position.
May we not take this characteristic of the concluding
chapter of the Book of Lamentations to be an indication
of progress in the spiritual experience of its author?
Perhaps it is to be partially explained by the fact that
the poem throughout consists of a prayer addressed
directly to God. The wildest, darkest passions of the
soul cannot live in the atmosphere of prayer. When
men say of the persecutor, "Behold he prayeth," it is
certain that he cannot any longer be "breathing
threatening and slaughter." Even the feelings of the
persecuted must be calmed in the presence of God.
The serenity of the surroundings of the mercy-seat
cannot but communicate itself to the feverish soul of
the suppliant. To draw near to God is to escape from
the tumults of earth and breathe the still, pure air of
heaven. He is Himself so calm and strong, so completely
sufficient for every emergency, that we begin
to enter into His rest as soon as we approach His
presence. All unawares, perhaps unsought, the peace
of God steals into the heart of the man who brings his
troubles to his Father in prayer.
Then the reflections that accompany prayer tend in
the same direction. In the light of God things begin to
assume their true proportions. We discover that our
first fierce outcries were unreasonable, that we had been
simply maddened by pain so that our judgment had been
confused. A psalmist tells us how he understood the
course of events which had previously perplexed him
by taking his part in the worship of the sanctuary, when
referring to his persecutors, the prosperous wicked,
he exclaims, "Then understood I their end."Psalm lxxiii. 17.
In
drawing near to God we learn that vengeance is God's
prerogative, that He will repay; therefore we can
venture to be still and leave the vindication of our cause
in His unerring hands. But, further, the very thirst
for revenge is extinguished in the presence of God, and
that in several ways: we see that the passion is wrong
in itself; we begin to make some allowance for the
offender; we learn to own kinship with the man while
condemning his wickedness; above all, we awake to a
keen consciousness of our own guilt.
This, however, is not a sufficient explanation of the
remarkable change in tone that we have observed in
the fifth elegy. The earlier poems contain prayers,
one of which degenerates into a direct imprecation.Lam. iii. 65.
If the poet had wholly given himself to prayer in that
case as he has done here very possibly his tone would
have been mollified. Still, we must look to other factors
for a complete explanation. The writer is himself one
of the suffering people. In describing their wrongs
he is narrating his own, for he is "the man who has
seen affliction." Thus he has long been a pupil in the
school of adversity. There is no school at which a
docile pupil learns so much. This man has graduated
in sorrow. It is not surprising that he is not just what
he was when he matriculated. We must not press the
analogy too far, because, as we have seen, there is good
reason to believe that none of the elegies were written
until some time after the occurrence of the calamities
to which they refer, that therefore they all represent
the fruit of long brooding over their theme. And yet
we may allow an interval to have elapsed between the
composition of the earlier ones and that of the poem
with which the book closes. This period of longer continued
reflection may have been utilised in the process
of clearing and refining the ideas of the poet. It is not
merely that the lessons of adversity impart fresh knowledge
or a truer way of looking at life and its fortunes.
They do the higher work of education—they develop
culture. This, indeed, is the greatest advantage to be
gained by the stern discipline of sorrow. The soul
that has the grace to use it aright is purged and
pruned, chastened and softened, lifted to higher views,
and at the same time brought down from self-esteem
to deep humiliation. Here we have a partial explanation
of the mystery of suffering. This poem throws
light on the terrible problem by its very existence, by
the spirit and character which it exhibits. The calmness
and self-restraint of the elegy, while it deepens
the pathos of the whole scene, helps us to see as no
direct statement would do, that the chastisement of
Israel has not been inflicted in vain. There must be
good even in the awful miseries here described in such
patient language.
The connection of shame with sin in this poem is
indirect and along a line which is the reverse of the
normal course of experience. The poet does not pass
from sin to shame; he proceeds from the thought of
shame to that of sin. It is the humiliating condition in
which the Jews are found that awakens the idea of the
shocking guilt of which this is the consequence. We
often have occasion to acknowledge the fatal hindrance
of pride to the right working of conscience. A lofty
conception of one's own dignity is absolutely inconsistent
with a due feeling of guilt. A man cannot be
both elated and cast down at the same moment. If
his elation is sufficiently sustained from within it will
effectually bar the door to the entrance of those humbling
thoughts which cannot but accompany an admission of
sin. Therefore when this barrier is first removed, and
the man is thoroughly humbled, he is open to receive
the accusations of conscience. All his fortifications
have been flung down. There is nothing to prevent
the invading army of accusing thoughts from marching
straight in and taking possession of the citadel of his
heart.
The elegy takes a turn at the eleventh verse. Up
to this point it describes the state of the people
generally in their sufferings from the siege and its
consequences. But now the poet directs attention to
separate classes of people and the different forms of
cruelty to which they are severally subjected in a
series of intensely vivid pictures. We see the awful
fate of matrons and maidens, princes and elders, young
men and children. Women are subjected to the vilest
abuse, neither reverence for motherhood nor pity
for innocence affording the least protection. Men of
royal blood and noble birth are killed and their corpses
hung up in ignominy—perhaps impaled or crucified in
accordance with the vile Babylonian custom. There
is no respect for age or office. Neither is there any
mercy for youth. In the East grinding is women's
work; but, like Samson among the Philistines, the
young men of the Jews are put in charge of the mills.
The poet seems to indicate that they have to carry
the heavy mill-stones in the march of the returning
army with the spoils of the sacked city. The children
are set to the slave task of Gibeonites. The Hebrew
word here translated children might stand for young
people who had reached adult years.v. 13.
But in the
present case the condition is that of immature strength,
for the burden of wood they are required to bear is
too heavy for them and they stumble under it. This
is the scene—outrage for the girls and women,
slaughter for the leading men, harsh slavery for the
children.
Next, passing from these exact details, the poet
again describes the condition of the people more
generally, and this time under the image of an interrupted
feast, which is introduced by one more reference
to the changes that have come upon certain
classes. The elders are no longer to be seen at the
gate administering the primitive forms of law entrusted
to them. The young men are no longer to be heard
performing on their musical instruments.v. 14.
Still speaking
for the people, the poet declares that the joy of
their heart has ceased. Then the aspect of all life
must be changed to them. Instead of the gay pictures
of dancers in their revelry we have the waiting of
mourners. The guest at a feast would be crowned
with a garland of flowers. Such was once the appearance
of Jerusalem in her merry festivities. But now
the garland has fallen from her head.v. 15, 16.
This imagery is a relief after the terrible realism
of the immediately preceding pictures. We cannot
bear to look continuously at scenes of agony, nor is
it well that we should attempt to do so, because if we
could succeed it would only be by becoming callous.
Then the final result would be not to excite deeper
sympathy, but the very reverse, and at the same time
a distinctly lowering and coarsening effect would be
produced in us. And yet we may not smother up
abuses in order to spare our own feelings. There are
evils that must be dragged out to the light in order
that they may be execrated, punished, and destroyed.
Uncle Tom's Cabin broke the back of American slavery
before President Lincoln attacked it. Where, then,
shall we find the middle position between repulsive
realism and guilty negligence? We have the
model for this in the Biblical treatment of painful
subjects. Scripture never gloats over the details of
crimes and vices; yet Scripture never flinches from
describing such things in the plainest possible terms.
If these subjects are ever to become the theme of art—and
art claims the whole of life for her domain—imagination
must carry us away to the secondary
effects rather than vivify the hideous occurrences
themselves. The passage before us affords an excellent
illustration of this method. With a few keen,
clear strokes the poet sketches in the exact situation.
But he shows no disposition to linger on ghastly
details. Though he does not shrink from setting them
before us in unmistakable truth of form and colour,
he hastens to a more ideal treatment of the subject,
and relieves us with the imaginary picture of the
spoiled banquet. Even Spenser sometimes excites
a feeling of positive nausea when he enlarges on some
most loathsome picture. It would be unendurable
except that the great Elizabethan poet has woven the
witchery of his dainty fancy into the fabric of his
verse. Thus things can be said in poetry which would
be unbearable in prose, because poetry refines with
the aid of imagination the tale that it does not shrink
from telling quite truly and most forcibly.
The change in the poet's style prepares for another
effect. While we are contemplating the exact details
of the sufferings of the different classes of outraged
citizens, the insult and cruelty and utter abomination
of these scenes rouse our indignation against the perpetrators
of the foulest crimes, and leave nothing but
pity for their victims. It is not in the presence of such
events that the sins of Israel can be brought home to
the people or even called to mind. The attempt to
introduce the thought of them there would seem to be
a piece of heartless officiousness. And yet it is most
important to perceive the connection between all this
misery and the previous misconduct of the Jews which
was its real cause. Accordingly intermediate reflections,
while they let the scenes of blood and terror recede,
touch on the general character of the whole in a way
that permits of more heart-searching self-examination.
Thus out of the brooding melancholy of this secondary
grief we are led to a distinct confession of sin on the
part of the people.v. 16.
This is the main result aimed at throughout the
whole course of chastisement. Until it has been reached
little good can be effected. When it is attained the
discipline has already wrought its greatest work. As
we saw at the outset, it is the shame of the situation
that awakens a consciousness of guilt. Humbled and
penitent, the chastened people are just in the position
at which God can meet them in gracious pardon.
Strictly speaking, perhaps we should say that this is
the position to which the elegist desires to lead them
by thus appearing as their spokesman. And yet we
should not make too sharp a distinction between the
poet and his people. The elegy is not a didactic work;
the flavour of its gentle lines would be lost directly
they lent themselves to pedagogic ends. It is only just
to take the words before us quite directly, as they are
written in the first person plural, for a description of
the thoughts of at least the group of Jews with whom
their author was associated.
The confession of sin implies in the first place a
recognition of its existence. This is more than a bare,
undeniable recollection that the deed was done. It is
possible by a kind of intellectual jugglery even to come
to a virtual denial of this fact in one's own consciousness.
But to admit the deed is not to admit the sin.
The casuistry of self-defence before the court of self-judgment
is more subtle than sound, as every one who
has found out his own heart must be aware. In this
matter "the heart is deceitful above all things."Jer. xvii. 9.
Now
it is not difficult to take part in a decorous service
where all the congregation are expected to denominate
themselves miserable offenders, but it is an entirely
different thing to retreat into the silent chamber of our
own thought, and there calmly and deliberately, with
full consciousness of what the words mean, confess to
ourselves, "We have sinned." The sinking of heart,
the stinging humiliation, the sense of self-loathing which
such an admission produces, are the most miserable
experiences in life. The wretchedness of it all is that
there is no possibility of escaping the accuser when he
is self. We can do nothing but let the shame of the
deed burn in the conscience without any mollifying
salve—until the healing of Divine forgiveness is
received.
But, in the second place, confession of sin goes
beyond the secret admission of it by the conscience, as
in a case heard in camerâ. Chiefly it is a frank avowal
of guilt before God. This is treated by St. John as an
essential condition of forgiveness by God, when He
says, "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous
to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all
unrighteousness."1 John i. 9.
How far confession should also be
made to our fellow-men is a difficult question. In
bidding us confess our "faults one to another,"James v. 16.
St.
James may be simply requiring that when we have
done anybody a wrong we should own it to the injured
person. The harsh discipline of the white sheet is
not found in apostolic times, the brotherly spirit of
which is seen in the charity which "covereth a multitude
of sins."1 Peter iv. 8.
And yet, on the other hand, the true penitent
will always shrink from sailing under false colours.
Certainly public offences call for public acknowledgment,
and all sin should be so far owned that whether the
details are known or not there is no actual deception,
no hypocritical pretence at a virtue that is not possessed,
no willingness to accept honours that are quite unmerited.
Let a man never pretend to be sinless, nay,
let him distinctly own himself a sinner, and, in particular,
let him not deny or excuse any specific wickedness
with which he is justly accused; and then for the rest,
"to his own lord he standeth or falleth."Rom. xiv. 4.
When the elegist follows his confession of sin with
the words, "For this our heart is faint," etc.,v. 17.
it is plain
that he attributes the sense of failure and impotence to
the guilt that has led to the chastisement. This faintness
of heart and the dimness of sight that accompanies
it, like the condition of a swooning person, suggest a
very different situation from that of the hero struggling
against a mountain of difficulties, or that of the martyr
triumphing over torture and death. The humiliation is
now accounted for, and the explanation of it tears to
shreds the last rag of pride with which the fallen people
might have attempted to hide it. The abject wretchedness
of the Jews is admitted to be the effect of their own
sins. No thought can be more depressing. The desolation
of Mount Zion, where jackals prowl undisturbed as
though it were the wilderness,ver. 18
is a standing testimony
to the sin of Israel. Such is the degradation to which
the people whom the elegist here represents are reduced.
It is a condition of utter helplessness; and yet in it will
rise the dawn of hope; for when man is most empty
of self he is most ready to receive God. Thus it is that
from the deepest pit of humiliation there springs the
prayer of trust and hope with which the Book of
Lamentations closes.
Chapter XXIV
THE EVERLASTING THRONE
v. 19-22
We have lingered long in the valley of humiliation.
At the eleventh hour we are directed to look
up from this scene of weary gloom to heavenly heights,
radiant in sunlight. It is not by accident that the new
attitude is suggested only at the very end of the last
elegy. The course of the thought and the course of
experience that underlies it have been preparing for
the change. On entering the valley the traveller must
look well to his feet; it is not till he has been a denizen
of it for some time that he is able to lift up his eyes to
other and brighter realms.
Thus at last our attention is turned from earth to
heaven, from man to God. In this change of vision
the mood which gave rise to the Lamentations disappears.
Since earthly things lose their value in view
of the treasures in heaven, the ruin of them also
becomes of less account. Thus we read in the Imitatio:
"The life of man is always looking on the things of time,
Pleased with the pelf of earth,
Gloomy at loss,
Pricked by the least injurious word;
Life touched by God looks on the eternal,—
With it no cleaving unto time,
No frown when property is lost,
No sneer when words are harsh,—
Because it puts its treasure and its joy in heaven,
Where nothing fades."
The explanation of this sudden turn is to be found
in the fact that for the moment the poet forgets
himself and his surroundings in a rapt contemplation
of God. This is the glory of adoration, the very
highest form of prayer, that prayer in which a man
comes nearest to the condition ascribed to angels and
the spirits of the blessed who surround the throne and
gaze on the eternal light. It is not to be thought of as
an idle dreaming like the dreary abstraction of the
Indian fanatic who has drilled himself to forget the
outside world by reducing his mind to a state of vacancy
while he repeats the meaningless syllable Om, or the
senseless ecstasy of the monk of Mount Athos, who has
attained the highest object of his ambition when he
thinks he has beheld the sacred light within his own
body. It is self-forgetful, not self-centred; and it is
occupied with the contemplation of those great truths
of the being of God, absorption in which is an inspiration.
Here the worshipper is at the river of the water
of life, from which if he drinks he will go away refreshed
for the battle like the Red-cross knight restored at the
healing fountain. It is the misfortune of our own age
that it is impractical in the excess of its practicalness
when it has not patience for those quiet, calm experiences
of pure worship which are the very food of the
soul.
The continuance of the throne of God is the idea
that now lays hold of the elegist as he turns his
thoughts from the miserable scenes of the ruined city
to the glory above. This is brought home to his consciousness
by the fleeting nature of all things earthly.
He has experienced what the author of the Epistle to
the Hebrews describes as "the removing of those
things that are shaken, as of things that have been
made, that those things which are not shaken may
remain."Heb. xii. 27.
The throne of David has been swept away;
but above the earthly wreck the throne of God stands
firm, all the more clearly visible now that the distracting
influence of the lower object has vanished, all the more
valuable now that no other refuge can be found. Men
fall like leaves in autumn; one generation follows
another in the swift march to death; dynasties which
outlive many generations have their day, to be succeeded
by others of an equally temporary character; kingdoms
reach their zenith, decline and fall. God only remains,
eternal, unchangeable. His is the only throne that
stands secure above every revolution.
The unwavering faith of our poet is apparent at this
point after it has been tried by the most severe tests.
Jerusalem has been destroyed, her king has fallen into
the hands of the enemy, her people have been scattered;
and yet the elegist has not the faintest doubt that her
God remains and that His throne is steadfast, immovable,
everlasting. This faith reveals a conviction far
in advance of that of the surrounding heathen. The
common idea was that the defeat of a people was also
the defeat of their gods. If the national divinities
were not exterminated they were flung down from their
thrones, and reduced to the condition of jins—demons
who avenged themselves on their conquerors by annoying
them whenever an opportunity for doing so
arose, but with greatly crippled resources. No such
notion is ever entertained by the author of these poems
nor by any of the Hebrew prophets. The fall of Israel
in no way affects the throne of God; it is even brought
about by His will; it could not have occurred if He
had been pleased to hinder it.
Thus the poet was led to find his hope and refuge in
the throne of God, the circumstances of his time concurring
to turn his thoughts in this direction, since the
disappearance of the national throne, the chaos of the
sacked city, and the establishment of a new government
under the galling yoke of slaves from Babylon, invited
the man of faith to look above the shifting powers of
earth to the everlasting supremacy of heaven.
This idea of the elegist is in line with a familiar
stream of Hebrew thought, and his very words have
many an echo in the language of prophet and psalmist,
as, for example, in the forty-fifth psalm, where we
read, "Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever."
The grand Messianic hope is founded on the conviction
that the ultimate establishment of God's reign throughout
the world will be the best blessing imaginable for
all mankind. Sometimes this is associated with the
advent of a Divinely anointed earthly monarch of the
line of David. At other times God's direct sovereignty
is expected to be manifested in the "Day of the Lord."
The failure of the feeble Zedekiah seems to have discredited
the national hopes centred in the royal family.
For two generations they slumbered, to be awakened
in connection with another disappointing descendant
of David, Zerubbabel, the leader of the return. No
king was ever equal to the satisfaction of these hopes
until the Promised One appeared in the fulness of the
times, until Jesus was born into the world to come
forth as the Lord's Christ. Meanwhile, since the royal
house is under a cloud, the essential Messianic hope
turns to God alone. He can deliver His people, and
He only. Even apart from personal hopes of rescue, the
very idea of the eternal, just reign of God above the
transitory thrones of men is a calming, reassuring
thought.
It is strange that this idea should ever have lost its
fascination among Christian people, who have so much
more gracious a revelation of God than was given to
the Jews under the old covenant; and yet our Lord's
teachings concerning the Fatherhood of God have been
set forth as the direct antithesis of the Divine sovereignty,
while the latter has been treated as a stern and dreadful
function from which it was natural to shrink with fear
and trembling. But the truth is the two attributes are
mutually illustrative; for he is a very imperfect father
who does not rule his own house, and he is a very
inadequate sovereign who does not seek to exercise
parental functions towards his people. Accordingly,
the gospel of Christ is the gospel of the kingdom.
Thus the good news declared by the first evangelists
was to the effect that the kingdom of God was at
hand, and our Lord taught us to pray, "Thy kingdom
come." For Christians, at least as much as for Jews,
the eternal sovereignty of God should be a source of
profound confidence, inspiring hope and joy.
Now the elegist ventures to expostulate with God
on the ground of the eternity of His throne. God had
not abdicated, though the earthly monarch had been
driven from his kingdom. The overthrow of Zedekiah
had left the throne of God untouched. Then it was
not owing to inability to come to the aid of the suffering
people that the eternal King did not intervene to put
an end to their miseries. A long time had passed
since the siege, and still the Jews were in distress.
It was as though God had forgotten them or voluntarily
forsaken them. This is a dilemma to which we are
often driven. If God is almighty can He be also all-merciful?
If what we knew furnished all the possible
data of the problem this would be indeed a serious
position. But our ignorance silences us.
Some hint of an explanation is given in the next
phrase of the poet's prayer. God is besought to turn
the people to Himself. Then they had been moving
away from him. It is like the old popular ideas of
sunset. People thought the sun had forsaken the
earth, when, in fact, their part of the earth had
forsaken the sun. But if the wrong is on man's side
on man's side must be the amendment. Under these
circumstances it is needless and unjust to speculate as
to the cause of God's supposed neglect or forgetfulness.
There can be no reasonable doubt that the language
of the elegy here points to a personal and spiritual
change. We cannot water it down to the expression
of a desire to be restored to Palestine. Nor is it
enough to take it as a prayer to be restored to God's
favour. The double expression,
"Turn Thou us unto Thee, O Lord, and we shall be turned,"
points to a deeper longing, a longing for real conversion,
the turning round of the heart and life to God,
the return of the prodigal to his Father. We think
of the education of the race, the development of mankind,
the culture of the soul; and in so thinking we
direct our attention to important truths which were
not so well within the reach of our forefathers. On
the other hand, are we not in danger of overlooking
another series of reflections on which they dwelt more
persistently? It is not the fact that the world is
marching straight on to perfection in an unbroken line
of evolution. There are breaks in the progress and
long halts, deviations from the course and retrograde
movements. We err and go astray, and then continuance
in an evil way does not bring us out to any
position of advance; it only plunges us down deeper
falls of ruin. Under such circumstances, a more
radical change than anything progress or education
can produce is called for if ever we are even to recover
our lost ground, not to speak of advancing to
higher attainments. In the case of Israel it was clear
that there could be no hope until the nation made a
complete moral and religious revolution. The same
necessity lies before every soul that has drifted into
the wrong way. This subject has been discredited
by being treated too much in the abstract, with too
little regard for the actual condition of men and women.
The first question is, What is the tendency of the life?
If that is away from God, it is needless to discuss
theories of conversion; the fact is plain that in the
present instance some conversion is needed. There
is no reason to retain a technical term, and perhaps it
would be as well to abandon it if it were found to be
degenerating into a mere cant phrase. This is not
a question of words. The urgent necessity is concerned
with the actual turning round of the leading
pursuits of life.
In the next place, it is to be observed that the
turning here contemplated is positive in its aims, not
merely a flight from the wrong way. It is not enough
to cast out the evil spirit, and leave the house swept
and garnished, but without a tenant to take care of it.
Evil can only be overcome by good. To turn from
sin to blank vacancy and nothingness is an impossibility.
The great motive must be the attraction of a
better course rather than revulsion from the old life.
This is the reason why the preaching of the gospel
of Christ succeeds where pure appeals to conscience
fail.
By his Serious Call to the Unconverted William Law
started a few earnest men thinking; but he could not
anticipate the Methodist revival although he prepared
the way for it. The reason seems to be that appeals
to conscience are depressing, necessarily and rightly
so; but some cheering encouragement is called for if
energy is to be found for the tremendous effort of
turning the whole life upon its axle. Therefore it is
not the threat of wrath but the gospel of mercy that
leads to what may be truly called conversion.
Then we may notice, further, that the particular
aim of the change here indicated is to turn back to
God. As sin is forsaking God, so the commencement
of a better life must consist in a return to Him.
But this is not to be regarded as a means towards
some other end. We must not have the home-coming
made use of as a mere convenience. It must be an
end in itself, and the chief end of the prayer and
effort of the soul, or it can be nothing at all. It
appears as such in the passage now under consideration.
The elegist writes as though he and the people
whom he represents had arrived at the conviction that
their supreme need was to be brought back into near
and happy relations with God. The hunger for God
breathes through these words. This is the truest,
deepest, most Divine longing of the soul. When once
it is awakened we may be sure that it will be satisfied.
The hopelessness of the condition of so many people
is not only that they are estranged from God, but that
they have no desire to be reconciled to Him. Then
the kindling of this desire is itself a great step towards
the reconciliation.
And yet the good wish is not enough by itself to attain
its object. The prayer is for God to turn the people
back to Himself. We see here the mutual relations
of the human and the Divine in the process of the
recovery of souls. So long as there is no willingness
to return to God nothing can be done to force that
action on the wanderer. The first necessity, therefore,
is to awaken the prayer which seeks restoration. But
this prayer must be for the action of God. The poet
knows that it is useless simply to resolve to turn.
Such a resolution may be repeated a thousand times
without any result following, because the fatal poison of
sin is like a snake bite that paralyses its victims. Thus
we read in the Theologia Germanica, "And in this
bringing back and healing, I can, or may, or shall do
nothing of myself, but simply yield to God, so that He
alone may do all things in me and work, and I may
suffer Him and all His work and His Divine will."
The real difficulty is not to change our own hearts and
lives; that is impossible. And it is not expected of us.
The real difficulty is rather to reach a consciousness of
our own disability. It takes the form of unwillingness
to trust ourselves entirely to God for Him to do for us
and in us just whatever He will.
The poet is perfectly confident that when God takes
His people in hand to lead them round to Himself He
will surely do so. If He turns them they will be turned.
The words suggest that previous efforts had been made
from other quarters, and had failed. The prophets,
speaking from God, had urged repentance, but their
words had been ineffectual. It is only when God
undertakes the work that there is any chance of success.
But then success is certain. This truth was
illustrated in the preaching of the cross by St. Paul at
Corinth, where it was found to be the power of God.
It is seen repeatedly in the fact that the worst, the
oldest, the most hardened are brought round to a
new life by the miracle of redeeming power. Herein
we have the root principle of Calvinism, the secret of
the marvellous vigour of a system which, at the first
blush of it, would seem to be depressing rather than
encouraging. Calvinism directed the thoughts of its
disciples away from self, and man, and the world, for
the inspiration of all life and energy. It bade them
confess their own impotence and God's almightiness.
All who could trust themselves to such a faith would
find the secret of victory.
Next, we see that the return is to be a renewal of a
previous condition. The poet prays, "Renew our
days as of old"—a phrase which suggests the recovery
of apostates. Possibly here we have some reference
to more external conditions. There is a hope that
the prosperity of the former times may be brought
back. And yet the previous line, which is concerned
with the spiritual return to God, should lead us to
take this one also in a spiritual sense. We think of
Cowper's melancholy regret—
"Where is the blessedness I knew
When first I saw the Lord?"
The memory of a lost blessing makes the prayer for
restoration the more intense. It is of God's exceeding
lovingkindness that His compassions fail not, so that
He does not refuse another opportunity to those who
have proved faithless in the past. In some respects
restoration is more difficult than a new beginning.
The past will not come back. The innocence of childhood,
when once it is lost, can never be restored.
That first, fresh bloom of youth is irrecoverable. On
the other hand, what the restoration lacks in one
respect may be more than made up in other directions.
Though the old paradise will not be regained, though
it has withered long since, and the site of it has become
a desert, God will create new heavens and a new earth
which shall be better than the lost past. And this new
state will be a real redemption, a genuine recovery of
what was essential to the old condition. The vision
of God had been enjoyed in the old, simple days, and
though to weary watchers sobered by a sad experience,
the vision of God will be restored in the more blessed
future.
In our English Bible the last verse of the chapter
reads like a final outburst of the language of despair.
It seems to say that the prayer is all in vain, for God
has utterly forsaken His people. So it was understood
by the Jewish critics who arranged to repeat the
previous verse at the end of the chapter to save the
omen, that the Book should not conclude with so gloomy
a thought. But another rendering is now generally
accepted, though our Revisers have only placed it in
the margin. According to this we read, "Unless Thou
hast utterly rejected us," etc. There is still a melancholy
tone in the sentence, as there is throughout
the Book that it concludes; but this is softened, and
now it by no means breathes the spirit of despair.
Turn it round, and the phrase will even contain an
encouragement. If God has not utterly rejected His
people assuredly He will attend to their prayer to be
restored to Him. But it cannot be that He has quite
cast them off. Then it must be that He will respond
and turn them back to Himself. If our hope is only
conditioned by the question whether God has utterly
forsaken us it is perfectly safe, because the one imaginable
cause of shipwreck can never arise. There is but
one thing that might make our trust in God vain and
fruitless; and that one thing is impossible, nay, inconceivable.
So wide and deep is our Father's love, so
firm is the adamantine strength of His eternal fidelity,
we may be absolutely confident that, though the mountains
be removed and cast into the sea, and though the
solid earth melt away beneath our feet, He will still
abide as the internal Refuge of His children, and therefore
that He will never fail to welcome all who seek
His grace to help them return to Him in true penitence
and filial trust. Thus we are led even by this most
melancholy book in the Bible to see, as with eyes
purged by tears, that the love of God is greater than
the sorrow of man, and His redeeming power more
mighty than the sin which lies at the root of the worst
of that sorrow, the eternity of His throne, in spite of
the present havoc of evil in the universe, assuring us
that the end of all will be not a mournful elegy, but
a pæan of victory.