Lamentations 1
How lonely sits the cityThat was full of people!How like a widow is she,Who was great among the nations!The princess among the provincesHas become a slave!She weeps bitterly in the night,Her tears are on her cheeks;Among all her loversShe has none to comfort her.All her friends have dealt treacherously with her;They have become her enemies.Judah has gone into captivity,Under affliction and hard servitude;She dwells among the nations,She finds no rest;All her persecutors overtake her in dire straits.The roads to Zion mournBecause no one comes to the set feasts.All her gates are desolate;Her priests sigh,Her virgins are afflicted,And she is in bitterness.Her adversaries have become the master,Her enemies prosper;For the Lord has afflicted herBecause of the multitude of her transgressions.Her children have gone into captivity before the enemy.And from the daughter of ZionAll her splendor has departed.Her princes have become like deerThat find no pasture,That flee without strengthBefore the pursuer.In the days of her affliction and roaming,Jerusalem remembers all her pleasant thingsThat she had in the days of old.When her people fell into the hand of the enemy,With no one to help her,The adversaries saw herAnd mocked at her downfall.Jerusalem has sinned gravely,Therefore she has become vile.All who honored her despise herBecause they have seen her nakedness;Yes, she sighs and turns away.Her uncleanness is in her skirts;She did not consider her destiny;Therefore her collapse was awesome;She had no comforter.“O Lord, behold my affliction,For the enemy is exalted!”The adversary has spread his handOver all her pleasant things;For she has seen the nations enter her sanctuary,Those whom You commandedNot to enter Your assembly.All her people sigh,They seek bread;They have given their valuablesfor food to restore life.“See, O Lord, and consider,For I am scorned.”“Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by?Behold and seeIf there is any sorrow like my sorrow,Which has been brought on me,Which the Lord has inflictedIn the day of His fierce anger.“From above He has sent fire into my bones,And it overpowered them;He has spread a net for my feetAnd turned me back;He has made me desolateAnd faint all the day.“The yoke of my transgressions was bound;They were woven together by His hands,And thrust upon my neck.He made my strength fail;The Lord delivered me into the hands of thosewhom I am not able to withstand.“The Lord has trampled underfootall my mighty men in my midst;He has called an assembly against meTo crush my young men;The Lord trampled as in a winepressThe virgin daughter of Judah.“For these things I weep;My eye, my eye overflows with water;Because the comforter, who should restore my life,Is far from me.My children are desolateBecause the enemy prevailed.”Zion spreads out her hands,But no one comforts her;The Lord has commanded concerning JacobThat those around him become his adversaries;Jerusalem has become an unclean thing among them.“The Lord is righteous,For I rebelled against His commandment.Hear now, all peoples,And behold my sorrow;My virgins and my young menHave gone into captivity.“I called for my lovers,But they deceived me;My priests and my eldersBreathed their last in the city,While they sought foodTo restore their life.“See, O Lord, that I am in distress;My soul is troubled;My heart is overturned within me,For I have been very rebellious.Outside the sword bereaves,At home it is like death.“They have heard that I sigh,But no one comforts me.All my enemies have heard of my trouble;They are glad that You have done it.Bring on the day You have announced,That they may become like me.“Let all their wickedness come before You,And do to them as You have done to meFor all my transgressions;For my sighs are many,And my heart is faint.”
"It is necessary to bear in mind the peculiar place of Israel and Jerusalem: otherwise we can never appreciate such a book as this, and many of the Psalms, as well as much of the Prophets. The patriotism of a Jew was bound up as that of no other people or country was with the honour of Jehovah. Providence governs everywhere: no raid of Red Indians, no manoeuvre of the greatest military power in the West, no movement or struggle in Asia, without His eye and hand. But He had set up a direct government in His own land and people, modified from Samuel's days by kingly power, which had blessing guaranteed on obedience. But who could guarantee the obedience? Israel pledged it indeed, but in vain. The people disobeyed, the priests disobeyed, the kings disobeyed. We see too that in Jeremiah's days false prophets imitated the true, and supplanted them in the heed of a court and nation which desired a delusive sanction from God on their own wilfulness, prophesying what pleased the people in flattery and deceit. Hence the corruption only lent an immense impetus to those who were already hastening down the steep of ruin. But this did not lesson the agony of such as Jeremiah. They realized the inevitable ruin; and he, not in moral sense only but by divine inspiration, gives expression to his feelings here. The blessed Lord Jesus Himself is the perfect pattern of similar grief over Jerusalem, in Him absolutely unselfish and in every way pure, but so much the more deeply felt. Unless the relation of that city to God be understood, one cannot enter into this; and there is danger of either explaining it away into care for their souls, or of perverting it into a ground for similar feelings, each for his own country. But it is clear that a man's soul is the same in Pekin or London, in Jerusalem or Baltimore. The Lord does show us the immeasurable value of a soul elsewhere; but this is not the key to His tears over Jerusalem. The impending judgment of God in this world, the dismal consequences yet in the womb of the future, because of the rejection of the Messiah as well as all other evil against God, made the Saviour weep. We cannot wonder therefore that the Spirit of Christ which was in Jeremiah, and guided him in this Book of Lamentations, gave the prophet communion with his Master before He Himself proved its worst against His own person."
William Kelly
Lamentations 1
