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The Expositor's Bible: The Song of Solomon and the Lamentations of Jeremiah
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The Expositor's Bible: The Song of Solomon and the Lamentations of Jeremiah

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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, 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.

"Turn Thou us unto Thee, O Lord, and we shall be turned,"

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.

1

To be considered later. See chap. iv.

2

1 Kings i. 3.

3

i. 9.

4

iv. 9.

5

viii. 6, 7.

6

1 Kings xi. 3.

7

vi. 4.

8

1 Kings xiv. 17.

9

1 Kings xvi. 18, 23, 24.

10

vi. 13.

11

ii. 1.

12

iv. 1.

13

i. 14.

14

iii. 9; iv. 8, 15; vii. 4.

15

iv. 8.

16

See Ency. Brit., Art. "Canticles," by Robertson Smith.

17

i. 2.

18

i. 3.

19

i. 4.

20

i. 5.

21

i. 6.

22

See viii. 12.

23

i. 9 – ii. 6.

24

i. 15.

25

i. 16, 17.

26

ii. 1.

27

ii. 2.

28

ii. 3.

29

ii. 4.

30

ii. 5.

31

ii. 6.

32

ii. 7.

33

See Gen. xxx. 14.

34

ii. 14.

35

ii. 9.

36

ii. 11-13.

37

ii. 15.

38

ii. 16.

39

ii. 17.

40

iii. 1-4.

41

iii. 5.

42

iii. 6-11.

43

iv. 6.

44

iv. 8-15.

45

iv. 16.

46

v. 1.

47

v. 2-7.

48

v. 8.

49

v. 9.

50

v. 10-16.

51

vi. 1.

52

vi. 2.

53

vi. 3.

54

Page 20.

55

vi. 4-7.

56

vi. 8, 9.

57

vi. 10.

58

Vers. 11, 12.

59

vi. 13. This is obscured in the Authorised Version.

60

vii. 1-9.

61

vii 1.

62

vii. 10.

63

vii. 11-13.

64

viii. 11.

65

viii. 1.

66

viii. 1.

67

viii. 2.

68

viii. 2.

69

viii. 3.

70

viii. 4.

71

viii. 5.

72

viii. 6, 7.

73

viii. 11.

74

i. 6.

75

viii. 12.

76

viii. 13.

77

viii. 14.

78

E.g. Exod. xxxiv. 15, 16; Numb. xv. 39; Psalm lxxiii. 27; Ezek. xvi. 23, etc.

79

E.g. Jer. iii. 1-11.

80

Hosea ii. 2.; iii. 3.

81

John iii. 29.

82

Mark. ii. 19.

83

Matt. xxii. 1-14.

84

Eph. v. 22-33.

85

Rev. xxi. 9.

86

Gen. xxix. 20.

87

i. 6.

88

iii. 22.

89

Amos v. 2.

90

Isa. xiv. 4 ff.

91

E.g., Psalms ix., x., xxv., xxxiv., xxxvii., cxix., cxlv.

92

Jer. viii. 18.

93

Jer. ix. 1.

94

iv. 17.

95

iv. 20.

96

Jer. lii. 2, 3.

97

ii. 9.

98

E.g. Jer. xlii. 7.

99

ii. 20.

100

ii. 14.

101

E.g. Ezek. xii. 24, xiii. 6, 7, xxii. 28.

102

Lam. ii. 15.

103

Ezek. xxvii. 3, xxviii. 12.

104

See Jer. xxvi. 24, xxix. 3ff, xl. 5.

105

ע and פ.

106

v. 20.

107

Neh. ii. 3.

108

i. 1-11.

109

i. 12-22.

110

i. 2.

111

Jer. xxxix. 4, 5.

112

Isa. i. 10-17.

113

Dan. xi. 31.

114

Mark xiii. 14.

115

i. 12.

116

Luke xxiii. 28.

117

i. 13.

118

i. 13.

119

Ibid.

120

i. 14.

121

i. 15.

122

i. 16.

123

i. 17.

124

i. 18.

125

i. 18.

126

i. 18, 19.

127

i. 20-2.

128

i. 9, 11.

129

i. 21.

130

See i. 2, 9, 16, 17, 21.

131

i. 16.

132

Mark xv. 34.

133

ii. 1.

134

ii. 1.

135

Matt. xi. 23.

136

ii. 2.

137

ii. 4.

138

ii. 6.

139

ii. 7.

140

Psalm vii. 11.

141

Matt. x. 34.

142

Heb. xii. 29.

143

ii. 9.

144

See next chapter.

145

ii. 10.

146

ii. 11, 12.

147

Luke xiii 1-5.

148

ii. 15.

149

ii. 16.

150

ii. 17.

151

Luke xiii. 20.

152

ii. 13.

153

See Jer. xlii. 4, 7.

154

See 1 Sam. iii. 1.

155

Isa. xlii. 1.

156

ii. 14.

157

Numb. xxiv. 13.

158

ii. 14.

159

Psalm vi. 6.

160

Psalm xxii. 14.

161

St. Paul, by Frederick Myers.

162

Heb. v. 8, 9.

163

iii. 2.

164

iii. 3.

165

iii. 4.

166

The Authorised Version has "travel," a mere variation in spelling. The word means painful labour, toil.

167

iii. 4.

168

iii. 6.

169

iii. 7.

170

iii. 8.

171

iii. 9.

172

iii. 10.

173

iii. 11.

174

iii. 12.

175

iii. 13.

176

iii. 14.

177

iii. 15.

178

iii. 16.

179

iii. 17.

180

iii. 18.

181

iii. 21.

182

iii. 40-8.

183

Heb. ii. 18, iv. 15.

184

Heb. ii. 18, iv. 15.

185

Prov. viii. 17.

186

Jer. xiv. 21.

187

Psalm lxxiii. 26.

188

iii. 26.

189

Matt. v. 45.

190

vii. 7, 8.

191

James iv. 2.

192

iii. 27.

193

iii. 29.

194

iii. 30.

195

iii. 31, 32

196

iii. 33.

197

iii. 34-6.

198

Gen. xviii. 25.

199

iii. 32.

200

Wisdom ii. 23 ff.

201

Rev. xii. 9.

202

Job i. 6-12, ii. 1-7.

203

Zech. iii. 1, 2.

204

1 Chron. xxi. 1.

205

Luke xiii. 16.

206

2 Cor. xii. 7.

207

1 Thess. ii. 18.

208

Rom. vi. 23.

209

iii. 39.

210

Isa. lxiii. 9.

211

Luke xv. 21.

212

1 John i. 9.

213

iii. 44.

214

iii. 45.

215

iii. 46.

216

iii. 47.

217

iii. 48 ff.

218

iii. 51.

219

iii. 48.

220

iii. 52 ff.

221

Jer. xxxviii. 6.

222

iii. 50.

223

iii. 57.

224

Psalm xxxiv. 6.

225

Gen. xv. 1.

226

Isa. xli. 14.

227

Mark vi. 50.

228

John xiv. 27.

229

Rev. i. 17, 18.

230

iii. 58.

231

iii. 59.

232

iii. 60-3.

233

iii. 65.

234

2 Kings xxv. 9.

235

iv. 1.

236

iv. 2.

237

iv. 7.

238

iv. 3.

239

iv. 4.

240

iv. 5.

241

iv. 6.

242

iv. 7.

243

iv. 7. "Hair," According to a slight emendation of the text recommended by recent criticism.

244

iv. 8.

245

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."

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