How hath the Lord covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in His anger. Lamentations 2:1-9 Chastisements J. Udall. 1. It is our duty to strive with ourselves to be affected with the miseries of God's people. 2. The chastisements and corrections that God layeth upon His Church are most wonderful.(1) The Lord will in His own servants declare His anger against sin.(2) He seeth afflictions the best means to frame them to His obedience.(3) His ways are beyond the reach of flesh and blood. 3. God spareth not to smite His dearest children when they sin against Him.(1) That He may declare Himself an adversary to sin in all men without partiality.(2) That He may reduce His servants from running on headlong to hell with the wicked. 4. The higher God advanceth any, the greater is their punishment in the day of their visitation for their sins.(1) To whom much is given, of them must much be required.(2) According to the privileges abused, so is the sin of those that have them greater and more in number. 5. The most beautiful thing in this world is base in respect of the majesty and glory of the Lord. 6. God's anger against sin moveth Him to destroy the things that He commanded for His own service, when they are abused by men. ( J. Udall. ) The Lord hath swallowed up all the habitations of Jacob Spoiled habitations J. Udall. 1. It is the hand of God that taketh away the flourishing estate of a kingdom ( Daniel 4:29 ). 2. As God is full of mercy in His long-suffering, so is His anger unappeasable when it breaketh out against the sons of men for their sins ( Jeremiah 4:4 ). 3. God depriveth us of a great blessing when He taketh from us our dwelling places. 4. There is no assurance of worldly possessions and peace, but in the favour of God. 5. God overthroweth the greatest strength that man can erect, even at His pleasure. 6. It is a mark of God's wrath, to be deprived of strength, courage, or any other necessary gift, when we stand in need of them. 7. It is the sin of the Church that causeth the Lord to spoil the same of any blessing that she hath heretofore enjoyed. 8. These being taken away in God's anger, teacheth us that it is the good blessing of God to have a kingdom, to have strongholds, munitions, etc., for a defence against their enemies. 9. The more God honoureth us with His blessings, the greater shall be our dishonour if we abuse them, when He entereth "into judgment" with us for the same. ( J. Udall. ) He hath cut off in His fierce anger all the horn of Israel Strength despoiled J. Udall. 1. Strength and honour are in the Lord's disposition, to be given, continued, or taken away at His pleasure. 2. When God's favour is towards us, it is our shield against our enemies; but when He meaneth to punish us, He leaveth us unto ourselves. 3. Though God's justice be severe against sin in all men, yet is it most manifest in His Church, having sinned against Him. (1) All men's eyes are most upon God's Church. (2) God doth declare Himself more in and for His Church than the world besides. ( J. Udall. ) He hath bent His bow like an enemy. Lamentations 2:4, 5 God as an enemy W. P. Adeney, M. A. If God is tormenting His people in fierce anger, it must be because He is their enemy — so the sad-hearted patriot reasons. First, we have the earthly side of the process. The daughter of Zion is covered with a cloud — a metaphor more striking in the brilliant East than in our habitually sombre climate. There it would suggest unwonted gloom — the loss of the customary light of heaven, rare distress, and excessive melancholy. 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 Language is now varied; instead of "the daughter of Zion" we have "the beauty of Israel." The use of the larger title, Israel, is not a little significant. It shows 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 intertribal warfare. 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. 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 show Himself propitious to Israel on the great day of atonement, and which was looked upon as the very centre of the Divine presence. 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. 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," 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. According to the strict translation of the original, God is mid 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 wails — was demolished, with the simple process of scouring the outlying gardens. 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. The first thing to be noticed in this unhestitating ascription to God of positive enmity is the striking evidence it contains of faith in the Divine power, presence, and activity. 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 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 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 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. 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 evil-doer? 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. 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. 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 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. 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. ( W. P. Adeney, M. A. ) The Divine anger J. Udall. 1. Where God is angry, there is nothing to be looked for but destruction and ill success in all things. 2. God punisheth sin in His children in this world as severely as ii they were reprobates.(1) To declare that He is not partial, but hateth sin in those whom He most of all loveth.(2) That it may appear what great wrath remaineth for the ungodly ( 1 Peter 4:17 ). 3. Though God show all outward signs of enmity against His Church, yet is His love everlasting thereunto. 4. God's anger is never in vain, but effecteth punishment upon them with whom He is angry. 5. God regardeth not the most precious things that are amongst the sons of men, in respect of declaring His justice against sin. ( J. Udall. ) The Lord was as an enemy Divine displeasure J. Udall. I. This oft repeating of one thing teacheth that it is hard to persuade God's people rightly to judge of and he afflicted with the afflictions that are upon them.(1) The ways of God are high beyond the reach of the sons of men.(2) We axe naturally of a blind and dull disposition, with much ado brought unto any good thing. 2. God hath no need of any people, but all have need of Him. 3. God will increase His plagues upon His children, where sin without repentance is increased. 4. God giveth many causes of sorrow when He punisheth His people.(1) He giveth a token that He is displeased, which is cause of greatest grief unto His children.(2) His punishments do usually cross our affections in the things that they are much set upon. (a) Labour with ourselves that we may be affected with the crosses that are upon us. (b) Seek to Him alone for succour in the time of our sorrow. ( J. Udall. ) He hath violently taken away His tabernacle. Lamentations 2:6-9 Divine destruction J. Parker, D. D. Jehovah is here represented as throwing down His own temple, as treating it as if it were a temporary shelter, as disregarding all its glory, and merely throwing it from Him as men might tear down and east away a shed from an orchard, a garden, or a field. Who can set a measure to the wrath of God? Continually does the Lord assert that He will have nothing to do with mere form or ceremony, with mere locality or consecration; He will only accept living obedience, living faithfulness, living sacrifice. He will have no mercy upon polluted temples and polluted altars; nor will His own Book be spared ii men have used it as an idol: He will destroy and utterly drive away everything that once was sacred if it has been perverted to unholy purposes. Let not men say that they will be safe in God's temple from God's wrath, because when law has been violated there is no sanctuary where God will regard man as safe from the visitation of His penal sword. How living and real does all this make the providence of heaven! How near does this bring God to our daily life and conduct! ( J. Parker, D. D. ) God destroying His own ordinances J. Udall. 1. It is the Lord alone that giveth safety unto His Church, or layeth His people open to spoilers ( Isaiah 5:5, 6 ; Psalm 80:12, 13 ). 2. No place on earth hath any holiness in it, or promise of a continuance, further than it is holily used. 3. God is angry with His own ordinances, and layeth a curse upon them, for the sins of those that abuse them ( Psalm 74:5-7 ; Isaiah 1:13 ; Isaiah 6:10 ). 4. The Church of God on earth is not always visible and apparent to the eyes of men ( Revelation 12:14 ). 5. When God will afflict a people, He will spoil them of the means of their peace and comfort ( Isaiah 3:1-5 ). 6. It is a grievous plague of God for a people to be spoiled of their rulers; and to enjoy them is a great blessing. 7. It is the heaviest judgment that God's Church can have falling upon her in this life, to be deprived of that holy ministry which should build her up in true religion ( Psalm 74:9 ; Micah 2:6 ). ( J. Udall. ) The Lord hath cast off His altar Altars destroyed J. Udall. 1. It is the duty of God's people to labour their affections, that they may be rightly touched with the loss of the outward exercises of religion. 2. When God is angry with His people, He will take from them the outward signs of His favour. 3. When God's people grow obstinate in their sins, He spoileth them of all those things wherein they trust. 4. when the Church is spoiled, the commonwealth cannot go free. 5. The wicked could never prevail against the godly, but that God giveth them into their hands. 6. God giveth the wicked (for the sins of His people) occasion to blaspheme His name and to deride His holy ordinances. ( J. Udall. ) The Lord hath purposed to destroy the wall...of Zion. Privileges no protection J. Udall. 1. No privilege can free the impenitent sinners from the plague that God meaneth to bring upon them, though they persuade themselves otherwise ( Jeremiah 7:4 ). 2. The ruins of kingdoms and strong cities come to pass only by the immutable decree of God; and not by fortune, man's power, or any other thing ( Daniel 4:22 ; 1 Samuel 15:26, 28 ). 3. The Lord doth both decree HIS judgments and also determine the measure of them ( Daniel 4:29 ). 4. The dumb and senseless creatures do mourn according to their kind when we are punished in them for our sins ( Romans 8:22 ). 5. The sin of men bringeth strongest things to nothing when God calleth them to an account ( Isaiah 13:19, 20 ). 6. God's hand prevaileth as easily against the strongest and most as the weakest and fewest. ( J. Udall. ) Her gates are sunk into the ground Gates sunk J. Udall. 1. When God punisheth His people, He will especially destroy those things wherein they put most confidence. 2. When God meaneth thoroughly to afflict a people, He will spoil them of the means of their peace and comfort. 3. When God by punishments showeth His anger against a people, He especially plagueth their princes and rulers, 4. It is a grievous punishment unto the godly to live with or to serve them that are wicked ( Psalm 120:4, 5 ). 5. It is a fearful judgment to have the ministry of the Word that heretofore we enjoyed, taken away from us ( Psalm 74:9 ; Mark 6:10, 11 ). ( J. Udall. ) The desolations of Zion J. W. Niblock, D. D. I. THE PRESENT DESOLATE AND MISERABLE STATE OF THE HEBREW NATION. No people, since the creation, are in so anomalous a state as the Jews — without a country or a city, a temple or a service, a priest or a sacrifice, worthy of the name. Enter a Jewish synagogue, and you will see "Ichabod is written on its walls" — "the glory has departed": it is no longer the "house of God" or "of prayer," but "a house of merchandise," if not worse. II. FOR SUCH STUPENDOUS EVILS "IS THERE NOT A CAUSE"? If the heinousness of sin he in proportion to the favours which the sinner has received, or to the light against which it has been committed, no ingratitude seems to be so great as that of the Jewish nation. III. THE ONLY REMEDY. God, by the prophet Hosea, after charging Israel with complicated guilt, gives a gleam of hope and a ray of mercy. "O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself; but in Me is thy help." This is the burden of my message today, that "with God there is mercy, yea, plenteous redemption"; and that, though others can neither profit nor deliver, He can and shall "redeem Israel from all his sins." IV. ANSWER OBJECTIONS. One says, "This is not the time." But who, I ask, is God's time keeper? Times and events are in God's hands; and it is neither in our power, nor would it be for our good, to know them. Who, then, can say what is not, when he confessedly knows not what is the time? Again I ask, "For what is it not the time?" For reaping? — for triumph? We never led you to expect it was; but, for breaking up the ground it is always opportune. Again, "we shall probably never live to see any fruits of our labours." This we cannot know for certain; and if we could, it is as selfish and ungenerous, as it is unwise, to use such an argument. We may set up the hoard, or erect the scaffolding, or lay the foundation: another generation may carry up the walls; and a third may put the finishing stroke with shoutings, songs, and triumphs. "After all," says another, "you will do no real good you may make hypocrites of your converts, and those only of the poorest, but you will not make Christians: the prejudices of the Jew are too deeply rooted to be removed by a tract, or even by the New Testament; your labour will therefore be in vain." Formidable as this objection is, it is as flimsy as it is false. We make Christians! We make no such pretensions: it is not in us: this is God's work — His high and exclusive prerogative. Believers "are God's husbandry, and God's building." "Is anything too hard for the Lord?" is a key which will open any lock which unbelief shall place in its way. One class of objectors, of all others the most to be lamented and feared, is that who say, respecting the Jews, "Let them alone: do not meddle with them: they will not attend to your instructions, nor have they any wish to change their religion; besides, what need? one religion is as good as another, if a man does but act up to that he has, and does as well as he can! Bigotry and intolerance will do them more harm than good." To this specious reasoning I reply, It is criminal indifference, and cruel inhumanity, to let men live and die in sin. True charity will make an effort to save those it loves. We know, from bitter experience, in our own cases, that, if left to themselves, the Israelites will not attend to us but God, who commanded, has promised HIS blessing on our labours. Sinners must not be left to themselves. ( J. W. Niblock, D. D. ) Her prophets also find no vision from the Lord. Prophets without a vision W. F. Adeney, M. A. In deploring the losses suffered by the daughter of Zion, the elegist bewails the failure of her prophets to obtain a vision from Jehovah. 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. This was not an age like the time of Samuel's youth, barren of Divine voices. 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 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 everyday 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 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 religions 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. 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. 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. Now 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. 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 such considerations must be attended to, 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. 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. 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 inquire 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. ( W. F. Adeney, M. A. ) The elders...keep silence. Lamentations 2:10 Overwhelming judgments J. Udall. 1. The wisest of God's servants are at their wit's end, or fall into despair, if they be deprived of their hope, in the promise of God's assistance ( Psalm 119:92 ). 2. Bodily exercises do profit to further lamentations in the day of heaviness, but are no part of God's service in themselves. 3. The extremity of God's judgments do for the time overwhelm God's dearest children in the greatest measure of grief that can be in this life ( Psalm 6:3 ; Psalm 22:1 ). 4. The most dainty ones are made to stoop when God's hand is heavy upon them for their sins. ( J. Udall. ) Mine eyes do fail with tears. Lamentations 2:11-13 The miseries of the Church taken to heart J. Udall. 1. The true ministers of God do take the miseries of the Church to heart in the greatest measure. 2. Our sorrow, humiliation, earnest prayer, and all other means of extraordinary calling upon God, must increase in us, so long as God's heavy hand is upon us. 3. Hearty sorrow for spiritual miseries distempereth the whole body. 4. The sorrows of the soul will easily consume the body. 5. A lively member is grieved with the hurt of the body, or any member thereof. 6. The ministers of Christ should have a tender affection to the members of the Church, as a man hath to his daughter. 7. There is no outward thing so much cause of sorrow, as the miseries laid upon our children in our sight. ( J. Udall. ) Compassion for sinners Hartley Aspen. It is the missionary with the fountain of pity that reaches the deepest place in the native's heart. When Livingstone was found dead on his knees in the heart of Africa, his head was resting over his open Bible, and his finger was pointing to the last words he ever penned in his diary: "Oh, God, when will the open sore of the world be healed?" That was the profound pity which commenced the redemptive work in Africa, and which lives in emancipating influence today. ( Hartley Aspen. ) They say to their mothers, Where is corn and wine? Great grief J. Udall. 1. It is the greatest grief that can be, to have them whom we would gladly pleasure, seek that at our hands which we cannot help them unto. 2. When God would have us profit by any work of His, He will let us see the true cause of it. 3. The grief that is seen with the eye is the heaviest unto us of all other things that fall upon our friends. 4. When God meaneth to humble us, He will use most effectual means to bring it to pass. ( J. Udall. ) What thing shall I take to witness for thee? Plain ministries J. Udall. Ministers must be studious in the Word, to find out everything that may fit the Church's present condition ( Isaiah 50:4 ; Matthew 13:52 ). 2. It is the greatest grief that can be, to fall into a trouble that hath not been laid upon others before. 3. That minister loveth us best, that dealeth most plainly with us. 4. The visible state of the Church of God may come to be of a desperate condition, every way vexed more and more. ( J. Udall. ) Thy prophets have seen vain and foolish things for thee. Lamentations 2:14 Prophetic fidelity W. F. Adeney, W. A. 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. 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 call 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 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. ( W. F. Adeney, W. A. ) False teachers J. Udall. 1. False teachers are as grievous a plague as can be laid upon a people. They bring with them inevitable destruction ( Matthew 15:14 ). 2. They that refuse to receive the true ministers, God will give them over to be seduced by false teachers and to believe lies ( 2 Chronicles 36:15 ; Proverbs 1:24 ; 2 Thessalonians 2:10-12 ). 3. It is a certain note of a false prophet, to speak such things in the name of the Lord as are untrue, or misalleged to please the carnal desires of the people ( Jeremiah 14:13-15 ). 4. It is not sufficient for a true minister not to flatter; he must also discover the people's sins unto them ( Ezekiel 13:4 ; 1 Kings 18:18 ; Matthew 3:7 ; Luke 3:8 ; Matthew 14:4 ). 5. The only way to avoid God's plagues is gladly to suffer ourselves bitterly to be reproved by God's ministers. 6. The falsehood that is taught by false prophets, and believed by a seduced people, is the cause of all God's punishments that light upon them. ( J. Udall. ) False spiritual guides lead to ruin Footsteps of Truth. A short time back the papers told of a vessel that had a most unfortunate trip. The captain became blind three days after leaving St. Pierre-Martinique and no one on board was capable of navigating the ship. The mate did his best and after drifting about for twenty-seven days came in sight of Newfoundland, where some fishermen saw her signals of distress and piloted her into port. If a ship with a blind captain is poorly off, what of a nation, a church, a village, where blind men are in charge: some born blind and by nature unqualified: others blind through worldly in

Benson Commentary Lamentations 2:1 How hath the Lord covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in his anger, and cast down from heaven unto the earth the beauty of Israel, and remembered not his footstool in the day of his anger! Lamentations 2:1 . How hath the Lord covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud — Changed her condition for the worse, and turned the light of her prosperity into the darkness of adversity. And cast down, &c., the beauty of Israel — The temple and all its glory. And remembered not his footstool in the day of his anger — Hath not spared even the ark itself, the footstool of the shekinah, or divine glory, which was wont to appear, sitting, as it were, enthroned upon the mercy-seat, between the cherubim: see the margin. Lamentations 2:2 The Lord hath swallowed up all the habitations of Jacob, and hath not pitied: he hath thrown down in his wrath the strong holds of the daughter of Judah; he hath brought them down to the ground: he hath polluted the kingdom and the princes thereof. Lamentations 2:2-4 . The Lord hath swallowed up the habitations, &c. — Without showing any pity or concern for them. He hath thrown down the strong holds, &c. — Hath suffered the enemies to batter down their fortifications to the ground. He hath polluted the kingdom, &c. — “He hath shown no regard for the kingdom which himself had settled upon the family of David, but involved the royal family in one common destruction with the rest of the people. The expression is much the same with that of Psalm 89:39 , Thou hast profaned his crown by casting it to the ground.” — Lowth. He hath cut off, &c., all the horn of Israel — Namely, their strength and glory, and especially their kingly dignity. He hath drawn back his right hand, &c. — He hath withdrawn his wonted assistance, and given us up into the hands of our enemies. Or, as Blaney rather thinks, the right hand of Israel may be here intended, namely, his exertions of strength represented as rendered ineffectual by God, or turned away from obstructing the progress of the enemy; “just as God says, Jeremiah 21:4 , that he would turn aside the weapons of war that were in the hands of the Jews, so as to prevent their hindering the Chaldean army from entering the city.” He burned against Jacob round about — God hath consumed them, not on this or that part merely, but everywhere, as a fire which seizes a house, or a heap of combustible matter, on all sides at once. He hath bent his bow like an enemy, &c. — God, whom by their sins they had provoked, and made their enemy, behaved himself as such toward them, bending his bow, as it were, and stretching out his right hand to destroy them. And slew all that were pleasant to the eye — The chief in worth and dignity; those who were in the flower of their age, the joy and delight of their parents. He poured out his fury like fire — Which devours all before it, without any discrimination. Lamentations 2:3 He hath cut off in his fierce anger all the horn of Israel: he hath drawn back his right hand from before the enemy, and he burned against Jacob like a flaming fire, which devoureth round about. Lamentations 2:4 He hath bent his bow like an enemy: he stood with his right hand as an adversary, and slew all that were pleasant to the eye in the tabernacle of the daughter of Zion: he poured out his fury like fire. Lamentations 2:5 The Lord was as an enemy: he hath swallowed up Israel, he hath swallowed up all her palaces: he hath destroyed his strong holds, and hath increased in the daughter of Judah mourning and lamentation. Lamentations 2:6 And he hath violently taken away his tabernacle, as if it were of a garden: he hath destroyed his places of the assembly: the LORD hath caused the solemn feasts and sabbaths to be forgotten in Zion, and hath despised in the indignation of his anger the king and the priest. Lamentations 2:6-7 . He hath violently taken away his tabernacle as of a garden — The Vulgate reads, dissipavit, quasi hortum, tentorium suum; he hath dissolved, broke in pieces, scattered, or laid waste, his tent as a garden. Thus also Houbigant: that is, he hath destroyed the temple, the place of his residence, and of our religious assemblies, as if it had been no better than a tent or cottage set up in a garden, or vineyard, just while the fruit was gathering, and then to be taken down again. This interpretation of the original text, which is, ???? ??? ???? , supposes ???? to be written for ??? words exactly alike in sound, though not always in sense, and frequently put the one for the other. But, as the former, from ????? , to hedge, originally signifies his hedge, many think the most proper rendering of the Hebrew, and the true sense of the passage is, as in the margin, He hath taken away his hedge as of a garden; that is, he hath withdrawn his protection, and left us exposed to the mercy of our enemies. He hath destroyed his places of the assembly — This translation, as also that of the Vulgate, understands this as a repetition of the former clause; but, as sixty MSS. and one edition, instead of ???? , read ????? at large, Blaney takes the congregation of Jehovah to be intended, rather than the place of their assembly, and renders the words, He hath destroyed his congregation, namely, the people of Israel, the vineyard, which he had heretofore kept under his special protection. The Lord hath caused the solemn feasts, &c., to be forgotten — Or rather, as ???? is more properly rendered, hath forgotten the solemn feasts, &c., that is, “holds those services no longer in esteem, but slights and disregards them:” compare Isaiah 1:14-15 . And hath despised the king and the priest — Hath shown no regard for either of those honourable offices, but hath suffered the kingdom to be destroyed, and the temple to be laid waste. He hath abhorred his sanctuary — It had been defiled with sin, that only thing which he hates, and for the sake of that he hath abhorred it, though he had formerly delighted in, and called it his rest for ever, Psalm 132:14 . They have made a noise in the house of the Lord, &c. — “Instead of the joyful sound of praises and thanksgivings to God, such as used to be solemnly performed in the temple at the public festivals, there was nothing to be heard there but the noise of soldiers, and the rudeness of infidels, profaning that sacred place, and insulting the true God, who was worshipped there: compare Psalm 74:4 .” — Lowth. Lamentations 2:7 The Lord hath cast off his altar, he hath abhorred his sanctuary, he hath given up into the hand of the enemy the walls of her palaces; they have made a noise in the house of the LORD, as in the day of a solemn feast. Lamentations 2:8 The LORD hath purposed to destroy the wall of the daughter of Zion: he hath stretched out a line, he hath not withdrawn his hand from destroying: therefore he made the rampart and the wall to lament; they languished together. Lamentations 2:8-9 . The Lord hath purposed to destroy the wall of Zion — The word wall is here to be taken in a metaphorical sense, for the strength and security of the city. He hath stretched out a line, &c. — Called emphatically, Isaiah 34:11 , ?? ??? , the line of confusion or devastation, being designed to mark out the extent of what was to be pulled down. For the instruments designed for building are in some places applied to destroying, because men sometimes mark out those buildings they intend to demolish. Thus, 2 Kings 21:13 , God says, I will stretch over Jerusalem the line of Samaria, and the plummet of the house of Ahab: see likewise Amos 7:7-8 . Therefore he made the rampart, &c., to lament — Made their walls and ramparts feeble, ready to shake like a man under some languishing distemper, who had no strength left. Her gates are sunk into the ground, &c. — The gates of Jerusalem are destroyed and covered over with rubbish, and the bolts of the gates are broken. Her king and her princes are among the Gentiles — Zedekiah and the nobles of Judah, who were not slain, are in a state of miserable captivity. The law is no more — It is no longer read and expounded; the priests and the Levites, whose office it is to instruct the people, being dispersed among the heathen; and that part of the law which respects the public worship of God, being rendered impracticable by the temple’s being destroyed. Her prophets also find no vision from the Lord — The prophets are either dead, or in a state of captivity, and these latter are not favoured with divine revelations as they were wont to be, and so cannot resolve the doubts of those who come to them for advice. Lamentations 2:9 Her gates are sunk into the ground; he hath destroyed and broken her bars: her king and her princes are among the Gentiles: the law is no more ; her prophets also find no vision from the LORD. Lamentations 2:10 The elders of the daughter of Zion sit upon the ground, and keep silence: they have cast up dust upon their heads; they have girded themselves with sackcloth: the virgins of Jerusalem hang down their heads to the ground. Lamentations 2:10-13 . The elders, &c., sit upon the ground, and keep silence — These and the other expressions of this and the two following verses betoken the deepest mourning and sorrow. Mine eyes do fail with tears — My sight is become dim with weeping. My bowels are troubled — As they were when he foresaw these calamities coming, Jeremiah 4:19-20 . My liver is poured upon the earth — My vitals seem to be dissolved, and have lost all their strength. “That the mental passions.” says Blaney, “have a considerable influence upon the habit of the body in various instances, is a fact not to be questioned. And experience daily shows, that a violent uneasiness of mind tends greatly to promote a redundance and overflowing of vitiated bile. The liver is the proper seat of the bile, where its secretions are carried on. Hence the prophet’s meaning in this place seems to be, that he felt as if his whole liver was dissolved and carried off in bile, on account of the copious discharge brought on by continual vexation and fretting. Job expresses the same thing, Job 16:13 , where he says, He poureth out my gall upon the ground.” Because the children and sucklings swoon in the streets — For want of sustenance. As the wounded — As those who are not presently despatched, but die a lingering death. What thing shall I take to witness for thee? — What instance can I bring of any calamity like thine, that such an example may be some mitigation of thy complaints. For thy breach is great, like the sea, &c. — The breach made in thee is like the breaking in of the sea that overflows a whole country, where no stop can be put to the inundation. Lamentations 2:11 Mine eyes do fail with tears, my bowels are troubled, my liver is poured upon the earth, for the destruction of the daughter of my people; because the children and the sucklings swoon in the streets of the city. Lamentations 2:12 They say to their mothers, Where is corn and wine? when they swooned as the wounded in the streets of the city, when their soul was poured out into their mothers' bosom. Lamentations 2:13 What thing shall I take to witness for thee? what thing shall I liken to thee, O daughter of Jerusalem? what shall I equal to thee, that I may comfort thee, O virgin daughter of Zion? for thy breach is great like the sea: who can heal thee? Lamentations 2:14 Thy prophets have seen vain and foolish things for thee: and they have not discovered thine iniquity, to turn away thy captivity; but have seen for thee false burdens and causes of banishment. Lamentations 2:14 . Thy prophets have seen vain and foolish things — The prophets, to whom thou didst choose to hearken, and whom thou didst believe, rather than those whom God sent to reveal his will, came and told thee idle tales, the fancies of their own minds, deluding thee with hopes of not being carried into captivity, or of a speedy return therefrom. They have not discovered thine iniquity, &c. — They have not given thy people a just sense of their iniquities, in order that, by being humbled and brought to true repentance, they might avert God’s judgments, but they have rather flattered them in their sins, and thereby have hastened on their ruin: see the margin. But have seen for thee false burdens — They have amused thee with false and fallacious prophecies, and that even after, as well as before, they were carried into captivity; (see Jeremiah 29:8 , &c.) and causes of banishment — Hebrew, ?????? , of casting out, of expulsion, as the word properly signifies: that is, their pretended revelations, promising peace, and giving hopes of impunity to thy people continuing in sin, were so far from profiting thee, that they were in a great measure the causes of thy captivity. Why prophecies are termed ?????? , burdens, see notes on Isaiah 13:1 , and Jeremiah 23:33 . Lamentations 2:15 All that pass by clap their hands at thee; they hiss and wag their head at the daughter of Jerusalem, saying, Is this the city that men call The perfection of beauty, The joy of the whole earth? Lamentations 2:15 . All that pass by clap their hands at thee; they hiss, &c. — These were gestures of derision, whereby the enemies of the Jews expressed a satisfaction in their calamities; saying, Is this the city that men call The Perfection of beauty — Or, perfect in beauty, as Blaney renders ?? ?? ??? ; The Joy of the whole earth — Such was the light in which the Jews had viewed Jerusalem, and such was the language in which they had been wont to speak of it. And it was at least a pardonable partiality in them, which led them to pass these encomiums upon it, and to suppose that all strangers would be equally delighted with its beauty as they themselves were. It was the metropolis of their nation, and the city their God had chosen to put his name there. There was his magnificent temple, and there the symbols of his divine presence, and the administration of the ordinances of his worship. Thither the whole nation resorted, according to his appointment, to celebrate their solemn feasts: and there those feasts were observed with all the magnificence of religious joy. It is no wonder, therefore, that they esteemed it the perfection of beauty, and a place in which the whole earth ought to delight. Lamentations 2:16 All thine enemies have opened their mouth against thee: they hiss and gnash the teeth: they say, We have swallowed her up: certainly this is the day that we looked for; we have found, we have seen it . Lamentations 2:16-17 . All thine enemies have opened their mouths against thee — As if they were ready to devour thee: see the margin. Or they have opened them in scoffs, reproaches, and insults. They hiss and gnash their teeth — In scorn and derision. They say, We have swallowed her up — Namely, Jerusalem. They triumph in their success against her, and in the rich prey they have got in making themselves masters of her. Certainly, this is the day we have looked for — Which we have expected and longed to see. Thus the enemies of the church are apt to take its disasters for its ruin, and to triumph in them accordingly; but they will find themselves deceived, for the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. The Lord hath done that which he had devised — Our destroyers could have had no power against us, unless it had been given them from above: they were but the sword in God’s hand. And he hath not surprised us by these providences: he gave us notice before hand what he would do if we were disobedient, and he hath done no more than what he threatened long since. He hath fulfilled his word which he had commanded — Hath verified and made good his declarations uttered in days of old — Namely, by Moses, Leviticus 26:16-31 ; Deuteronomy 28:15-49 . He hath set up the horn of thine adversaries — Hath advanced their power and glory. Lamentations 2:17 The LORD hath done that which he had devised; he hath fulfilled his word that he had commanded in the days of old: he hath thrown down, and hath not pitied: and he hath caused thine enemy to rejoice over thee, he hath set up the horn of thine adversaries. Lamentations 2:18 Their heart cried unto the Lord, O wall of the daughter of Zion, let tears run down like a river day and night: give thyself no rest; let not the apple of thine eye cease. Lamentations 2:18-19 . Their heart cried unto the Lord — “The same,” says Blaney, “are the speakers here who are said to have made the foregoing remarks concerning the distressed condition of Jerusalem, namely, the passengers, ( Lamentations 2:15 ,) whose hearts, being deeply affected with what they saw, urged them to break forth into the following passionate exclamation, addressed to the daughter of Zion.” O wall of the daughter of Zion — The Vulgate reads the verse, Clamavit cor eorum ad Dominum, super muros filiæ Sion, Deduc quasi torrentem lacrymas per diem et noctem; non des requiem tibi, neque taceat pupilla occuli tui: “Their heart hath cried unto the Lord concerning the walls of the daughter of Zion, Cause thy tears to descend, like a torrent, night and day; give thyself no rest, nor let the apple of thine eye be silent.” As the wall and rampart are said to lament, ( Lamentations 2:8 ,) because their ruins were objects of lamentation; so here the ruined wall, including the ruined city and its inhabitants, is called upon, by a beautiful prosopopœia, to mourn and weep over the desolations of that place which God had chosen for his peculiar residence, and to entreat him to take compassion on its miseries. The original expression, rendered the apple of thine eye, is literally the daughter of thine eye; by which Blaney thinks is meant, not the pupil, but the tear, which, he says, may, with great propriety and elegance, be termed the daughter of the eye from which it issues. Arise, cry out in the night — Do not cease thy prayers and supplications even in the night season. In the beginning of the watches — The Jews divided the night, first into three, and in after ages into four watches: see Jdg 7:19 ; Matthew 14:25 . Pour out thy heart like water before the Lord — Offer up thy earnest prayers with tears to the throne of grace; and send up thy very soul, and thy most devout affections along with them: see Psalm 62:8 ; 1 Samuel 7:6 . Lift up thy hands for the life of thy young children — That they at least may be spared; (see Lamentations 2:11 ;) that faint in the top of every street — See the margin. The expression seems to mean the same as in every street. Lamentations 2:19 Arise, cry out in the night: in the beginning of the watches pour out thine heart like water before the face of the Lord: lift up thy hands toward him for the life of thy young children, that faint for hunger in the top of every street. Lamentations 2:20 Behold, O LORD, and consider to whom thou hast done this. Shall the women eat their fruit, and children of a span long? shall the priest and the prophet be slain in the sanctuary of the Lord? Lamentations 2:20-22 . Behold, O Lord, to whom thou hast done this — To thy people, for whom thou hast formerly expressed so much tenderness and affection. Jerusalem seems to be here introduced speaking. Shall the women eat their fruit — We find by comparing this verse with chap. Lamentations 4:10 , that God brought upon them that terrible judgment which he had denounced against them, if they continued to provoke him, namely, that they should eat the flesh of their own sons and daughters. See the margin. And children of a span long — Hebrew, ?????? , rendered in the margin, swaddled with their hands, and by the LXX., ????? ????????? ??????? , infants sucking the breasts. Shall the priest and the prophet be slain in the sanctuary of the Lord? — Shall thy ministers be slain, and that in thy sanctuary? We learn from this, 1st, That the Chaldeans spared no character, no, not the most distinguished; even the priest and the prophet, who, of all men, one would think, might have expected protection from heaven, and veneration on earth, yet they were slain; not abroad in the field of battle, where they would have been out of their place, as Hophni and Phinehas were, but in the sanctuary of the Lord, the place of their business, and which they hoped would have been a refuge to them. 2d, They spared no age, no, not those who, by reason of their tender or decrepit age, were exempted from taking up the sword; for the young and the old lay on the ground slain in the streets. 3d, They spared no sex, the virgins and the young men fell by the sword. In the most barbarous military executions that we read of, the virgins were spared and made part of the spoil, but here they were put to the sword as well as the young men. We learn, 4th, That this was the Lord’s doing; he suffered the sword of the Chaldeans to devour thus without distinction; he slew them in the day of his anger — Namely, his anger for their many and aggravated sins. Thou hast called, as in a solemn day — A day of awful retribution; my terrors round about — As my people were wont to be called together from all parts on solemn days, when they were to meet at Jerusalem for thy service; so now, by thy providence, my terrible enemies are by thee called together to slay thy people in that holy city in which they were wont to worship thee. So that none escaped nor remained — That is, few or none. Those that I have swaddled, and brought up, hath mine enemy consumed — As if they had been brought forth for the murderer, like lambs for the butcher, Hosea 9:13 . Zion, that was a mother to them all, laments to see those that were brought up in her courts, and under the tuition of her oracles, thus made a prey of and destroyed. Lamentations 2:21 The young and the old lie on the ground in the streets: my virgins and my young men are fallen by the sword; thou hast slain them in the day of thine anger; thou hast killed, and not pitied. Lamentations 2:22 Thou hast called as in a solemn day my terrors round about, so that in the day of the LORD'S anger none escaped nor remained: those that I have swaddled and brought up hath mine enemy consumed. Benson Commentary on the Old and New Testaments Text Courtesy of BibleSupport.com . Used by Permission.

Expositor's Bible Commentary Lamentations 2:1 How hath the Lord covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in his anger, and cast down from heaven unto the earth the beauty of Israel, and remembered not his footstool in the day of his anger! GOD AS AN ENEMY Lamentations 2:1-9 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. { Lamentations 2:1 } 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." { Lamentations 2:1 } 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 aloof 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, arid 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. { Matthew 11:23 } 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. { Lamentations 2:2 } 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," { Lamentations 2:4 } 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. { Lamentations 1:6 } 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. { Lamentations 2:7 } 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 the 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. Rut 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 he 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 7:11 } 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. { Matthew 10:34 } 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." { Hebrews 12:29 } 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. Lamentations 2:9 Her gates are sunk into the ground; he hath destroyed and broken her bars: her king and her princes are among the Gentiles: the law is no more ; her prophets also find no vision from the LORD. PROPHETS WITHOUT A VISION Lamentations 2:9 ; Lamentations 2:14 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 Jeremiah 42:4 ; Jeremiah 42:7 } 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 Samuel 3:1 } 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 everyday 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 lift, 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"; { Isaiah 42:2 } 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 nutritions 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 world 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. { Lamentations 2:14 } 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.". { Numbers 24:13 } 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 extravagan