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His commandment." "Behold, O Lord, "Behold, O Lord, . . . I have grievously rebelled; abroad the sword bereaveth, at home there is as death." "My enemies are glad that Thou hast done it. . . . Let all their wickedness come before Thee, and do unto them as Thou hast done unto me for all my transgressions."

Lam. ii.-Zion's destruction and woes. Call to repentance.

"The Lord hath cast down from heaven unto the earth the beauty of Israel," "He hath bent His bow like an enemy, with His right hand as an adversary He hath slain all that were pleasant to the eye, He hath poured out His fury like fire.” Her palaces, His strongholds, His Tabernacle, His solemn assembly and sabbath, His altar, His priest and king, He hath swallowed up, abhorred, despised in His anger. "He hath made the rampart and wall to lament, they languish together; her gates are sunk, her bars broken, her king and princes are among the heathen, and the Law is not; the elders keep silence in dust and sack-cloth, the maidens hang down their heads, mine eyes fail with tears, children swoon in the streets for hunger." Our sins and false prophets are to blame for it all. "All they that pass by clap their hands, hiss and wag their heads, saying, 'Is this the city that men called the perfection of beauty, the joy of the whole earth? We have swallowed her up; certainly this is the day we looked for, we have found, we have seen it."" The Lord hath fulfilled His word and done what He foretold of old; He hath thrown thee down and exalted the horn of thine adversaries. Arise, pour out thine heart like water before the face of the Lord. Behold, O Lord, to whom Thou hast done thus!" "Shall the women eat their fruit, their children; the priest and prophet be slain in the sanctuary? Young and old lie in the streets, maidens and youths are fallen by the sword!"

Lam. iii.—An "I" elegy. Desolation, Contrition, Hope and Trust. Curse on foes.

"I am he that hath seen affliction by the rod of His wrath; He hath led me in darkness and not in light; He hath broken my bones and made me old and my chain heavy, He shutteth out my prayer; He was to me as a bear and a lion; He hath bent His bow and set me as a mark for the arrow. He hath filled me

with bitterness and sated me with wormwood."

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The penitent "I" sees a righteous but compassionate God, and from his depth of woe hears a voice: "Fear not."

"It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning; great is Thy faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in Him." It is good for me that I have been in trouble; my soul, wait patiently upon God. "For the Lord will not cast off for ever. For though He cause grief, yet will He have compassion according to the multitude of His mercies. For He doth not afflict willingly (= from His heart), nor grieve the children of men." The Lord does not crush the prisoners, nor turn aside the right, but loveth righteousness. "Why doth man complain when his sins are punished? Let us search and try our ways, and turn again to the Lord. We have transgressed, we have rebelled. Thou hast covered Thyself with a cloud that our prayer should not pass through, Thou hast made us as the offscouring and refuse in the midst of the peoples. Mine eye poureth down, till the Lord look down and behold from heaven." "I called upon the Lord from the lowest dungeon, Thou heardest my voice; Thou drewest near and saidst, Fear not." "Thou wilt render unto my foes a recompense, Thou wilt give them hardness of heart, Thy curse upon them; pursue them in anger and destroy them."

Lam. iv.--Lurid picture of Zion's woes. Sinful priests and prophets. Curse on Edom; comfort for Zion.

"How is the gold become dim!" The sanctuary-stones lie about the streets, Zion's precious sons are as earthen pitchers, the sucking child's tongue is parched for thirst, the children lack bread, they that were in scarlet embrace the dunghills, Zion's sin is greater than Sodom; her Nazarites were purer than snow, their visage is blacker than a coal, their skin cleaveth to their bones; those slain by the sword are better than those slain with hunger; women have sodden their children. The Lord hath accomplished His fury. Neither kings nor men "believed that the enemy should enter into the gates of Jerusalem. It is because of the sins of her prophets and the iniquities of her priests; they have wandered as blind men in the streets, and polluted themselves with blood."

"Our eyes as yet failed in looking for our vain help; in our watching we have watched for a nation that could not save"; our foes pursued, laid wait for, harried us mercilessly on every side, "the breath of our nostrils, the anointed of the Lord (= our king) was taken in their pits; of whom we said, Under his shadow we shall live among the nations." "Rejoice and be glad, Edom (at our fall); the cup shall pass through unto thee also, thou shalt be drunken and naked." "Zion, the punishment of thine iniquity is ended, He will no more carry thee away into captivity. Edom, He will visit thine iniquity; He will discover thy sins."

Lam. v.-Alien oppression. (Unlike other Lamentations, v. begins with prayer and ends on the wrath of God.)

"Remember, O Lord, what is come upon us, Behold, and see our reproach." (Woes of foreign oppression.) Aliens have our lands and homes, sell us our water and wood. "Our fathers have sinned and are not; and we have borne their iniquities"; "servants have ruled over us"; they starved us, ravished our wives and maidens, hanged our princes, insulted our elders, sweated our young men and children, turned our joy into tears; foxes walked on Zion's holy mountain. "Thou, O Lord, abidest for ever, Thy throne is from generation to generation. Wherefore dost Thou forget us for ever, and forsake us so long time? Turn Thou us unto Thee, O Lord, and we shall be turned; Renew our days as of old. But Thou hast utterly rejected us. Thou art very wroth against us."

Tradition uniformly ascribes Lamentations to Jeremiah. The Septuagint actually introduces the first chapter with the words: "And it came to pass that after Israel was carried into Captivity, and Jerusalem was laid waste, Jeremiah sat weeping,' and made this lamentation over Jerusalem and said."2 Even some who question Jeremiah's authorship as a whole, attribute parts to him. Hence the placing of Lam. immediately after Jer. in our Bible; even as It is largely owing to the ascription of Lam. to Jeremiah that he is known as the weeping prophet.

Cf. 2 Chron. xxxv. 25.

In the Hebrew Bible, Lam. stands among the "Holy Writings," and "Ah how !", its opening word, is its title. In the Septuagint, it stands after Jer., and its title is Opñvo (= “ Dirges," elegies"), exactly as the Talmud,

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Ruth follows Judges in the Greek Bible and ours, because the story of Ruth is laid in the time of the Judges. Much of Lam. was certainly composed before 516 B.C., the date of the completion of the Second Temple. Lam. ii. and iv. are the best, and probably oldest. Lam. iii. is deeply religious, but artistically weakest, and latest in date. Lam. v. shows dramatic power, but seems left in the rough by its composer. Lam. i. is a beautiful, but rather monotonous elegy. Lam. ii. and iv. may certainly be Jeremiah's; but, generally speaking, the whole book, like much in Ezekiel, shows the literary artist's hand overmuch, and was apparently written in the study towards the end of the Captivity. Lamentations, in later days, was publicly read by the Jews on the 9th of Ab, the anniversary of the destruction of the Temple, as part of the ritual of that great day of mourning.1

and Jewish writers generally, call it "elegies." Hence the Lamentationes, Lamenta of Jerome and the Latin Church. (See W. Robertson Smith, Enc. Brit. (9th editn.), xiv. 240.)

The only portions of the Hagiographa publicly read in the Jewish Church are Canticles (at the Passover), Ruth (at the Feast of Weeks), Lam. (as above), Eccles. (at Feast of Tabernacles), Esther (at Feast of Purim). These five books together form the five Megillôth ("rolls") or small books written on separate rolls for liturgical use at the five Jewish festivals mentioned. "Chron., Prov., Job, Dan., Neh., Ezra, are not read now, and have never been read, in Jewish public worship" (Woods, O.T. Canon, Hastings' D. of B., iii. 604).

CHAPTER XIX

MESSIANIC HOPE-DANIEL AND APOCALYPSES

WE speak of the Future Hope and associate it with Life after Death, Judgment, Eternity, Heaven, and Hell; for us it has mainly to do with the individual. To say that belief in individual immortality is not found in the Old Testament would be untrue. It certainly is from about 300 B.C. onward, e.g. Pss. xvi. 9-11, xlix. 15, lxxiii. 24; Is. xxv. 8, xxvi. 19; Dan. xii. 1-2. But, in itself, the belief in a purely individual immortality never appealed to any but a very few isolated thinkers in O.T. days. Even when they did arrive at a belief in a resurrection, it was all but exclusively a national, not an individual, resurrection. Israelites looked forward to a blessed future only as members of a Holy People, as citizens of an Israel of God or righteous Kingdom which should embrace all good Hebrews, alive or dead, for the good dead should rise to share in its blessings. In a word, our eschatology is that of the individual and its scene heaven; O.T. eschatology is that of Israel as a nation and its stage of action is God's Kingdom here on earth.

A clear idea of the Future Hope of Israel, as given in the O.T. and as pictured by O.T. writers and readers, is not easy to place before the modern reader, and for two reasons: (1) The O.T. reveals its picture of it bit by bit, here a little and there a little; only in apocalypses outside the Bible do we get these separate ideas combined into a clear organic whole hardly distinguishable from the New Testament picture.

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