Lamentations 5:1

5:1-16 Is any afflicted? Let him pray; and let him in prayer pour out his complaint to God. The people of God do so here; they complain not of evils feared, but of evils felt. If penitent and patient under what we suffer for the sins of our fathers, we may expect that He who punishes, will return in mercy to us. They acknowledge, Woe unto us that we have sinned! All our woes are owing to our own sin and folly. Though our sins and God's just displeasure cause our sufferings, we may hope in his pardoning mercy, his sanctifying grace, and his kind providence. But the sins of a man's whole life will be punished with vengeance at last, unless he obtains an interest in Him who bare our sins in his own body on the tree.

Remember, O Lord, what is come upon us,.... This chapter is called, in some Greek copies, and in the Vulgate Latin, Syriac, and Arabic versions, "the prayer of Jeremiah". Cocceius interprets the whole of the state of the Christian church after the last destruction of Jerusalem; and of what happened to the disciples of Christ in the first times of the Gospel; and of what Christians have endured under antichrist down to the present times: but it is best to understand it of the Jews in Babylon; representing their sorrowful case, as represented by the prophet; entreating that the Lord would remember the affliction they were under, and deliver them out of it, that which he had determined should come upon them. So the Targum, "remember, O Lord, what was decreed should be unto us;'' and what he had long threatened should come upon them; and which they had reason to fear would come, though they put away the evil day far from them; but now it was come, and it lay heavy upon them; and therefore they desire it might be taken off: consider, and behold our reproach: cast upon them by their enemies; and the rather the Lord is entreated to look upon and consider that, since his name was concerned in it, and it was for his sake, and because of the true religion they professed; also the disgrace they were in, being carried into a foreign country for their sins; and so were in contempt by all the nations around.

Lamentations 5:1-6 . Consider, and behold our reproach — Which we suffer from the heathen nations. Our inheritance is turned to strangers — Namely, to the Babylonians and others, to whom our lands are given. We are orphans and fatherless — All the chief men being carried away to Babylon, lest they should make any fresh attempts to shake off the Babylonish yoke, all that were left in Judea were poor people, destitute of almost every thing. We have drunk our water for money, &c. — When our country was in our own possession, we had free use of water and wood, both which we are now forced to buy. Our necks are under persecution — We are become slaves to our enemies, who make us labour incessantly. We have given the hand to the Egyptians, &c. — We have been obliged to stretch out our hands to the Egyptians and Assyrians for bread to support us. Whether the expression here used implies their begging it of them, or buying it with money, is not quite plain.

1 . This final poem, although its vv . are equal in number with the letters of the Heb. alphabet, yet does not, like its predecessors, adhere to any rule as to the initial letters. “Rhyme takes the place of the alphabetical structure, the poem having not less than 45 words ending in the sound u . Cp. Psalms 124” (Dummelow). Like ch. 4, as against ch. 3, each v . is made up of two, not three, members. Neither is it written in the Ḳinah rhythm. For the question of its date see Intr., p. 326. The poet ( Lamentations 5:1 ) calls upon Jehovah to regard the ignominy which has befallen His people, describes ( Lamentations 5:2-4 ) the misery which exists in the land, and ( Lamentations 5:5-6 ) the persecutions inflicted on them from without. He tells ( Lamentations 5:7-10 ) of the privations endured by his people, and ( Lamentations 5:11-14 ) of the indignities perpetrated at and after the capture of the city, and, as the last element in the picture ( Lamentations 5:15-18 ), the universal and hopeless depression. The description terminates ( Lamentations 5:19-22 ) in an appeal for Jehovah’s help, grounded upon the thought of His abiding omnipotence.

V. (1) Remember, O Lord.—The fact that the number of verses is, as in Lamentations 1, 2, 4, the same as that of the Hebrew alphabet suggests the inference that this chapter also, though not actually alphabetic, was intended to have been so, and that we have the last of the five elegies in a half-finished state. It would seem as if Jeremiah first wrote freely what was in his mind, and then set to work as an artist to bring it under the alphabetic scheme. This chapter, it may be stated, has more the character of a prayer than any other, and the prayer begins with recapitulating the woes of Judah as a ground for the compassion of Jehovah.

Remember, O LORD, what is come upon us: {a} consider, and behold our reproach. (a) This prayer as is thought, was made when some of the people were carried away captive, others such as the poorest remained, and some went into Egypt and other places for comfort, though it seems that the prophet foreseeing their miseries to come, thus prayed.

CHAPTER (ELEGY) 5 La 5:1-22. Epiphonema, or a Closing Recapitulation of the Calamities Treated in the Previous Elegies. 1. (Ps 89:50, 51).A humble prayer, presenting to the Lord their great misery, Lamentations 5:1-15, confessing their sins, Lamentations 5:16-18, imploring deliverance, Lamentations 5:19-22. It hath been before observed, that it is very frequent in Scripture to express those acts which are reasonably consequent to the exercise of our exterior or interior senses, by terms which signify the exercise of those senses. That which the prophet here prayeth for is God’s freeing the Jews from those calamities which oppressed them; this he prayeth for under the notion of God’s remembering them, and beholding their reproach.

Supplication and statement regarding the distress. The quest made in Lamentations 5:1 refers to the oppression depicted in what follows. The words, "Remember, O Lord, what hath happened (i.e., befallen) us," are more fully explained in the second member, "Look and behold our disgrace." It is quite arbitrary in Thenius to refer the first member to the past, the second to the present, described in what follows, Lamentations 5:12-16 . The Qeri הבּיטה is an unnecessary alteration, after Lamentations 1:11 ; Lamentations 3:63 . - With Lamentations 5:2 begins the description of the disgrace that has befallen them. This consists, first of all, in the fact that their inheritance has become the possession of strangers. Rosenm׬ller rightly explains נחלה to mean, terra quae tuo nobis dono quandam est concessa. נחפך is used of the transference of the property to others, as in Isaiah 60:5 . Many expositors would refer בּתּינוּ to the houses in Jerusalem which the Chaldeans had not destroyed, on the ground that it is stated, in 2 Kings 25:9 and Jeremiah 52:13 , that the Chaldeans destroyed none but large houses. There is no foundation, however, for this restriction; moreover, it is opposed by the parallel נחלתנוּ.

Just as by נחלה we are to understand, not merely the possession of Jerusalem, but of the whole country, so also בּתּינוּ are the dwelling-houses of the country in towns and villages; in this case, the question whether any houses still remained standing in Jerusalem does not demand consideration at all. Ngelsbach is wrong in his remark that נחלה and בּתּים respectively mean immovable and portable property, for houses are certainly not moveable property.

10 . If our transgressions ] Better, direct: our transgressions … are upon us. The people had come to regard their calamities as due to their sins and evidence of them. They had come round to the prophet’s view of their history, for they saw his predictions fulfilled. But the new view came with a crushing weight upon them. The calamities of their country were unparalleled ( Lamentations 1:12 ; Lamentations 2:13 ; Lamentations 2:20 ; Lamentations 3:1 ; Lamentations 4:6 ; Lamentations 4:9 ), and equally unparalleled must have been their guilt ( Lamentations 1:9 ; Lamentations 1:14 ; Lamentations 2:14 ; Lamentations 4:13 ; Lamentations 5:7 ). And their calamities seemed final, their sin was expiable only by their complete destruction. we pine away ] Or, waste away. The word expresses not mental but physical wasting away, ending in complete dissolution. See the very similar figures, Isaiah 10:18 ; Isaiah 17:4 ; cf. Ezekiel 4:17 ; Ezekiel 24:23 ; Leviticus 26:39 . 10–20 . Despondency of the people, making the prophet’s appeals to them of none effect. Removal of the despair by two gracious words from the Lord.