Lamentations 5:8

, what is come upon us: consider, and behold our reproach. 2 Our inheritance is turned to strangers, our houses to aliens. 3 We are orphans and fatherless, our mothers are as widows. 4 We have drunken our water for money; our wood is sold unto us. 5 Our necks are under persecution: we labour, and have no rest. 6 We have given the hand to the Egyptians, and to the Assyrians, to be satisfied with bread. 7 Our fathers have sinned, and are not; and we have borne their iniquities. 8 Servants have ruled over us: there is none that doth deliver us out of their hand. 9 We gat our bread with the peril of our lives because of the sword of the wilderness. 10 Our skin was black like an oven because of the terrible famine. 11 They ravished the women in Zion, and the maids in the cities of Judah. 12 Princes are hanged up by their hand: the faces of elders were not honoured. 13 They took the young men to grind, and the children fell under the wood. 14 The elders have ceased from the gate, the young men from their music. 15 The joy of our heart is ceased; our dance is turned into mourning. 16 The crown is fallen from our head: woe unto us, that we have sinned! Is any afflicted? let him pray; and let him in prayer pour out his complaint to God, and make known before him his trouble. The people of God do so here; being overwhelmed with grief, they give vent to their sorrows at the footstool of the throne of grace, and so give themselves ease.

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.

Servants have ruled over us,.... The Targum is, "the sons of Ham, who were given to be servants to the sons of Shem, they have ruled over us;'' referring to the prophecy of Noah, Genesis 9:26; or such as had been tributary to the Jews, as the Edomites; so Aben Ezra; the Babylon, an, are meant; and not the nobles and principal inhabitants only, but even their servants, had power and authority over the Jews and they were at their beck and command; which made their servitude the more disagreeable and intolerable: there is none that doth deliver us out of their hand; out of the hand of these servants.

8 . Servants rule ] The reference may be to cases where slaves actually rose to positions of authority. Cp. Tobiah in Nehemiah 2:10 ; Nehemiah 2:19 . Budde suggests that such persons may have seized upon property (cp. Habakkuk 1:6 ) and forced the Jews to earn their bread under them as day-labourers.

Verse 8. - Servants have ruled; rather, slaves. The Babylonians in general might be called slaves, by comparison with the "kingdom of priests" ( Exodus 19:6 ), and the "sons" of Jehovah ( Isaiah 45:11 ; Hosea 1:10 ). Or the expression may mean that even baseborn hangers on of the conquering host assumed the right to command the defenceless captives. Lamentations 5:8

8. Servants … ruled … us—Servants under the Chaldean governors ruled the Jews (Ne 5:15). Israel, once a "kingdom of priests" (Ex 19:6), is become like Canaan, "a servant of servants," according to the curse (Ge 9:25). The Chaldeans were designed to be "servants" of Shem, being descended from Ham (Ge 9:26). Now through the Jews' sin, their positions are reversed.

Further description of the miserable condition under which the congregation languishes. Lamentations 5:8 . "Servants rule over us," etc. עבדים are not the Chaldean soldiers, who are in 2 Kings 24:10 designated the servants of Nebuchadnezzar (Pareau, Rosenmller, Maurer); still less the Chaldeans, in so far as they, till shortly before, had been the subjects of the Assyrians (Kalkschmidt); nor the Chaldean satraps, as servants of the king of Babylon (Thenius, Ewald); nor even "slaves who had been employed as overseers and taskmasters of the captives while on the march" (Ngelsbach); but the Chaldeans. These are called servants, partly because of the despotic rule under which they were placed, partly in the sense already indicated by C. B. Michaelis, as being those qui nobis potius, si pii fuissemus, servire debuissent, in accordance with the analogous designation of Jerusalem as a princess among the countries of the world, Lamentations 1:1 .

The redeeming power in all this range of applications of λυτρο ῦ σθαι is uniformly conceived as divine. It is to God, the Lord God Almighty, alone that redemption is ascribed, whether it be the redemption of Israel or of the individual, or whether it be physical or spiritual. God and God alone is the Redeemer alike of Israel and of the individual, in every case of deliverance of whatever order. We hear in Sirach, it is true, of the Holy One redeeming Israel by the hand of Isaiah (48:20); and indeed, in a somewhat confused sentence, of the twelve prophets, or of their bones, redeeming Jacob (49:10)—or are we to assume that God is understood as the nominative of the verbs and read: "But God comforted Israel and redeemed them by the faith of hope"? There are besides two negative statements which may seem to imply the possibility of a human redeemer. The one is found in Psalms 7:2–3, and the other,—a very instructive passage—in Lamentations 5:8. In Psalms 7:2–3 David prays: "O Lord, my God, in thee do I put my hope, save (σ ῶ σον) me from all that persecute me, and deliver ( ῥῦ σαι) me; let him not seize my soul, like a lion, while there is none to redeem (λυτρουμένου) or to save (σώζοντος)." In Lamentations 5:8 we read: "Slaves, have ruled over us: there is none to redeem (λυτρο ῦ μενος) out of their hand." In neither instance is it intimated, however, that a human redeemer could be found: despair is rather expressed, and the cry is for the only Redeemer that can suffice