Lam. 3 The faithful bewail their misery and contempt, Lam. 3:1–21. They nourish their hope by consideration of the justice, providence, and mercies of God, Lam. 3:22–38.

Some understand this of the prophet, some of the people, who were before set out under the notion of a woman, a daughter, here of a man. Affliction must here be taken emphatically for eminent degrees of affliction, caused not merely from the power and malice of the enemy, but from the wrath of God,…

Darkness in Scripture (metaphorically taken) signifies ignorance, sin, and misery; and light signifies knowledge, a state of grace, or a state of mirth and jollity; they are both here taken in the latter sense, as light is taken, Est. 8:16, Mic. 7:8, Job 18:5, Ps.

The course of God’s providence toward me is quite altered, his hand, that is, his power, which was wont to be with me, and for me, against my enemies, is now turned against me; nor is it for a moment, or for one stroke or two, but his hand is continually against me.

I was a virgin, young and fair, but I am quite altered, and am now as an old woman whose flesh is decayed, and my skin wrinkled; all my beauty is gone, and all my strength is gone; my bones, those in whom my strength consisted, are slain and broken.

He hath not builded with me, increasing my prosperity, and protecting my houses, but he hath builded forts, and batteries, and castles, (military buildings,) to batter down my walls and houses, Isa. 29:2–3.

The prophet compareth their state in Babylon to the state of bodies in the graves, or in some charnel-house, which are places of darkness, full of rottenness and dead men’s bones.

The use of a hedge about an enclosed field is twofold: 1. To keep out other beasts which belong not to the owner of the ground; in this sense God set a hedge sometimes about Canaan, Isa. 5:5. 2.

In the condition I am in, I cannot help myself, no creatures can help me, I have no hope but in God. I take the ordinary course in that case, which is prayer, I pray fervently and aloud, as those that are serious and importunate for what they desire (for shouting here signifies no more than making…

Ways in Scripture ordinarily signifies men’s courses, and methods of counsels, and actions; if the term be taken in that sense here, it signifieth God’s defeating all their methods and counsels taken for their own security, in the pursuit of which they met not with ordinary, but with insuperable…

That is, he hath taken all advantages against me to destroy me.

The same thing is repeated in other phrases which was before said, viz. that God had pleased by his providence to frustrate all the designs and counsels of the Jews, and miserably to destroy them, as a lion or a bear (the wild beasts mentioned before) tear in pieces the beasts they prey upon.

He hath prepared himself for acts of vindicative justice, and he hath made me the object of it.

That is, he hath made his judgments to pierce the most inward parts of the nation; or, he hath mortally wounded me. In the Hebrew it is, the daughters of his quiver, a way of speaking very usual in Hebrew, to express any thing that comes from another as the effect either of a natural or moral…

Though some think the prophet speaks this of himself, yet, considering he hath all along spoken in the name of the people, it is not probable, which makes a difficulty, how the people could be a derision to themselves? It seemeth therefore ill translated, and that it should have been, I was a…

That is, he hath filled me with severe and bitter dispensations. Wormwood is a bitter herb, but it is also a wholesome herb, and therefore some think that the Hebrew word should rather be translated henbane, and that it signifies some herb whose juice is intoxicating and poisonous.

These are but more metaphorical expressions, signifying the unpleasant difficult condition into which God had brought this people. They were like men that lived upon gritty bread, more fit to break their teeth than to nourish them; they were in the state of mourners, and no ordinary mourners, who…

Peace here signifieth prosperity, rather than a freedom from war. Though during the siege they were far from peace in a strict sense, yet in their captivity they had that peace; but both their minds were far off from quiet, and their persons from prosperity: the prophet owneth God as the cause of…

If, according to our translation, we read Remembering, or While I remember, these two verses contain but one sentence; in tire former part the prophet in the name of this people expresseth their despairing condition; in the latter he gives the reason of it, viz.

That is, I cannot forget them, and the thoughts of them sink my spirits.

This, not what was already said, that made them despair, and their souls to bow down; but this, that which followeth, concerning the nature of God, and other good providences.

Mercy is nothing else but love flowing freely from any to persons in misery, and differs from compassion only in the freeness of the emanation. It is not because God had not power enough utterly to have consumed us, nor because we had not guilt enough to have provoked his justice to have put an end…

These compassions of God are renewed day by day, to declare the great faithfulness of God in fulfilling his many promises made for mercy to his people.

God is the portion of his people, and they have chosen him as their portion; he hath declared himself to them as such, and they have accepted him as such. This gives them ground both for patience under his providences, and also of expectation of good from him in their lowest and meanest state.

Good is a term of a very comprehensive notion. The nature of it lieth in a suitableness to the thing or person to whom it relateth; so it signifieth profit and pleasantness.

Good here either signifies honestum, what becomes men, and is their duty; or utile, what is profitable, and will turn to good account to them. Hoping and waiting differ but as the mother and daughter, hope being the mother of patience and waiting; or as the habit and act, hoping and waiting being…

Good here must be expounded in the same sense as in the foregoing verse. It is not pleasant, but it is profitable, it is honourable, what becomes us, and is our duty, quietly and patiently to bear what afflictions God will please to lay upon us, to restrain our wild and wanton spirits when they are…

Our English Annotations supplying that, makes the connexion clear, It is good for a man that he sit alone, Jer. 15:17; not doing what he doth to be seen of men, but sitting alone, and when he is alone suppressing the mutinies of his spirit, and keeping his soul in subjection to God; because God…

If that may be supplied, or when, (as Pagnine translateth בי Lam. 3:28, the connexion of these words with the former is very fair and easy, for then those words, Lam. 3:27, It is good that must be repeated in the beginning of Lam.

According to our Saviour’s precept, Matt. 5:39, he doth not take any private revenge; he is reproached and reviled, but when he is so he revileth not again, 1 Pet. 2:23; he is filled with reproach from others, but his mouth is not filled with the reproachings of others.

This is that which beareth up his spirits, that though the Lord may for a time estrange himself from his people, yet he will not always forsake them.

But though, as a prudent parent, he may see reason to cause grief in and to afflict his own people, yet as a tender good father, that pitieth his children in misery, he will have compassion upon them, having not only mercies, but a multitude or abundance of mercies.

In the Hebrew it is, he doth not afflict from his heart, that is, with pleasure and delight; or (which seemeth the best sense to me) not from his own mere motion without a cause given him from the persons afflicted. Hence judgment is called God’s strange work.

Here are three things mentioned, of all which it is said that God approveth them not neither all, nor any of them. The first is, to crush the prisoners of the earth: he hath power to crush all men in the world, they are his prisoners, and cannot flee from him, but he delighteth not in it.

The sense of these words is doubted by none, that nothing cometh to pass in the world but by the disposal of Divine Providence, either effecting it by an immediate influence, or permitting it; but to what end these words are brought in in this place is not so generally agreed.

In the Hebrew the form of these words is interrogatory, as much as if he should say, Doth not evil come out of God’s mouth from his direction and command, and from his providence, as well as good? He speaks of evils of punishment, judicial afflictive dispensations; so it agreeth with Job 2:10, Amos…

This verse admits of various senses, caused from the various interpretation of the Hebrew word, which we translate complain, which also signifies to mourn or grieve; so some render it, Why doth a living man grieve or vex himself? But the word is noted most generally to signify complaining or…

Seeing God doth not grieve us willingly, nor delight to crush us, though we be his prisoners, and seeing the hand of God is in these things upon us, and that justly, to recompense our iniquities into our bosoms, instead of mourning and fretting against God, which is not reasonable, nor will be of…

Let us apply ourselves unto God by prayer, often expressed under this notion in Scripture from that gesture ordinarily used in prayer; and let us not do it in hypocrisy, but joining our hearts with our hands, praying seriously and fervently.

The prophet doth not dictate words, but sense to them, teaching them the matter of their prayer; first, by way of confession. Sin is called a transgression, because it is going aside from the way of God’s precepts; it is called rebellion, because it is an act contrary to that allegiance and duty…

Thou hast covered with anger; either thou hast covered thyself with anger, or covered thy own face with anger, so as not to look upon us to move thy pity; or (which is more probably the sense) thou hast covered, that is, overwhelmed, us with thy wrath.

God had covered them with wrath, overwhelming them with afflictions. so as they had no way to escape; and whereas in this distress they had nothing else to do but only to apply themselves to God, he had hid his face from them, so as they could get no comfortable sight of him; he was as one covered…

That is, thou hast made us to all nations extremely contemptible, so as they value us no more than the sweepings of their houses, or the most vile, refuse, and contemptible things imaginable.

That is, to mock, scoff, and reproach us.

All manner of misery was come upon them. They were seized first with fears and terrors; going to escape these they fell into a snare, or (as it is in the Hebrew) into a pit, out of which they could not get; they were wasted, made desolate, and destroyed.

The prophet was deeply affected upon the prospect of this evil before it came, Jer. 9:1, and was now much more affected when he saw the judgment was come; he wept plentifully and constantly, as for their sins which had brought these judgments upon them, so for the judgments themselves, as…

That is, until the Lord show me some favour. See the notes on Lam. 1:9.

The eye and the ear are those organs of the body, by which the soul exerciseth its senses to bring in all objects, whether pleasant or sad, to the understanding to judge of them, according to the judgment of which upon them it is affected with joy or sorrow, desire or aversation, &c.

As boys beat a bird from bush to bush, suffering it to rest no where, so mine enemies, to whom I gave no cause, pursued me.

Dungeon seemeth not to be here taken literally, for the lowest and nastiest place in prisons, which probably was the portion but of a few of the Jews; but metaphorically, for the lowest and saddest condition of misery.

Afflictions often in Scripture are called waters, Isa. 28:17–18, Isa. 59:19. I am cut off; that is, I am utterly undone, there is no hope for me.

That is, out of my deepest affliction, as Jonah out of the belly of hell, Jonah 2:2. I cried unto God, and called upon him for mercy.

I in former great afflictions applied myself unto thee, and thou didst hear me; show me now the same favour. Our former experiences of God’s goodness to us in hearing our prayers ought to hold up our hands in prayer, mid beget a confidence in us that we, persisting in our duty, shall find God the…

There was a time when I was in distress, and called upon time, and thou didst draw near unto me. God is never far off from any of us, as to his essential presence; nor is it possible that he should, for he filleth all places.

Thou hast been wont to take my part against my enemies, not like a lawyer by word of mouth, but actually and really pleading my cause. Thou hast redeemed my life; thou hast saved me from many a danger which looked fatally upon me.

Thou hast a perfect knowledge of men’s perverse and unrighteous dealings with me at this time; do thou judge betwixt me and mine enemies, and deal with them according to what shall appear just to thee.

Thou hast been a witness to all their fury and rage, and all their malicious and bloody contrivances against me.

Whatever knowledge men get of things done from their eye or ear, thou hast from thy omnisciency; thou knowest not only their malicious actions, but words and thoughts.

That is, thou hast observed and noted the motions or products of my enemies’ lips, and their secret devices before they came out of their lips.

That is, at all times, when they sit down and rise up, I am their song. Though probably the words have a special reference to their sitting down at feasts, and at their merry meetings.

These three last verses are all but the same general petition, though expressed in various phrases; the prophet had prayed, Lam. 3:59, that God would judge his people’s cause, here he prayeth that he would also judge his enemies, he only desireth justice against them, a recompence of the work of…

The word translated sorrow of heart is found no where else in holy writ, which makes a certain particular explication of it to be difficult, and hath given interpreters a strange liberty in translating it shield, sorrow, and grief, obstinacy or hardness of heart, perplexity, abjection or breaking…

Bring them to a temporal ruin and destruction. How far such petitions are lawful we have before showed, in our notes on Ps. 69:22–24;c. Ps. 119:6–10;c. Jer. 11:20, Jer. 15:15, Lam. 1:22.