She images her sorrows under a variety of metaphors (cf. ch.
iii. 1-18); ascribing all her woes to Yahweh’s righteous wrath,
provoked by her sins, and crying for vengeance on the malicious
rivals who had rejoiced at her overthrow.
The text has suffered much. Verse 5c read: בשבי (v. 18), “into captivity,” צרים (v. 7), “adversaries.” For verse 7, see Budde, V. 14: נשקד, read נקשר, “was bound.” Verse 19c read: אבל להשיב נפש ולא מצאו כי בקשו “For they sought food to restore life, and found it not:” cf. Septuagint; and verses 11, 16. Verse 20: the incongruous כי מרו מריתי, “For I grievously rebelled,” should be נכמרו רחמי, “My inwards burn”; Hos. xi. 8. Verses 21 f.: “All my foes heard, rejoiced That IT” (cf. Psalm ix. 13), “Thou didst. Bring Thou” (הֶבִא אֶת), “the Day Thou hast proclaimed; Let them become like me! Let the time” (עת; see Septuagint) “of their calamity come!”
Chapter ii.—“Ah how in wrath the Lord | Beclouds Bath-Sion!” The poet laments Yahweh’s anger as the true cause which destroyed city and kingdom, suspended feast and Sabbath, rejected altar and sanctuary. He mentions the uproar of the victors in the Temple; the dismantling of the walls; the exile of king and princes (verses 1-9). He recalls the mourning in the doomed city; the children dying of hunger in the streets; the prophets deluding the people with vain hopes. Passers-by jeered at the fallen city; and all her enemies triumphed over her (verses 10-17). Sion is urged to cry to the Lord in protest against His pitiless work (verses 18-22).
Here too emendation is necessary. Verse 4a: הציב הצו, “He fixed His arrow,” sc. on the string (Septuagint, ἐστερέωσεν); cf. Psalm xi. 2. Add at the end כלה (את) אפו, “He spent His anger:” see iv. 11; Ezek. vii. 8, xx. 8, 21. Verse 6: ויפרץ גדר משכנו, “And He broke down the wall of His dwelling-place” (Septuagint τὸ σκήνωμα αὐτοῦ; cf. Psalm lxxxiv. 7f., where מועד follows, as here). Is. v. 5; Psalms lxxx. 13, lxxxix. 41. Perhaps ויהרס, verses 2, 17. But Septuagint καὶ διεπέτασεν = ויפרש (i. 13, 17) = ויפרס (iv. 4) or even ויפרץ. Verse 9, perhaps: “He sunk (טבִּע) her gates in the ground,—He shattered her bars; He made her king and her princes wander (אִבִּר, Jer. xxiii. 1)—Among the nations without Torah” (cf. Ezek. vii. 26 f.). Verse 18: “Cry much” (רַבת; or bitterly, מר, Zeph. i. 14) “unto the Lord, O Virgin Daughter of Zion!” Verse 19 is metrically redundant, and the last clauses do not agree with what follows. “For the life of thy children” was altered from “for what He hath done to thee” (על שעולל לך); and then the rest was added. The uniform gloom of this, the most dirge-like of all the pieces, is unrelieved by a single ray of hope, even the hope of vengeance; cf. chapters i. iii. iv. ad fin.
Chapter iii.—Here the nation is personified as a man (cf. Hos. xi. 1), who laments his own calamities. In view of i. 12–22, ii. 20-22, this is hardly a serious deviation from the strict form of elegy (Klagelied). Budde makes much of “the close external connexion with ch. ii.” The truth is that the break is as great as between any two of these poems. Chapter ii. ends with a mother’s lament over her slaughtered children; chapter iii. makes an entirely new beginning, with its abruptly independent “I am the Man!” The suppression of the Divine Name is intentional. Israel durst not breathe it, until compelled by the climax, verse 18: cf. Am. vi. 10. Contrast its frequency afterwards, when ground of hope is found in the Divine pity and purpose (verses 22-40), and when the contrite nation turns to its God in prayer (verses 55-66). The spiritual aspect of things is now the main topic. The poet deals less with incident, and more with the moral significance of the nation’s sufferings. It is the religious culmination of the book. His poem is rather lyrical than narrative, which may account for some obscurities in the connexion of thought; but his alphabetic scheme proves that he designed twenty-two stanzas, not sixty-six detached couplets. There is something arresting in that bold “I am the Man”; and the lyrical intensity, the religious depth and beauty of the whole, may well blind us to occasional ruggedness of metre and language, abrupt transitions from figure to figure and other alleged blemishes, some of which may not have seemed such to the poet’s contemporaries (e.g. the repetition of the acrostic word, far more frequent in Psalm cxix.); and some disappear on revision of the text.
Verse 5, perhaps: “He swallowed me up” (Jer. li. 34) “and begirt my head” (Septuagint) “with gloom” (אפלה Is. lviii. 10, cf. verse 6, yet cf. also הלאה, Neh. ix. 32). Verse 14: “all my people,” rather all peoples (Heb. MSS. and Syr.). Verse 16b, rd. הפלישני, “He made me bore” (i.e. grovel) “in the ashes:” cf. Jer. vi. 26; Ezek. xxvii. 30. Verse 17a should be: ויזנח לעולם נפשי “And He cast off my soul for ever:” see verse 31; Psalm lxxxviii. 15. Verse 26: “It is good to wait” להחיל “in silence” (דומם Is. xlvii. 5); or “It is good that he wait and be silent” (כּי יֹחִּיל וְדֶמַם; cf. verse 27). Verse 31, add נפשו, “his soul.” The verse is a reply to 17a. Verses 34-36 render: “To crush under His feet . . . Adonai purposed not” (Gen. xx. 10; Psalm lxvi. 18). Verse 39, חי (Gen. v. 5; or חיה Neh. ix. 29) is the necessary second verb: “Why doth a mortal complain?” (or “What . . . lament?”). “Doth a man live by his sins?”: Man “lives by” righteousness (Ezek. xxxiii. 19). For the wording, cf. Psalm lxxxix. 49. Verse 43a: “Thou didst encompass with” (rg. סבותה; Hos. xii. 1) “anger and pursue us.” Syntax as verse 66a. Verse 49, rd. תּפוּנֶה (cf. ii. 18 also). Verse 51: “Mine eye did hurt to herself” (לנפשהּ), “By weeping over my people:” Verse 48: ch. i. 16; Jer. xxxi. 15. Verse 52: “They quelled my life in the pit” (Sheol; Psalms xxx. 4, lxxxviii. 4, 7; verse 55); “They brought me down to Abaddon” (הרידוני אבדון; cf. Psalm lxxxviii. 12). Verse 58: “O plead, Lord, the cause of my soul! O redeem my life!”; cf. Psalm cxix. 154. If the prayer for vengeance begins here, Budde’s “deep division in the middle of an acrostic letter-group” vanishes. Verse 59, rd. עותי, “my perverting;” inf. pi. c. suff. obj.; cf. verse 36. Verse 61b repeated by mistake from 60b. Perhaps: “Wherewith they dogged my steps:” שחרפו עקבתי: Psalm lxxxix. 51 f. Verse 63, rd. קומם, as usual, and נגינתם, as in verse 14 and Job xxx. 9. Verse 65: “Thou wilt give them madness” (cf. Arab. gunûn; magnûn, mad) “of heart; Thou wilt curse and consume them!” (תאר תכלם).
| Chapter iv. | “Ah, how doth gold grow dim,— |
The poet shows how famine and the sword desolated Zion (verses 1-10). All was Yahweh’s work; a wonder to the heathen world, but accounted for by the crimes of prophets and priests (Jer. xxiii. 11, 14, xxvi. 8, 20 ff., xxix. 21-23), who, like Cain, became homeless wanderers and outcasts (verses 11-16). Vainly did the besieged watch for succours from Egypt (Jer. xxxvii. 5 ff.); and even the last forlorn hope, the flight of “Yahweh’s Anointed,” King Zedekiah, was doomed to fail (verses 17-20; Jer. xxxix. 4 ff). Edom rejoiced in her ruin (Ezek. xxv. 12; xxxv. 15; Obad.; Psalm cxxxvii. 7); but Zion’s sin is now atoned for (cf. Is. xl. 2), and she may look forward to the judgment of her foe (verses 21-22).
Verse 6d, perhaps: “And their ruin tarried not” (פירס ולא יחל); cf. Pro. xxiv. 22. Verse 7d: “Their body” (rd. נויחם) “was a sapphire:” see Ct. v. 14; Dn. x. 6. Verse 9: “Happier were the slain of the sword Than the slain of famine! For they” (Septuagint om.), “they passed away” (הלכו Septuagint; Psalm xxxix. 14) “with a stab” (Ju. ix. 54; Is. xiii. 15; Jer. li. 4), “Suddenly, in the field” (פתאם בש׳; Jer. xiv. 18). Verse 13, add היא after נביאיה; cf. Ju. xiv. 4; Jer. xxii. 16. Verse 17c: “While we watched” (Septuagint) “continually:” בצפותנו צפו. Verse 18: “Our steps were curbed” (צרו MSS.; see Pro. iv. 12; Job xviii. 7) “from walking In our open places” (before the city gates: Neh. viii. 1, 3); “The completion of our days drew nigh” (קרב יום מלאות ימינו; cf. Lev. viii. 33; Job xx. 22), “For our end was come” (Ezek. vii. 2, 6, &c.). Verse 21, Septuagint om. Uz (dittogr. ?); “Settler in the Land!” (i.e. of Judah; cf. Ezek. xxxv. 10, xxxvi. 5. Perhaps יורשתי הא׳ “Seizer of the Land”).
Chapter v.—A sorrowful supplication, in which the speakers deplore, not the fall of Jerusalem, but their own state of galling dependence and hopeless poverty. They are still suffering for the sins of their fathers, who perished in the catastrophe (verse 7). They are at the mercy of “servants” (verse 8; cf. 2 Kings xxv. 24; Neh. v. 15: “Yea, even their ‘boys’ lorded it over the people”), under a tyranny of pashas of the worst type (verses 11 f.). The soil is owned by aliens; and the Jews have to buy their water and firewood (verses 2, 4; cf. Neh. ix. 36 f.). While busy harvesting, they are exposed to the raids of the Bedouins (verse 9). Jackals prowl among the ruins of Zion (verse 18; cf. Neh. iv. 3). And this condition of things has already lasted a very long time (verse 20).
Verses 5 f. transpose and read: “To adversaries” (לצרים) “we submitted, Saying” (לאמור), “’We shall be satisfied with bread’” (cf. Jer. xlii. 14); “The yoke of our neck they made heavy” (Neh. v. 15: הכבידו על העם); “We toil, and no rest is allowed us.” Verse 13: “Nobles endured to grind, And princes staggered under logs” (חורים for בחורים, which belongs to verse 14; שרים for נערים. Eccl. x. 7; Is. xxxiv. 12; Neh. iv. 14;
