The Expositor's Bible: The Song of Solomon and the Lamentations of Jeremiah
by Walter F. Adeney · English · Gutenberg #39941 · 594,841 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Expositor's Bible: The Song of Solomon and the Lamentations of Jeremiah
Author: Walter F. Adeney
Editor: Sir W. Robertson Nicoll
Release date: June 7, 2012 [eBook #39941]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/39941
Credits: Produced by Marcia Brooks, Colin Bell, Julia Neufeld and
the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EXPOSITOR'S BIBLE: THE SONG OF SOLOMON AND THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEREMIAH ***
Produced by Marcia Brooks, Colin Bell, Julia Neufeld and
the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian
Libraries)
Transcriber's note:
Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
Small capital text has been replaced with all capitals.
THE EXPOSITOR'S BIBLE
EDITED BY THE REV.
W. ROBERTSON NICOLL, M.A., LL.D.
_Editor of "The Expositor"_
THE SONG OF SOLOMON
AND
THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEREMIAH
BY
WALTER F. ADENEY, M.A.
London
HODDER AND STOUGHTON
27, PATERNOSTER ROW
MDCCCXCV
THE SONG OF SOLOMON
AND THE
LAMENTATIONS OF JEREMIAH
BY
WALTER F. ADENEY, M.A.
PROFESSOR OF NEW TESTAMENT EXEGESIS, AND CHURCH HISTORY,
NEW COLLEGE LONDON
London
HODDER AND STOUGHTON
27, PATERNOSTER ROW
MDCCCXCV
_Printed by Hazell, Watson, & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury._
CONTENTS
_THE SONG OF SOLOMON_
CHAPTER I
PAGE
THE STRUCTURE OF THE BOOK 3
CHAPTER II
TRUE LOVE TESTED 15
i.-v. i.
CHAPTER III
LOVE UNQUENCHABLE 28
v. i-viii.
CHAPTER IV
MYSTICAL INTERPRETATIONS 41
CHAPTER V
CANONICITY 53
_THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEREMIAH_
CHAPTER I
HEBREW ELEGIES 63
CHAPTER II
THE ORIGIN OF THE POEMS 75
CHAPTER III
THE THEME 87
CHAPTER IV
DESOLATION 97
i. 1-7.
CHAPTER V
SIN AND SUFFERING 108
i. 8-11.
CHAPTER VI
ZION'S APPEAL 120
i. 12-22.
CHAPTER VII
GOD AS AN ENEMY 132
ii. 1-9.
CHAPTER VIII
THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN 144
ii. 10-17.
CHAPTER IX
PROPHETS WITHOUT A VISION 156
ii. 9, 14.
CHAPTER X
THE CALL TO PRAYER 168
ii. 18-22.
CHAPTER XI
THE MAN THAT HATH SEEN AFFLICTION 180
iii. 1-21.
CHAPTER XII
THE UNFAILING GOODNESS OF GOD 194
iii. 22-24.
CHAPTER XIII
QUIET WAITING 206
iii. 25-36.
CHAPTER XIV
GOD AND EVIL 218
iii. 37-39.
CHAPTER XV
THE RETURN 230
iii. 40-42.
CHAPTER XVI
GRIEVING BEFORE GOD 242
iii. 43-54.
CHAPTER XVII
_DE PROFUNDIS_ 253
iii. 55-66.
CHAPTER XVIII
CONTRASTS 265
iv. 1-12.
CHAPTER XIX
LEPERS 277
iv. 13-16.
CHAPTER XX
VAIN HOPES 288
iv. 17-20.
CHAPTER XXI
THE DEBT OF GUILT EXTINGUISHED 300
iv. 21, 22.
CHAPTER XXII
AN APPEAL FOR GOD'S COMPASSION 311
v. 1-10.
CHAPTER XXIII
SIN AND SHAME 324
v. 11-18.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE EVERLASTING THRONE 335
v. 19-22.
_THE SONG OF SOLOMON_
CHAPTER I
_THE STRUCTURE OF THE BOOK_
The Song of Solomon is a puzzle to the commentator. Quite apart from
the wilderness of mystical interpretations with which it has been
overgrown in the course of the ages,[1] its literary form and motive
are subjects of endless controversy. There are indications that it is
a continuous poem; and yet it is characterised by startling
kaleidoscopic changes that seem to break it up into incongruous
fragments. If it is a single work the various sections of it succeed
one another in the most abrupt manner, without any connecting links or
explanatory clauses.
[1] To be considered later. See chap. iv.
The simplest way out of the difficulty presented by the many curious
turns and changes of the poem is to deny it any structural unity, and
treat it as a string of independent lyrics. That is to cut the knot in
a rather disappointing fashion. Nevertheless the suggestion to do so
met with some favour when it was put forth at the close of the last
century by Herder, a writer who seemed better able to enter into the
spirit of Hebrew poetry than any of his contemporaries. While
accepting the traditional view of the authorship of the book, this
critic described its contents as "Solomon's songs of love, the oldest
and sweetest of the East;" and Goethe in the world of letters, as
well as biblical students, endorsed his judgment. Subsequently it fell
into disfavour, and scholars who differed among themselves with
respect to their own theories, agreed in rejecting this particular
hypothesis. But quite recently it has reappeared in an altered form.
The book, it is now suggested, is just a chance collection of folk
songs from northern Palestine, an anthology of rustic love-poems.
These songs are denied any connection with Solomon or the court. The
references to royalty are accounted for by a custom said to be kept up
among the Syrian peasants in the present day, according to which the
week of wedding festivities is called "The king's week," because the
newly-married pair then play the part of king and queen, and are
playfully treated by their friends with the honours of a court. The
bridegroom is supposed to be named Solomon in acknowledgment of his
regal splendour--as an English villager might be so named for his
conspicuous wisdom; while perhaps the bride is called the Shulammite,
with an allusion to the famous beauty Abishag, the Shunammite of
David's time.[2]
[2] 1 Kings i. 3.
Such a theory as this is only admissible on condition that the unity
of the poem has been disproved. But whether we can unravel it or not,
there is much that goes to show that one thread runs through the whole
book. The style is the same throughout, and it has no parallel in the
whole of Hebrew literature. Everywhere we meet with the same rich,
luxurious language, the same abundance of imagery, the same
picturesque habit of alluding to a number of plants and animals by
name, the same vivacity of movement, the same pleading tone, the same
suffused glow as of the light of morning. Then there are more peculiar
features that continually recur, such as the form of the dialogue,
certain recognisable characters, the part of chorus taken by the
daughters of Jerusalem, in particular the gentle, graceful portrait of
the Shulammite, the consistency of which is well preserved. But the
principal reason for believing in the unity of the work is to be found
in an examination of its plot. The difficulty of making this out has
encouraged the temptation to discredit its existence. But while there
are various ideas about the details, there is enough in common to all
the proposed schemes of the story to indicate the fact that the book
is one composition.
The question whether the work is a drama or an idyl has been discussed
with much critical acumen. But is it not rather pedantic? The sharply
divided orders of European poetry were not observed or even known in
Israel. It was natural, therefore, that Hebrew imaginative work should
partake of the characteristics of several orders, while too naïve to
trouble itself with the rules of any one. The drama designed for
acting was not cultivated by the ancient Jews. It was introduced as an
exotic only as late as the Roman period, when Herod built the first
theatre known to have existed in the Holy Land. Previous to his time
we have no mention of the art of play-acting among the Jews.
Nevertheless the dialogues in the Song of Solomon are certainly
dramatic in character; and we cannot call the poem an idyl when it is
rendered entirely in the form of speeches by different persons without
any connecting narrative. The Book of Job is also dramatic in form,
though, like Browning's dramatic poetry, not designed for acting; but
in that work each of the several speakers is introduced by a sentence
that indicates who he is, while in our poem no such indication is
given. Here we only get evidence of a change of speakers in the form
and contents of the utterances, and the transition from the masculine
to the feminine gender and from the singular number to the plural.
Even the chorus takes an active part in the movement of the dialogue,
instead of simply commenting on the proceedings of the principal
characters as in a Greek play. We seem to want a key to the story, and
the absence of anything of the kind is the occasion of the bewildering
variety of conjectures that confronts the reader. But the difficulty
thus occasioned is no reason for denying that there is any continuity
in the book, especially in view of numerous signs of unity that cannot
be evaded.
Among those who accept the dramatic integrity of the poem there are
two distinct lines of interpretation, each of them admitting some
differences in the treatment of detail. According to one scheme
Solomon is the only lover; according to the other, while the king is
seeking to win the affections of the country maiden, he has been
forestalled by a shepherd, fidelity to whom is shewn by the Shulammite
in spite of the fascinations of the court.
There is no denying the rural simplicity of much of the scenery;
evidently this is designed to be in contrast to the sensuous luxury
and splendour of the court. Those who take Solomon to be the one lover
throughout, not only admit this fact; they bring it into their version
of the story so as to heighten the effect. The king is out
holiday-making, perhaps on a hunting expedition, when he first meets
the country maiden. In her childlike simplicity she takes him for a
rustic swain; or perhaps, though she knows who he is, she sportively
addresses him as she would address one of her village companions.
Subsequently she shews no liking for the pomp of royalty. She cannot
make herself at home with the women of the harem. She longs to be back
in her mother's cottage among the woods and fields where she spent her
child days. But she loves the king and he dotes on her. So she would
take him with her away from the follies and temptations of the court
down to her quiet country retreat. Under the influence of the
Shulammite Solomon is induced to give up his unworthy habits and live
a healthier, purer life. Her love is strong enough to retain the king
wholly to herself. Thus the poem is said to describe a reformation in
the character of Solomon. In particular it is thought to celebrate the
triumph of true love over the degradation of polygamy.
It is impossible to find any time in the life of David's successor
when this great conversion might have taken place; and the occurrence
itself is highly improbable. Those however are not fatal objections to
the proposed scheme, because the poem may be entirely ideal; it may
even be written _at_ the king. Historical considerations need not
trouble us in dealing with an imaginative work such as this. It must
be judged entirely on internal grounds. But when it is so judged it
refuses to come into line with the interpretation suggested. Regarding
the matter only from a literary point of view, we must confess that it
is most improbable that Solomon would be introduced as a simple
peasant without any hint of the reason of his appearing in this novel
guise. Then we may detect a difference between the manner in which the
king addresses the Shulammite and that in which, on the second
hypothesis, the shepherd speaks to her. Solomon's compliments are
frigid and stilted; they describe the object of his admiration in the
most extravagant terms, but they exhibit no trace of feeling. The
heart of the voluptuary is withered, the fires of passion have burnt
themselves out and only the cold ashes remain, the sacred word "love"
has been so long desecrated that it has ceased to convey any meaning.
On the other hand, frequent practice has outstripped the clumsy wooing
of inexperienced lovers and developed the art of courtship to a high
degree. The royal bird-catcher knows how to lay his lines, though
fortunately for once even his consummate skill fails. How different is
the bearing of the true lover, a village lad who has won the maiden's
heart! He has no need to resort to the vocabulary of flattery, because
his own heart speaks. The English translations give an unwarrantable
appearance of warmth to the king's language where he is represented as
calling the Shulammite "My love."[3] The word in the Hebrew means no
more than _my friend_. When Solomon first appears he addresses the
Shulammite with this title, and then immediately tries to tempt her by
promising her presents of jewelry. Take another instance. In the
beginning of the fourth chapter Solomon enters on an elaborate series
of compliments describing the beauty of the Shulammite, without a
single word of affection. As she persists in withstanding his advances
her persecutor becomes abashed. He shrinks from her pure, cold gaze,
calls her terrible as an army with banners, prays her to turn away her
eyes from him. On the theory that Solomon is the accepted lover, the
beloved bridegroom, this position is quite unintelligible. Now turn
to the language of the true lover: "Thou hast ravished my heart, my
sister, my bride; thou hast ravished my heart with one look of thine
eyes."[4]
[3] i. 9.
[4] iv. 9.
A corresponding difference is to be detected in the bearing of the
maiden towards the rivals. Towards the king she is cool and repellent;
but no dream of poetry can equal the tenderness and sweetness of her
musing on her absent lover or the warmth of love with which she speaks
to him. These distinctions will be more apparent in detail as we
proceed with the story of the poem. It may be noticed here, that this
story is not at all consistent with the theory that Solomon is the
only lover. According to that hypothesis we have the highly improbable
situation of a separation of the newly married couple on their wedding
day. Besides, as the climax is supposed to be reached at the middle of
the book, there is no apparent motive for the second half. The modern
novel, which has its wedding at the middle of its plot, or even at the
very beginning, and then sets itself to develop the comedy or perhaps
the tragedy of married life, is not at all parallel to this old love
story. Time must be allowed for the development of matrimonial
complications; but here the scenes are all in close connection.
If we are thus led to accept what has been called "the shepherd
hypothesis" the value of the book will be considerably enhanced. This
is more than a mere love poem; it is not to be classed with erotics,
although a careless reading of some of its passages might incline us
to place it in the same category with a purely sensuous style of
poetry. We have here something more than Sappho's fire. If we are
tempted to compare it with Herrick's _Hesperides_ or Shakespeare's
_Sonnets_, we must recognise an element that lifts it above the sighs
of love-sick youths and maidens. Even on the "Solomon theory" pure
love and simple living are exalted in opposition to the luxury and
vices of the royal seraglio. A poem that sets forth the beauty of a
simple country life as the scene of the true love of husband and wife
in contrast to the degradation of a corrupt court is distinctly
elevating in tone and influence, and the more so for the fact that it
is not didactic in form. It is not only in kings' palaces and amid
scenes of oriental voluptuousness that the influence of such ideas as
are here presented is needed. Christian civilisation has not
progressed beyond the condition in which the consideration of them may
be resorted to as a wholesome corrective. But if we are to agree to
the "shepherd hypothesis" as on the whole the more probable, another
idea of highest importance emerges. It is not love, now, but fidelity,
that claims our attention. The simple girl, protected only by her
virtue, who is proof against all the fascinations of the most splendid
court, and who prefers to be the wife of the poor man whom she loves,
and to whom she has plighted troth, to accepting a queen's crown at
the cost of deserting her humble lover, is the type and example of a
loyalty which is the more admirable because it appears where we should
little expect to find it. It has been said that such a story as is
here depicted would be impossible in real life; that a girl once
enticed into the harem of an oriental despot would never have a chance
of escape. The eunuchs who guarded the doors would lose their heads if
they allowed her to run away; the king would never give up the prey
that had fallen into his trap; the shepherd lover who was mad enough
to pursue his lost sweetheart into her captor's palace would never
come out alive. Are we so sure of all these points? Most improbable
things do happen. It is at least conceivable that even a cruel tyrant
might be seized with a fit of generosity, and why should we regard
Solomon as a cruel tyrant? His fame implies that there were noble
traits in his character. But these questions are beside the mark. The
situation is wholly ideal. Then the more improbable the events
described would be in real life, the more impressive do the lessons
they suggest become.
Who wrote the book? The only answer that can be given to this question
is negative. Assuredly, Solomon could not have been the author of this
lovely poem in praise of the love and fidelity of a country lass and
her swain, and the simplicity of their rustic life. It would be
difficult to find a man in all history who more conspicuously
illustrated the exact opposites of these ideas. The exquisite eulogy
of love--perhaps the finest in any literature--which occurs towards
the end of the book, the passage beginning, "Set me as a seal upon
thine heart," etc.,[5] is not the work of this master of a huge
seraglio, with his "seven hundred wives" and his "three hundred
concubines."[6] It is impossible to find the source of this poetry in
the palace of the Israelite "Grand Monarch"; we might as soon light on
a bank of wild flowers in a Paris dancing saloon. There is quite a
library of Solomon literature, a very small part of which can be
traced to the king whose name it bears, the greatness of this name
having attracted attention and led to the ascription of various works
to the royal author, whose wisdom was as proverbial as his splendour.
It is difficult to resist the impression that in the present case
there is some irony in the singular inappropriateness of the title.
[5] viii. 6, 7.
[6] 1 Kings xi. 3.
The date of the poem can be conjectured with some degree of assurance,
although the language does not help us much in the determination of
this point. There are archaisms, and there are also terms that seem to
indicate a late date--Aramaic words and possibly even words of Greek
extraction. The few foreign terms may have crept in under the
influence of revisers. On the other hand the style and contents of the
book speak for the days of the Augustan age of Hebrew history. The
notoriety of Solomon's court and memories of its magnificence and
luxury seem to be fresh in the minds of people. These things are
treated in detail and with an amount of freedom that supposes
knowledge on the part of the readers as well as the writer. There is
one expression that helps to fix the date with more definiteness.
Tirzah is associated with Jerusalem as though the two cities were of
equal importance. The king says:--
"Thou art beautiful, O my love, as Tirzah,
Comely as Jerusalem."[7]
[7] vi. 4.
Now this city was the northern capital for about fifty years after the
death of Solomon--from the time of Jeroboam, who made it his royal
residence,[8] till the reign of Omri, who abandoned the ill-omened
place six years after his vanquished predecessor Zimri had burnt the
palace over his own head.[9] The way in which the old capital is
mentioned here implies that it is still to the north what Jerusalem is
to the south. Thus we are brought to the half century after the death
of the king whose name the book bears.
[8] 1 Kings xiv. 17.
[9] 1 Kings xvi. 18, 23, 24.
The mention of Tirzah as the equal of Jerusalem is also an evidence of
the northern origin of the poem; for it is not at all probable that a
subject of the mutilated nation of the south would describe the beauty
of the rebel headquarters by the side of that of his own idolised
city, as something typical and perfect. But the poem throughout gives
indications of its origin in the country parts of the north. Shunem,
famous as the scene of Elisha's great miracle, seems to be the home of
the heroine.[10] The poet turns to all points of the compass for
images with which to enrich his pictures--Sharon on the western
coast,[11] Gilead across the Jordan to the east,[12] Engedi by the
wilderness of the Dead Sea,[13] as well as the northern districts. But
the north is most frequently mentioned. Lebanon is named over and over
again,[14] and Hermon is referred to as in the neighbourhood of the
shepherd's home.[15] In fact the poem is saturated with the fragrant
atmosphere of the northern mountains.
[10] vi. 13.
[11] ii. 1.
[12] iv. 1.
[13] i. 14.
[14] iii. 9; iv. 8, 15; vii. 4.
[15] iv. 8.
Now this has suggested a striking inference. Here we have a picture of
Solomon and his court from the not too friendly hand of a citizen of
the revolted provinces. The history in the Books of Kings is written
from the standpoint of Judah; it is curious to learn how the people of
the north thought of Solomon in all his glory. Thus considered the
book acquires a secondary and political meaning. It appears as a
scornful condemnation of the court at Jerusalem on the part of the
poorer and more simple inhabitants of the kingdom of Jeroboam and his
successors.[16] But it also stands for all time as a protest against
luxury and vice, and as a testimony to the beauty and dignity of pure
love, stanch fidelity, and quiet, wholesome, primitive country
manners. It breathes the spirit that reappears in Goldsmith's
_Deserted Village_, and inspires the muse of Wordsworth, as in the
poem which contrasts the dove's simple notes with the nightingale's
tumultuous song, saying of the homely bird,
"He sang of love with quiet blending;
Slow to begin, and never ending;
Of serious faith and inward glee;
That was the song--the song for me."
[16] See _Ency. Brit._, Art. "Canticles," by Robertson Smith.
CHAPTER II
_TRUE LOVE TESTED_
CHAPTER i.-v. 1
The poem opens with a scene in Solomon's palace. A country maiden has
just been introduced to the royal harem. The situation is painful
enough in itself, for the poor, shy girl is experiencing the miserable
loneliness of finding herself in an unsympathetic crowd. But that is
not all. She is at once the object of general observation; every eye
is turned towards her; and curiosity is only succeeded by
ill-concealed disgust. Still the slavish women, presumably acting on
command, set themselves to excite the new comer's admiration for their
lord and master. First one speaks some bold amorous words,[17] and
then the whole chorus follows.[18] All this is distressing and
alarming to the captive, who calls on her absent lover to fetch her
away from such an uncongenial scene; she longs to run after him; for
it is the king who has brought her into his chambers, not her own
will.[19] The women of the harem take no notice of this interruption,
but finish their ode on the charms of Solomon. All the while they are
staring at the rustic maiden, and she now becomes conscious of a
growing contempt in their looks. What is she that the attractions of
the king before which the dainty ladies of the court prostrate
themselves should have no fascination for her? She notices the
contrast between the swarthy hue of her sun-burnt countenance and the
pale complexion of these pampered products of palace seclusion. She is
so dark in comparison with them that she likens herself to the black
goats-hair tents of the Arabs.[20] The explanation is that her
brothers have made her work in their vineyards. Meanwhile she has not
kept her own vineyard.[21] She has not guarded her beauty as these
idle women, who have nothing else to do, have guarded theirs; but
perhaps she has a sadder thought--she could not protect herself when
out alone at her task in the country or she would never have been
captured and carried on to the prison where she now sits disconsolate.
Possibly the vineyard she has not kept is the lover whom she has
lost.[22] Still she is a woman, and with a touch of piqued pride she
reminds her critics that if she is dark--black compared with them--she
is comely. They cannot deny that. It is the cause of all her misery;
she owes her imprisonment to her beauty. She knows that their secret
feeling is one of envy of her, the latest favourite. Then their
affected contempt is groundless. But, indeed, she has no desire to
stand as their rival. She would gladly make her escape. She speaks in
a half soliloquy. Will not somebody tell her where he is whom her soul
loveth? Where is her lost shepherd lad? Where is he feeding his flock?
Where is he resting it at noon? Such questions only provoke mockery.
Addressing the simple girl as the "fairest among women," the court
ladies bid her find her lover for herself. Let her go back to her
country life and feed her kids by the shepherds' tents. Doubtless if
she is bold enough to court her swain in that way she will not miss
seeing him.
[17] i. 2.
[18] i. 3.
[19] i. 4.
[20] i. 5.
[21] i. 6.
[22] See viii. 12.
Hitherto Solomon has not appeared. Now he comes on the scene, and
proceeds to accost his new acquisition in highly complimentary
language, with the ease of an expert in the art of courtship. At this
point we encounter the most serious difficulty for the theory of a
shepherd lover. To all appearances a dialogue between the king and the
Shulammite here ensues.[23] But if this were the case, the country
girl would be addressing Solomon in terms of the utmost
endearment--conduct utterly incompatible with the "shepherd
hypothesis." The only alternative is to suppose that the hard-pressed
girl takes refuge from the importunity of her royal flatterer by
turning aside to an imaginary, half dream-like conversation with her
absent lover. This is not by any means a probable position, it must be
allowed; it seems to put a strained interpretation on the text.
Undoubtedly if the passage before us stood by itself, there would not
be any difference of opinion about it; everybody would take it in its
obvious meaning as a conversation between two lovers. But it does not
stand by itself--unless, indeed, we are to give up the unity of the
book. Therefore it must be interpreted so as not to contradict the
whole course of the poem, which shews that another than Solomon is the
true lover of the disconsolate maiden.
[23] i. 9--ii. 6.
The king begins with the familiar device by which rich men all the
world over try to win the confidence of poor girls when there is no
love on either side,--a device which has been only too successful in
the case of many a weak Marguerite though her tempter has not always
been a handsome Faust; but in the present case innocence is fortified
by true love, and the trick is a failure. The king notices that this
peasant girl has but simple plaited hair and homely ornaments. She
shall have plaits of gold and studs of silver! Splendid as one of
Pharaoh's chariot horses, she shall be decorated as magnificently as
they are decorated! What is this to our stanch heroine? She treats it
with absolute indifference, and begins to soliloquise, with a touch of
scorn in her language. She has been loaded with scent after the manner
of the luxurious court, and the king while seated feasting at his
table has caught the odour of the rich perfumes. That is why he is now
by her side. Does he think that she will serve as a new dainty for the
great banquet, as a fresh fillip for the jaded appetite of the royal
voluptuary? If so he is much mistaken. The king's promises have no
attraction for her, and she turns for relief to dear memories of her
true love. The thought of him is fragrant as the bundle of myrrh she
carries in her bosom, as the henna-flowers that bloom in the vineyards
of far-off Engedi.
Clearly Solomon has made a clumsy move. This shy bird is not of the
common species with which he is familiar. He must aim higher if he
would bring down his quarry. She is not to be classed with the wares
of the matrimonial market that are only waiting to be assigned to the
richest bidder. She cannot be bought even by the wealth of a king's
treasury. But if there is a woman who can resist the charms of finery,
is there one who can stand against the admiration of her personal
beauty? A man of Solomon's experience would scarcely believe that such
was to be found. Nevertheless now the sex he estimates too lightly is
to be vindicated, while the king himself is to be taught a wholesome
lesson. He may call her fair; he may praise her dove-like eyes.[24]
His flattery is lost upon her. She only thinks of the beauty of her
shepherd lad, and pictures to herself the green bank on which they
used to sit, with the cedars and firs for the beams and roof of their
trysting-place.[25] Her language carries us away from the gilded
splendour and close, perfumed atmosphere of the royal palace to scenes
such as Shakespeare presents in the forest of Arden and the haunts of
Titania, and Milton in the Mask of _Comus_. Here is a Hebrew lady
longing to escape from the clutches of one who for all his glory is
not without some of the offensive traits of the monster Comus. She
thinks of herself as a wild flower, like the crocus that grows on the
plains of Sharon or the lily (literally the anemone) that is sprinkled
so freely over the upland valleys.[26] The open country is the natural
_habitat_ of such a plant, not the stifling court. Solomon catches at
her beautiful imagery. Compared with other maidens she is like a lily
among thorns.[27]
[24] i. 15.
[25] i. 16, 17.
[26] ii. 1.
[27] ii. 2.
And now these scenes of nature carry the persecuted girl away in a
sort of reverie. If she is like the tender flower, her lover resembles
the apple tree at the foot of which it nestles, a tree the shadow of
which is delightful and its fruit sweet.[28] She remembers how he
brought her to his banqueting house; that rustic bower was a very
different place from the grand divan on which she had seen Solomon
sitting at his table. No purple hangings like those of the king's
palace there screened her from the sun. The only banner her shepherd
could spread over her was love, his own love.[29] But what could be a
more perfect shelter?
[28] ii. 3.
[29] ii. 4.
She is fainting. How she longs for her lover to comfort her! She has
just compared him to an apple tree; now the refreshment she hungers
for is the fruit of this tree; that is to say, his love.[30] Oh that
he would put his arms round her and support her, as in the old happy
days before she had been snatched away from him![31]
[30] ii. 5.
[31] ii. 6.
Next follows a verse which is repeated later, and so serves as a sort
of refrain.[32] The Shulammite adjures the daughters of Jerusalem not
to awaken love. This verse is misrendered in the Authorised Version,
which inserts the pronoun "my" before "love" without any warrant in
the Hebrew text. The poor girl has spoken of apples. But the court
ladies must not misunderstand her. She wants none of their love
apples,[33] no philtre, no charm to turn her affections away from her
shepherd lover and pervert them to the importunate royal suitor. The
opening words of the poem which celebrated the charms of Solomon had
been aimed in that direction. The motive of the work seems to be the
Shulammite's resistance to various attempts to move her from loyalty
to her true love. It is natural, therefore, that an appeal to desist
from all such attempts should come out emphatically.
[32] ii. 7.
[33] See Gen. xxx. 14.
The poem takes a new turn. In imagination the Shulammite hears the
voice of her beloved. She pictures him standing at the foot of the
lofty rock on which the harem is built, and crying,--
"Oh, my dove, that art in the clefts of the rock, in the cover
of the steep place,
Let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice;
For sweet is thy voice, and thy countenance is comely."[34]
[34] ii. 14.
He is like a troubadour singing to his imprisoned lady-love; and she,
in her soliloquys, though not by any means a "high-born maiden," may
call to mind the simile in Shelley's _Skylark_:--
"Like a high-born maiden
In a palace tower,
Soothing her love-laden
Soul in secret hour,
With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower."
She remembers how her lover had come to her bounding over the hills
"like a roe or a young hart,"[35] and peeping in at her lattice; and
she repeats the song with which he had called her out--one of the
sweetest songs of spring that ever was sung.[36] In our own green
island we acknowledge that this is the most beautiful season of all
the round year; but in Palestine it stands out in more strongly
pronounced contrast to the three other seasons, and it is in itself
exceedingly lovely. While summer and autumn are there parched with
drought, barren and desolate, and while winter is often dreary with
snow-storms and floods of rain, in spring the whole land is one lovely
garden, ablaze with richest hues, hill and dale, wilderness and
farmland vying in the luxuriance of their wild flowers, from the red
anemone that fires the steep sides of the mountains to the purple and
white cyclamen that nestles among the rocks at their feet. Much of the
beauty of this poem is found in the fact that it is pervaded by the
spirit of an eastern spring. This makes it possible to introduce a
wealth of beautiful imagery which would not have been appropriate if
any other season had been chosen. Even more lovely in March than
England is in May, Palestine comes nearest to the appearance of our
country in the former month; so that this poem, that is so completely
bathed in the atmosphere of early spring, calls up echoes of the
exquisite English garden pictures in Shelley's _Sensitive Plant_ and
Tennyson's _Maud_. But it is not only beauty of imagery that our poet
gains by setting his work in this lovely season. His ideas are all in
harmony with the period of the year he describes so charmingly. It is
the time of youth and hope, of joy and love--especially of love, for,
"In the spring a young man's fancy
Lightly turns to thoughts of love."
[35] ii. 9.
[36] ii. 11-13.
There is even a deeper association between the ideas of the poem and
the season in which it is set. None of the freshness of spring is to
be found about Solomon and his harem, but it is all present in the
Shulammite and her shepherd; and spring scenes and thoughts powerfully
aid the motive of the poem in accentuating the contrast between the
tawdry magnificence of the court and the pure, simple beauty of the
country life to which the heroine of the poem clings so faithfully.
The Shulammite answers her lover in an old ditty about "the little
foxes that spoil the vineyards."[37] He would recognise that, and so
discover her presence. We are reminded of the legend of Richard's page
finding his master by singing a familiar ballad outside the walls of
the castle in the Tyrol where the captive crusader was imprisoned.
This is all imaginary. And yet the faithful girl knows in her heart
that her beloved is hers and that she is his, although in sober
reality he is now feeding his flocks in the far-off flowery fields of
her old home.[38] There he must remain till the cool of the evening,
till the shadows melt into the darkness of night, when she would fain
he returned to her, coming over the rugged mountains "like a roe or a
young hart."[39]
[37] ii. 15.
[38] ii. 16.
[39] ii. 17.
Now the Shulammite tells a painful dream.[40] She dreamed that she had
lost her lover, and that she rose up at night and went out into the
streets seeking him. At first she failed to find him. She asked the
watchmen whom she met on their round, if they had seen him whom her
soul loved. They could not help her quest. But a little while after
leaving them she discovered the missing lover, and brought him safely
into her mother's house.
[40] iii. 1-4.
After a repetition of the warning to the daughters of Jerusalem not to
awaken love,[41] we are introduced to a new scene.[42] It is by one of
the gates of Jerusalem, where the country maiden has been brought in
order that she may be impressed by the gorgeous spectacle of Solomon
returning from a royal progress. The king comes up from the wilderness
in clouds of perfume, guarded by sixty men-at-arms, and borne in a
magnificent palanquin of cedar-wood, with silver posts, a floor of
gold, and purple cushions, wearing on his head the crown with which
his mother had crowned him. Is the mention of the mother of Solomon
intended to be specially significant? Remember--she was Bathsheba!
The allusion to such a woman would not be likely to conciliate the
pure young girl who was not in the least degree moved by this attempt
to charm her with a scene of exceptional magnificence.
[41] iii. 5.
[42] iii. 6-11
Solomon now appears again, praising his captive in extravagant
language of courtly flattery. He praises her dove-like eyes, her
voluminous black hair, her rosy lips, her noble brow (not even
disguised by her veil), her towering neck, her tender bosom--lovely as
twin gazelles that feed among the lilies. Like her lover, who is
necessarily away with his flock, Solomon will leave her till the cool
of the evening, till the shadows melt into night; but he has no
pastoral duties to attend to, and though the delicate balancing and
assimilation of phrase and idea is gracefully manipulated, there is a
change. The king will go to "mountains of myrrh" and "hills of
frankincense,"[43] to make his person more fragrant, and so, as he
hopes, more welcome.
[43] iv. 6.
If we adopt the "shepherd hypothesis" the next section of the poem
must be assigned to the rustic lover.[44] It is difficult to believe
that this peasant would be allowed to speak to a lady in the royal
harem. We might suppose that here and perhaps also in the earlier
scene the shepherd is represented as actually present at the foot of
the rock on which the palace stands. Otherwise this also must be taken
as an imaginary scene, or as a reminiscence of the dreamy girl.
Although a thread of unity runs through the whole poem, Goethe was
clearly correct in calling it "a medley." Scenes real and imaginary
melting one into another cannot take their places in a regular drama.
But when we grant full liberty to the imaginary element there is less
necessity to ask what is subjective and what objective, what only
fancied by the Shulammite and what intended to be taken as an actual
occurrence. Strictly speaking, nothing is actual; the whole poem is a
highly imaginative series of fancy pictures illustrating the
development of its leading ideas.
[44] iv. 8-15.
Next--whether we take it as in imagination or in fact--the shepherd
lover calls his bride to follow him from the most remote regions. His
language is entirely different from that of the magnificent monarch.
He does not waste his breath in formal compliments, high-flown
imagery, wearisome lists of the charms of the girl he loves. That was
the clumsy method of the king; clumsy, though reflecting the finished
manners of the court, in comparison with the genuine outpourings of
the heart of a country lad. The shepherd is eloquent with the
inspiration of true love; his words throb and glow with genuine
emotion; there is a fine, wholesome passion in them. The love of his
bride has ravished his heart. How beautiful is her love! He is
intoxicated with it more than with wine. How sweet are her words of
tender affection, like milk and honey! She is so pure, there is
something sisterly in her love with all its warmth. And she is so near
to him that she is almost like part of himself, as his own sister.
This holy and close relationship is in startling contrast to the only
thing known as love in the royal harem. It is as much more lofty and
noble as it is more strong and deep than the jaded emotions of the
court. The sweet pure maiden is to the shepherd like a garden the gate
of which is barred against trespassers, like a spring shut off from
casual access, like a sealed fountain--sealed to all but one, and,
happy man, he is that one. To him she belongs, to him alone. She is a
garden, yes, a most fragrant garden, an orchard of pomegranates full
of rich fruit, crowded with sweet-scented plants--henna and spikenard
and saffron, calamus and cinnamon and all kinds of frankincense, myrrh
and aloes and the best of spices. She is a fountain in the garden,
sealed to all others, but not stinted towards the one she loves. To
him she is as a well of living waters, like the full-fed streams that
flow from Lebanon.
The maiden is supposed to hear the song of love. She replies in
fearless words of welcome, bidding the north wind awake, and the south
wind too, that the fragrance of which her lover has spoken so
enthusiastically may flow out more richly than ever. For his sake she
would be more sweet and loving. All she possesses is for him. Let him
come and take possession of his own.[45]
[45] iv. 16.
What lover could turn aside from such a rapturous invitation? The
shepherd takes his bride; he enters his garden, gathers his myrrh and
spice, eats his honey and drinks his wine and milk, and calls on his
friends to feast and drink with him.[46] This seems to point to the
marriage of the couple and their wedding feast; a view of the passage
which interpreters who regard Solomon as the lover throughout for the
most part take, but one which has this fatal objection, that it leaves
the second half of the poem without a motive. On the hypothesis of the
shepherd lover it is still more difficult to suppose the wedding to
have occurred at the point we have now reached, for the distraction
of the royal courtship still proceeds in subsequent passages of the
poem. It would seem, then, that we must regard this as quite an ideal
scene. It may, however, be taken as a reminiscence of an earlier
passage in the lives of the two lovers. It is not impossible that it
refers to their wedding, and that they had been married before the
action of the whole story began. In that case we should have to
suppose that Solomon's officers had carried off a young bride to the
royal harem. The intensity of the love and the bitterness of the
separation apparent throughout the poem would be the more intelligible
if this were the situation. It is to be remembered that Shakespeare
ascribes the climax of the love and grief of Romeo and Juliet to a
time after their marriage. But the difficulty of accepting this view
lies in the improbability that so outrageous a crime would be
attributed to Solomon, although it must be admitted that the guilty
conduct of his father and mother had gone a long way in setting an
example for the violation of the marriage tie. In dealing with vague
and dreamy poetry such as that of the Song of Solomon, it is not
possible to determine a point like this with precision; nor is it
necessary to do so. The beauty and force of the passage now before us
centre in the perfect mutual love of the two young hearts that here
show themselves to be knit together as one, whether already actually
married or not yet thus externally united.
[46] v. 1.
CHAPTER III
_LOVE UNQUENCHABLE_
CHAPTER v. 1-viii
We have seen how this strange poem mingles fact and fancy, memory and
reverie, in what would be hopeless confusion if we could not detect a
common prevailing sentiment and one aim towards which the whole is
tending, with all its rapidly shifting scenes and all its perplexingly
varying movements. The middle of the poem attains a perfect climax of
love and rapture. Then we are suddenly transported to an entirely
different scene. The Shulammite recites a second dream, which somewhat
resembles her former dream, but is more vivid and intense, and ends
very painfully.[47] The circumstances of it will agree most readily
with the idea that she is already married to the shepherd. Again it is
a dream of the loss of her lover, and of her search for him by night
in the streets of Jerusalem. But in the present case he was first
close to her, and then he deserted her most unaccountably; and when
she went to look for him this time she failed to find him, and met
with cruel ill-treatment. In her dream she fancies she hears the
bridegroom knocking at her chamber door and calling upon her as his
sister, his love, his dove, his undefiled, to open to him. He has
just returned from tending his flock in the night, and his hair is wet
with the dew. The bride coyly excuses herself, on the plea that she
has laid aside her mantle and washed her feet; as though it would vex
her to put her feet to the ground again. This is but the playful
reluctance of love; for no sooner is her beloved really lost than she
undertakes the greatest trouble in the search for him. When he puts in
his hand to lift the latch, her heart is moved towards him, and she
rises to open the door. On touching the lock she finds it covered with
liquid myrrh. It has been ingeniously suggested that we have here a
reference to the construction of an eastern lock, with a wooden pin
dropped into the bolt, which is intended to be lifted by a key, but
which may be raised by a man's finger if he is provided with some
viscid substance, such as the ointment here mentioned, to adhere to
the pin. The little detail shews that the lover or bridegroom had come
with the deliberate intention of entering. How strange, then, that
when the bride opens the door he is not to be seen! Why has he fled?
The shock of this surprise quite overwhelms the poor girl, and she is
on the point of fainting. She looks about for her vanished lover, and
calls him by name; but there is no answer. She goes out to seek for
him in the streets, and there the watchmen cuff and bruise her, and
the sentry on the city walls rudely tear off her veil.
[47] v. 2-7.
Returning from the distressing recollection of her dream to the
present condition of affairs, the sorrowful Shulammite adjures the
daughters of Jerusalem to tell her if they have found her love.[48]
They respond by asking, what is her beloved more than any other
beloved?[49] This mocking question of the harem women rouses the
Shulammite, and affords an opportunity for descanting on the beauty of
her love.[50] He is both fair and ruddy, the chiefest among ten
thousand. For this is what he is like: a head splendid as finest gold;
massive, curling, raven locks; eyes like doves by water brooks, and
looking as though they had been washed in milk--an elaborate image in
which the soft iris and the sparkling light on the pupils suggest the
picture of the gentle birds brooding on the bank of a flashing stream,
and the pure, healthy eyeballs a thought of the whiteness of milk;
cheeks fragrant as spices; lips red as lilies (the blood-red
anemones); a body like ivory, with blue veins as of sapphire; legs
like marble columns on golden bases. The aspect of him is like great
Lebanon, splendid as the far-famed cedars; and when he opens his lips
his voice is ravishingly sweet. Yes, he is altogether lovely. Such is
her beloved, her dearest one.
[48] v. 8.
[49] v. 9.
[50] v. 10-16.
The mocking ladies ask their victim where then has this paragon
gone?[51] She would have them understand that he has not been so cruel
as really to desert her. It was only in her dream that he treated her
with such unaccountable fickleness. The plain fact is that he is away
at his work on his far-off farm, feeding his flock, and perhaps
gathering a posy of flowers for his bride.[52] He is far away,--that
sad truth cannot be denied; and yet he is not really lost, for love
laughs at time and distance; the poor lonely girl can say still that
she is her beloved's and that he is hers.[53] The reappearance of this
phrase suggests that it is intended to serve as a sort of refrain.
Thus it comes in with admirable fitness to balance the other refrain
to which reference has been made earlier.[54] In the first refrain the
daughters of Jerusalem are besought not to attempt to awaken the
Shulammite's love for Solomon; this is well balanced by the refrain in
which she declares the constancy of the mutual love that exists
between herself and the shepherd.
[51] vi. 1.
[52] vi. 2.
[53] vi. 3.
[54] Page 20.
Now Solomon reappears on the scene, and resumes his laudation of the
Shulammite's beauty.[55] But there is a marked change in his manner.
This most recent capture is quite unlike the sort of girls with whom
his harem was stocked from time to time. He had no reverence for any
of them; they all considered themselves to be highly honoured by his
favour, all adored him with slavish admiration, like that expressed by
one of them in the first line of the poem. But he is positively afraid
of the Shulammite. She is "terrible as an army with banners." He
cannot bear to look at her eyes; he begs her to turn them away from
him, for they have overcome him. What is the meaning of this new
attitude on the part of the mighty monarch? There is something awful
in the simple peasant girl. The purity, the constancy, the cold scorn
with which she regards the king, are as humiliating as they are novel
in his experience. Yet it is well for him that he is susceptible to
their influence. He is greatly injured and corrupted by the manners of
a luxurious oriental court. But he is not a seared profligate. The
vision of goodness startles him; then there is a better nature in him,
and its slumbering powers are partly roused by this unexpected
apparition.
[55] vi. 4-7.
We have now reached a very important point in the poem. It is almost
impossible to reconcile this with the theory that Solomon is the one
and only lover referred to throughout. But on the "shepherd
hypothesis" the position is most significant. The value of constancy
in love is not only seen in the steadfast character of one who is
sorely tempted to yield to other influences; it is also apparent in
the effects on a spectator of so uncongenial a nature as king Solomon.
Thus the poet brings out the great idea of his work most vividly. He
could not have done so more forcibly than by choosing the court of
Solomon for the scene of the trial, and shewing the startling effect
of the noble virtue of constancy on the king himself.
Here we are face to face with one of the rescuing influences of life,
which may be met in various forms. A true woman, an innocent child, a
pure man, coming across the path of one who has permitted himself to
slide down towards murky depths, arrests his attention with a painful
shock of surprise. The result is a revelation to him, in the light of
which he discovers, to his horror, how far he has fallen. It is a sort
of incarnate conscience warning him of the still lower degradation
towards which he is sinking. Perhaps it strikes him as a beacon light,
shewing the path up to purity and peace; an angel from heaven sent to
help him retrace his steps and return to his better self. Few men are
so abandoned as never to be visited by some such gleam from higher
regions. To many, alas, it comes but as the temporary rift in the
clouds through which for one brief moment the blue sky becomes visible
even on a wild and stormy day, soon to be lost in deeper darkness.
Happy are they who obey its unexpected message.
The concluding words of the passage which opens with Solomon's praises
of the Shulammite present another of the many difficulties with which
the poem abounds. Mention is made of Solomon's sixty queens, his
eighty concubines, his maidens without number; and then the Shulammite
is contrasted with this vast seraglio as "My dove, my undefiled," who
is "but one"--"the only one of her mother."[56] Who is speaking here?
If this is a continuation of Solomon's speech, as the flow of the
verses would suggest, it must mean that the king would set his newest
acquisition quite apart from all the ladies of the harem, as his
choice and treasured bride. Those who regard Solomon as the lover,
think they see here what they call his conversion, that is to say, his
turning away from polygamy to monogamy. History knows of no such
conversion; and it is hardly likely that a poet of the northern
kingdom would go out of his way to whitewash the matrimonial
reputation of a sovereign from whom the house of Judah was descended.
Besides, the occurrence here represented bears a very dubious
character when we consider that all the existing denizens of the harem
were to be put aside in favour of a new beauty. It would have been
more like a genuine conversion if Solomon had gone back to the love of
his youth, and confined his affections to his neglected first wife.
[56] vi. 8, 9.
On the shepherd hypothesis it is most natural to attribute the passage
to the shepherd himself. But since it is difficult to imagine him
present at this scene between Solomon and the Shulammite, it seems
that we must fall back on the idealising character of the poem. In
this figurative way the true lover expresses his contempt for the
monstrous harem at the palace. He is content with his one ewe lamb;
nay, she is more to him than all Solomon's bevy of beauties; even
these ladies of the court are now constrained to praise the noble
qualities of his bride.
Solomon's expression of awe for the terrible purity and constancy of
the Shulammite is repeated,[57] and then she tells the story of her
capture.[58] She had gone down to the nut garden to look at the fresh
green on the plants, and to see whether the vines were budding and the
pomegranates putting forth their lovely scarlet blossoms, when
suddenly, and all unawares, she was pounced upon by the king's people
and whisked away in one of his chariots. It is a vivid scene, and,
like other scenes in this poem, the background of it is the lovely
aspect of nature in early spring.
[57] vi. 10.
[58] Vers. 11, 12.
The Shulammite now seems to be attempting a retreat, and the ladies of
the court bid her return; they would see the performance of a
favourite dance, known as "The Dance of Mahanaim."[59] Thereupon we
have a description of the performer, as she was seen during the
convolutions of the dance, dressed in a transparent garment of red
gauze,--perhaps such as is represented in Pompeian frescoes,--so that
her person could be compared to pale wheat surrounded by crimson
anemones.[60] It is quite against the tenor of her conduct to suppose
that the modest country girl would degrade herself by ministering to
the amusement of a corrupt court in this shameless manner. It is more
reasonable to conclude that the entertainment was given by a
professional dancer from among the women of the harem. We have a hint
that this is the case in the title applied to the performer, in
addressing whom Solomon exclaims, "O prince's daughter,"[61]] an
expression never used for the poor Shulammite, and one from which we
should gather that she was a captive princess who had been trained as
a court dancer. The glimpse of the manners of the palace helps to
strengthen the contrast of the innocent, simple country life in which
the Shulammite delights.
[59] vi. 13. This is obscured in the Authorised Version.
[60] vii. 1-9.
[61] vii 1.
It has been suggested, with some degree of probability, that the
Shulammite is supposed to make her escape while the attention of the
king and his court is diverted by this entrancing spectacle. It is to
be observed, at all events, that from this point onwards to the end of
the poem, neither Solomon nor the daughters of Jerusalem take any part
in the dialogue, while the scene appears to be shifted to the
Shulammite's home in the country, where she and the shepherd are now
seen together in happy companionship. The bridegroom has come to fetch
his bride. Again she owns that she is his, and delights in the glad
thought that his heart goes out to her.[62] She bids him come with her
into the field, and lodge in the villages. They will get them early
into the vineyards and see whether the vines are blooming, and whether
the pomegranates are in blossom.[63] It is still early spring. It was
early spring when she was snatched away. Unless she had been a whole
year at the palace,--an impossible situation with the king continuing
his ineffectual courtship for so long a time,--we have no movement of
time. But the series of events from the day when the Shulammite was
seized in her nut garden, till she found herself back again in her
home in the north country, after the trying episode of her temporary
residence in the royal palace, must have occupied some weeks. And yet
the conclusion of the story is set in precisely the same stage of
spring, the time when people look for the first buds and blossoms, as
the opening scenes. It has been proposed to confine the whole action
to the northern district, where Solomon might have had a country house
adjoining his vineyard.[64] The presence of the "daughters of
Jerusalem," and allusions to the streets of the city, its watchmen,
and the guard upon the walls, are against this notion. It is better to
conclude that we have here another instance of the idealism of the
poem. Since early spring is the season that harmonises most perfectly
with the spirit of the whole work, the author does not trouble himself
with adapting its scenes in a realistic manner to the rapidly changing
aspects of nature.
[62] vii. 10.
[63] vii. 11-13.
[64] viii. 11.
The shepherd has addressed the Shulammite as his sister;[65] she now
reciprocates the title by expressing her longing that he had been as
her brother.[66] This singular mode of courtship between two lovers
who are so passionately devoted to one another that we might call them
the Hebrew Romeo and Juliet, is not without significance. Its
recurrence, now on the lips of the bride, helps to sharpen still more
the contrast between what passes for love in the royal harem, and the
true emotion experienced by a pair of innocent young people, unsullied
by the corruptions of the court--illustrating, as it does at once, its
sweet intimacy and its perfect purity.
[65] viii. 1.
[66] viii. 1.
The proud bride would now lead her swain to her mother's house.[67]
There is no mention of her father; apparently he is not living. But
the fond way in which this simple girl speaks of her mother reveals
another lovely trait in her character. She has witnessed the wearisome
magnificence of Solomon's palace. It was impossible to associate the
idea of home with such a place. We never hear the daughters of
Jerusalem, those poor degraded women of the harem, speaking of their
mothers. But to the Shulammite no spot on earth is so dear as her
mother's cottage. There her lover shall have spiced wine and
pomegranate juice--simple home-made country beverages.[68] Repeating
one of the early refrains of the poem, the happy bride is not afraid
to say that there too her husband shall support her in his strong
embrace.[69] She then repeats another refrain, and for the last
time--surely one would say now, quite superfluously--she adjures the
daughters of Jerusalem not to awaken any love for Solomon in her, but
to leave love to its spontaneous course.[70]
[67] viii. 2.
[68] viii. 2.
[69] viii. 3.
[70] viii. 4.
Now the bridegroom is seen coming up from the wilderness with his
bride leaning upon him, and telling how he first made love to her when
he found her asleep under an apple tree in the garden of the cottage
where she was born.[71] As they converse together we reach the richest
gem of the poem, the Shulammite's impassioned eulogy of love.[72] She
bids her husband set her as a seal upon his heart in the inner
sanctuary of his being, and as a seal upon his arm--always owning her,
always true to her in the outer world. She is to be his closely, his
openly, his for ever. She has proved her constancy to him; now she
claims his constancy to her. The foundation of this claim rests on the
very nature of love. The one essential characteristic here dwelt upon
is strength--"Love is strong as death." Who can resist grim death? who
escape its iron clutches? Who can resist mighty love, or evade its
power? The illustration is startling in the apparent incompatibility
of the two things drawn together for comparison. But it is a stern and
terrible aspect of love to which our attention is now directed. This
is apparent as the Shulammite proceeds to speak of jealousy which is
"hard as the grave." If love is treated falsely, it can flash out in a
flame of wrath ten times more furious than the raging of hatred--"a
most vehement flame of the Lord." This is the only place in which the
name of God appears throughout the whole poem. It may be said that
even here it only comes in according to a familiar Hebrew idiom, as
metaphor for what is very great. But the Shulammite has good reason
for claiming God to be on her side in the protection of her love from
cruel wrong and outrage. Love as she knows it is both unquenchable and
unpurchasable. She has tested and proved these two attributes in her
own experience. At the court of Solomon every effort was made to
destroy her love for the shepherd, and all possible means were
employed for buying her love for the king. Both utterly failed. All
the floods of scorn which the harem ladies poured over her love for
the country lad could not quench it; all the wealth of a kingdom could
not buy it for Solomon. Where true love exists, no opposition can
destroy it; where it is not, no money can purchase it. As for the
second idea--the purchasing of love--the Shulammite flings it away
with the utmost contempt. Yet this was the too common means employed
by a king such as Solomon for replenishing the stock of his harem.
Then the monarch was only pursuing a shadow; he was but playing at
love-making; he was absolutely ignorant of the reality.
[71] viii. 5.
[72] viii. 6, 7.
The vigour, one might say the rigour, of this passage distinguishes it
from nearly all other poetry devoted to the praises of love. That
poetry is usually soft and tender; sometimes it is feeble and sugary.
And yet it must be remembered that even the classical Aphrodite could
be terribly angry. There is nothing morbid or sentimental in the
Shulammite's ideas. She has discovered and proved by experience that
love is a mighty force, capable of heroic endurance, and able, when
wronged, to avenge itself with serious effect.
Towards the conclusion of the poem fresh speakers appear in the
persons of the Shulammite's brothers, who defend themselves from the
charge of negligence in having permitted their little sister to be
snatched away from their keeping, explaining how they have done their
best to guard her. Or perhaps they mean that they will be more careful
in protecting a younger sister. They will build battlements about her.
The Shulammite takes up the metaphor. She is safe now, as a wall well
embattled; at last she has found peace in the love of her husband.
Solomon may have a vineyard in her neighbourhood, and draw great
wealth from it with which to buy the wares in which he delights.[73]
It is nothing to her. She has her own vineyard. This reference to the
Shulammite's vineyard recalls the mention of it at the beginning of
the poem, and suggests the idea that in both cases the image
represents the shepherd lover. In the first instance she had not kept
her vineyard,[74] for she had lost her lover. Now she has him, and she
is satisfied.[75] He calls to her in the garden, longing to hear her
voice there,[76] and she replies, bidding him hasten and come to her
as she has described him coming before,--
"Like to a roe or a young hart
Upon the mountains of spices."[77]
[73] viii. 11.
[74] i. 6.
[75] viii. 12.
[76] viii. 13.
[77] viii. 14.
And so the poem sinks to rest in the happy picture of the union of the
two young lovers.
CHAPTER IV
_MYSTICAL INTERPRETATIONS_
Thus far we have been considering the bare, literal sense of the text.
It cannot be denied that, if only to lead up to the metaphorical
significance of the words employed, those words must be approached
through their primary physical meanings. This is essential even to the
understanding of pure allegory such as that of _The Faerie Queen_ and
_The Pilgrim's Progress_; we must understand the adventures of the Red
Cross Knight and the course of Christian's journey before we can learn
the moral of Spenser's and Bunyan's elaborate allegories. Similarly it
is absolutely necessary for us to have some idea of the movement of
the Song of Solomon as a piece of literature, in its external form,
even if we are persuaded that beneath this sensuous exterior it
contains the most profound ideas, before we can discover any such
ideas. In other words, if it is to be considered as a mass of
symbolism the symbols must be understood in themselves before their
significance can be drawn out of them.
But now we are confronted with the question whether the book has any
other meaning than that which meets the eye. The answers to this
question are given on three distinct lines:--First, we have the
_allegorical_ schemes of interpretation, according to which the poem
is not to be taken literally at all, but is to be regarded as a
purely metaphorical representation of national or Church history,
philosophical ideas, or spiritual experiences. In the second place, we
meet with various forms of double interpretation, described as
_typical_ or _mystical_, in which a primary meaning is allowed to the
book as a sort of drama or idyl, or as a collection of Jewish
love-songs, while a secondary signification of an ideal or spiritual
character is added. Distinct as these lines of interpretation are in
themselves, they tend to blend in practice, because even when two
meanings are admitted the symbolical signification is considered to be
of so much greater importance than the literal that it virtually
occupies the whole field. In the third place there is the _purely
literal_ interpretation, that which denies the existence of any
symbolical or mystical intention in the poem.
Allegorical interpretations of the Song of Solomon are found among the
Jews early in the Christian era. The Aramaic Targum, probably
originating about the sixth century A.D., takes the first half of the
poem as a symbolical picture of the history of Israel previous to the
captivity, and the second as a prophetic picture of the subsequent
fortunes of the nation. The recurrence of the expression "the
congregation of Israel" in this paraphrase wherever the Shulammite
appears, and other similar adaptations, entirely destroy the fine
poetic flavour of the work, and convert it into a dreary, dry-as-dust
composition.
Symbolical interpretations were very popular among Christian
Fathers--though not with universal approval, as the protest of
Theodore of Mopsuestia testifies. The great Alexandrian Origen is the
founder and patron of this method of interpreting the Song of Solomon
in the Church. Jerome was of opinion that Origen "surpassed himself"
in his commentary on the poem--a commentary to which he devoted ten
volumes. According to his view, it was originally an epithalamium
celebrating the marriage of Solomon with Pharaoh's daughter; but it
has secondary mystical meanings descriptive of the relation of the
Redeemer to the Church or the individual soul. Thus "the little foxes
that spoil the grapes" are evil thoughts in the individual, or
heretics in the Church. Gregory the Great contributes a commentary of
no lasting interest. Very different is the work of the great mediæval
monk St. Bernard of Clairvaux, who threw himself into it with all the
passion and rapture of his enthusiastic soul, and in the course of
eighty-six homilies only reached the beginning of the third chapter in
this to him inexhaustible mine of spiritual wealth, when he died,
handing on the task to his faithful disciple Gilbert Porretanus, who
continued it on the same portentous scale, and also died before he had
finished the fifth chapter. Even while reading the old monkish Latin
in this late age we cannot fail to feel the glowing devotion that
inspires it. Bernard is addressing his monks, to whom he says he need
not give the milk for babes, and whom he exhorts to prepare their
throats not for this milk but for bread. As a schoolman he cannot
escape from metaphysical subtleties--he takes the kiss of the
bridegroom as a symbol of the incarnation. But throughout there burns
the perfect rapture of love to Jesus Christ which inspires his
well-known hymns. Here we are at the secret of the extraordinary
popularity of mystical interpretations of the Song of Solomon. It has
seemed to many in all ages of the Christian Church to afford the best
expression for the deepest spiritual relations of Christ and His
people. Nevertheless, the mystical method has been widely disputed
since the time of the Reformation. Luther complains of the "many wild
and monstrous interpretations" that are attached to the Song of
Solomon, though even he understands it as symbolical of Solomon and
his state. Still, not a few of the most popular hymns of our own day
are saturated with ideas and phrases gathered from this book, and
fresh expositions of what are considered to be its spiritual lessons
may still be met with.
It is not easy to discover any justification for the rabbinical
explanation of the Song of Solomon as a representation of successive
events in the history of Israel, an explanation which Jewish scholars
have abandoned in favour of simple literalism. But the mystical view,
according to which the poem sets forth spiritual ideas, has pleas
urged in its favour that demand some consideration. We are reminded of
the analogy of Oriental literature, which delights in parable to an
extent unknown in the West. Works of a kindred nature are produced in
which an allegorical signification is plainly intended. Thus the
Hindoo Gilagovinda celebrates the loves of Chrishna and Radha in
verses that bear a remarkable resemblance to the Song of Solomon.
Arabian poets sing of the love of Joseph for Zuleikha, which mystics
take as the love of God towards the soul that longs for union with
Him. There is a Turkish mystical commentary on the Song of Hafiz.
The bible itself furnishes us with suggestive analogies. Throughout
the Old Testament the idea of a marriage union between God and His
people occurs repeatedly, and the most frequent metaphor for religious
apostasy is drawn from the crime of adultery.[78] This symbolism is
especially prominent in the writings of Jeremiah[79] and Hosea.[80]
The forty-fifth psalm is an epithalamium commonly read with a
Messianic signification. John the Baptist describes the coming Messiah
as the Bridegroom,[81] and Jesus Christ accepts the title for
Himself.[82] Our Lord illustrates the blessedness of the Kingdom of
Heaven in a parable of a wedding feast.[83] With St. Paul the union of
husband and wife is an earthly copy of the union of Christ and his
Church.[84] The marriage of the Lamb is a prominent feature in the
Book of the Revelation.[85]
[78] _E.g._ Exod. xxxiv. 15, 16; Numb. xv. 39; Psalm lxxiii. 27; Ezek.
xvi. 23, etc.
[79] _E.g._ Jer. iii. 1-11.
[80] Hosea ii. 2.; iii. 3.
[81] John iii. 29.
[82] Mark. ii. 19.
[83] Matt. xxii. 1-14.
[84] Eph. v. 22-33.
[85] Rev. xxi. 9.
Further, it may be maintained that the experience of Christians has
demonstrated the aptness of the expression of the deepest spiritual
truths in the imagery of the Song of Solomon. Sad hearts disappointed
in their earthly hopes have found in the religious reading of this
poem as a picture of their relation to their Saviour the satisfaction
for which they have hungered, and which the world could never give
them. Devout Christians have read in it the very echo of their own
emotions. Samuel Rutherford's _Letters_, for example, are in perfect
harmony with the religious interpretation of the Song of Solomon; and
these letters stand in the first rank of devotional works. There is
certainly some force in the argument that a key which seems to fit the
lock so well must have been designed to do so.
On the other hand, the objections to a mystical, religious
interpretation are very strong. In the first place, we can quite
account for its appearance apart from any justification of it in the
original intention of the author. Allegory was in the air at the time
when, as far as we know, secondary meanings were first attached to the
ideas of the Song of Solomon. They sprang from Alexandria, the home of
allegory. Origen, who was the first Christian writer to work out a
mystical explanation of this book, treated other books of the Old
Testament in exactly the same way; but we never dream of following him
in his fantastical interpretations of those works. There is no
indication that the poem was understood allegorically or mystically as
early as the first century of the Christian era. Philo is the prince
of allegorists; but while he explains the narratives of the Pentateuch
according to his favourite method, he never applies that method to
this very tempting book, and never even mentions the work or makes any
reference to its contents. The Song of Solomon is not once mentioned
or even alluded to in the slightest way by any writer of the New
Testament. Since it is never noticed by Christ or the Apostles, of
course we cannot appeal to their authority for reading it mystically;
and yet it was undoubtedly known to them as one of the books in the
canon of the sacred Scriptures to which they were in the habit of
appealing repeatedly. Consider the grave significance of this fact.
All secondary interpretations of which we know anything, and, as far
as we can tell, all that ever existed, had their origin in
post-apostolic times. If we would justify this method by authority it
is to the Fathers that we must go, not to Christ and or his apostles,
not to the sacred Scriptures. It is a noteworthy fact, too, that the
word _Eros_, the Greek name for the love of man and woman, as
distinguished from _Agape_, which stands for love in the widest sense
of the word, is first applied to our Lord by Ignatius. Here we have
the faint beginning of the stream of erotic religious fancies which
sometimes manifests itself most objectionably in subsequent Church
history. There is not a trace of it in the New Testament.
If the choice spiritual ideas which some people think they see in the
Song of Solomon are not imported by the reader, but form part of the
genuine contents of the book, how comes it that this fact was not
recognised by one of the inspired writers of the New Testament? or, if
privately recognised, that it was never utilised? In the hands of the
mystical interpreter this work is about the most valuable part of the
Old Testament. He finds it to be an inexhaustible mine of the most
precious treasures. Why, then, was such a remunerative lode never
worked by the first authorities in Christian teaching? It may be
replied that we cannon prove much from a bare negative. The apostles
may have had their own perfectly sufficient reasons for leaving to the
Church of later ages the discovery of this valuable spiritual store.
Possibly the converts of their day were not ripe for the comprehension
of the mysteries here expounded. Be that as it may, clearly the onus
_probandi_ rests with those people of a later age who introduce a
method of interpretation for which no sanction can be found in
Scripture.
Now the analogies that have been referred to are not sufficient to
establish any proof. In the case of the other poems mentioned above
there are distinct indications of symbolical intentions. Thus in the
_Gitagovinda_ the hero is a divinity whose incarnations are
acknowledged in Hindoo mythology; and the concluding verse of that
poem points the moral by a direct assertion of the religious meaning
of the whole composition. This is not the case with the Song of
Solomon. We must not be misled by the chapter-headings in our English
Bibles, which of course are not to be found in the original Hebrew
text. From the first line to the last there is not the slightest hint
in the poem itself that it was intended to be read in any mystical
sense. This is contrary to the analogy of all allegories. The parable
may be difficult to interpret, but at all events it must suggest that
it is a parable; otherwise it defeats its own object. If the writer
never drops any hint that he has wrapped up spiritual ideas in the
sensuous imagery of his poetry, what right has he to expect that
anybody will find them there, so long as his poem admits of a
perfectly adequate explanation in a literal sense? We need not be so
dense as to require the allegorist to say to us in so many words:
"This is a parable." But we may justly expect him to furnish us with
some hint that his utterance is of such a character. Æsop's fables
carry their lessons on the surface of them, so that we can often
anticipate the concluding morals that are attached to them. When
Tennyson announced that the _Idyls of the King_ constituted an
allegory most people were taken by surprise; and yet the analogy of
_The Faerie Queen_, and the lofty ethical ideas with which the poems
are inspired, might have prepared us for the revelation. But we have
no similar indications in the case of the Song of Solomon. If somebody
were to propound a new theory of _The Vicar of Wakefield_, which
should turn that exquisite tale into a parable of the Fall, it would
not be enough for him to exercise his ingenuity in pointing out
resemblances between the eighteenth-century romance and the ancient
narrative of the serpent's doings in the Garden of Eden. Since he
could not shew that Goldsmith had the slightest intention of teaching
anything of the kind, his exploit could be regarded as nothing but a
piece of literary trifling.
The Biblical analogies already cited, in which the marriage relation
between God or Christ and the Church or the soul are referred to, will
not bear the strain that is put upon them when they are brought
forward in order to justify a mystical interpretation of the Song of
Solomon. At best they simply account for the emergence of this view of
the book at a later time, or indicate that such a notion might be
maintained if there were good reasons for adopting it. They cannot
prove that in the present case it should be adopted. Moreover, they
differ from it on two important points. _First_, in harmony with all
genuine allegories and metaphors, they carry their own evidence of a
symbolical meaning, which as we have seen the Song of Solomon fails to
do. _Second_, they are not elaborate compositions of a dramatic or
idyllic character in which the passion of love is vividly illustrated.
Regarded in its entirety, the Song of Solomon is quite without
parallel in Scripture. It may be replied that we cannot disprove the
allegorical intention of the book. But this is not the question. That
intention requires to be proved; and until it is proved, or at least
until some very good reasons are urged for adopting it, no statement
of bare possibilities counts for anything.
But we may push the case further. There is a positive improbability of
the highest order that the spiritual ideas read into the Song of
Solomon by some of its Christian admirers should have been originally
there. This would involve the most tremendous anachronism in all
literature. The Song of Solomon is dated among the earlier works of
the Old Testament. But the religious ideas now associated with it
represent what is regarded as the fruit of the most advanced
saintliness ever attained in the Christian Church. Here we have a flat
contradiction to the growth of revelation manifested throughout the
whole course of Scripture history. We might as well ascribe the
Sistine Madonna to the fresco-painters of the catacombs; or, what is
more to the point, our Lord's discourse with his disciples at the
paschal meal to Solomon or some other Jew of his age.
No doubt the devoted follower of the mystical method will not be
troubled by considerations such as these. To him the supposed fitness
of the poem to convey his religious ideas is the one sufficient proof
of an original design that it should serve that end. So long as the
question is approached in this way, the absence of clear evidence only
delights the prejudiced commentator with the opportunity it affords
for the exercise of his ingenuity. To a certain school of readers the
very obscurity of a book is its fascination. The less obvious a
meaning is, the more eagerly do they set themselves to expound and
defend it. We could leave them to what might be considered a very
harmless diversion if it were not for other considerations. But we
cannot forget that it is just this ingenious way of interpreting the
Bible in accordance with preconceived opinions that has encouraged the
quotation of the Sacred Volume in favour of absolutely contradictory
propositions, an abuse which in its turn has provoked an inevitable
reaction leading to contempt for the Bible as an obscure book which
speaks with no certain voice.
Still, it may be contended, the analogy between the words of this poem
and the spiritual experience of Christians is in itself an indication
of intentional connection. Swedenborg has shewn that there are
correspondences between the natural and the spiritual, and this truth
is illustrated by the metaphorical references to marriage in the Bible
which have been adduced for comparison with the Song of Solomon. But
their very existence shows that analogies between religious experience
and the love story of the Shulammite may be traced out by the reader
without any design on the part of the author to present them. If they
are natural they are universal, and any love song will serve our
purpose. On this principle, if the Song of Solomon admits of mystical
adaptation, so do Mrs. Browning's _Sonnets from the Portuguese_.
We have no alternative, then, but to conclude that the mystical
interpretation of this work is based on a delusion. Moreover, it must
be added that the delusion is a mischievous one. No doubt to many it
has been as meat and drink. They have found in their reading of the
Song of Solomon real spiritual refreshment, or they believe they have
found it. But there is another side. The poem has been used to
minister to a morbid, sentimental type of religion. More than any
other influence, the mystical interpretation of this book has imported
an effeminate element into the notion of the love of Christ, not one
trace of which can be detected in the New Testament. The Catholic
legend of the marriage of St. Catherine is somewhat redeemed by the
high ascetic tone that pervades it; and yet it indicates a decline
from the standpoint of the apostles. Not a few unquestionable
revelations of immorality in convents have shed a ghastly light on the
abuse of erotic religious fervour. Among Protestants it cannot be said
that the most wholesome hymns are those which are composed on the
model of the Song of Solomon. In some cases the religious use of this
book is perfectly nauseous, indicating nothing less than a disease of
religion. When--as sometimes happens--frightful excesses of sensuality
follow close on seasons of what has been regarded as the revival of
religion, the common explanation of these horrors is that in some
mysterious way spiritual emotion lies very near to sensual appetite,
so that an excitement of the one tends to rouse the other. A more
revolting hypothesis, or one more insulting to religion, cannot be
imagined. The truth is, the two regions are separate as the poles. The
explanation of the phenomena of their apparent conjunction is to be
found in quite another direction. It is that their victims have
substituted for religion a sensuous excitement which is as little
religious as the elation that follows indulgence in alcoholism. There
is no more deadly temptation of the devil than that which hoodwinks
deluded fanatics into making this terrible mistake. But it can
scarcely be denied that the mystical reading of the Song of Solomon by
unspiritual persons, or even by any persons who are not completely
fortified against the danger, may tend in this fatal direction.
CHAPTER V
_CANONICITY_
It is scarcely to be expected that the view of the Song of Solomon
expounded in the foregoing pages will meet with acceptance from every
reader. A person who has been accustomed to resort to this book in
search of the deepest spiritual ideas cannot but regard the denial of
their presence with aversion. While, however, it is distressing to be
compelled to give pain to a devout soul, it may be necessary. If there
is weight in the considerations that have been engaging our attention,
we cannot shut our eyes to them simply because they may be
disappointing. The mystical interpreter will be shocked at what he
takes for irreverence. But, on the other hand, he should be on his
guard against falling into this very fault from the opposite side.
Reverence for truth is a primary Christian duty. The iconoclast is
certain to be charged with irreverence by the devotee of the popular
idol which he feels it his duty to destroy; and yet, if his action is
inspired by loyalty to truth, reverence for what he deems highest and
best may be its mainspring.
If the Song of Solomon were not one of the books of the Bible,
questions such as these would never arise. It is its place in the
sacred canon that induces people to resent the consequences of the
application of criticism to it. It is simply owing to its being a part
of the Bible that it has come to be treated mystically at all.
Undoubtedly this is why it was allegorised by the Jews. But, then, the
secondary signification thus acquired reacted upon it, and served as a
sort of buoy to float it over the rocks of awkward questions. The
result was that in the end the book attained to an exceptionally high
position in the estimation of the rabbis. Thus the great Rabbi Akiba
says: "The course of the ages cannot vie with the day on which the
Song of Songs was given to Israel. All the _Kethubim_ (_i.e._, the
_Hagiographa_) are holy, but the Song of Songs is a holy of holies."
Such being the case, it is manifest that the rejection of the mystical
signification of its contents must revive the question of the
canonicity of the book. We have not, however, to deal with the problem
of its original insertion in the canon. We find it there. Some doubts
as to its right to the place it holds seem to have been raised among
the Jews during the first century of the Christian era; but these
doubts were effectually borne down. As far as we know, the Song of
Solomon has always been a portion of the Hebrew Scriptures from the
obscure time when the collection of those Scriptures was completed. It
stands as the first of the five _Megilloth_, or sacred rolls--the
others being Ruth, Lamentations, Esther, and Ecclesiastes. We are not
now engaged in the difficult task of constructing a new canon. The
only possibility is that of the expulsion of a book already in the old
canon. But the attempt to disturb in any way such a volume as the Old
Testament, with all its incomparable associations, is not one to be
undertaken lightly or without adequate reason.
In order to justify this radical measure it would not be enough to
shew that the specific religious meanings that some have attached to
the Song of Solomon do not really belong to it. If it is said that the
secular tone it acquires under the hands of criticism shews it to be
unworthy of a place in the sacred Scriptures, this assertion goes upon
an unwarrantable assumption. We have no reason to maintain that all
the books of the Old Testament must be of equal value. The Book of
Esther does not reach a very high level of moral or religious worth;
the pessimism of Ecclesiastes is not inspiring; even the Book of
Proverbs contains maxims that cannot be elevated to a first place in
ethics. If we could discover no distinctively enlightening or
uplifting influence in the Song of Solomon, this would not be a
sufficient reason for raising a cry against it; because if it were
simply neutral in character, like nitrogen in the atmosphere, it would
do no harm, and we could safely let it be. The one justification for a
radical treatment of the question would be the discovery that the book
was false in doctrine or deleterious in character. As to doctrine, it
does not trench on that region at all. It would be as incongruous to
associate it with the grave charge of heresy as to bring a similar
accusation against the _Essays of Elia_ or Keats's poetry. And if the
view expressed in these pages is at all correct, it certainly cannot
be said that the moral tendency of the book is injurious; the very
reverse must be affirmed.
Since there is no reason to believe that the Song of Solomon had
received any allegorical interpretation before the commencement of the
Christian era, we must conclude that it was not on the ground of some
such interpretation that it was originally admitted into the Hebrew
collection of Scripture. It was placed in the canon before it was
allegorised. It was only allegorised because it had been placed in
the canon. Then why was it set there? The natural conclusion to arrive
at under these circumstances is that the scribes who ventured to put
it first among the sacred _Megilloth_ saw that there was a distinctive
value in it. Perhaps; however, it is too much to say this of them. The
word "Solomon" being attached to the book would seem to justify its
inclusion with other literature which had received the hall-mark of
that great name. Still we can learn to appreciate it on its own
merits, and in so doing perceive that there is something in it to
justify its right to a niche in the glorious temple of scripture.
Assuredly it was much to make clear in the days of royal polygamy
among the Jews that this gross imitation of the court life of heathen
monarchies was a despicable and degrading thing, and to set over
against it an attractive picture of true love and simple manners. The
prophets of Israel were continually protesting against a growing
dissoluteness of morals: the Song of Solomon is a vivid illustration
of the spirit of their protest. If the two nations had been content
with the rustic delight so beautifully portrayed in this book, they
might not have fallen into ruin as they did under the influence of the
corruptions of an effete civilisation. If their people had cherished
the graces of purity and constancy that shine so conspicuously in the
character of the Shulammite they might not have needed to pass through
the purging fires of the captivity.
But while this can be said of the book as it first appeared among the
Jews, a similar estimate of its function in later ages may also be
made. An ideal representation of fidelity in love under the greatest
provocation to surrender at discretion has a message for every age. We
need not shrink from reading it in the pages of the Bible. Our Lord
teaches us that next to the duty of love to God comes that of love to
one's neighbour. But a man's nearest neighbour is his wife. Therefore
after his God his wife has the first claim upon him. But the whole
conception of matrimonial duty rests on the idea of constancy in the
love of man and woman.
If this book had been read in its literal signification and its
wholesome lesson absorbed by Christendom in the Middle Ages, the
gloomy cloud of asceticism that then hung over the Church would have
been somewhat lightened, not to give place to the outburst of
licentiousness that accompanied the _Renaissance_, but rather to allow
of the better establishment of the Christian home. The absurd legends
that follow the names of St. Anthony and St. Dunstan would have lost
their motive. Hildebrand would have had no occasion to hurl his
thunderbolt. The Church was making the huge mistake of teaching that
the remedy for dissoluteness was unnatural celibacy. This book taught
the lesson--truer to nature, truer to experience, truer to the God who
made us--that it was to be found in the redemption of love.
Can it be denied that the same lesson is needed in our own day? The
realism that has made itself a master of a large part of popular
literature reveals a state of society that perpetuates the manners of
the court of Solomon, though under a thin veil of decorum. The remedy
for the awful dissoluteness of large portions of society can only be
found in the cultivation of such lofty ideas on the relation of the
sexes that this abomination shall be scouted with horror. It is
neither necessary, nor right, nor possible to contradict nature. What
has to be shewn is that man's true nature is not bestial, that satyrs
and fauns are not men, but degraded caricatures of men. We cannot
crush the strongest passion of human nature. The moral of the Song of
Solomon is that there is no occasion to attempt to crush it, because
the right thing is to elevate it by lofty ideals of love and
constancy.
This subject also deserves attention on its positive side. The
literature of all ages is a testimony to the fact that nothing in the
world is so interesting as love. What is so old as love-making? and
what so fresh? At least ninety-nine novels out of a hundred have a
love-story for plot; and the hundredth is always regarded as an
eccentric experiment. The pedant may plant his heel on the perennial
flower; but it will spring up again as vigorous as ever. This is the
poetry of the most commonplace existence. When it visits a dingy soul
the desert blossoms as the rose. Life may be hard, and its drudgery a
grinding yoke; but with love "all tasks are sweet." "And Jacob served
seven years for Rachel; and they seemed unto him but a few days, for
the love he had to her."[86] That experience of the patriarch is
typical of the magic power of true love in every age, in every clime.
To the lover it is always "the time of the singing of birds." Who
shall tell the value of the boon that God has given so freely to
mankind, to sweeten the lot of the toiler and shed music into his
heart? But this boon requires to be jealously guarded and sheltered
from abuse, or its honey will be turned into gall. It is for the
toiler--the shepherd whose locks are wet with the dew that has fallen
upon him while guarding his flock by night, the maiden who has been
working in the vineyard; it is beyond the reach of the pleasure-seeking
monarch and the indolent ladies of his court. This boon is for the pure
in heart; it is utterly denied to the sensual and dissolute. Finally, it
is reserved for the loyal and true as the peculiar reward of constancy.
[86] Gen. xxix. 20.
But while a poem that contains these principles must be allowed to
have an important mission in the world, it does not follow that it is
suitable for public or indiscriminate reading. The fact that the key
to it is not easily discovered is a warning that it is liable to be
misunderstood. When it is read superficially, without any
comprehension of its drift and motive, it may be perverted to
mischievous ends. The antique Oriental pictures with which it abounds,
though natural to the circumstances of its origin, are not in harmony
with the more reserved manners of our own conditions of society. As
all the books of the Bible are not of the same character, so also they
are not all to be used in the same way.
_THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEREMIAH_
CHAPTER I
_HEBREW ELEGIES_
The book which is known by the title "The Lamentations of Jeremiah" is
a collection of five separate poems, very similar in style, and all
treating of the same subject--the desolation of Jerusalem and the
sufferings of the Jews after the overthrow of their city by
Nebuchadnezzar. In our English Bible it is placed among the
prophetical works of the Old Testament, standing next to the
acknowledged writings of the man whose name it bears. This arrangement
follows the order in the Septuagint, from which it was accepted by
Josephus and the Christian Fathers. And yet the natural place for such
a book would seem to be in association with the Psalms and other
poetical compositions of a kindred character. So thought the Rabbis
who compiled the Jewish canon. In the Hebrew Bible the Book of
Lamentations is assigned to the third collection, that designated
_Hagiographa_, not to the part known as the _Prophets_.
In form as well as in substance this book is a remarkable specimen of
a specific order of poetry. The difficulty of recovering the original
pronunciation of the language has left our conception of Hebrew metres
in a state of obscurity. It has been generally supposed that the
rhythm was more of sight than of sound, but that it consisted
essentially in neither, depending mainly on the balance of ideas. The
metre, it has been stated, might strike the eye in the external aspect
of the sentences; it was designed much more to charm the mind by the
harmony and music of the thoughts. But while these general principles
are still acknowledged, some further progress has been made in the
examination of the structure of the verses, with the result that both
more regularity of law and more variety of metre have been discovered.
The elegy in particular is found to be shaped on special lines of its
own. It has been pointed out that a peculiar metre is reserved for
poems of mournful reflection.
The first feature of this metre to be noted is the unusual length of
the line. In Hebrew poetry, according to the generally accepted
pronunciation, the lines vary from about six syllables to about
twelve. In the elegy the line most frequently runs to the extreme
limit, and so acquires a slow, solemn movement.
A second feature of elegiac poetry is the breaking of the lengthy line
into two unequal parts--the first part being about as long as a whole
line in an average Hebrew lyric, and the second much shorter, reading
like another line abbreviated, and seeming to suggest that the weary
thought is waking up and hurrying to its conclusion. Sometimes this
short section is a thin echo of the fuller conception that precedes,
sometimes the completion of that conception. In the English version,
of course, the effect is frequently lost; still occasionally it is
very marked, even after passing through this foreign medium. Take, for
example, the lines,
"Her princes are become like harts--that find no pasture,
And they are gone without strength--before the pursuer;"[87]
or again the very long line,
"It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed--because His
compassions fail not."[88]
[87] i. 6.
[88] iii. 22.
Now although this is only a structural feature it points to inferences
of deeper significance. It shews that the Hebrew poets paid special
attention to the elegy as a species of verse to be treated apart, and
therefore that they attached a peculiar significance to the ideas and
feelings it expresses. The ease with which the transition to the
elegiac form of verse is made whenever an occasion for using it occurs
is a hint that this must have been familiar to the Jews. Possibly it
was in common use at funerals in the dirge. We meet with an early
specimen of this verse in Amos, when, just after announcing that he is
about to utter a _lamentation_ over the house of Israel, the herdsman
of Tekoa breaks into elegiacs with the words,
"The virgin daughter of Israel is fallen--she shall no more rise:
She is cast down upon her land--there is none to raise her up."[89]
[89] Amos v. 2.
Similarly constructed elegiac pieces are scattered over the Old
Testament scriptures from the eighth century B.C. onwards. Several
illustrations of this peculiar kind of metre are to be found in the
Psalms. It is employed ironically with terrible effect in the Book of
Isaiah, where the mock lament over the death of the king of Babylon is
constructed in the form of a true elegy. When the prophet made a
sudden transition from his normal style to sombre funereal measures
his purpose would be at once recognised, for his words would sound
like the tolling bell and the muffled drums that announce the march
of death; and yet it would be known that this solemn pomp was not
really a demonstration of mourning or a symbol of respect, but only
the pageantry of scorn and hatred and vengeance. The sarcasm would
strike home with the more force since it fell on men's ears in the
heavy, lingering lines of the elegy, as the exultant patriot
exclaimed,
"How hath the oppressor ceased--the golden city ceased!
The Lord hath broken the staff of the wicked--the sceptre of the
rulers," etc.[90]
[90] Isa. xiv. 4 _ff._
A special characteristic of the five elegies that make up the Book of
Lamentations is their alphabetical arrangement. Each elegy consists of
twenty-two verses, the same number as that of the letters in the
Hebrew alphabet. All but the last are acrostics, the initial letter of
each verse following the order of the alphabet. In the third elegy
every line in the verse begins with the same letter. According to
another way of reckoning, this poem consists of sixty-six verses
arranged in triplets, each of which not only follows the order of the
alphabet with its first letter, but also has this initial letter
repeated at the beginning of each of its three verses. Alphabetical
acrostics are not unknown elsewhere in the Old Testament; there are
several instances of them in the Psalms.[91] The method is generally
thought to have been adopted as an expedient to assist the memory.
Clearly it is a somewhat artificial arrangement, cramping the
imagination of the poet; and it is regarded by some as a sign of
literary decadence. Whatever view we may take of it from the
standpoint of purely artistic criticism, we can derive one important
conclusion concerning the mental attitude of the writer from a
consideration of the elaborate structure of the verse. Although this
poetry is evidently inspired by deep emotion--emotion so profound that
it cannot even be restrained by the stiffest vesture--still the author
is quite self-possessed: he is not at all over-mastered by his
feelings; what he says is the outcome of deliberation and reflection.
[91] _E.g._, Psalms ix., x., xxv., xxxiv., xxxvii., cxix., cxlv.
Passing from the form to the substance of the elegy, our attention is
arrested on the threshold of the more serious enquiry by another link
of connection between the two. In accordance with a custom of which we
have other instances in the Hebrew Bible, the first word in the text
is taken as the title of the book. The haphazard name is more
appropriate in this case than it sometimes proves to be, for the first
word of the first chapter--the original Hebrew for which is the Jewish
title of the book--is "How." Now this is a characteristic word for the
commencement of an elegy. Three out of the five elegies in
Lamentations begin with it; so does the mock elegy in Isaiah.
Moreover, it is not only suggestive of the form of a certain kind of
poetry; it is a hint of the spirit in which that poetry is conceived;
it strikes the key-note for all that follows. Therefore it may not be
superfluous for us to consider the significance of this little word in
the present connection.
In the first place, it is a sort of note of exclamation prefixed to
the sentence it introduces. Thus it infuses an emotional element into
the statements which follow it. The word is a relic of the most
primitive form of language. Judging from the sounds produced by
animals and the cries of little children, we should conclude that the
first approach to speech would be a simple expression of
excitement--a scream of pain, a shout of delight, a yell of rage, a
shriek of surprise. Next to the mere venting of feeling comes the
utterance of desire--a request, either for the possession of some
coveted boon, or for deliverance from something objectionable. Thus
the dog barks for his bone, or barks again to be freed from his chain;
and the child cries for a toy, or for protection from a terror. If
this is correct it will be only at the third stage of speech that we
shall reach statements of fact pure and simple. Conversely, it may be
argued that as the progress of cultivation develops the perceptive and
reasoning faculties and corresponding forms of speech, the primitive
emotional and volitional types of language must recede. Our phlegmatic
English temperament predisposes us to take this view. It is not easy
for us to sympathise with the expressiveness of an excitable Oriental
people. What to them is perfectly natural and not at all inconsistent
with true manliness strikes us as a childish weakness. Is not this a
trifle insular? The emotions constitute as essential a part of human
nature as the observing and reasoning faculties, and it cannot be
proved that to stifle them beneath a calm exterior is more right and
proper than to give them a certain adequate expression. That this
expression may be found even among ourselves is apparent from the
singular fact that the English, who are the most prosaic people in
their conduct, have given the world more good poetry than any other
nation of modern times; a fact which, perhaps, may be explained on the
principle that the highest poetry is not the rank outgrowth of
irregulated passions, but the cultivated fruit of deep-rooted ideas.
Still these ideas must be warmed with feeling before they will
germinate. Much more, when we are not merely interested in poetic
literature, when we are in earnest about practical actions, an
artificial restraint of the emotions must be mischievous. No doubt the
unimpassioned style has its mission--in allaying a panic, for example.
But it will not inspire men to attempt a forlorn hope. Society will
never be saved by hysterics; but neither will it ever be saved by
statistics. It may be that the exclamation _how_ is a feeble survival
of the savage _howl_. Nevertheless the emotional expression, when
regulated as the taming of the sound suggests, will always play a very
real part in the life of mankind, even at the most highly developed
stage of civilisation.
In the second place, it is to be observed that this word introduces a
tone of vagueness into the sentences which it opens. A description
beginning as these elegies begin would not serve the purpose of an
inventory of the ruins of Jerusalem such as an insurance society would
demand in the present day. The facts are viewed through an atmosphere
of feeling, so that their chronological order is confused and their
details melt one into another. That is not to say that they are robbed
of all value. Pure impressionism may reveal truths which no hard,
exact picture can render clear to us. These elegies make us see the
desolation of Jerusalem more vividly than the most accurate
photographs of the scenes referred to could have done, because they
help us to enter into the passion of the event.
With this idea of vagueness, however, there is joined a sense of
vastness. The note of exclamation is also a note of admiration. The
language is indefinite in part for the very reason that the scene
beggars description. The cynical spirit which would reduce all life
to the level of a Dutch landscape is here excluded by the
overwhelming mass of the troubles bewailed. The cataract of sorrow
awes us with the greatness of its volume and the thunder of its fall.
From suggestions thus rising out of a consideration of the opening
word of the elegy we may be led on to a perception of similar traits
in the body of this poetry. It is emotional in character; it is vague
in description; and it sets before us visions of vast woe.
But now it is quite clear that poetry such as this must be something
else than the wild expression of grief. It is a product of reflection.
The acute stage of suffering is over. The writer is musing upon a sad
past; or if at times he is reflecting on a present state of distress,
still he is regarding this as the result of more violent scenes, in
the midst of which the last thing a man would think of doing would be
to sit down and compose a poem. This reflective poetry will give us
emotion, still warm, but shot with thought.
The reflectiveness of the elegy does not take the direction of
philosophy. It does not speculate on the mystery of suffering. It does
not ask such obstinate questions, or engage in such vexatious
dialectics, as circle about the problem of evil in the Book of Job.
Leaving those difficult matters to the theologians who care to wrestle
with them, the elegist is satisfied to dwell on his theme in a quiet,
meditative mood, and to permit his ideas to flow on spontaneously as
in a reverie. Thus it happens that, artificial as is the form of his
verse, the underlying thought seems to be natural and unforced. In
this way he represents to us the afterglow of sunset which follows the
day of storm and terror.
The afterglow is beautiful--that is what the elegy makes evident. It
paints the beauty of sorrow. It is able to do so only because it
contemplates the scene indirectly, as portrayed in the mirror of
thought. An immediate vision of pain is itself wholly painful. If the
agony is intense, and if no relief can be offered, we instinctively
turn aside from the sickening sight. Only a brutalised people could
find amusement in the ghastly spectacle of the Roman amphitheatre. It
is cited as a proof of Domitian's diabolical cruelty that the emperor
would have dying slaves brought before him in order that he might
watch the facial expression of their last agonies. Such scenes are not
fit subjects for art. The famous group of the _Laocoon_ is considered
by many to have passed the boundaries of legitimate representation in
the terror and torment of its subject; and _Ecce Homos_ and pictures
of the crucifixion can only be defended from a similar condemnation
when the profound spiritual significance of the subjects is made to
dominate the bare torture. Faced squarely, in the glare of day, pain
and death are grim ogres, the ugliness of which no amount of sentiment
can disguise. You can no more find poetry in a present Inferno than
flowers in the red vomit of a live volcano. Men who have seen war tell
us they have discovered nothing attractive in its dreadful scenes of
blood and anguish and fury. What could be more revolting to
contemplate than the sack of a city,--fire and sword in every street,
public buildings razed to the ground, honoured monuments defaced,
homes ravaged, children torn from the arms of their parents, young
girls dragged away to a horrible fate, lust, robbery, slaughter
rampant without shame or restraint, the wild beast in the conquerors
let loose, and a whole army, suddenly freed from all rules of
discipline, behaving like a swarm of demons just escaped from hell.
To think of cultivating art or poetry in the presence of such scenes
would be as absurd as to attempt a musical entertainment among the
shrieks of lost souls.
The case assumes another aspect when we pass from the region of
personal observation to that of reflection. There is no beauty in the
sight of a captured castle immediately after the siege which ended in
its fall, its battlements shattered, its walls seamed with cracks,
here and there a breach, rough and ragged, and strewn with stones and
dust. And yet, by slow degrees and in imperceptible ways, time and
nature will transform the scene until moss-grown walls and ivy-covered
towers acquire a new beauty only seen among ruins. Nature heals and
time softens, and between them they throw a mantle of grace over the
scars of what were once ugly, gaping wounds. Pain as it recedes into
memory is transmuted into pathos; and pathos always fascinates us with
some approach to beauty. If it is true that
"Poets learn in sorrow what they teach in song,"
must it not be also the fact that sorrow while inspiring song is
itself glorified thereby? To use suffering merely as the food of
æstheticism would be to degrade it immeasurably. We should rather put
the case the other way. Poetry saves sorrow from becoming sordid by
revealing its beauty, and in epic heroism even its sublimity. It helps
us to perceive how much more depth there is in life than was apparent
under the glare and glamour of prosperity. Some of us may recollect
how shallow and shadowy our own lives were felt to be in the simple
days before we had tasted the bitter cup. There was a hunger then for
some deeper experience which seemed to lie beyond our reach. While we
naturally shrank from entering the _via dolorosa_, we were dimly
conscious that the pilgrims who trod its rough stones had discovered a
secret that remained hidden from us, and we coveted their attainment,
although we did not envy the bitter experience by which it had been
acquired. This feeling may have been due in part to the foolish
sentimentality that is sometimes indulged in by extreme youth; but
that is not the whole explanation of it, for when our path conducts us
from the flat, monotonous plain of ease and comfort into a region of
chasms and torrents, we do indeed discover an unsuspected depth in
life. Now it is the mission of the poetry of sorrow to interpret this
discovery to us. At least it should enable us to read the lessons of
experience in the purest light. It is not the task of the poet to
supply a categorical answer to the riddle of the universe; stupendous
as that task would be, it must be regarded as quite a prosaic one.
Poetry will not fit exact answers to set questions, for poetry is not
science; but poetry will open deaf ears and anoint blind eyes to
receive the voices and visions that haunt the depths of experience.
Thus it leads on to--
"that blessed mood,
In which the burden of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world
Is lightened."
It may not be obvious to the reader of an elegy that this function is
discharged by such a poem, for elegiac poetry seems to aim at nothing
more than the thoughtful expression of grief. Certainly it is neither
didactic nor metaphysical. Nevertheless in weaving a wreath of
imagination round the sufferings it bewails it cannot but clothe them
with a rich significance. It would seem to be the mission of the five
inspired elegies contained in the Book of Lamentations thus to
interpret the sorrows of the Jews, and through them the sorrows of
mankind.
CHAPTER II
_THE ORIGIN OF THE POEMS_
As we pass out of Jerusalem by the Damascus Gate, and follow the main
north road, our attention is immediately arrested by a low hill of
grey rock sprinkled with wild flowers, which is now attracting
peculiar notice because it has been recently identified with the
"Golgotha" on which our Lord was crucified. In the face of this hill a
dark recess--faintly suggestive of the eye-socket, if we may suppose
the title "Place of a skull" to have arisen from a fancied resemblance
to a goat's skull--is popularly known as "Jeremiah's grotto," and held
by current tradition to be the retreat where the prophet composed the
five elegies that constitute our Book of Lamentations. Clambering with
difficulty over the loose stones that mark the passage of winter
torrents, and reaching the floor of the cave, we are at once struck by
the suspicious aptness of the "sacred site." In a solitude singularly
retired, considering the proximity of a great centre of population,
the spectator commands a full view of the whole city, its embattled
walls immediately confronting him, with clustered roofs and domes in
the rear. What place could have been more suitable for a poetic lament
over the ruins of fallen Jerusalem? Moreover, when we take into
account the dread associations derived from the later history of the
Crucifixion, what could be more fitting than that the mourning
patriot's tears for the woes of his city should have been shed so near
to the very spot where her rejected Saviour was to suffer? But
unfortunately history cannot be constructed on the lines of harmonious
sentiments. When we endeavour to trace the legend that attributes the
Lamentations to Jeremiah back to its source we lose the stream some
centuries before we arrive at the time of the great prophet. No doubt
for ages the tradition was undisputed; it is found both in Jewish and
in Christian literature--in the Talmud and in the Fathers. Jerome
popularised it in the Church by transferring it to the Vulgate, and
before this Josephus set it down as an accepted fact. It is pretty
evident that each of these parallel currents of opinion may have been
derived from the Septuagint, which introduces the book with the
sentence, "And it came to pass, after Israel had been carried away
captive, and Jerusalem had become desolate, that Jeremiah sat weeping,
and lamented with this lamentation over Jerusalem, and said," etc.
Here our upward progress in tracking the tradition is stayed; no more
ancient authority is to be found. Yet we are still three hundred years
from the time of Jeremiah! Of course it is only reasonable to suppose
that the translators of the Greek version did not make their addition
to the Hebrew text at random, or without what they deemed sufficient
grounds. Possibly they were following some documentary authority, or,
at least, some venerable tradition. Of this we know nothing.
Meanwhile, it must be observed that no such statement exists in the
Hebrew Bible; and it would never have been omitted if it had been
there originally.
One other witness has been adduced, but only to furnish testimony of
an obscure and ambiguous character. In 2 Chron. xxxv. 25 we read,
"And Jeremiah lamented for Josiah; and all the singing men and singing
women spake of Josiah in their lamentations, unto this day; and they
made them an ordinance in Israel; and, behold, they are written in the
lamentations." Josephus, and Jerome after him, appear to assume that
the chronicler is here referring to our Book of Lamentations. That is
very questionable; for the words describe an elegy on Josiah, and our
book contains no such elegy. Can we suppose that the chronicler
assumed that inasmuch as Jeremiah was believed to have written a
lament for the mourners to chant in commemoration of Josiah, this
would be one of the poems preserved in the collection of Jerusalem
elegies familiar to readers of his day? Be that as it may, the
chronicler wrote in the Grecian period, and therefore his statements
come some long time after the date of the prophet.
In this dearth of external testimony we turn to the book itself for
indications of origin and authorship. The poems make no claim to have
been the utterances of Jeremiah; they do not supply us with their
author's name. Therefore there can be no question of genuineness, no
room for an ugly charge of "forgery," or a delicate ascription of
"pseudonymity," The case is not comparable to that of 2 Peter, or even
to that of Ecclesiastes--the one of which directly claims apostolic
authority, and the other a "literary" association with the name of
Solomon. It is rather to be paralleled with the case of the Epistle to
the Hebrews, a purely anonymous work. Still there is much which seems
to point to Jeremiah as the author of these intensely pathetic
elegies. They are not like MacPherson's _Ossian_; nobody can question
their antiquity. If they were not quite contemporaneous with the
scenes they describe so graphically they cannot have originated much
later; for they are like the low wailings with which the storm sinks
to rest, reminding us how recently the thunder was rolling and the
besom of destruction sweeping over the land. Among the prophets of
Israel Jeremiah was the voice crying in the wilderness of national
ruin; it is natural to suppose that he too was the poet who poured out
sad thoughts of memory in song at a later time when sorrow had leisure
for reflection. His prophecies would lead us to conclude that no Jew
of those dark days could have experienced keener pangs of grief at the
incomparable woes of his nation. He was the very incarnation of
patriotic mourning. Who then would be more likely to have produced the
national lament? Here we seem to meet again none other than the man
who exclaimed, "Oh that I could comfort myself against sorrow! my
heart is faint within me"[92] and again, "Oh that my head were waters,
and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for
the slain of the daughter of my people."[93] Many points of
resemblance between the known writings of Jeremiah and these poems may
be detected. Thus Jeremiah's "Virgin daughter" of God's people
reappears as the "Virgin daughter of Judah." In both the writer is
oppressed with fear as well as grief; in both he especially denounces
clerical vices, the sins of the two rival lines of religious leaders,
the priests and the prophets; in both he appeals to God for
retribution. There is a remarkable likeness in tone and temper
throughout between the two series of writings. It would be possible to
adduce many purely verbal marks of similarity; the commentator on
Lamentations most frequently illustrates the meaning of a word by
referring to a parallel usage in Jeremiah.
[92] Jer. viii. 18.
[93] Jer. ix. 1.
On the other hand, several facts raise difficulties in the way of our
accepting of the hypothesis of a common authorship. The verbal
argument is precarious at best; it can only be fully appreciated by
the specialist, and if accepted by the general reader, it must be
taken on faith. Of course this last point is no valid objection to the
real worth of the argument in itself; it cannot be maintained that
nothing is true which may not be reduced to the level of the meanest
intelligence, or the "differential calculus" would be a baseless
fable. But when the specialists disagree, even the uninitiated have
some excuse for holding the case to be not proved for either side; and
it is thus with the resemblances and the differences between Jeremiah
and Lamentations, long lists of phrases used in common being balanced
with equally long lists of peculiarities found in one only of the two
books in question. The strongest objection to the theory that Jeremiah
was the author of the Lamentations, however, is one that can be more
readily grasped. These poems are most elaborately artistic in form,
not to say artificial. Now the objection which is roused by that fact
is not simply due to the loose and less shapely construction of the
prophecies; for it may justly be urged that the literary designs
entertained by the prophet in the leisure of his later years may have
led him to cultivate a style which would have been quite unsuitable
for his practical preaching or for the political pamphlets he used to
fling off in the heat of conflict. It originates in deeper
psychological contradictions. Is it possible that the man who had shed
bitterest tears, as from his very heart, in the dismal reality of
misery, could play with his troubles in fanciful acrostics? Can we
imagine a leading actor in the tragedy turning the events through
which he had passed into materials for æsthetic treatment? Can we
credit this of so intense a soul as Jeremiah? The composition of _In
Memoriam_ may be cited as an instance of the production of highly
artistic poetry under the influence of keen personal sorrow. But the
case is not parallel; for Tennyson was a passive mourner over the loss
of a friend under circumstances with which he had no connection, while
Jeremiah had contended strenuously for years on the field of action.
Could a man with such a history have set himself to work up its most
doleful experiences into the embroidery of a peculiarly artificial
form of versification? That is the gravest difficulty. Other
objections of minor weight follow. In the third elegy Jeremiah would
seem to be giving more prominence to his own personality than we
should have expected of the brave, unselfish prophet. In the fourth
the writer appears to associate himself with those Jews who were
disappointed in expecting deliverance from an Egyptian alliance, when
he complains--
"Our eyes do yet fail in looking for our vain help:
In watching we have watched for a nation that could not save."[94]
[94] iv. 17.
Would Jeremiah, who bade the Jews bow to the scourge of Jehovah's
chastisement and look for no earthly deliverer, thus confess
participation in the worldly policy which he, in common with all the
true prophets, had denounced as faithless and disobedient? Then, while
sharing Jeremiah's condemnation of the priests and prophets, the
writer appears to have only commiseration for the fate of the poor
weak king Zedekiah.[95] This is very different from Jeremiah's
treatment of him.[96]
[95] iv. 20.
[96] Jer. lii. 2, 3.
It is not a serious objection that our poet says of Zion,
"Yea, her prophets find no vision from the Lord,"[97]
while we know that Jeremiah had visions after the destruction of
Jerusalem,[98] because the general condition may still have been one
characterised by the silencing of the many prophets with whose oracles
the Jews had been accustomed to solace themselves in view of
threatened calamities; nor that he exclaims,
"Shall the priest and the prophet be slain in the sanctuary of the
Lord?"[99]
although Jeremiah makes no mention of this twofold assassination,
because we have no justification for the assumption that he recorded
every horror of the great tragedy; nor, again, that the author is
evidently familiar with the Book of Deuteronomy, and refers frequently
to the "Song of Moses" in particular, for this is just what we might
have expected of Jeremiah; and yet these and other similar but even
less conclusive points have been brought forward as difficulties.
Perhaps it is a more perplexing in view of the traditional hypothesis,
that the poet appears to have made use of the writings of Ezekiel.
Thus the allusion to the prophets who have "seen visions ... of vanity
and foolishness,"[100] points to the fuller description of these men
in the writings of the prophet of the exile, where the completeness of
the picture shews that the priority is with Ezekiel.[101] Similarly
the "perfection of beauty" ascribed to the daughter of Jerusalem in
the second elegy[102] reminds us of the similar phrase that occurs
more than once in Ezekiel.[103] Still, that prophet wrote before the
time to which the Lamentations introduce us, and it cannot be affirmed
that Jeremiah could not have seen his writings, or would not have
condescended to echo a phrase from them. A difficulty of a broader
character must be felt in the fact that the poems themselves give us
no hint of Jeremiah. The appearance of the five elegies in the
_Hagiographa_ without any introductory notice is a grave objection to
the theory of a Jeremiah authorship. If so famous a prophet had
composed them, would not this have been recorded? Even in the
Septuagint, where they are associated with Jeremiah, they are not
translated by the same hand as the version of the prophet's
acknowledged works. It may be that none of the objections which have
been adduced against the later tradition can be called final; nor when
regarded in their total force do they absolutely forbid the
possibility that Jeremiah was the author of the Lamentations. But then
the question is not so much one of possibility as one of probability.
We must remember that we are dealing with anonymous poems that make no
claim upon any particular author, and that we have no pleas whatever,
special or more general, on which to defend the guesses of a much
later and quite uncritical age, when people cultivated a habit of
attaching every shred of literature that had come down from their
ancestors to some famous name.
[97] ii. 9.
[98] _E.g._ Jer. xlii. 7.
[99] ii. 20.
[100] ii. 14.
[101] _E.g._ Ezek. xii. 24, xiii. 6, 7, xxii. 28.
[102] Lam. ii. 15.
[103] Ezek. xxvii. 3, xxviii. 12.
Failing Jeremiah, it is not possible to hit upon any other known
person with the least assurance. Some have followed Bunsen in his
conjecture that Baruch the scribe may have been the author of the
poems. Others have suggested a member of the family of Shaphan, in
which Jeremiah found his most loyal friends.[104]
[104] See Jer. xxvi. 24, xxix. 3_ff_, xl. 5.
It is much questioned whether the five elegies are the work of one
man. The second, the third, and the fourth follow a slightly different
alphabetical arrangement from that which is employed in the first--in
reversing the order of two letters,[105] while the internal structure
of the verses in the third shews another variation--the threefold
repetition of the acrostic. Then the personality of the poet emerges
more distinctly in the third elegy as the centre of interest--a marked
contrast to the method of the other poems. Lastly, the fifth differs
from its predecessors in several respects. Its lines are shorter; it
is not an acrostic; it is chiefly devoted to the insults heaped upon
the Jews by their enemies; and it seems to belong to a later time, for
while the four previous poems treat of the siege of Jerusalem and its
accompanying troubles, this one is concerned with the subsequent state
of servitude, and reflects on the ruin of the nation across some
interval of time. Thus the poet cries--
"Wherefore doest thou forget us for ever,
And forsake us _so long time_?"[106]
[105] [Hebrew: ayin] and [Hebrew: pe].
[106] v. 20.
A recent attempt to assign the last two elegies to the age of the
Maccabees has entirely broken down. The points of agreement with that
age which have been adduced will fit the Babylonian period equally
well, and the most significant marks of the later time are entirely
absent. Is it conceivable that a description of the persecution by
Antiochus Epiphanes would contain no hint of the martyr fidelity of
the devout Jews to their law which was so gloriously maintained under
the Maccabees? The fourth and fifth elegies are as completely silent
on this subject as the earlier elegies.
The evidence that points to any diversity of authorship is very
feeble. The fifth elegy may have been written years later than the
rest of the book, and yet it may have come from the same source, for
the example of Tennyson shews that the gift of poetry is not always
confined to but a brief interval in the poet life. The other
distinctions are not nearly so marked as some that may be observed in
the recognised poems of a single author--for example, the amazing
differences between the smooth style of _The Idylls of the King_ and
the quaint dialect of _The Northern Farmer_. Though some differences
of vocabulary have been discovered, the resemblances between all the
five poems are much more striking. In motive and spirit and feeling
they are perfectly agreed. While therefore in our ignorance of the
origin of the Lamentations, and in recognition of the variations that
have been indicated, we cannot deny that they may have been collected
from the utterances of two or even three inspired souls, neither are
we by any means forced to assent to this opinion; and under these
circumstances it will be justifiable as well as convenient to refer to
the authorship of Lamentations in terms expressive of a single
individual. One thing is fairly certain. The author was a
contemporary, an eye-witness of the frightful calamities he bewailed.
With all their artificiality of structure these elegies are the
outpourings of a heart moved by a near vision of the scenes of the
Babylonian invasion. The swift, vivid pictures of the siege and its
accompanying miseries force upon our minds the conclusion that the
poet must have moved in the thick of the events he narrates so
graphically, although, unlike Jeremiah, he does not seem to have been
a leading actor in them. Children cry to their mothers for bread, and
faint with hunger at every street corner; the ghastly rumour goes
forth that a mother has boiled her baby; elders sit on the ground in
silence; young maidens hang their heads despairing; princes tremble in
their helplessness; the enemy break through the walls, carry havoc
into the city, insolently trample the sacred courts of the temple;
even the priest and the prophet do not escape in the indiscriminate
carnage; wounded people are seen, with blood upon their garments,
wandering aimlessly like blind men; the temple is destroyed, its rich
gold bedimmed with smoke, and the city herself left waste and
desolate, while the exultant victors pour ridicule over the misery of
their prey. A later generation would have blurred the outline of these
scenes, regarding them through the shifting mists of rumour, with more
or less indistinctness. Besides, the motive for the composition of
such elegies would vanish with the lapse of time. Still some few years
must be allowed for the patriot's brooding over the scenes he had
witnessed, until the memory of them had mellowed sufficiently for them
to become the subjects of song. The fifth elegy, at all events,
implies a considerable interval. Jerusalem was destroyed in the year
B.C. 587; therefore we may safely date the poems from about B.C. 550
onwards--_i.e._, at some time during the second half of the sixth
century. What is of more moment for us to know is that we have here no
falsetto notes, such as we may sometimes detect in Virgil's exquisite
descriptions of the siege of Troy, for the poet has witnessed the
fiery ordeal the recollection of which now inspires his song. Thus out
of the unequalled woes of Jerusalem destroyed he has provided for all
ages the typical, divinely inspired expression of sorrow--primarily
the expression of sorrow--and then associated with this some pregnant
hints both of its dark relationship to sin and of its higher
connection with the purposes of God.
CHAPTER III
_THE THEME_
No more pathetic subject ever inspired a poet than that which became
the theme of the Lamentations. Wave after wave of invasion had swept
over Jerusalem, until at length the miserable city had been reduced to
a heap of ruins. After the decisive defeat of the Egyptians at the
great battle of Carchemish during the reign of Jehoiakim,
Nebuchadnezzar broke into Jerusalem and carried off some of the sacred
vessels from the temple, leaving a disorganised country at the mercy
of the wild tribes of Bedouin from beyond the Jordan. Three months
after the accession of Jehoiakin, the son of Jehoiakim, the Chaldæans
again visited the city, pillaged the temple and the royal palace, and
sent the first band of captives, consisting of the very élite of the
citizens, with Ezekiel among them, into captivity at Babylon. This was
only the beginning of troubles. Zedekiah, who was set up as a mere
vassal king, intrigued with Pharaoh Hophra, a piece of folly which
called down upon himself and his people the savage vengeance of
Nebuchadnezzar. Jerusalem now suffered all the horrors of a siege,
which lasted for a year and a half. Famine and pestilence preyed upon
the inhabitants; and yet the Jews were holding out with a stubborn
resistance, when the invaders effected an entrance by night, and were
encamped in the temple court before the astonished king was aware of
their presence. Zedekiah then imitated the secrecy of his enemies.
With a band of followers he crept out of one of the eastern gates, and
fled down the defile towards the Jordan; but he was overtaken near
Jericho, and conveyed a prisoner to Riblah; his sons were killed in
his very presence, his eyes were burnt out, and the wretched man sent
in chains to Babylon. The outrages perpetrated against the citizens at
Jerusalem as well as the sufferings of the fugitives were such as are
only possible in barbarous warfare. Finally the city was razed to the
ground and her famous temple burnt.
The Lamentations bewail the fall of a city. In this respect they are
unlike the normal type of elegiac poetry. As a rule, the elegy is
personal in character and individualistic, mourning the untimely death
of some one beloved friend of the writer. It is the revelation of a
private grief, although with a poet's privilege its author calls upon
his readers to share his sorrow. In the classic model of this order of
verse Milton justifies the intrusion of his distress upon the peace of
nature by exclaiming--
"For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime,
Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer.
Who would not sing for Lycidas?"
And Shelley, while treating his theme in an ethereal, fantastic way,
still represents Alastor, the Spirit of Solitude, in the person of one
who has just died, when he cries--
"But thou art fled,
Like some frail exhalation which the dawn
Robes in its golden beams,--ah! thou hast fled!
The brave, the gentle, and the beautiful,
The child of grace and genius."
Gray's well-known elegy, it is true, is not confined to the fate of a
single individual; the churchyard suggests the pathetic reflections of
the poet on the imaginary lives and characters of many past
inhabitants of the village. Nevertheless these cross the stage one by
one; the village itself has not been destroyed, like Goldsmith's
"Sweet Auburn." Jeremiah's lamentation on the death of Josiah must
have been a personal elegy; so was the scornful lament over the king
of Babylon in Isaiah. But now we have a different kind of subject in
the Book of Lamentations. Here it is the fate of Jerusalem, the fate
of the city itself as well as that of its citizens, that is deplored.
To rouse the imagination and awaken the sympathy of the reader Zion is
personified, and thus the poetry is assimilated in form to the normal
elegy. Still it is important for us to take note of this
distinguishing trait of the Lamentations; they bewail the ruin of a
city.
Poetry inspired with this intention must acquire a certain breadth not
found in more personal effusions. Too much indulgence in private grief
cannot but produce a narrowing effect upon the mind. Intense pain is
as selfish as intense pleasure. We may mourn our dead until we have no
room left in our sympathies for the great ocean of troubles among the
living that surges round the little island of our personal interests.
This misfortune is escaped in the Lamentations. Close as is the poet's
relations with the home of his childhood, there is still some approach
to altruism in his lament over the desolation of Jerusalem viewed as a
whole, rather than over the death of his immediate friends alone.
There is a largeness, too, in it. We find it difficult to recover the
ancient feeling for the city. Our more important towns are so huge
and shapeless that the inhabitants fail to grasp the unity, the
wholeness of the wilderness of streets and houses; and yet they so
effectually overshadow the smaller towns that these places do not
venture to assume much civic pride. Besides, one general tendency of
modern life is individualistic. Even the more recent attempts to rouse
interest in comprehensive social questions are conceived in a spirit
of sympathy for the individual rights and needs of the people, and do
not spring from any great concern for the prosperity of the
corporation as such. No doubt this is an indication of a movement in a
right direction. The old civic idea was too abstract; it sacrificed
the citizens to the city, beautifying the public buildings in the most
costly manner, while the people were crowded in miserable dens to rot
and die unseen and unpitied. We substitute sanitation for splendour.
This is more sensible, more practical, more humane, if it is more
prosaic; for life is something else than poetry. Still it may be worth
while asking whether in aiming at a useful, homely object it is so
essential to abandon the old ideal altogether, because it cannot be
denied that the price we pay is seen in a certain dinginess and
commonness of living. Is it necessary that philanthropy should always
remain Philistine?
The largeness of view which breaks upon us when we begin to think of
the city as a whole rather than only of a number of isolated
individuals is more than a perception of mass and magnitude. The city
is an organism; and not like an animal of the lower orders, such as
the _anelids_ or _centipedes_, in which every segment is simply a
_replica_ of its neighbour, it is an organism maintained in efficiency
by means of a great variety of mutual ministeries. Thus it is a unit
in itself more elaborately differentiated, and therefore in a sense
higher in the scale of being than its constituent elements, the
individual inhabitants. The destruction of a city constituted in this
way is a serious loss to the world. Even if no one inhabitant is
killed, and quite apart from the waste of property and the ruin of
commerce, the dissolution of the organism leaves a tremendous gap. The
scattered people may acquire a new prosperity in the land of their
exile, but still the city will have vanished. The Jews survived the
destruction of Jerusalem; yet who shall estimate the loss that this
destruction of their national capital involved?
Then the city being a definite organic unit has its own history, a
history which is immensely more than the sum of the biographies of its
inhabitants--stretching down from remote ages, and joining the distant
past with present days. Here, then, time adds to the largeness of the
city idea. The brevity of life seems to assign a petty part to the
individual. But that brevity vanishes in the long, continuous story of
an ancient city. A man may well be proud of his connection with such a
record, unless it be one of wickedness and shame; and even in that
case his relations to a great city deepen and widen his life, though
the result may be, as it was with the devout Jew, to induce grief and
humiliation. But Jerusalem had her records of glory as well as her
tales of shame. The city of David and Solomon held garnered stores of
legend and history, in the rich memories of which each of her children
had a heritage. The overthrow of Jerusalem was the dissipation of a
great inheritance.
And this is not all. The city has its own peculiar character--a
character which is not only more than a summary of the morals and
manners of the men and women who live in it, but also unique when
compared with other cities. Every city that can boast of real civic
life has its distinctive individuality; and often this is as striking
as the individuality of any private person. Birmingham is very unlike
Manchester; nobody could mistake Glasgow for Edinburgh. London, Paris,
Berlin, Rome, Melbourne, New York--each of these cities is unique. The
particular city may be said to be the only specimen of its kind. If
one is blotted out the type is lost; there is no duplicate. Athens and
Sparta, Rome and Carthage, Florence and Venice, were rivals which
could never take the place of one another. Most assuredly Jerusalem
stood alone, stamped with a character which no other place in the
world approached, and charged with a perfectly unique mission. For
such a city to vanish off the face of the earth was the impoverishment
of the world in the loss of what no nation in all the four continents
could ever supply.
In saying this we must be careful to avoid the anachronism of reading
into the present situation the after history of the sacred city and
the character therein evolved. In the days before the exile Jerusalem
was not the holy place that Ezra and Nehemiah subsequently laboured to
make of it. Still looking back across the centuries we can see what
perhaps the contemporaries could not discover, that the peculiar
destiny of Jerusalem was already shaping itself in history. At the
time, to the patriotic devotion of the mourning Jews, she was their
old home, the happy dwelling-place of their childhood, the shrine of
their fathers' sepulchres--Nehemiah's thought about the city even at a
later date;[107] in a word, the ancient centre of national life and
union, strength and glory. But another and a higher meaning was
beginning to gather about the word Jerusalem, a meaning which has come
in course of time to give this city a place quite solitary and
unrivalled in all history. Jerusalem is now revered as the religious
centre of the world's life. Even in this early age she was beginning
to earn her lofty character. Josiah's reformation had so far succeeded
that the temple of Solomon had been pronounced the centre of the
worship of Jehovah. Then these elegies bear witness to the importance
of the national festivals, which were all held at the capital, and
which were all of a religious nature. It is impossible to conjecture
what would have been the course of the religious history of the world
if Jerusalem had been blotted out for ever at this period of the life
of the city. More than five centuries later Jesus Christ declared that
the _time_ had come when neither at the Samaritan mountain nor at
Jerusalem should men worship the Father, because God is spirit and can
only be worshipped in spirit and in truth. Thus the possibility of
this spiritual worship which was independent of the sanctity of any
place was a question of time. The time for it had only just arrived
when our Lord made His great declaration. Of course the calendar could
not rule this matter; it was not essentially an affair of dates. But
the world required all those intervening ages to ripen into fitness
for the lofty act of purely spiritual worship; and even then the great
advance was not made by a process of simple development. It was
necessary for Christ to come, both to reveal the higher nature of
worship by revealing the higher nature of Him who was the object of
worship, and also to bestow the spiritual grace through which men and
women could practise the true worship. Therefore these very words of
our Lord which proclaim the absolute spirituality of worship for those
who have attained to His teaching most plainly imply that such worship
must have been beyond the reach of average people, at all events, in
earlier ages. Jerusalem, then, was needed to serve as the cradle of
the religion revealed through her prophets. When her wings had grown
religion could dispense with the nest; but in her unfledged condition
the destruction of the local shelter threatened the death of the
broodling.
[107] Neh. ii. 3.
There is a hopeful side to these reflections. A city with such a
character may be said to bear the seeds of her own revival. Her
individuality has that within it which fights against extinction. To
put it another way, the idea of the city is too marked and too
attractive for its privileged custodians to let it fade out of their
minds, or to rest satisfied without attempting once more to have it
realised in visible form. Carthage might perish; for Carthage had few
graces wherewith to stir the enthusiasm of her citizens. Rome, on the
other hand, had developed a character and a corresponding destiny of
her own; and therefore she could not be blotted out by savage Huns or
Vandal hosts. The genius for government, unapproached by any other
city, could not be suppressed by the worst ravages of the invader.
Even when political supremacy had passed away in consequence of the
vices and weakness of the degenerate citizens, the power that had
ruled the world simply took another shape and ruled the Church, the
supremacy of Rome in the papacy succeeding to the supremacy of Rome in
the empire. So was it with Jerusalem. There was immortality in this
wonderful city.
We may look at the subject from two points of view. First, faith in
God encourages the hope that such a destiny as is here foreshadowed
should not be allowed to fail. So felt the prophets who were permitted
to read the counsels of God by inspired insight into the eternal
principles of His nature. These men were sure that Jerusalem must rise
again from her ashes because they knew for a certainty that her Lord
would not let His purposes concerning her be frustrated.
Then even with the limited vision which is all that can be attained
from the lower platform of historical criticism, we may see that
Jerusalem had acquired such an immortal place in the estimation of the
Jews, that the people must have clung to the idea of a restoration
till it was realised. To say this is to shew that the realisation
could not but be accomplished. Such passionate regrets as those of the
Lamentations are seeds of hope.
May we go one step further? Is not every true and deep regret a
prophecy of restoration? There is an irrecoverable past, it must be
owned. That is to say, the days that are gone cannot return, nor can
deeds once done ever be undone; the future will never be an exact
repetition of the past. But all this does not forbid the assurance
that there may be genuine restoration. Jerusalem restored was very
unlike the city whose fate the elegist bewailed; nevertheless she was
restored, and that with her essential characteristics more pronounced
than ever. Henceforth she was to be most completely what her earlier
history had only faintly adumbrated--the typical seat of religion.
Thus, though the Lamentations are not at all cheering or prophetic in
tone, or even in intention, but the very reverse, wholly mournful and
despondent, we may still detect, in the very intensity and
persistence of the sorrow they portray, gleams of hope for better
days. There is no hope in stolid indifference; it is in the penitent's
tears that we discover the prospect of his amendment. Repentance weeps
for the past, but at the same time it looks forward with a changed
mind that is the promise of better things to come. Why should not we
apply these ideas that spring from a consideration of the five Hebrew
elegies to other elegies--to the dirges that mourn the loved and dead?
If we could willingly let the departed drop out of thought we might
have little ground for believing we should ever see them again. But
sorrow for the dead immortalises them in memory. In a materialistic
view of the universe that might mean nothing but the perpetuity of a
sentiment. But then it may by itself help us to perceive the
superficiality, the utter falseness of such a view. Thus Tennyson sees
the answer to the crushing doubts of materialism and the assurance of
immortality for the departed in the strength of the love with which
they are cherished:
"What is it all if we all of us end but in being our own corpse
coffins at last,
Swallowed in Vastness, lost in Silence, drowned in the deeps of
a meaningless Past!
What but a murmur of gnats in the gloom, or a moment's anger of bees
in their hive?
. . . . . . . .
Peace, let it be! for I loved him, and love him for ever. The dead are
not dead, but alive."
CHAPTER IV
_DESOLATION_
i. 1-7.
The first elegy is devoted to moving pictures of the desolation of
Jerusalem and the sufferings of her people. It dwells upon these
disasters themselves, with fewer references to the causes of them or
the hope of any remedy than are to be found in the subsequent poems,
simply to express the misery of the whole story. Thus it is in the
truest sense of the word a "Lamentation." It naturally divides itself
into two parts--one with the poet speaking in his own person,[108] the
other representing the deserted city herself appealing to passing
strangers and neighbouring nations, and lastly to God, to take note of
her woes.[109]
[108] i. 1-11.
[109] i. 12-22.
The poem opens with a very beautiful passage in which we have a
comparison of Jerusalem to a widow bereft of her children, sitting
solitary in the night, weeping sorely. It would not be just to read
into the image of widowhood ideas collected from utterances of the
prophets about the wedded union of Israel and her Lord; we have no
hint of anything of the sort here. Apparently the image is selected in
order to express the more vividly the utter lonesomeness of the city.
It is clear that the attribute "solitary" has no bearing on the
external relations of Jerusalem--her isolation among the Syrian hills,
or the desertion of her allies, mentioned a little later;[110] it
points to a more ghostly solitude, streets without traffic, tenantless
houses. The widow is solitary because she has been robbed of her
children. And in this, her desolation, _she sits_. The attitude, so
simple and natural and easy under ordinary circumstances, here
suggests a settled continuance of wretchedness; it is helpless and
hopeless. The first wild agony of the severance of the closest natural
ties has passed, and with it the stimulus of conflict; now there has
supervened the dull monotony of despair. This is the lowest depth of
misery, because it allows leisure when leisure is least welcome,
because it gives the reins to the imagination to roam over regions of
heart-rending memory or sombre apprehension, above all because there
is nothing to be done, so that the whole range of consciousness is
abandoned to pain. Many a sufferer has been saved by the healing
ministry of active duties, sometimes resented as an intrusion. It is a
fearful thing simply to sit in sorrow.
[110] i. 2.
The mourner sits _in the night_, while the world around lies in the
peace of sleep. The darkness has fallen, yet she does not stir, for
day and night are alike to her--both dark. She is statuesque in
sorrow, petrified by pain, and yet unhappily not dead; benumbed, but
alive in every sensitive fibre of her being and terribly awake. In
this dread night of misery her one occupation is weeping. The mourner
knows how the hidden fountains of tears which have been sealed to the
world for the day will break out in the silent solitude of night;
then the bravest will "wet his couch with his tears." The forlorn
woman "weepeth sore"; to use the expressive Hebraism, "weeping she
weepeth." "Her tears are on her cheeks"; they are continually flowing;
she has no thought of drying them; there is no one else to wipe them
away. This is not the frantic torrent of youthful tears, soon to be
forgotten in sudden sunshine, like a spring shower; it is the dreary
winter rain, falling more silently, but from leaden clouds that never
break. The Hebrew poet's picture is illustrated with singular aptness
by a Roman coin, struck off in commemoration of the destruction of
Jerusalem by the army of Titus, which represents a woman seated under
a palm tree with the legend _Judæa capta_. Is it too much to imagine
that some Greek artist attached to the court of Vespasian may have
borrowed the idea for the coin from the Septuagint version of this
very passage?
The woe of Jerusalem is intensified by reason of its contrast with the
previous splendour of the proud city. She had not always appeared as a
lonely widow. Formerly she had held a high place among the
neighbouring nations--for did she not cherish memories of the great
days of her shepherd king and Solomon the magnificent? Then she ruled
provinces; now she is herself tributary. She had lovers in the old
times--a fact which points to faults of character not further pursued
at present. How opposite is the utterly deserted state into which she
is now sunk! This thought of a tremendous fall gives the greatest
force to the portrait. It is Rembrandtesque; the black shadows on the
foreground are the deeper because they stand sharply out against the
brilliant radiance that streams in from the sunset of the past. The
pitiableness of the comfortless present lies in this, that there had
been lovers whose consolations would now have been a solace; the
bitterness of the enmity now experienced is its having been distilled
from the dregs of poisoned friendship. Against the protests of her
faithful prophets Jerusalem had courted alliance with her heathen
neighbours, only to be cruelly deserted in her hour of need. It is the
old story of friendship with the world, keenly accentuated in the life
of Israel, because this favoured people had already seen glimpses of a
rich, rare privilege, the friendship of Heaven. This is the irony of
the situation; it is the tragic irony of all Hebrew history. Why were
these people so blindly infatuated that they would be perpetually
forsaking the living waters, and hewing out to themselves broken
cisterns that could hold no water? The question is only surpassed by
that of the similar folly on the part of those of us who follow their
example in spite of the warning their fate affords, failing to see
that true friendship is too exacting for ties spun from mere
convenience or superficial pleasantness to bear the strain of its more
serious claims.
Passing on from the poetic image to a more direct view of the drear
facts of the case, the author describes the hardships of the
fugitives--people who had fled to Egypt, the retreat of Jeremiah and
his companions. This must be the bearing of the passage which our
translators render--
"Judah is gone into captivity because of affliction, and because of
great servitude."
For if the topic were the captivity at Babylon it would be difficult
to see how "affliction" and "great servitude" could be treated as the
_causes_ of that disaster; were they not rather its effects? Two
solutions of this difficulty have been proposed. It has been suggested
that the captivity is here presented as a consequence of the
misconduct of the Jews in oppressing peoples subject to them. But the
abstract words will not readily bear any such meaning; we should have
expected some more explicit charge. Then it has been proposed to read
the words "out of affliction," etc., in place of the phrase "because
of affliction," etc., as though in escaping from trouble at home the
Jews had only passed into a new misfortune abroad. This is not so
simple an explanation of the poet's language as that at which we
arrive by the perfectly legitimate substitution of the word "exile"
for "captivity." It may seem strange that the statement should be
affirmed of "Judah," as though the whole nation had escaped to Egypt;
but it would be equally inexact to say that "Judah" was carried
captive to Babylon, seeing that only a selection from the upper
classes was deported, while the majority of the people was probably
left in the land. But so many of the Jews, especially those best known
to the poet, were in voluntary exile, that it was quite natural for
him to regard them as virtually the nation. Now upon these refugees
three troubles fall. First, the asylum is a heathen country,
abominable to pious Israelites. Second, even here the fugitives have
no rest; they are not allowed to settle down; they are perpetually
molested. Third, on the way thither they are harassed by the enemy.
They are overtaken by pursuers "within the straits," a statement which
may be read literally; bands of Chaldæans would hover about the
mountains, ready to pounce upon the disorganised groups of fugitives
as they made their way through the narrow defiles that led out of the
hill country to the southern plains. But the phrase is a familiar
Hebraism for difficulties generally. No doubt it was true of the Jews
in this larger sense that their opponents took advantage of their
straitened circumstances to vex them in every possible way. This is
just in accordance with the common experience of mankind all the world
over. But while the fact of the experience is obvious, the inference
to which it points like an arrow is obstinately eluded. Thus a
commercial man in financial straits loses his credit at the very
moment when he most needs it. We cannot say that this is a proof of
spite, or even a sign of cynical indifference; because the needy
person is really most untrustworthy, though his moral integrity may be
unshaken, seeing that his circumstances make it probable that he will
be unable to fulfil his obligations. But now it is the deeper
significance of this fact that is so persistently ignored. There is
perceptible at times in nature a law of compensation by the operation
of which misfortune is mitigated; but that merciful law is frequently
thwarted by the overbearing influence of the terrible law of the
"survival of the fittest," the gospel of the fortunate, but the
death-knell for all failures. If this is so in nature, much more does
it obtain in human society so long as selfish greed is unchecked by
higher principles. Then the world, the Godless world, can be no asylum
for the miserable and unfortunate, because it will be hard upon them
in exact proportion to the extremity of their necessities. Moreover,
the perception that this bitter truth is not a fruit of temporary
passions which may be restrained by education, but the outcome of
certain persistent principles which cannot be set aside while society
retains its present constitution, gives to it the adamantine strength
of destiny.
Coming nearer to the city in his mental vision, the poet next bewails
deserted roads; "those ways of Zion" up which the holiday folks used
to troop, clad in gay garments, with songs of rejoicing, are left so
lonely that it seems as though they themselves must be mourning. It is
in keeping with the imagery of these poems which personify the city,
to endow the very roads with fancied consciousness. This is a natural
result of intense emotion, and therefore a witness to its very
intensity. It seems as though the very earth must share in the
feelings of the man whose heart is stirred to its depths; as though
all things must be filled with the passion the waves of which flow out
to the horizon of his consciousness, till the very stones cry out.
As he approaches the city, the poet is struck with a strange, sad
sight. There are no people about the gates; yet here, if anywhere, we
should expect to meet not only travellers passing through, but also
groups of men, merchants at their traffic, arbitrators settling
disputes, friends exchanging confidences, idlers lounging about and
chewing the cud of the latest gossip, beggars winning for alms; for by
the gates are markets, _al fresco_ tribunals, open spaces for public
meetings. Formerly the life of the city was here concentrated; now no
trace of life is to be seen even at these social ganglia. The
desertion and silence of the gateways gives a shock of distress to the
visitor on entering the ruined city. More disappointments await him
within the walls. Still keeping in mind the idea of the national
festivals, and accompanying the course of them in imagination, the
poet goes up to the temple. No services are proceeding; any priests
who may be found still haunting the precincts of the charred ruins can
only sigh over their enforced idleness; the girl-choristers whose
voices would ring through the porticoes in the old times, are silent
and desolate, for their mother, Jerusalem, is herself "in bitterness."
In this part of the elegy our attention is directed to the cessation
of the happy national assemblies with their accompaniment of public
worship in songs of praise for harvest and vintage and in the awful
symbolism of the altar. The name "Zion" was associated with two
things, festivity and worship. It was a happy privilege for Israel to
have had the inspired insight as well as the courage of faith to
realise the conjunction. Even with the fuller light and larger liberty
of Christianity it is rarely acknowledged among us. Our services have
too much of the funeral dirge about them. The devout Israelite
reserved his dirge for the death of his worship. It does not seem to
have occurred to the poet that anybody could come to regard worship as
an irksome duty from which he would gladly be liberated. Are we, then,
to suppose that the Israelites who practised the crude cult that was
prevalent before the Exile, even among the true servants of Jehovah,
were indeed more devout than Christians who enjoy the privileges of
their richer revelation? Scarcely so; for it must be remembered that
we are called to a more spiritual and therefore a more difficult
worship. Inward sincerity is here of supreme importance; if this is
missing there is no worship, and without it the miserable unreality
becomes inexpressibly wearisome. No doubt it is the failure to reach
the rare altitude of its lofty ideal that makes Christian worship to
appear in the eyes of many to be a melancholy performance. But this
explanation should not be permitted to obscure the fact that true,
living, spiritual worship must be a very delightful exercise of the
soul. Perhaps one reason why this truth is not sufficiently
appreciated may be found in the very facility with which the outward
means of worship are presented to us. People who are seldom out of the
sound of church bells are inclined to grow deaf to their significance.
The Roman Christian hunted in the catacombs, the Waldensian hiding in
his mountain cave, the Covenanter meeting his fellow members of the
kirk in a remote highland glen, the backwoodsman walking fifty miles
to attend Divine service once in six months, are led by difficulty and
deprivation to perceive the value of public worship in a degree which
is surprising to people among whom it is merely an incident of
every-day life. When Zion was in ashes the memory of her festivals was
encircled with a halo of regret.
In accordance with the principle of construction which he follows
throughout--the heightening of the effect of the picture by presenting
a succession of contrasts--the poet next sets the prosperity of the
enemies of Jerusalem in close juxtaposition to the misery of those of
her people in whom it is most pitiable and startling, the children and
the princes. Men with any heart in them would wish above all things
that the innocent young members of their families should be spared;
yet the captives carried off to Babylon consisted principally of boys
and girls torn from their homes, conveyed hundreds of miles across the
desert, many of them dragged down to hideous degradation by the vices
that luxuriated in the corrupt empire of the Euphrates. The other
class of victims specially commented on is that of the princes. Not
only is the present humiliation of the nobility in sharp contrast to
their former elevation of rank, and therefore their sufferings the
more acute, but it is also to be observed that their old position of
leadership has been completely reversed. The reference must be to
Zedekiah and his courtiers.[111] These proud princes who formerly
exercised command over the multitude have become a shameful flock of
fugitives. In the expressive image of the poet, they are compared to
"harts that find no pasture"; they are like fleet wild deer, so cowed
by hunger that they meekly permit themselves to be driven by their
enemies just as if they were a herd of tame cattle.
[111] Jer. xxxix. 4, 5.
In the middle of this comparison between the success of the conquerors
and the fate of their victims the poet inserts a pregnant sentence
which suddenly carries us off to regions of far more profound
reflection, touching upon the two sources of the ruin of Jerusalem
that lie behind the visible hand of Nebuchadnezzar and his hosts, her
own sin and the consequent wrath of her God. It flashes out as a
momentary thought, and then retires with equal suddenness, permitting
the previous current of reflections to be resumed as though unaffected
by the startling interruption. This thought will reappear, however,
with increasing fulness, shewing that it is always present to the mind
of the poet and ready to come to the surface at any moment, even when
it would seem to be inappropriate, although it can never be really
inappropriate, because it is the key to the mystery of the whole
tragedy.
Lastly, while the sense of a strong contrast is excited objectively by
a comparison of the placid security of the invaders with the
degradation of the fugitives, subjectively it is most vividly realised
by the sufferers themselves when they call to mind their former
happiness. Jerusalem is supposed to fall into a reverie in which she
follows the recollection of the whole series of her pleasant
experiences from far-off bygone times through an the succeeding ages
flown to the present era of calamities. This is to indulge in the
pains of memory--pains which are decidedly more acute than the
corresponding pleasures celebrated by Samuel Rogers. These pains are
doubly intense owing to the inevitable fact that the contrast is
unnaturally strained. Viewed in the softened lights of memory, the
past is strangely simplified, its mixed character is forgotten, and
many of its unpleasant features are smoothed out, so that an idyllic
charm hovers over the dream, and lends it an unearthly beauty. This is
why so many people foolishly damp the hopes of children, who, if they
are healthily constituted, ought to be anticipating the future with
eagerness, by solemnly exhorting them to make hay while the sun
shines, with the gloomy warning that the sunny season must soon pass.
Their application of the motto _carpe diem_ is not only pagan in
spirit; it is founded on an illusion. Happily there is some unreality
about most of our yearning regrets for the days that have gone. That
sweet, fair past was not so radiant as its effigy in the dreamland of
memory now appears to be; nor is the hard present so free from
mitigating circumstances as we suppose. And yet, when all is said, we
cannot find the consolation we hunger after in hours of darkness among
bare conclusions of common-sense. The grave is not an illusion, at
least when only viewed in the light of the past though even this
chill, earthy reality begins to melt into a shadow immediately the
light of the eternal future falls upon it. The melancholy that laments
the lost past can only be perfectly mastered by that Christian grace,
the hope which presses forward to a better future.
CHAPTER V
_SIN AND SUFFERING_
i. 8-11
The doctrinaire rigour of Judaism in its uncompromising association of
moral and physical evils has led to an unreasonable disregard for the
solid truth which lies behind this mistake. It can scarcely be said
that men are now perplexed by the problem that inspired the Book of
Job. The fall of the tower of Siloam or the blindness of a man from
his birth would not start among us the vexatious questions which were
raised in the days of our Lord. We have not accepted the Jewish theory
that the punishment of sin always overtakes the sinner in this life,
much less have we assented to the by no means necessary corollary that
all calamities are the direct penalties of the misconduct of the
sufferers, and therefore sure signs of guilt. The modern tendency is
in the opposite direction; it goes to ignore the existence of any
connection whatever between the course of the universe and human
conduct. No interference with the uniformity of the laws of nature for
retributive or disciplinary purposes can be admitted. The machinery
runs on in its grooves never deflected by any regard for our good or
bad deserts. If we dash ourselves against its wheels they will tear us
to pieces, grind us to powder; and we may reasonably consider this
treatment to be the natural punishment of our folly. But here we are
not beyond physical causation, and the drift of thought is towards
holding the belief in anything more to be a simple survival from
primitive anthropomorphic ideas of nature, a pure superstition. Is it
a pure superstition? It is time we turned to another side of the
question.
Every strong conviction that has obtained wide recognition, however
erroneous and mischievous it may be, can be traced back to the abuse
of some solid truth. It is not the case that the universe is
constructed without any regard for moral laws. Even the natural
punishment of the violation of natural laws contains a certain ethical
element. Other considerations apart, clearly it is wrong to injure
one's health or endanger one's life by rushing headlong against the
constituted order of the universe; therefore the consequences of such
conduct may be taken as signs of its condemnation. In the case of the
sufferings of the Jews lamented by our poet the calamities were not
primarily of a physical origin; they grew out of human acts--the
accompaniments of the Chaldæan invasion. When we come to the evolution
of history we are introduced to a whole world of moral forces that are
not at work in the material universe. Nebuchadnezzar did not know that
he was the instrument of a Higher Power for the chastisement of
Israel; but the corruptions of the Jews, so ruthlessly exposed by
their prophets, had undermined the national vigour which is the chief
safeguard of a state, as surely as at a later time the corruptions of
Rome opened her gates to devastating hosts of Goths and Huns. May we
not go further, and, passing beyond the region of common observation,
discover richer indications of the ethical meanings of events in the
application to them of a real faith in God? It was his profound
theism that lay at the base of the Jew's conception of temporal
retribution, crude, hard, and narrow as this was. If we believe that
God is supreme over nature and history as well as over individual
lives, we must conclude that He will use every province of His vast
dominion so as to further His righteous purposes. If the same Spirit
reigns throughout there must be a certain harmony between all parts of
His government. The mistake of the Jew was his claim to interpret the
details of this Divine administration with a sole regard for the
minute fraction of the universe that came under his own eyes, with
blank indifference to the vast realm of facts and principles of which
he could know nothing. His idea of Providence was too shortsighted,
too parochial, in every respect too small; yet it was true in so far
as it registered the conviction that there must be an ethical
character in the government of the world by a righteous God, that the
divinely ordered course of events cannot be out of all relation to
conduct.
It does not fall in with the plan of the Lamentations for this subject
to be treated so fully in these poems as it is in the stirring
exhortations of the great prophets. Yet it comes to the surface
repeatedly. In the fifth verse of the first elegy the poet attributes
the affliction of Zion to "the multitude of her transgressions"; and
he introduces the eighth verse with the clear declaration--
"Jerusalem hath grievously sinned; therefore she has become an
unclean thing."
The powerful Hebrew idiom according to which the cognate substance
follows the verb is here employed. Rendered literally, the opening
phrase is, "sinned sin." The experience of the chastisement leads to a
keen perception of the guilt that precedes it. This is more than a
consequence of the application of the accepted doctrine of the
connection of sin with suffering to a particular case. No intellectual
theory is strong enough by itself to awaken a slumbering conscience.
The logic may be faultless; and yet even though the point of the
syllogism is not evaded it will be coolly ignored. Trouble arouses a
torpid conscience in a much more direct and effectual way. In the
first place, it shatters the pride which is the chief hindrance to the
confession of sin. Then it compels reflection; it calls a halt, and
makes us look back over the path we may have been following too
heedlessly. Sometimes it seems to exercise a distinctly illuminating
influence. It is as though scales had fallen from the sufferer's eyes;
he sees all things in a new light, and some ugly facts which had been
lying at his side for years disregarded suddenly glare upon him as
horrible discoveries. Thus the "Prodigal Son" perceives that he has
sinned both against Heaven and against his father when he is in the
lowest depths of misery, not so much because he recognises a penal
character in his troubles, but more on account of the fact that he has
_come to himself_. This subjective, psychological connection between
suffering and sin is independent of any dogma of retribution; for the
ends of practical discipline it is the most important connection. We
may waive all discussion of the ancient Jewish problem, and still be
thankful to recognise the Elijah-like ministry of adversity.
The immediate effect of this vision of sin is that a new colour is
given to the picture of the desolation of Jerusalem. The image of a
miserable woman is preserved, but the dignity of the earlier scene is
missing here. Pathos and poetry gather round the picture of the
forlorn widow weeping for the loss of her children. Neglected and
humbled as she is in worldly estate, the tragic vastness of her sorrow
has exalted her to an altitude of moral sublimity. Such suffering
breaks through those barriers of conventional experience which make
many lives look mean and trivial. It is so awful that we cannot but
regard it with reverence. But all this is altered in the aspect of
Jerusalem which follows the confession of her great sin. In the
freedom of ancient language the poet ventures on an illustration that
would be regarded as too gross for modern literature. The limits of
our art exclude subjects which excite a sensation of disgust; but this
is just the sensation the author of the elegy deliberately aims at
producing. He paints a picture which is simply intended to sicken his
readers. The utter humiliation of Jerusalem is exhibited in the
unavoidable exposure of a condition which natural modesty would
conceal at any cost. Another contrast between the reserve of our
modern style and the rude bluntness of antiquity is here apparent. It
is not only that we have grown more refined in language--a very
superficial change which might be no better than the whitewashing of
sepulchres; over and above this civilising of mere manners, the effect
of Teutonic habits, strengthened by Christian sentiments, has been to
develop a respect for woman undreamed of in the old Eastern world. It
may be added that the scientific temper of recent times has taught us
that there is nothing really dishonouring in purely natural processes.
The ancient world could not distinguish between delicacy and shame. We
should regard a poor suffering woman whose modesty had been grievously
wounded with simple commiseration; the ancient Jews treated such a
person with disgust as an unclean creature, quite unable to see that
their conduct was simply brutal.
The new aspect of the misery of Jerusalem is thus set forth as one of
degradation and ignominy. The vision of sin is immediately followed by
a scene of shame. Commentators have been divided over the question
whether this picture of the humiliated woman is intended to apply to
the sin of the city or only to her misfortunes. In favour of the
former view, it may be remarked that uncleanness is distinctly
associated with moral corruption: the connection is the more
appropriate here inasmuch as a confession of sin immediately precedes.
On the other hand, the attendant circumstances point to the second
interpretation. It is the humiliation of the condition of the
sufferer, rather than that condition itself, which is dwelt upon.
Jerusalem is despised, "she sigheth," "is come down wonderfully,"
"hath no comforter," and is generally afflicted and oppressed by her
enemies. But while we are led to regard the pitiable picture as a
representation of the woful plight into which the proud city has
fallen, we cannot conclude it to be an accident that this particular
phase of her misery succeeds the mention of her great guilt. After
all, it is only the underlying guilt that can justify a verdict which
carries disgrace as well as suffering for its penalty. Even when the
judgments of men are too confused to recognise this truth with regard
to other people, it should be apparent to the conscience of the
humiliated person himself. The humiliation which follows nothing worse
than a fall into external misfortunes is but a superficial trouble,
and the consciousness of innocence can enable one to submit to it
without any sense of inward shame. The sting of contempt lies in the
miserable consciousness that it is deserved.
Thus we see the punishment of sin consisting in exposure. The exposure
which simply hurts natural modesty is acutely painful to a refined,
sensitive spirit; and yet the very dignity which it outrages is a
shield against the point of the insult. But where the exposure follows
sin this shield is absent. In that case the degradation of it is
without any mitigation. Nothing more may be necessary to constitute a
very severe punishment. When the secrets of all hearts are revealed
the very revelation will be a penal process. To lay bare the quivering
nerves of memory to the searching sunlight must be to torture the
guilty soul with inconceivable horrors. Nevertheless it is a matter
for profound thankfulness that there is no question of a surprising
revelation of the sinner's guilt being made to God at some future
time, some shocking discovery which might turn His lovingkindness into
wrath or contempt. We cannot have a firmer ground of joy and hope than
the fact that God knows everything about us, and yet loves us at our
worst, patiently waiting for repentance with His offer of unlimited
forgiveness. Exposure before God is like a surgical examination; the
hope of a cure, if it does not dispel the sense of humiliation--and
that is impossible in the case of guilt, the disgrace of which to a
healthy conscience is more intense before the holiness of God than
before the eyes of fellow-sinners--still encourages confidence.
The recognition of a moral lapse at the root of the shame of
Jerusalem, though not perhaps in the shame itself, is confirmed by a
phrase which reflects on the culpable heedlessness of the Jews. The
elegy deplores how the city has "come down wonderfully" on account of
the fact that "she remembered not her latter end." It is quite
confusing and incorrect to render this expression in the present
tense as it stands in the Authorised English Version. The poet cannot
mean that the Jews in exile and captivity have already forgotten the
recent horrors of the siege of Jerusalem. This would be flatly
contrary to the motive of the elegy, which is to give tongue to the
sufferings of the Jews flowing out of that disaster. It would be
impossible to say that the calamity that inspired the elegy was no
longer even remembered by its victims. What an anti-climax this would
be! Clearly the poet is bewailing the culpable folly of the people in
not giving a thought to the certain consequences of such a course as
they were following; a course that had been denounced by the faithful
prophets of Jehovah, who, alas! had been but voices crying in the
wilderness, unnoted, or even scouted and suppressed, like the stormy
petrels hated by sailors as birds of ill-omen. In her ease and
prosperity, her self-indulgence and sin, the doomed city had failed to
recollect what must be the end of such things. The idea of remembrance
is peculiarly apt and forcible in this connection, although it has a
relation to the future, because the Jews had been through experiences
which should have served as warnings if they had duly reflected on
them. This was not a matter for wild guesses or vague apprehensions.
Not only were there the distinct utterances of Jeremiah and his
predecessors to rouse the thoughtless; events had been speaking louder
than words. Jerusalem was already a city with a history, and that
history had even by this time accumulated some tragic lessons. These
were subjects for memory. Thus memory can become prophecy, because the
laws which are revealed in the past will govern the future. We are
none of us so wholly inexperienced but that in the knowledge of what
we have already been through we may gain wisdom to anticipate the
consequences of our present actions. The heedless person is one who
forgets, or at all events one who will not attend to his own memories.
Such recklessness is its own condemnation; it cannot plead the excuse
of ignorance.
But now it may be objected that this reference to the mere thought of
consequences suggests considerations that are too low to furnish the
reasons for the ruin of Jerusalem. Would the city have been spared if
only her inhabitants had been a little more foreseeing? It should be
observed that though mere prudence is never a very lofty virtue,
imprudence is sometimes a very serious fault. It cannot be right to be
simply reckless, to ignore all lessons of the past and fling oneself
blindly into the future. The hero who is sure that he is inspired by a
lofty motive may walk straight into the very jaws of death, and be all
the stronger for his noble indifference to his fate; but he who is no
hero, he who is not influenced by any great or unselfish ideas, has no
excuse for neglecting the warnings of common prudence. All wise
actions must be more or less guided with a view to their issues in the
future, although in the case of the best of them the aims will be pure
and unselfish. It is our prerogative to "look before and after"; and
just in proportion as we take long views do our deeds acquire gravity
and depth. Our Lord characterised the two ways by their ends. While
the example of the careless Jews is followed on all sides--and who of
us can deny that he has ever fallen into the negligence?--is it not a
little superfluous to discuss abstract, unpractical problems about a
remote altruism?
Intermingled with his painful picture of the humiliation and shame of
the fallen city, the poet supplies indications of the effect of all
this on the suffering citizens. Despised by all who had formerly
honoured her, Jerusalem sighs and longs to retire into obscurity, away
from the rude gaze of her oppressors.
In particular, two further signs of her distress are here given.
The first is _spoliation_. Her enemies have laid hands on "all her
pleasant things." It may strike us that, after the miseries just
narrated, this is but a minor trouble. Job's calamities began with the
loss of his property, and rose from this by degrees to the climax of
agony. If his first trouble had been the sudden death of all his
children, stunned by that awful blow, he would have cared little about
the fate of his flocks and herds. It is not according to the method of
the Lamentations, however, to move on to any climax. The thoughts are
set forth as they well up in the mind of the poet, now passionate and
intense, then again of a milder cast, yet altogether combining to
colour one picture of intolerable woe. But there is an aspect of this
idea of the robbery of the "pleasant things" which heightens the sense
of misery. It is another instance of the force of contrast so often
manifested in these elegies. Jerusalem had been a home of wealth and
luxury in the merry old days. But hoarded money, precious jewellery,
family heirlooms, products of art and skill, accumulated during
generations of prosperity and treated as necessaries of life--all had
been swept away in the sack of the city, and scattered among strangers
who could not prize them as they had been prized by their owners; and
now these victims of spoliation, stripped of everything, were in want
of daily bread. Even what little could be saved from the wreck they
had to give up in exchange for common food, bought dearly in the
market of necessity.
The second sign of the great distress here noted is _desecration_.
Gentiles invade the sacred precincts of the temple. Considering that
the sanctuary had been already much more effectually desecrated by the
blood-stained hands and lustful hearts of impious worshippers, such as
those "rulers of Sodom" denounced by Isaiah for "trampling" the courts
of Jehovah with their "vain oblations,"[112] we do not find it easy to
sympathise with this horror of a supposed defilement from the mere
presence of heathen persons. Yet it would be unjust to accuse the
shocked Israelites of hypocrisy. They ought to have been more
conscious of the one real corruption of sin; but we cannot add that
therefore their notions of external uncleanness were altogether
foolish and wrong. To judge the Jews of the age of the Captivity by a
standard of spirituality which few Christians have yet attained to
would be a cruel anachronism. The Syrian invasion of the temple in the
time of the Maccabees was called by a very late prophet an
"abomination of desolation,"[113] and a similar insult to be offered
to the sacred place by the Romans is described by our Lord in the same
terms.[114] All of us must be conscious at times of the sacredness of
associations. To botanise on his mother's grave may be a proof of a
man's freedom from superstition, but it cannot be taken as an
indication of the fineness of his feelings. The Israelite
exclusiveness which shunned the intrusion of foreigners simply because
they were foreigners was combined both with a patriotic anxiety to
preserve the integrity of the nation, and in some cases with a
religious dread of idolatry. It is true the nominal contamination of
the mere presence of Gentiles was generally more dreaded than the real
contagion of their corrupt examples. Still the very idea of
desecration, even when it is superficial, together with a sense of
pain at its presence, is higher than the materialism which despises it
not because this materialism has the grace to sanctify everything, but
for the opposite reason, because it counts nothing holy, because to it
all things are common and unclean.
[112] Isa. i. 10-17.
[113] Dan. xi. 31.
[114] Mark xiii. 14.
Before we pass from this portion of the elegy there is one curious
characteristic of it which calls for notice. The poet suddenly drops
the construction in the third person and writes in the first person.
This he does twice--at the end of the ninth verse, and again at the
end of the eleventh. He might be speaking in his own person, but the
language points to the personified city. Yet in each case the outburst
is quite abrupt, sprung upon us without any introductory formula.
Possibly the explanation of this anomaly must be sought in the
liturgical use for which the poem was designed. If it was to be sung
antiphonally we may conjecture that at these places a second chorus
would break in. The result would be a startling dramatic effect--as
though the city had sat listening to the lament over her woes until
the piteous tale had compelled her to break her silence and cry aloud.
In each case the cry is directed to heaven. It is an appeal to God;
and it simply prays for His attention--"Behold, O Lord," "See, O Lord,
and behold." In the first case the Divine attention is called to the
insolence of the enemy, in the second to the degradation of Jerusalem.
Still it is only an appeal for notice. Will God but look upon all this
misery? That is sufficient.
CHAPTER VI
_ZION'S APPEAL_
i. 12-22
In the latter part of the second elegy Jerusalem appears as the
speaker, appealing for sympathy, first to stray, passing travellers,
then to the larger circle of the surrounding nations, and lastly to
her God. Already the suffering city has spoken once or twice in brief
interruptions of the poet's descriptions of her miseries, and now she
seems to be too impatient to permit herself to be represented any
longer even by this friendly advocate; she must come forward in person
and present her case in her own words.
There is much difference of opinion among commentators about the
rendering of the phrase with which the appeal begins. The Revisers
have followed the Authorised Version in taking it as a question--"Is
it nothing to you, all ye that pass by?"[115] But it may be treated as
a direct negative--"It is nothing," etc., or, by a slightly different
reading of the Hebrew text, as a simple call for attention--"O all ye
that pass by," etc., as in the Vulgate "_O vos_," etc. The usual
rendering is the finest in literary feeling, and it is in accordance
with a common usage. Although the sign of an interrogation, which
would set this meaning beyond dispute, is absent, there does not seem
to be sufficient reason for rejecting it in favour of one of the
proposed alternatives. But in any case the whole passage evidently
expresses a deep yearning for sympathy. Mere strangers, roving
Bedouin, any people who may chance to be passing by Jerusalem, are
implored to behold her incomparable woes. The wounded animal creeps
into a corner to suffer and die in secret, perhaps on account of the
habit of herds, in tormenting a suffering mate. But among mankind the
instinct of a sufferer is to crave sympathy, from a friend, if
possible; but if such be not available, then even from a stranger. Now
although where it is possible to give effectual aid, merely to cast a
pitying look and pass by on the other side, like the priest and the
Levite in the parable, is a mockery and a cruelty, although
unpretentious indifference is better than that hypocrisy, it would be
a great mistake to suppose that in those cases for which no direct
relief can be given sympathy is of no value. This sympathy, if it is
real, would help if it could; and under all circumstances it is the
reality of the sympathy that is most prized, not its issues.
[115] i. 12.
It should be remembered, further, that the first condition of active
aid is a genuine sense of compassion, which can only be awakened by
means of knowledge and the impressions which a contemplation of
suffering produce. Evil is wrought not only from want of thought, but
also from lack of knowledge; and good-doing is withheld for the same
reason. Therefore the first requisite is to arrest attention. A royal
commission is the reasonable precursor of a state remedy for some
public wrong. Misery is permitted to flourish in the dark because
people are too indolent to search it out. No doubt the knowledge of
sufferings which we might remedy implies a grave responsibility; but
we cannot escape our obligations by simply closing our eyes to what we
do not wish to see. We are responsible for our ignorance and its
consequences wherever the opportunity of knowledge is within our
reach.
The appeal to all who pass by is most familiar to us in its later
association with our Lord's sufferings on the cross. But this is not
in any sense a Messianic passage; it is confined in its purpose to the
miseries of Jerusalem. Of course there can be no objection to
illustrating the grief and pain of the Man of Sorrows by using the
classic language of an ancient lament if we note that this is only an
illustration. There is a kinship in all suffering, and it is right to
consider that He who was tried in all points as we are tried passed
through sorrows which absorbed all the bitterness even of such a cup
of woe as that which was drunk by Jerusalem in the extremity of her
misfortunes. If never before there had been sorrow like unto her
sorrow, at length that was matched, nay, surpassed at Gethsemane and
Golgotha. Still it would be a mistake to confine these words to their
secondary application--not only an exegetical mistake, but one of
deeper significance. Jesus Christ restrained the wailing of the women
who offered Him their compassion on His way to the cross, bidding them
weep not for Him, but for themselves and their children.[116] Much
more when His passion is long past and He is reigning in glory must it
be displeasing to Him for His friends to be wasting idle tears over
the sufferings of His earthly life. The morbid sentimentality which
broods over the ancient wounds of Christ, the nail prints and the
spear thrust, but ignores the present wounds of society--the wounds
of the world for which He bled and died, or the wounds of the Church
which is His body now, must be wrong in His sight. He would rather we
gave a cup of cold water to one of His brethren than an ocean of tears
to the memory of Calvary. If then we would make use of the ruined
city's appeal for sympathy by applying it to some later object it
would be more in agreement with the mind of Christ to think of the
miseries of mankind in our own day, and to consider how a sympathetic
regard for them may point to some ministry of alleviation.
[116] Luke xxiii. 28.
In order to impress the magnitude of her miseries on the minds of the
strangers whose attention she would arrest, the city, now personified
as a suppliant, describes her dreadful condition in a series of brief,
pointed metaphors. Thus the imagination is excited; and the
imagination is one of the roads to the heart. It is not enough that
people know the bald facts of a calamity as these may be scheduled in
an inspector's report. Although this preliminary information is most
important, if we go no further the report will be replaced in its
pigeon-hole, and lie there till it is forgotten. If it is to do
something better than gather the dust of years it must be used as a
foundation for the imagination to work upon. This does not imply any
departure from truth, any false colouring or exaggeration; on the
contrary, the process only brings out the truth which is not really
seen until it is imagined. Let us look at the various images under
which the distress of Jerusalem is here presented.
It is like a fire in the bones.[117] It burns, consumes, pains with
intolerable torment; it is no skin-deep trouble, it penetrates to the
very marrow. This fire is overmastering; it is not to be quenched,
neither does it die out; it "prevaileth" against the bones. There is
no getting such a fire under.
[117] i. 13.
It is like a net.[118] The image is changed. We see a wild creature
caught in the bush, or perhaps a fugitive arrested in his flight and
flung down by hidden snares at his feet. Here is the shock of
surprise, the humiliation of deceit, the vexation of being thwarted.
The result is a baffled, bewildered, helpless condition.
[118] i. 13.
It is like faintness.[119] The desolate sufferer is ill. It is bad
enough to have to bear calamities in the strength of health. Jerusalem
is made sick and kept faint all the day--with a faintness that is not
a momentary collapse, but a continuous condition of failure.
[119] _Ibid._
It is
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