Let us see what these things are which he calls to mind. Yes, this was Jeremiah, but it certainly was not only him. Prophets Lamentations 3:1-66 . That we may be entitled to the comforts administered to the afflicted in the foregoing verses, and may taste the sweetness of them, we have here the duties of an afflicted state prescribed to us, in the performance of which we may expect those comforts. ( Lamentations 3:1-9) The man afflicted by the LORD. They were surrounded, hedged, and blocked. Note, Those that are cast down are commonly tempted to think themselves cast off, Ps 31 22; Jon 2 4. This is the result of their searching and trying their ways; the more they enquired into them the worse they found them. 3. I do not see that we gain any thing by this. When our comforts fail, yet God's compassions do not. VIII. The evil fact is, turning aside the right of a man; and the aggravation of it is, doing it before the face of the Most High; that is, in a court of justice, where God is ever considered to be present. Mine enemies chased me From this to the end of the chapter the prophet speaks of his own personal sufferings, and especially of those which he endured in the dungeon. Let the curse be executed, v. 66. He does indeed afflict, and grieve the children of men; all their grievances and afflictions are from him. My affliction and my transgression (so some read it), my trouble and my sin that brought it upon me; this was the wormwood and the gall in the affliction and the misery. Title. I have become the ridicule of all my people II. Even when I cry and shout, God's ear is wont to be open to the prayers of his people, and his door of mercy to those that knock at it; but now both are shut, even to one that cries and shouts. 1. 2. Here we find a different feeling; he humbles himself under the mighty hand of God, and then his hope revives. (Clarke). If men injure them by force of arms, God does not approve of that. They complain that there was a wall of partition between them and God, and, (1.) This comfort I receive from the hand of God, and shall I not receive that evil also? Like a lion in ambush. 4 My flesh and my skin hath he made old; he hath broken my bones. Therefore I hope in Him: God couldnt really be his hope until he was first his portion. A mother listens for the breathing of her babe in the dark. 23 They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. He had already begun to appear for them (v. 58): "O Lord! Email / username or password was incorrect! Without interruption, In His wise judgments God caused grief, but promised to also show compassion, and would do so according to the multitude of His mercies. This was a pathway to hope for him. i. Yes, certainly they do; and it is more emphatically expressed in the original: Do not this evil, and this good, proceed out of the mouth of the Most High? 24 The Lord is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in him. He had heard their prayers; though they had been ready to fear that the cloud of wrath was such as their prayers could not pass through (v. 44), yet upon second thoughts, or at least upon further trial, they find it otherwise, and that God had not said unto them, Seek you me in vain. 5. Thou hast seen - all their imaginations Every thing is open to the eye of God. Darkness is put for great trouble and perplexity, the want both of comfort and of direction; this was the case of the complainant (v. 2): "He has led me by his providence, and an unaccountable chain of events, into darkness and not into light, the darkness I feared and not into the light I hoped for." Whatever measure he was to receive, whatever inheritance, whatever future, it would all be found in Yahweh. 5. 4. 9 He hath inclosed my ways with hewn stone, he hath made my paths crooked. He had silenced their fears and quieted their spirits (v. 57): "Thou drewest near in the day that I called upon thee; thou didst graciously assure me of thy presence with me, and give me to see thee nigh unto me, whereas I had thought thee to be at a distance from me." God will plead thy cause, and redeem thy soul. (Clarke). Their taunting song: Mocking or taunt-songs were also frequently used to express derision or contempt for an enemy. (Harrison). i. Lamentations 3 He preached in the same church as C. H. Spurgeon over one hundred years earlier. I am the man who has seen affliction by the rod of His wrath, He has led me and made me walk in darkness, He has been to me like a bear lying in wait, My strength and my hope have perished from the LORD, My soul still remembers and sinks within me, This I recall to mind, therefore I have hope, Through the LORDs mercies we are not consumed, The LORD is good to those who wait for Him, to the soul who seeks Him, It is good that he should hope and wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD, It is good for a man to bear the yoke in his youth, Let him give his cheek to the one who strikes him, according to the multitude of His mercies, For He does not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of men, To turn aside the justice due a man before the face of the Most High. God can interpret all. (Meyer). 3. If you turn to the life of Whitfield our great and mighty Whitfield in more modern times, what was his character? 3. It is our wisdom then to submit, and to kiss the rod; for, if we still walk contrary to God, he will punish us yet seven times more; for when he judges he will overcome. So (v. 11), "He has turned aside my ways; he has blasted all my counsels, ruined my projects, so that I am necessitated to yield to my own ruin. Far be it from God that he should do iniquity, or countenance those that do it. (Lamentations 3:21-23) New mercies from a faithful God. Persecute and destroy them Thou wilt pursue them with destruction. We have been with him, and it has never been well with us since we forsook him; let us therefore now turn again to him." i. range of evangelical traditions, all of the ideas and principles conveyed And God's causing our grief ought to be no discouragement at all to those expectations. But he is in a particular manner good to those that wait for him, to the soul that seeks him. A serious consideration of ourselves and a reflection upon our past lives. From which it most assuredly follows, that God never afflicts us but for our good, nor chastises but that we may be partakers of his holiness. These past deliverances created his assurance that Jehovah would yet act on behalf of His people and destroy their enemies from under the heavens. (Morgan), 2021 The Enduring Word Bible Commentary by David Guzik ewm@enduringword.com, The Whole Bible

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