The Song of Solomon : and the Lamentations of Jeremiah

THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEREMIAH
A\Teck the}' 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
alread}^ 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," ^ 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 WTong. To judge the Jews of the age of
the Captivity by a standard of spirituality which few
Christians have 3-et 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," ^ and a similar
insult to be offered to the sacred place by the Romans
is described by our Lord in the same terms.^ 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
anxiet}' to preserve the integrity of the nation, and in
' I-sa. i. 10-17. " Dan. xi. 31. ^ Mark xiii. 14.