The Song of Solomon : and the Lamentations of Jeremiah

[0-17.] THE CRY OF THE CHHDREN 145
merely ideal, that it represents a great, solid truth, the
truth that the perfect human unit is not an individual,
but a more or less extensive group of persons, mutually
harmonised and organised in a common life, a society
of some sort—the family, the city, the state, mankind.
By bearing this in mind we shall be able to perceive
that sufferings which in themselves might seem sordid
and degrading can attain to something of epic dignity.
It is in this spirit that the poet deplores the exile of
the king and the princes. He is not now concerned with
the private troubles of these exalted persons. Judah
was a limited monarchy, though not after the pattern
of government familiar to us, but rather in the style of
the Plantagenet rule, according to which the sovereign
shared his authority with a number of powerful barons,
each of whom was lord over his own territory. The men
described as " the princes of Israel" were not, for the
most part, members of the royal family ; they were the
heads of tribes and families. Therefore the banishment'
of these persons, together with the king, meant for the
Jews who were left behind the loss of their ruling autho-
rities. Then it seems most reasonable to connect the
clause which follows the reference to the exile with the
sufferings of Jerusalem rather than with the hardships
of the captives, because the whole context is concerned
with the former subject. This phrase read literally is,
" The law is not." ^ Our Revisers have followed the
Authorised Version in connecting it with the previous
expression, "among the nations," which describes the
place of exile, so as to lead us to read it as a statement
that the king and the princes were enduring the hardship
of residence in a land where their sacred Tomh was
' ii. 9.