The Song of Solomon : and the Lamentations of Jeremiah

154
THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEREMIAH
cerned with the woes of Jerusalem, and he can only
find one image with which these woes are at all com-
parable. Her breach, he says, " is great like the sea," ^
meaning that her calamities are vast and terrible as the
sea ; or perhaps that the ruin of Jerusalem is like that
produced by the breaking in of the sea—a striking
image in its application to an inland mountain city
for no place was really safer from any such cataclysm
than Jerusalem. The analogy is intentionally far-
fetched. What might naturally happen to Tyre, but
could not possibly reach Jerusalem, is nevertheless the
only conceivable type of the events that have actually
befallen this ill-fated city. The Jews were not a
maritime people. To them the sea was no delight such
as it is to us. They spoke of it with terror, and shud-
dered to hear from afar of its ravages. Now the
deluge of their own troubles is compared to the great
and terrible sea.
The poet can offer no comfort for such misery as
this. His confession of helplessness agrees with what
we must have perceived already, namely, that the Book
of Lamentations is not a book of consolations. It is
not always easy to see that the sympathy which mourns
with the sufferer may be quite unable to relieve him.
The too common mistake of the friend who comes to
show sympathy is Bildad's and his companions' notion
that he is called upon to offer advice. Why should
one who is not in the school of afQiction assume the
function of pedagogue to a pupil of that school, who
by reason of the mere fact of his presence there should
rather be deemed fit to instruct the outsider ?
If he cannot comfort Jerusalem, however, the elegist
ii. 13.
;