The Song of Solomon : and the Lamentations of Jeremiah

THE LAMENTATIONS OF JEREMIAH
instance, we have reason to believe that the speaker
is under the influence of a Divine inspiration, we have
no right to conclude that this gift would enable him to
take an all-round vision of truth. Still, can we deny-
that the elegist has presented to our minds but one
facet of truth ? If we do not accept it as intended for a
complete picture of God, and if we confine it to an
account of the Divine action under certain circumstances
as this appears to one who is most painfully affected
by it, without any assertion concerning the ultimate
motives of God—and this is all we have any justifica-
tion for doing—it may teach us important lessons which
we are too ready to ignore in favour of less unpleasant
notions. Finally it would be quite unfair to the elegist,
and it would give us a totally false impression of his
ideas, if we were to go no further than this. To under-
stand him at all we must hear him out. The contrast
between the first part of this poem and the second is
startling in the extreme, and we must not forget that
the two are set in the closest juxtaposition, for it is
plain that the one is intended to balance the other.
The harshness of the opening words could be per-
mitted with the more daring, because a perfect correc-
tive to any unsatisfactory inferences that might be
drawn from it was about to be immediately supplied.
The triplet of verses 19 to 21 serves as a transition
to the picture of the other side of the Divine action.
It begins with prayer. Thus a new note is struck.
The sufferer knows that God is not at heart his enemy.
So he ventures to beseech the very Being concerning
whose treatment of him he has been complaining so
bitterly, to remember his affliction and the misery it
has brought on him, the wormwood, the gall of his
hard lot. Hope now dawns on him out of his own