1._O God! why hast thou east us off for ever? _If this complaint was written when the people were captives in Babylon, although Jeremiah had assigned the 70th year of their captivity as the period of their deliverance, it is not wonderful that waiting so long was to them a very bitter affliction, th... [ Continue Reading ]
2._Remember thy congregation, which thou hast possessed of old. _(214) Here they boast of having been the peculiar people of God, not on account of any merit of their own, but by the grace of adoption. They boast in like manner of their antiquity, — that they are not subjects who have come under the... [ Continue Reading ]
3._Lift up thy strokes. _Here the people of God, on the other hand, beseech him to inflict a deadly wound upon their enemies, corresponding to the cruelty with which they had raged against his sanctuary. They would intimate, that a moderate degree of punishment was not sufficient for such impious an... [ Continue Reading ]
4._Thy adversaries have roared in the midst of thy sanctuaries. _Here the people of God compare their enemies to lions, (Amos 3:8,) to point out the cruelty which they exercised even in the very sanctuaries of God. (218) In this passage we are to understand the temple of Jerusalem as spoken of rathe... [ Continue Reading ]
5._He who lifted up the axe upon the thick trees was renowned. _The prophet again aggravates still more the barbarous and brutal cruelty of the enemies of his countrymen, from the circumstance, that they savagely demolished an edifice which had been built at such vast expense, which was embellished... [ Continue Reading ]
7._They have set fire to thy sanctuaries. _The Psalmist now complains that the temple was burned, and thus completely razed and destroyed, whereas it was only half demolished by the instruments of war. Many have supposed that the order of the words has been here inverted, (224) not being able to per... [ Continue Reading ]
8._They have said in their heart, Let us destroy them all together. _To express the more forcibly the atrocious cruelty of the enemies of the Church, the prophet introduces them speaking together, and exciting one another to commit devastation without limit or measure. His language implies, that eac... [ Continue Reading ]
9._We see not our signs. _Here the pious Jews show that their calamities were aggravated from the circumstance that they had no consolation by which to alleviate them. It is a powerful means of encouraging the children of God, when he enables them to cherish the hope of his being reconciled to them,... [ Continue Reading ]
10._How long, O God! shall the adversary reproach? _Here it is intimated that nothing inflicted upon them greater anguish than when they saw the name of God blasphemed by the ungodly. By this manner of praying, the object of the inspired writer was to kindle in our hearts a zeal for maintaining the... [ Continue Reading ]
11._How long wilt thou withdraw thy hand? _It is easy to see what the prophet here intends, and yet interpreters are not agreed as to the words. Some by the word _hand, _in the first part of the verse, understand _the left hand, _to distinguish it from _the right hand, _mentioned in the last clause... [ Continue Reading ]
12._But God is my King from the beginning. _In this verse, as we have often seen to be the case in other places, the people of God intermingle meditations with their prayers, thereby to acquire renewed vigor to their faith, and to stir up themselves to greater earnestness in the duty of prayer. We k... [ Continue Reading ]
13._Thou hast divided the sea by thy power. _The prophet now collects together certain kinds of deliverances highly worthy of remembrance; all of them, however, belonging to the first deliverance by which God emancipated his people from the tyranny of Egypt. We will find him afterwards descending to... [ Continue Reading ]
16._The day is thine, the night also is thine. _The prophet now descends to the consideration of the divine benefits which are extended in common to all mankind. Having commenced with the special blessings by which God manifested himself to be the Father of his chosen people, he now aptly declares t... [ Continue Reading ]
17._Thou hast fixed _(241) _all the boundaries of the earth. _What is here stated concerning the boundaries or limits assigned to the earth, and concerning the regular and successive recurrence of summer and winter every year, is to the same effect as the preceding verse. It is doubtful whether the... [ Continue Reading ]
18._Remember this. _The prophet having encouraged the hearts of the godly by magnifying the divine power and goodness, now returns to the prosecution of his prayer. He first complains that the enemies of his people revile God, and yet continue unpunished. When he says, _Remember this, _the manner of... [ Continue Reading ]
19._Give not to the beast the soul of thy turtle dove. _The Hebrew word חית _, chayath, _which we translate _beast, _signifies sometimes _the soul _or _life, _and so some explain it in the second clause of this verse, where it again occurs. But it is here unquestionably to be taken either for _a wil... [ Continue Reading ]
20._Have regard to thy covenant. _That God may be the more inclined to show mercy, the prophet brings to his remembrance the Divine covenant; even as the refuge of the saints, when they have found themselves involved in extreme dangers, has always been to hope for deliverance, because God had promis... [ Continue Reading ]
21._Let not him who is oppressed return with shame. _The word _return, _as it has a reference to God, is equivalent to the expression, _to go away empty. _The faithful, then, beseech Him that they may not be put to shame by suffering a repulse at his hands. They call themselves _afflicted, poor, _an... [ Continue Reading ]
22._Arise, O God! plead thy cause. _The pious Jews again supplicate God to ascend into his judgment-seat. He is then said _to arise, _when, after having long exercised forbearance, he shows, in very deed, that he has not forgotten his office as judge. To induce him to undertake this cause the more r... [ Continue Reading ]