Expositor's Bible: The Song of Solomon Part 11

Next the poet exhorts the object of his sympathy--this strange personification of the "wall of the daughter of Zion," under the image of which he is thinking of the Jews--to arise. The weeping is but a preliminary to more promising acts. The sufferer is not to spend the long night in an unbroken flow of grief, like the psalmist "watering his couch with his tears."[159] The very opposite att.i.tude is now suggested. Grief must not be treated as a normal condition, to be acquiesced in or even encouraged. The victim is tempted to cherish his sorrow as a sacred charge, to feel hurt if any mitigation of it is suggested, or ashamed of confessing that relief has been received.

When he has reached this condition it is obvious that the substance of grief has pa.s.sed; the ghost of it that remains is fast becoming a harmless sentiment. If, however, the trouble should be still maintaining the tightness of its grip on the heart, there is positive danger in permitting it to be indulged without intermission. The sufferer must be roused if he is to be saved from the disease of _melancholia_.

[159] Psalm vi. 6.

He must be roused also if he would pray. True prayer is a strenuous effort of the soul, requiring the most wakeful attention and taxing the utmost energy of will. The Jew stood up to pray with hands outstretched to heaven. The relaxed and feeble devotions of a somnolent worshipper must fall flat and fruitless. There is no value in the length of a prayer, but there is much in its depth. It is the weight of its earnestness, not the comprehensiveness of its topics, that gives it efficacy. Therefore we must gird up our loins to pray just as we would to work, or run, or fight.

Now the awakened soul is urged to cry out in the night, and in the beginning of the night watches--that is to say, not only at the commencement of the night, for this would require no rousing, but at the beginning of each of the three watches into which the Hebrews divided the hours of darkness--at sunset, at ten o clock, and at two in the morning. The sufferer is to keep watch with prayer--observing his vespers, his nocturns, and his matins, not of course to fulfil forms, but because, since his grief is continuous, his prayer also must not cease. This is all a.s.signed to the night, perhaps because that is a quiet, solemn season for undisturbed reflection, when therefore the grief that requires the prayer is most acutely felt; or perhaps because the time of sorrow is naturally pictured as a night, as a season of darkness.

Proceeding with our consideration of the details of this call to prayer, we come upon the exhortation to pour out the heart like water before the face of the Lord. The image here used is not without parallel in scripture. Thus a psalmist exclaims--

"I am poured out like water, And all my bones are out of joint; My heart is like wax; It is melted in the midst of my bowels."[160]

[160] Psalm xxii. 14.

But the ideas are not just the same in the two cases. While the psalmist thinks of himself as crushed and shattered, as though his very being were dissolved, the thought of the elegist has more action about it, with a deliberate intention and object in view. His image suggests complete openness before G.o.d. Nothing is to be withheld. It is not so much that the secrets of the soul are to be disclosed. The end aimed at is not confession, but confidence. Therefore what the writer would urge is that the sufferer should tell the whole tale of his grief to G.o.d, quite freely, without any reserve, trusting absolutely to the Divine sympathy.

This confidence is a primary requisite in prayer. Until we can trust our Father it is useless to pet.i.tion for his aid; we could not avail ourselves of it if it were offered us. Indeed, the soul must come into relations of sympathy with G.o.d before any real prayer is at all possible.

We may go further. The att.i.tude of soul that is here recommended is in itself the very essence of prayer. The devotions that consist in a series of definite pet.i.tions are of secondary worth, and superficial in comparison with this outpouring of the heart before G.o.d. To enter into relations of sympathy and confidence with G.o.d is to pray in the truest, deepest way possible, or even conceivable. Prayer in the heart of it is not pet.i.tion; that is the beggar's resort. It is communion--the child's privilege. We must often be as beggars, empty of everything before G.o.d; yet we may also enjoy the happier relationship of sonship with our Father. Even in the extremity of need perhaps the best thing we can do is to spread out the whole case before G.o.d. It will certainly relieve our own minds to do so, and everything will appear changed when viewed in the light of the Divine presence. Perhaps we shall then cease to think ourselves aggrieved and wronged; for what are our deserts before the holiness of G.o.d? Pa.s.sion is allayed in the stillness of the sanctuary, and the indignant protest dies upon our lips as we proceed to lay our case before the eyes of the All-Seeing. We cannot be impatient any longer; He is so patient with us, so fair, so kind, so good. Thus when we cast our burden upon the Lord we may be surprised with the discovery that it is not so heavy as we supposed. There are times when it is not possible for us to go any further. We do not know what relief to ask for, or even whether we should request to be in any way delivered from a load which it may be our duty to bear, or the endurance of which may be a most wholesome discipline for us. These possibilities must always put a restraint upon the utterance of positive pet.i.tions. But they do not apply to the prayer that is a simple act of confidence in G.o.d. The secret of failure in prayer is not that we do not ask enough; it is that we do not pour out our hearts before G.o.d, the restraint of confidence rising from fear or doubt simply paralysing the energies of prayer. Jesus teaches us to pray not only because He gives us a model prayer, but much more because He is in Himself so true and full and winsome a revelation of G.o.d, that as we come to know and follow Him our lost confidence in G.o.d is restored. Then the heart that knows its own bitterness, and that shrinks from permitting the stranger even to meddle with its joy--how much more then with its sorrow?--can pour itself out quite freely before G.o.d, for the simple reason that He is no longer a stranger, but the one perfectly intimate and absolutely trusted Friend.

It is to be noted that the elegist points to a definite occasion for the outpouring of the heart before G.o.d. He singles out specifically the sufferings of the starving children--a terrible subject that appears more than once in this elegy, shewing how the horror of it has fastened on the imagination of the poet. This was the most heart-rending and mysterious ingredient in the bitter cup of the woes of Jerusalem. If we may bring any trouble to G.o.d we may bring the worst trouble. So this becomes the main topic of the prayer that follows. Here the cases of the princ.i.p.al victims are cited. Priest and prophet, notwithstanding the dignity of office, young man and maiden, old man and little child--all alike have fallen victims. The ghastly incident of a siege, where hunger has reduced human beings to the level of savage beasts, women devouring their own children, is here cited, and its cause, as well as that of all the other scenes of the great tragedy, boldly ascribed to G.o.d. It is G.o.d who has summoned His Terrors as at other times He had summoned His people to the festivals of the sacred city. But if G.o.d mustered the whole army of calamities it seems right to lay the story of the havoc they have wrought before His face; and the prayer reads almost like an accusation, or at least an expostulation, a remonstrance. It is not such, however; for we have seen that elsewhere the elegist makes full confession of the guilt of Jerusalem and admits that the doom of the wretched city was quite merited. Still if the dire chastis.e.m.e.nt is from the hand of G.o.d it is G.o.d alone who can bring deliverance. That is the final point to be reached.

CHAPTER XI

_THE MAN THAT HATH SEEN AFFLICTION_

iii. 1-21

Whether we regard it from a literary, a speculative, or a religious point of view, the third and central elegy cannot fail to strike us as by far the best of the five. The workmanship of this poem is most elaborate in conception and most finished in execution, the thought is most fresh and striking, and the spiritual tone most elevated, and, in the best sense of the word, evangelical. Like Tennyson, who is most poetic when he is most artistic, as in his lyrics, and like all the great sonneteers, the author of this exquisite Hebrew melody has not found his ideas to be cramped by the rigorous rules of composition. It would seem that to a master the elaborate regulations that fetter an inferior mind are no hindrances, but rather instruments fitted to his hand, and all the more serviceable for their exactness. Possibly the artistic refinement of form stimulates thought and rouses the poet to exert his best powers; or perhaps--and this is more probable--he selects the richer robe for the purpose of clothing his choicer conceptions. Here we have the acrostics worked up into triplets, so that they now appear at the beginning of every line, each letter occurring three times successively as an initial, and the whole poem falling into sixty-six verses or twenty-two triplets. Yet none of the other four poems have any approach to the wealth of thought or the uplifting inspiration that we meet with in this highly finished product of literary art.

This elegy differs from its sister poems in another respect. It is composed, for the most part, in the first person singular, the writer either speaking of his own experience or dramatically personating another sufferer. Who is this "man that hath seen affliction?" On the understanding that Jeremiah is the author of the whole book, it is commonly a.s.sumed that the prophet is here revealing his own feelings under the mult.i.tude of troubles with which he has been overwhelmed.

But if, as we have seen, this hypothesis is, to say the least, extremely dubious, of course the a.s.sumption that has been based upon it loses its warranty. No doubt there is much in the touching picture of the afflicted person that agrees with what we know of the experience of the great prophet. And yet, when we look into it, we do not find anything of so specific a character as to settle us in the conclusion that the words could have been spoken by no one else. There is just the possibility that the poet is not describing himself at all; he may be representing somebody well known to his contemporaries-- perhaps even Jeremiah, or just a typical character, in the manner of Browning's _Dramatis Personae_.

While some mystery hangs over the personality of this man of sorrows the power and pathos of the poem are certainly heightened by the concentration of our attention upon one individual. Few persons are moved by general statements. Necessarily the comprehensive is all outline. It is by the supply of the particular that we fill up the details; and it is only when these details are present that we have a full-bodied picture. If an incident is typical it is ill.u.s.trative of its kind. To know one such fact is to know all. Thus the science lecturer produces his specimen, and is satisfied to teach from it without adding a number of duplicates. The study of abstract reports is most important to those who are already interested in the subjects of these dreary doc.u.ments; but it is useless as a means of exciting interest. Philanthropy must visit the office of the statistician if it would act with enlightened judgment, and not permit itself to become the victim of blind enthusiasm; but it was not born there, and the sympathy which is its parent can only be found among individual instances of distress.

In the present case the speaker who recounts his own misfortunes is more than a casual witness, more than a mere specimen picked out at random from the heap of misery acc.u.mulated in this age of national ruin. He is not simply a man who has seen affliction, one among many similar sufferers; he is the man, the well-known victim, one pre-eminent in distress even in the midst of a nation full of misery.

Yet he is not isolated on a solitary peak of agony. As the supreme sufferer, he is also the representative sufferer. He is not selfishly absorbed in the morbid occupation of brooding over his private grievances. He has gathered into himself the vast and terrible woes of his people. Thus he foreshadows our Lord in His pa.s.sion. We cannot but be struck with the aptness of much in this third elegy when it is read in the light of the last scenes of the gospel history. It would be a mistake to say that these outpourings from the heart of the Hebrew patriot were intended to convey a prophetic meaning with reference to another Sufferer in a far-distant future. Nevertheless the application of the poem to the Man of Sorrows is more than a case of literary ill.u.s.tration; for the idea of representative suffering which here emerges, and which becomes more definite in the picture of the servant of Jehovah in Isa. liii., only finds its full realisation and perfection in Jesus Christ. It is repeated, however, with more or less distinctness wherever the Christ spirit is revealed. Thus in a n.o.ble interpretation of St. Paul, the Apostle is represented as experiencing--

"Desperate tides of the whole world's anguish Forced through the channel of a single heart."[161]

[161] _St. Paul_, by Frederick Myers.

The portrait of himself drawn by the author of this elegy is the more graphic by reason of the fact that the present is linked to the past.

The striking commencement, "I _am_ the man," etc., sets the speaker in imagination before our eyes. The addition "who _has_ seen" (or rather, experienced) "affliction" connects him with his present sufferings.

The unfathomable mystery of personal ident.i.ty here confronts us. This is more than memory, more than the lingering scar of a previous experience; it is, in a sense, the continuance of that experience, its ghostly presence still haunting the soul that once knew it in the glow of life. Thus we are what we have thought and felt and done, and our present is the perpetuation of our past. The man who has seen affliction does not only keep the history of his distresses in the quiet chamber of memory. His own personality has slowly acquired a depth, a fulness, a ripeness that remove him far from the raw and superficial character he once was. We are silenced into awe before Job, Jeremiah, and Dante, because these men grew great by suffering.

Is it not told even of our Lord Jesus Christ that He was made perfect by the things that He suffered?[162] Unhappily it cannot be said that every hero of tragedy climbs to perfection on the rugged steps of his terrible life-drama; some men are shattered by discipline which proves to be too severe for their strength. Christ rose to His highest glory by means of the cruelty of His enemies and the treason of one of His trusted disciples; but cruel wrongs drove Lear to madness, and a confidant's treachery made a murderer of Oth.e.l.lo. Still all who pa.s.s through the ordeal come out other than they enter, and the change is always a growth in some direction, even though in many cases we must admit with sorrow that this is a downward direction.

[162] Heb. v. 8, 9.

It is to be observed that here in his self-portraiture--just as elsewhere when describing the calamities that have befallen his people--the elegist attributes the whole series of disastrous events to G.o.d. This characteristic of the Book of Lamentations throughout is nowhere more apparent than in the third chapter. So close is the thought of G.o.d to the mind of the writer, he does not even think it necessary to mention the Divine name. He introduces his p.r.o.nouns without any explanation of their objects, saying "_His_ wrath" and "_He_ hath led me," and so on through the succeeding verses. This quiet a.s.sumption of a recognised reference of all that happens to one source, a source that is taken to be so well known that there is no occasion to name it, speaks volumes for the deep-seated faith of the writer. He is at the antipodes of the too common position of those people who habitually forget to mention the name of G.o.d because He is never in their thoughts. G.o.d is always in the thoughts of the elegist, and that is why He is not named. Like Brother Lawrence, this man has learnt to "practise the presence of G.o.d."

In amplifying the account of his sufferings, after giving a general description of himself as the man who has experienced affliction, and adding a line in which this experience is connected with its cause--the rod of the wrath of Him who is unnamed, though ever in mind--the stricken patriot proceeds to ill.u.s.trate and enforce his appeal to sympathy by means of a series of vivid metaphors. This is the most crisp and pointed writing in the book. It hurries us on with a breathless rush of imagery, scene after scene flashing out in bewildering speed like the whirl of objects we look at from the windows of an express train.

Let us first glance at the successive pictures in this rapidly moving panorama of similes, and then at the general import and unit of the whole.

The afflicted man was under the Divine guidance; he was not the victim of blind self-will; it was not when straying from the path of right that he fell into this pit of misery. The strange thing is that G.o.d led him straight into it--led him into darkness, not into light as might have been expected with such a Guide.[163] The first image, then, is that of a traveller misled. The perception of the terrible truth that is here suggested prompts the writer at once to draw an inference as to the relation in which G.o.d stands to him, and the nature and character of the Divine treatment of him throughout. G.o.d, whom he has trusted implicitly, whom he has followed in the simplicity of ignorance, G.o.d proves to be his Opponent! He feels like one duped in the past, and at length undeceived as he makes the amazing discovery that his trusted Guide has been turning His hand against him repeatedly all the day of his woful wanderings.[164] For the moment he drops his metaphors, and reflects on the dreadful consequences of this fatal antagonism. His flesh and skin, his very body is wasted away; he is so crushed and shattered, it is as though G.o.d had broken his bones.[165] Now he can see that G.o.d has not only acted as an enemy in guiding him into the darkness; G.o.d's dealings have shewn more overt antagonism. The helpless sufferer is like a besieged city, and G.o.d, who is conducting the a.s.sault, has thrown up a wall round him. With that daring mixture of metaphors, or, to be more precise, with that freedom of sudden transition from the symbol to the subject symbolised which we often meet with in this Book, the poet calls the rampart with which he has been girdled "gall and travail,"[166] for he has felt himself beset with bitter grief and weary toil.[167]

[163] iii. 2.

[164] iii. 3.

[165] iii. 4.

[166] The Authorised Version has "travel," a mere variation in spelling. The word means painful labour, toil.

[167] iii. 4.

Then the scene changes. The victim of Divine wrath is a captive languishing in a dungeon, which is as dark as the abodes of the dead, as the dwellings of those who have been _long_ dead.[168] The horror of this metaphor is intensified by the idea of the antiquity of Hades.

How dismal is the thought of being plunged into a darkness that is already aged--a stagnant darkness, the atmosphere of those who long since lost the last rays of the light of his life! There the prisoner is bound by a heavy chain.[169] He cries for help; but he is shut down so low that his prayer cannot reach his Captor.[170]

[168] iii. 6.

[169] iii. 7.

[170] iii. 8.

Again we see him still hampered, though in altered circ.u.mstances. He appears as a traveller whose way is blocked, and that not by some accidental fall of rock, but of set purpose, for he finds the obstruction to be of carefully prepared masonry, "hewn stones."[171]

Therefore he has to turn aside, so that his paths become crooked. Yet more terrible does the Divine enmity grow. When the pilgrim is thus forced to leave the highroad and make his way through the adjoining thickets his Adversary avails Himself of the cover to a.s.sume a new form, that of a lion or a bear lying in ambush.[172] The consequence is that the hapless man is torn as by the claws and fangs of beasts of prey.[173] But now these wild regions in which the wretched traveller is wandering at the peril of his life suggest the idea of the chase.

The image of the savage animals is defective in this respect, that man is their superior in intelligence, though not in strength. But in the present case the victim is in every way inferior to his Pursuer. So G.o.d appears as the Huntsman, and the unhappy sufferer as the poor hunted game. The bow is bent, and the arrow directed straight for its mark.[174] Nay, arrow after arrow has already been let fly, and the dreadful Huntsman, too skilful ever to miss His mark, has been shooting "the sons of His quiver" into the very vitals of the object of His pursuit.[175]

[171] iii. 9.

[172] iii. 10.

[173] iii. 11.

[174] iii. 12.

[175] iii. 13.

Here the poet breaks away from his imagery for a second time to tell us that he has become an object of derision to all his people, and the theme of their mocking songs.[176] This is a striking statement. It shews that the afflicted man is not simply one member of the smitten nation of Israel, sharing the common hardships of the race whose "badge is servitude." He not merely experiences exceptional sufferings. He meets with no sympathy from his fellow-countrymen. On the contrary, these people so far dissociate themselves from his case that they can find amus.e.m.e.nt in his misery. Thus, while even a misguided Don Quixote is a n.o.ble character in the rare chivalry of his soul, and while his very delusions are profoundly pathetic, many people can only find material for laughter in them, and pride themselves in their superior sanity for so doing, although the truth is, their conduct proves them to be incapable of understanding the lofty ideals that inspire the object of their empty derision; thus Jeremiah was mocked by his unthinking contemporaries, when, whether in error, as they supposed, or wisely, as the event shewed, he preached an apparently absurd policy; and thus a greater than Jeremiah, One as supreme in reasonableness as in goodness, was jeered at by men who thought Him at best a Utopian dreamer, because they were grovelling in earthly thoughts far out of reach of the spiritual world in which He moved.

[176] iii. 14.

Returning to imagery, the poet pictures himself as a hardly used guest at a feast. He is fed, crammed, sated; but his food is bitterness, the cup has been forced to his lips, and he has been made drunk--not with pleasant wine, however, but with wormwood.[177] Gravel has been mixed with his bread, or perhaps the thought is that when he has asked for bread stones have been given him. He has been compelled to masticate this unnatural diet, so that his teeth have been broken by it. Even that result he ascribes to G.o.d, saying, "He hath broken my teeth."[178] It is difficult to think of the interference with personal liberty being carried farther than this. Here we reach the extremity of crushed misery.