Cornelius a Lapide
Table of Contents
Synopsis of the Chapter
This chapter is, as it were, a brief recapitulation and summary of the Lamentations. For just as orators in their peroration repeat and condense what they have said throughout the entire speech, both for the sake of memory and of emotion, so as to move their hearers more strongly: so also does Jeremiah here. This chapter is entitled, not in the Hebrew, but by the Septuagint and our Interpreter, the Prayer of Jeremiah: for first, he reopens and briefly enumerates the evils inflicted on the people by God on account of their sins, and recounted in the Lamentations: then he prays for mercy, that God may restore the people to their former state. Jeremiah composed this prayer after the destruction of Jerusalem, before he went into Egypt. Moreover, this prayer is not composed in the order of the Hebrew letters; nevertheless it has just as many verses, namely 22 (1).
Vulgate Text: Threni 5:1-22
1. Remember, O Lord, what has befallen us: behold, and look upon our reproach. 2. Our inheritance has been turned over to strangers, our houses to foreigners. 3. We have become orphans without a father, our mothers are as widows. 4. We drink our water for money: we buy our wood at a price. 5. We were driven by our necks, no rest was given to the weary. 6. We gave our hand to Egypt, and to the Assyrians, that we might be satisfied with bread. 7. Our fathers sinned, and are no more: and we have borne their iniquities. 8. Servants have ruled over us: there was none to redeem us from their hand. 9. At the peril of our lives we brought our bread, before the sword in the desert. 10. Our skin was scorched as an oven, by reason of the storms of famine. 11. They humbled the women in Zion, and the virgins in the cities of Judah. 12. Princes were hung up by their hand: they did not respect the faces of the elders. 13. They abused the young men shamefully: and the boys fell under the wood. 14. The elders ceased from the gates, the young men from the choir of singers. 15. The joy of our heart has ceased: our dancing has been turned into mourning. 16. The crown has fallen from our head: woe to us, because we have sinned! 17. Therefore our heart has become sorrowful, therefore our eyes are darkened. 18. Because of Mount Zion, which is destroyed, foxes walk upon it. 19. But You, O Lord, remain forever, Your throne from generation to generation. 20. Why will You forget us forever? Why will You forsake us for so long a time? 21. Convert us, O Lord, to You, and we shall be converted: renew our days, as from the beginning. 22. But You have utterly rejected us, You are exceedingly angry against us.
Verse 1: REMEMBER.
1. REMEMBER. — These words remember, behold, contain emphasis; for they signify not a bare and idle gaze and recollection, but a practical, affectionate, and efficacious one, namely, a feeling joined with its effect. God is therefore said to remember and to behold when He has mercy, pardons, frees from punishments, shows favor, bestows benefits, etc. For the remembrance of God, as also His gaze, is operative and efficacious, whereas that of man is idle and ineffectual. Conversely, to forget and not to behold means the same as to neglect, to not care.
Verse 2: OUR INHERITANCE.
2. OUR INHERITANCE. — Judea, which we possessed by hereditary right, has now been made the Chaldeans', and is tributary to them. He enumerates from verse 1 to 19 just as many evils and calamities (namely one in each verse), that is, 18, which befell them through the destruction. All and each of these happened literally to Christians, when on account of their sins they lost that same Holy Land, Greece, Asia, and other provinces, which are now occupied by the Turks or heretics. Let these therefore take these words to themselves. Tropologically, all these things can easily be applied to the sinner, who incurs just as many, indeed more, losses through sin. See Dionysius the Carthusian.
Verse 3: WE HAVE BECOME ORPHANS WITHOUT A FATHER,
3. WE HAVE BECOME ORPHANS WITHOUT A FATHER, — because the fathers were killed or captured by the Chaldeans; hence the wives remain solitary and desolate as widows, and the children as orphans. So Hugo, Lyranus, the Chaldean. Second, Rabanus and St. Thomas, as if to say: We have been deprived of the paternal protection of God, who was the husband of the Synagogue and the father of each individual in it. Third, Maldonatus, as if to say: We have been deprived of our king, Josiah and Zedekiah; for a king is, as it were, the father of the commonwealth and the fatherland. But the first sense is the plainest. For there follows: "Our mothers are as widows."
Verse 4: WE DRINK OUR WATER FOR MONEY: OUR WOOD, etc.
4. WE DRINK OUR WATER FOR MONEY: OUR WOOD, etc. — as if to say: Even common and cheap things, such as water, we had to buy. Second, the water and wood that were formerly ours, now seized by the Chaldeans, we had to redeem and still must redeem with money or tribute. Third, Sanchez, as if to say: In Babylon, the water that is common to all Babylonians, we captive Jews must buy from them with money, which is harsh and inhumane. For, as Cicero teaches in Book 1 of the Offices, all things that nature produced for the common use of men, such as water, air, fire, etc., by the law of nature belong to all and each.
Verse 5: WE WERE DRIVEN BY OUR NECKS.
5. WE WERE DRIVEN BY OUR NECKS. — In Hebrew: Upon our necks we suffered persecution, because they were led to Babylon bound by ropes around the neck. So Rabanus and St. Thomas; and the Chaldeans placed their burdens upon them, say the Chaldean and Hugo: but those who had remained in Judea were driven like brute animals to labor and agriculture. Hence Sanchez, by necks oppressed — namely by the yoke of servitude — understands any hard and lowly service. The servants carried burdens, he says, either placed on their shoulders and necks, as pack-animals carry on their backs; or with their necks thrust into a wagon-yoke, which is the lot of oxen, so that they pulled the cart and on it a load — dung, for instance, stones, sand, etc. They are said to "threaten" their own necks, because from the previous day's work they guessed what load they would have to carry on the morrow; and so they would announce it to themselves, saying: O neck, once free and noble, how many burdens await you, unworthy even of servile necks! O arms, what labor, what tasks will exercise and break you! O my head, now devoted to insults and terrible curses! Thus we see the Jews now handling the vilest tasks: "Whose furniture is a basket and hay," says Juvenal, Satire 3, who therefore calls them Verpi, and mocks them. Maldonatus interprets differently: The word minabamur, he says, is taken passively, as if to say: The enemies threatened our necks with a grave evil, namely, as Lyranus and Dionysius say, they threatened to cut off our heads unless we immediately did whatever they wished. Hence some read minabantur instead of minabamur. But the Roman codices and other most correct ones have minabamur, which here does not mean to threaten; for when it has that meaning, it is always taken actively, never passively; but it means to be driven and led like cattle, for this is what the Hebrew נרדף nirdaph denotes: hence the etymological verse distinguishes the two thus:
The shepherd drives (minat) the sheep with a staff, the wolf threatens (minatur) with its mouth.
NO REST WAS GIVEN TO THE WEARY. — Otherwise, from the Hebrew, R. Solomon and R. Joseph translate: labor is not left to us, that is, we labor and toil to earn something; but immediately all the profit we have gained is taken from us by our inhumane masters, whom we serve. Thus the devil drives witches to crimes, and wearies them, and gives them no rest; thus drinking-bouts, feasts, games, even nocturnal lusts weary a person, and give no rest to the wretched man who is tired and exhausted; hence the impious say, Wisdom V, 7: "We have wearied ourselves in the way of iniquity"; for neither the devil, nor concupiscence, nor the world gives any rest to the sinner who serves them as a slave. On the contrary, to serve God is to find rest, indeed to reign.
Verse 6: WE GAVE OUR HAND TO EGYPT,
6. WE GAVE OUR HAND TO EGYPT, — that is, we struck a treaty with the Egyptians, says R. Abraham. Second, and better, as if to say: From the Egyptians we sought help and provisions, and we became suppliants to them, and like beggars we stretched out our hands to them to ask for alms. So Vatablus, Lyranus, Rabanus, Hugo, St. Thomas. Third, "we gave our hand," that is, we surrendered and subjected ourselves, and served like slaves to the Egyptians and Assyrians, so that we might earn bread to live on, and drag out our wretched existence: so the Chaldean; and this sense seems the most fitting. Fourth, the Septuagint translates differently: Egypt gave its hand to Assyria for their satisfaction, that is, the Egyptians and Assyrians supplied provisions to the Jews, so that they might be satisfied with bread.
Third, the Chaldean paraphrases: When we were going into exile, Nebuchadnezzar saw the princes of Israel going empty, that is, without baggage; so he ordered them to sew up the scrolls of the law, and to make sacks from them, and they filled them with pebbles that were at the bank of the Euphrates, and placed them upon their necks. Thus the Jews report or rather tell fables. Or, if this is true, they deservedly suffered it, so that they would carry the parchments of the law converted into sacks filled with pebbles and sand — they who had the law on parchments so dry and barren, not written in their hearts, and therefore idle and useless, which consequently brought upon them this burden of exile, and weighed them down and oppressed them, so that in the very thing in which they had sinned, in that same thing they were punished.
Verse 8: SERVANTS.
8. SERVANTS. — The Ammonites and Edomites, who formerly served us as tributaries, now together with the Chaldeans stormed Jerusalem. So Hugo, St. Thomas (1), Lyranus.
Second, as if to say: The Chaldeans, who descended from Ham, Cush, and
Nimrod (who first reigned in Babylon, Genesis chapter X, 10), were condemned by Noah to be servants of Shem and his posterity, that is, of us, Genesis IX, 27; or, as Rabanus says, who on account of impiety and idolatry are servants; while the Jews are freeborn: yet these now rule over us; hence the Jews used to call the Gentiles servants, but themselves free. Hence to Christ, who wished to free them from the servitude of sin, they say, John VIII, 35: "We are the seed of Abraham, and we have never served anyone."
Third, Sanchez: It is likely, he says, that the Jews were given as part of the spoils to the servants of the Chaldeans, who had served them in the Jewish war and operated in the camps: or rather, the Chaldeans set their own servants over the Jews, so that those servants would severely exact from them a hard daily quota of work, as the servants of Pharaoh did to the Hebrews in Egypt, Exodus I, 11 and 14. This is an immense grief, as well as ignominy and disgrace, which wonderfully stings and oppresses the spirit of the master. For the same blow, when inflicted by a superior or an equal, tortures far less than if it is inflicted by a subordinate, and especially by a servant. Thus the Emperor Maximian, in order to afflict St. Sergius, his chief officer, who freely professed himself a Christian, most severely, sent him to be judged and atrociously punished by Antiochus, prefect of the East, who had been St. Sergius's servant and had obtained that dignity through his favor; who, to satisfy Maximian, ordered St. Sergius to be shod with spiked shoes, and wearing these to run like a slave before his chariot; and so he led him for three leagues with sharp shame as well as pain; for the spikes drew streams of blood from his feet. He then ordered this torment to be repeated. But when he saw that St. Sergius could be overcome by no shame or pain, he ordered him to be beheaded in the year of our Lord 309, on the 7th day of October, on which day the Church celebrates his triumph with the annual commemoration of his martyrdom.
Verse 9: AT THE PERIL OF OUR LIVES,
9. AT THE PERIL OF OUR LIVES, — that is, with danger to our soul, that is, our life, because of the Chaldeans roaming everywhere, and lying in ambush and marauding in deserted places (just as the Arabs still maraud in Judea and Syria today), both during the siege and after the city was already captured, we went out to forage, so as to bring provisions and food from the fields into the city: so Hugo, Lyranus, Dionysius, Vatablus, and R. Joseph, who adds: That small amount of bread, he says, which we procured and brought out from the Assyrians, was seized on the road, and there was no one to deliver us from their violence.
Verse 10: OUR SKIN,
10. OUR SKIN, — as if to say: Just as an oven is burned, dried, and blackened by frequent fire, so our skins are burned, dried, and blackened by famine from natural heat.
BY REASON OF THE STORMS OF FAMINE, — that is, on account of the immense famine that rushed upon us like a mighty storm. In Hebrew it reads: on account of the burnings of famine, that is, by a burning famine, or on account of the burnings of the fields that brought famine.
Verse 12: PRINCES WERE HUNG UP BY THEIR HAND (in Hebrew, by their
12. PRINCES WERE HUNG UP BY THEIR HAND (in Hebrew, by their hand, namely the enemies') (1).
Verse 13: THEY ABUSED THE YOUNG MEN SHAMEFULLY.
13. THEY ABUSED THE YOUNG MEN SHAMEFULLY. — In Hebrew: They took the young men to the mill, as if to say: They put the young men, as being strong, to the vilest task, that is, to turning millstones. So the Chaldean, Vatablus, Pagninus (2).
Second, our Interpreter translates better: They shamefully abused the young men; for "to grind" metaphorically signifies this among the Hebrews, as is clear from Job XXXI, 10, in the Hebrew, and also in Horace and other Latin authors, whose words on an obscene matter I willingly refrain from quoting. Thus also the Greeks use μύλλων, that is, to grind, for to commit fornication; hence μυλλάς is the word for a harlot.
THE BOYS FELL UNDER THE WOOD, — that is, they were hung on a wooden gibbet. So the Chaldean, Hugo, Lyranus. Or rather, as Vatablus says, they collapsed from exhaustion under the wooden handle with which they turned the mill. Or, as Lyranus says, they collapsed under the burden of wood that they were forced to carry beyond their strength for the Chaldeans. Fourth, Maldonatus and Sanchez explain it as if to say: The boys were beaten with rods and clubs to the point of blood and death.
Verse 14: THE ELDERS (judges) CEASED FROM THE GATES (of the cities,...
14. THE ELDERS (judges) CEASED FROM THE GATES (of the cities, in which they used to sit while they exercised judgment, or handled the affairs of the city or citizens); THE YOUNG MEN FROM THE CHOIR OF SINGERS. — For the glory of a flourishing city consists in two things: namely, in the gravity, prudence, and fairness of the elders; and in the vigor, joy, and delight of the young men, who used to lead dances, and in them to sing and dance. Both ceased in afflicted Jerusalem. For "choir" the Hebrew has נגינה negina, which was a kind of musical instrument; but because they used to lead dances and choruses to it, hence by metonymy it is taken for them.
Verse 16: THE CROWN HAS FALLEN FROM OUR HEAD.
16. THE CROWN HAS FALLEN FROM OUR HEAD. — That is, the diadem of the kingdom, namely our kingdom has been transferred to the Chaldeans: so Hugo, St. Thomas, Lyranus; second, Maldonatus understands by the crown, glory; third, Rabanus, Vatablus, and Isidore understand by the crown, the temple; fourth and properly, the Jews used to place crowns on their heads at feasts and more joyful banquets, as if to say: Those days and delights have ceased, in which we used to rejoice and crown our heads. So Sanchez. Let penitents take all these things to themselves, and imitate the cries and wailings of penitents here, and similar ones in Climacus, in the step On Penitence.
Verse 17: OUR EYES ARE DARKENED,
17. OUR EYES ARE DARKENED, — from constant and excessive weeping, as Job complains happened to him.
chapter XVI, 17; second, "darkened," as if to say: We were so stricken, prostrated, and stunned by this disaster that our eyes seemed to be turned and darkened: third, Sanchez says: Our eyes are darkened, he says, because the sorrowful shun the light and human company, and seek darkness, like Dido in Virgil:
She wishes for death, she is weary of beholding the vault of heaven.
Verse 18: FOXES WALK UPON IT.
18. FOXES WALK UPON IT. — as if to say: The temple and Mount Zion are so deserted that foxes freely and fearlessly roam about in it.
Verse 20: WHY DO YOU FORGET US FOREVER.
20. WHY DO YOU FORGET US FOREVER. — In Hebrew: why for a length of days, why do You forsake us for so long a time, as if we did not pertain to You? especially since, as stated in the preceding verse 19, You remain forever, and have among us an eternal kingdom and throne, which no force of enemies can prevail against.
Verse 21: CONVERT US,
21. CONVERT US, — as if to say: Because the origin of our evils was our departing from You, O Lord; therefore You who are unchangeable and firm in Your promises, as well as in Your eternal kingdom, as I said in verse 19; You, I say, according to Your promises in Leviticus XXVI, 23, do not utterly cast us off, nor Your covenant with us; and because for this it is required that we pray for our sins, so that having received pardon for them from You, we may be reconciled to You through grace, I pray, O Lord, convert us to You through true and serious repentance, by which we may obtain this pardon and grace. So the Chaldean, Olympiodorus, Rabanus, Lyranus, and others. Hence the Prophet consequently prays that the people may be brought back to that time and age in which, converted to God in faith and mind, they worshipped Him piously and devoutly: and in turn, when He turned Himself toward His people, they were endowed with peace and all good things (1). So Rabanus and St. Thomas. For if He Himself should wish to convert His exiled people to their place and fatherland, as well as to Himself, they will be converted there, and at the same time will return to their former honor and glory, just as if they were rising from the dead. Hence he adds: "Renew our days as from the beginning." Therefore a twofold conversion is signified here: the first and most important, to God's grace and friendship; the second, consequent upon it, that from exile the Jews may be converted and return to liberty, their fatherland, and their former goods. Hugo understands these words only of the second.
Hence the Council of Trent, session VI, chapter V, and the theologians teach that for the conversion of a sinner grace is necessary, and free will cooperating with grace, and that this is what Zechariah means when he says in chapter I, 3: "Be converted to Me, and I will be converted to you"; but that grace must precede and arouse free will, which is as it were oppressed and lulled to sleep by sin; and that this is what Jeremiah means here, and thus he is to be reconciled with Zechariah.
RENEW OUR DAYS, AS FROM THE BEGINNING, — that we may worship You piously and devoutly, as we began under Moses at Sinai, when You gave us the law; and You in turn may guard us, and our days, in peace. So the Chaldean, Rabanus, St. Thomas.
Second, Olympiodorus, Dionysius, Hugo, Lyranus, as if to say: Free us from Babylon, as once You led us out of Egypt into the promised land. Similar to this petition is that of Job XXIX, 2: "Who will grant me that I might be as in the months past, according to the days in which God watched over me? as I was in the days of my youth, when God was secretly in my tabernacle," etc.
Verse 22: BUT YOU HAVE UTTERLY REJECTED US.
22. BUT YOU HAVE UTTERLY REJECTED US. — This is another reason for which he ought to be heard, which the Septuagint, the Chaldean, and Vatablus express more clearly; for they translate: Because You have rejected us enough, namely by exercising the utmost vengeance and captivity upon us, as if to say: We have now suffered enough punishment, and have satisfied Your anger; therefore restore Your clemency to us, and convert us to You. For this petition he suppresses out of shame and affliction. For the same reason the Hebrew and our Interpreter add the little word "but," as if to say: I prayed, saying: Convert us; but behold, I do not obtain it, and we are far from this conversion, because behold You have hitherto utterly rejected us; therefore, silent and confused, I groan, and by this groan of mine I silently and reverently implore Your mercy, that You may at last spare Your anger, restrain Your scourges, and have mercy on me. This sense is most fitting. For it is an aposiopesis aimed at pathos, such as is common among the deeply afflicted who beg for pardon; for in such cases grief and shame suppress much. Second, Maldonatus thinks these words correspond to verse 20 and should be joined with it, as if to say: "Why do You forget us forever? but" — that is, and so — "You have utterly rejected us." Third, others translate: Although You have rejected us, yet we have already suffered enough punishment from Your anger poured out upon us. Fourth, Sanchez explains it thus, as if to say: But why do I insist on prayers, why do I press with petitions, that You restore the Jewish nation as quickly as possible, when You, vehemently angry, have cast off the people until the seventieth year, and consigned them to the Babylonian captivity? This sense is also appropriate (2).