_GOD AS AN ENEMY_
ii. 1-9
The elegist, as we have seen, attributes the troubles of the Jews to
the will and action of God. In the second poem he even ventures
further, and with daring logic presses this idea to its ultimate
issues. If God is tormenting His people in fierce anger it must be
because He is their enemy--so the sad-hearted patriot reasons. The
course of Providence does not shape itself to him as a merciful
chastisement, as a veiled blessing; its motive seems to be distinctly
unfriendly. He drives his dreadful conclusion home with great
amplitude of details. In order to appreciate the force of it let us
look at the illustrative passage in two ways--first, in view of the
calamities inflicted on Jerusalem, all of which are here ascribed to
God, and then with regard to those thoughts and purposes of their
Divine Author which appear to be revealed in them.
First, then, we have the earthly side of the process. The daughter of
Zion is covered with a cloud.[133] The metaphor would be more striking
in the brilliant East than it is to us in our habitually sombre
climate. There it would suggest unwonted gloom--the loss of the
customary light of heaven, rare distress, and excessive melancholy.
It is a general, comprehensive image intended to overshadow all that
follows. Terrible disasters cover the aspect of all things from zenith
to horizon. The physical darkness that accompanied the horrors of
Golgotha is here anticipated, not indeed by any actual prophecy, but
in idea.
[133] ii. 1.
But there is more than gloom. A mere cloud may lift, and discover
everything unaltered by the passing shadow. The distress that has
fallen on Jerusalem is not thus superficial and transient. She herself
has suffered a fatal fall. The beauty of Israel has been cast down
from heaven to earth. The language is now varied; instead of "the
daughter of Zion" we have "the beauty of Israel."[134] The use of the
larger title, "Israel," is not a little significant. It shews that the
elegist is alive to the idea of the fundamental unity of his race, a
unity which could not be destroyed by centuries of inter-tribal
warfare. Although in the ungracious region of politics Israel stood
aloft from Judah, the two peoples were frequently treated as one by
poets and prophets when religious ideas were in mind. Here apparently
the vastness of the calamities of Jerusalem has obliterated the memory
of jealous distinctions. Similarly we may see the great English
race--British and American--forgetting national divisions in pursuit
of its higher religious aims, as in Christian missions; and we may be
sure that this blood-unity would be felt most keenly under the shadow
of a great trouble on either side of the Atlantic. By the time of the
destruction of Jerusalem the northern tribes had been scattered, but
the use of the distinctive name of these people is a sign that the
ancient oneness of all who traced back their pedigree to the
patriarch Jacob was still recognised. It is some compensation for the
endurance of trouble to find it thus breaking down the middle wall of
partition between estranged brethren.
[134] ii. 1.
It has been suggested with probability that by the expression "the
beauty of Israel" the elegist intended to indicate the temple. This
magnificent pile of buildings, crowning one of the hills of Jerusalem,
and shining with gold in "barbaric splendour," was the central object
of beauty among all the people who revered the worship it enshrined.
Its situation would naturally suggest the language here employed.
Jerusalem rises among the hills of Judah, some two thousand feet above
the sea-level; and when viewed from the wilderness in the south she
looks indeed like a city built in the heavens. But the physical
exaltation of Jerusalem and her temple was surpassed by exaltation in
privilege, and prosperity, and pride. Capernaum, the vain city of the
lake that would raise herself to heaven, is warned by Jesus that she
shall be cast down to Hades.[135] Now not only Jerusalem, but the
glory of the race of Israel, symbolised by the central shrine of the
national religion, is thus humiliated.
[135] Matt. xi. 23.
Still keeping in mind the temple, the poet tells us that God has
forgotten His footstool. He seems to be thinking of the Mercy-Seat
over the ark, the spot at which God was thought to shew Himself
propitious to Israel on the great Day of Atonement, and which was
looked upon as the very centre of the Divine presence. In the
destruction of the temple the holiest places were outraged, and the
ark itself carried off or broken up, and never more heard of. How
different was this from the story of the loss of the ark in the days
of Eli, when the Philistines were constrained to send it home of their
own accord! Now no miracle intervenes to punish the heathen for their
sacrilege. Yes, surely God must have forgotten His footstool! So it
seems to the sorrowful Jew, perplexed at the impunity with which this
crime has been committed.
But the mischief is not confined to the central shrine. It has
extended to remote country regions and simple rustic folk. The
shepherd's hut has shared the fate of the temple of the Lord. All the
habitations of Jacob--a phrase which in the original points to country
cottages--have been swallowed up.[136] The holiest is not spared on
account of its sanctity, neither is the lowliest on account of its
obscurity. The calamity extends to all districts, to all things, to
all classes.
[136] ii. 2.
If the shepherd's cot is contrasted with the temple and the ark
because of its simplicity, the fortress may be contrasted with this
defenceless hut because of its strength. Yet even the strongholds have
been thrown down. More than this, the action of the Jews' army has
been paralysed by the God who had been its strength and support in the
glorious olden time. It is as though the right hand of the warrior had
been seized from behind and drawn back at the moment when it was
raised to strike a blow for deliverance. The consequence is that the
flower of the army, "all that were pleasant to the eye,"[137] are
slain. Israel herself is swallowed up, while her palaces and
fortresses are demolished.
[137] ii. 4.
The climax of this mystery of Divine destruction is reached when God
destroys His own temple. The elegist returns to the dreadful subject
as though fascinated by the terror of it. God has violently taken away
His tabernacle.[138] The old historic name of the sanctuary of Israel
recurs at this crisis of ruin; and it is particularly appropriate to
the image which follows, an image which possibly it suggested. If we
are to understand the metaphor of the sixth verse as it is rendered in
the English Authorised and Revised Versions, we have to suppose a
reference to some such booth of boughs as people were accustomed to
put up for their shelter during the vintage, and which would be
removed as soon as it had served its temporary purpose. The solid
temple buildings had been swept away as easily as though they were
just such flimsy structures, as though they had been "of a garden."
But we can read the text more literally, and still find good sense in
it. According to the strict translation of the original, God is said
to have violently taken away His tabernacle "as a garden." At the
siege of a city the fruit gardens that encircle it are the first
victims of the destroyer's axe. Lying out beyond the walls they are
entirely unprotected, while the impediments they offer to the
movements of troops and instruments of war induce the commander to
order their early demolition. Thus Titus had the trees cleared from
the Mount of Olives, so that one of the first incidents in the Roman
siege of Jerusalem must have been the destruction of the Garden of
Gethsemane. Now the poet compares the ease with which the great,
massive temple--itself a powerful fortress, and enclosed within the
city walls--was demolished, with the simple process of scouring the
outlying gardens. So the place of assembly disappears, and with it
the assembly itself, so that even the sacred Sabbath is passed over
and forgotten. Then the two heads of the nation--the king, its civil
ruler, and the priest, its ecclesiastical chief--are both despised in
the indignation of God's anger.
[138] ii. 6.
The central object of the sacred shrine is the altar, where earth
seems to meet heaven in the high mystery of sacrifice. Here men seek
to propitiate God; here too God would be expected to shew Himself
gracious to men. Yet God has even cast off His altar, abhorring His
very sanctuary.[139] Where mercy is most confidently anticipated,
there of all places nothing but wrath and rejection are to be found.
What prospect could be more hopeless?
[139] ii. 7.
The deeper thought that God rejects His sanctuary because His people
have first rejected Him is not brought forward just now. Yet this
solution of the mystery is prepared by a contemplation of the utter
failure of the old ritual of atonement. Evidently that is not always
effective, for here it has broken down entirely; then can it ever be
inherently efficacious? It cannot be enough to trust to a sanctuary
and ceremonies which God Himself destroys. But further, out of this
scene which was so perplexing to the pious Jew, there flashes to us
the clear truth that nothing is so abominable in the sight of God as
an attempt to worship Him on the part of people who are living at
enmity with Him. We can also perceive that if God shatters our
sanctuary, perhaps He does so in order to prevent us from making a
fetich of it. Then the loss of shrine and altar and ceremony may be
the saving of the superstitious worshipper who is thereby taught to
turn to some more stable source of confidence.
This, however, is not the line of reflections followed by the elegist
in the present instance. His mind is possessed with one dark, awful,
crushing thought. All this is God's work. And why has God done it? The
answer to that question is the idea that here dominates the mind of
the poet. It is because _God has become an enemy_! There is no attempt
to mitigate the force of this daring idea. It is stated in the
strongest possible terms, and repeated again and again at every
turn--Israel's cloud is the effect of God's anger; it has come in the
day of His anger; God is acting with fierce anger, with a flaming fire
of wrath. This must mean that God is decidedly inimical. He is
behaving as an adversary; He bends His bow; He manifests violence. It
is not merely that God permits the adversaries of Israel to commit
their ravages with impunity; God commits those ravages; He is Himself
the enemy. He shews indignation, He despises, He abhors. And this is
all deliberate. The destruction is carried out with the same care and
exactitude that characterise the erection of a building. It is as
though it were done with a measuring line. God surveys to destroy.
The first thing to be noticed in this unhesitating ascription to God
of positive enmity is the striking evidence it contains of faith in
the Divine power, presence, and activity. These were no more visible
to the mere observer of events in the destruction of Jerusalem than in
the shattering of the French empire at Sedan. In the one case as in
the other all that the world could see was a crushing military defeat
and its fatal consequences. The victorious army of the Babylonians
filled the field as completely in the old time as that of the Germans
in the modern event. Yet the poet simply ignores its existence. He
passes it with sublime indifference, his mind filled with the thought
of the unseen Power behind. He has not a word for Nebuchadnezzar,
because he is assured that this mighty monarch is nothing but a tool
in the hands of the real Enemy of the Jews. A man of smaller faith
would not have penetrated sufficiently beneath the surface to have
conceived the idea of Divine enmity in connection with a series of
occurrences so very mundane as the ravages of war. A heathenish faith
would have acknowledged in this defeat of Israel a triumph of the
might of Bel or Nebo over the power of Jehovah. But so convinced is
the elegist of the absolute supremacy of his God that no such idea is
suggested to him even as a temptation of unbelief. He knows that the
action of the true God is supreme in everything that happens, whether
the event be favourable or unfavourable to His people. Perhaps it is
only owing to the dreary materialism of current thought that we should
be less likely to discover an indication of the enmity of God in some
huge national calamity.
Still, although this idea of the elegist is a fruit of his unshaken
faith in the universal sway of God, it startles and shocks us, and we
shrink from it almost as though it contained some blasphemous
suggestion. Is it ever right to think of God as the enemy of any man?
It would not be fair to pass judgment on the author of the
Lamentations on the ground of a cold consideration of this abstract
question. We must remember the terrible situation in which he
stood--his beloved city destroyed, the revered temple of his fathers a
mass of charred ruins, his people scattered in exile and captivity,
tortured, slaughtered; these were not circumstances to encourage a
course of calm and measured reflection. We must not expect the
sufferer to carry out an exact chemical analysis of his cup of woe
before uttering an exclamation on its quality; and if it should be
that the burning taste induces him to speak too strongly of its
ingredients, we who only see him swallow it without being required to
taste a drop ourselves should be slow to examine his language too
nicely. He who has never entered Gethsemane is not in a position to
understand how dark may be the views of all things seen beneath its
sombre shade. If the Divine sufferer on the cross could speak as
though His God had actually deserted Him, are we to condemn an Old
Testament saint when he ascribes unspeakably great troubles to the
enmity of God?
Is this, then, but the rhetoric of misery? If it be no more, while we
seek to sympathise with the feelings of a very dramatic situation, we
shall not be called upon to go further and discover in the language of
the poet any positive teaching about God and His ways with man. But
are we at liberty to stop short here? Is the elegist only expressing
his own feelings? Have we a right to affirm that there can be no
objective truth in the awful idea of the enmity of God?
In considering this question we must be careful to dismiss from our
minds the unworthy associations that only too commonly attach
themselves to notions of enmity among men. Hatred cannot be ascribed
to One whose deepest name is Love. No spite, malignity, or evil
passion of any kind can be found in the heart of the Holy God. When
due weight is given to these negations very much that we usually see
in the practice of enmity disappears. But this is not to say that the
idea itself is denied, or the fact shown to be impossible.
In the first place, we have no warrant for asserting that God will
never act in direct and intentional opposition to any of His
creatures. There is one obvious occasion when He certainly does this.
The man who resists the laws of nature finds those laws working
against Him. He is not merely running his head against a stone wall;
the laws are not inert obstructions in the path of the transgressor;
they represent forces in action. That is to say, they resist their
opponent with vigorous antagonism. In themselves they are blind, and
they bear him no ill-will. But the Being who wields the forces is not
blind or indifferent. The laws of nature are, as Kingsley said, but
the ways of God. If they are opposing a man God is opposing that man.
But God does not confine His action to the realm of physical
processes. His providence works through the whole course of events in
the world's history. What we see evidently operating in nature we may
infer to be equally active in less visible regions. Then if we believe
in a God who rules and works in the world, we cannot suppose that His
activity is confined to aiding what is good. It is unreasonable to
imagine that He stands aside in passive negligence of evil. And if He
concerns Himself to thwart evil, what is this but manifesting Himself
as the enemy of the evildoer?
It may be contended, on the other side, that there is a world of
difference between antagonistic actions and unfriendly feelings, and
that the former by no means imply the latter. May not God oppose a man
who is doing wrong, not at all because He is his Enemy, but just
because He is his truest Friend? Is it not an act of real kindness to
save a man from himself when his own will is leading him astray? This
of course must be granted, and being granted, it will certainly affect
our views of the ultimate issues of what we may be compelled to
regard in its present operation as nothing short of Divine antagonism.
It may remind us that the motives lying behind the most inimical
action on God's part may be merciful and kind in their aims. Still,
for the time being, the opposition is a reality, and a reality which
to all intents and purposes is one of enmity, since it resists,
frustrates, hurts.
Nor is this all. We have no reason to deny that God can have real
anger. Is it not right and just that He should be "angry with the
wicked every day"?[140] Would He not be imperfect in holiness, would
He not be less than God if He could behold vile deeds springing from
vile hearts with placid indifference? We must believe that Jesus
Christ was as truly revealing the Father when He was moved with
indignation as when He was moved with compassion. His life shows quite
clearly that He was the enemy of oppressors and hypocrites, and He
plainly declared that He came to bring a sword.[141] His mission was a
war against all evil, and therefore, though not waged with carnal
weapons, a war against evil men. The Jewish authorities were perfectly
right in perceiving this fact. They persecuted Him as their enemy; and
He was their enemy. This statement is no contradiction to the gracious
truth that He desired to save all men, and therefore even these men.
If God's enmity to any soul were eternal it would conflict with His
love. It cannot be that He wishes the ultimate ruin of one of His own
children. But if He is at the present time actively opposing a man,
and if He is doing this in anger, in the wrath of righteousness
against sin, it is only quibbling with words to deny that for the
time being He is a very real enemy to that man.
[140] Psalm vii. 11.
[141] Matt. x. 34.
The current of thought in the present day is not in any sympathy with
this idea of God as an Enemy, partly in its revulsion from harsh and
un-Christlike conceptions of God, partly also on account of the modern
humanitarianism which almost loses sight of sin in its absorbing love
of mercy. But the tremendous fact of the Divine enmity towards the
sinful man so long as he persists in his sin is not to be lightly
brushed aside. It is not wise wholly to forget that "our God is a
consuming fire."[142] It is in consideration of this dread truth that
the atonement wrought by His Son according to His own will of love is
discovered to be an action of vital efficacy, and not a mere scenic
display.
[142] Heb. xii. 29.