_THE CALL TO PRAYER_
ii. 18-22
It is not easy to analyse the complicated construction of the
concluding portion of the second elegy. If the text is not corrupt its
transitions are very abrupt. The difficulty is to adjust the relations
of three sections. First we have the sentence, "Their heart cried unto
the Lord." Next comes the address to the wall. "O wall of the daughter
of Zion," etc. Lastly, there is the prayer which extends from verse 20
to the end of the poem.
The most simple grammatical arrangement is to take the first clause in
connection with the preceding verse. The last substantive was the word
"adversaries." Therefore in the rigour of grammar the pronoun should
represent that word. Read thus, the sentence relates an action of the
enemies of Israel when their horn has been exalted. The word rendered
"cried" is one that would designate a loud shout, and that translated
"Lord" here is not the sacred name _Jehovah_ but _Adonai_, a general
term that might very well be used in narrating the behaviour of the
heathen towards God. Thus the phrase would seem to describe the
insolent shout of triumph which the adversaries of the Jews fling at
the God of their victims.
On the other hand, it is to be observed that the general title "Lord"
(_Adonai_) is also employed in the very next verse in the direct call
to prayer. The heart, too, is mentioned again there as it is here, and
that to express the inner being and deepest feelings of the afflicted
city. It seems unlikely that the elegist would mention a heart-cry of
the enemies and describe this as addressed to "The Lord."
Probably then we should apply this opening clause to the Jews,
although they had not been named in the near context, a construction
favoured by the abrupt transitions in which the elegist indulges
elsewhere. It is the heart of the Jews that cried unto the Lord. Now
the question arises, How shall we take this assertion in view of the
words that follow? The common reading supposes that it introduces the
immediately succeeding sentences. The heart of the Jews calls to the
wall of the daughter of Zion, and bids it arise and pray. But with
this construction we should look for another word (such as "saying")
to introduce the appeal, because the Hebrew word rendered "cried" is
usually employed absolutely, and not as the preface to quoted speech.
Besides, the ideas would be strangely involved. Some people,
indefinitely designated "they," exhort the wall to weep and pray! How
can this exhortation to a wall be described as a calling to the Lord?
The complication is increased when the prayer follows sharply on the
anonymous appeal without a single connecting or explanatory clause.
A simpler interpretation is to follow Calvin in rendering the first
clause absolutely, but still applying it to the Jews, who, though they
are not named here, are supposed to be always in mind. We may not
agree with the stern theologian of Geneva in asserting that the cry
thus designated is one of impatient grief flowing not "from a right
feeling or from the true fear of God, but from the strong and turbid
impulse of nature." The elegist furnishes no excuse for this somewhat
ungracious judgment. After his manner, already familiar to us, the
poet interjects a thought--viz., that the distressed Jews cried to
God. This suggests to him the great value of the refuge of prayer, a
topic on which he forthwith proceeds to enlarge first by making an
appeal to others, and then by himself breaking out into the direct
language of petition.
This is not the first occasion on which the elegist has shown his
faith in the efficacy of prayer. But hitherto he has only uttered
brief exclamations in the middle of his descriptive passages. Now he
gives a solemn call to prayer, and follows this with a deliberate,
full petition, addressed to God. We must feel that the elegy is lifted
to a higher plane by the new turn that the thought of its author takes
at this place. Grief is natural; it is useless to pretend to be
impassive; and, although our Teutonic habits of reserve may make it
difficult for us to sympathise with the violent outbursts that an
Oriental permits himself without any sense of shame, we must admit
that a reasonable expression of the emotions is good and wholesome.
Tennyson recognises this in the well-known lyric where he says of the
dead warrior's wife--
"She must weep or she will die."
Nevertheless, an unchecked rush of feeling, not followed by any
action, cannot but evince weakness; it has no lifting power. Although,
if the emotion is distressful, such an expression may give relief to
its subject, it is certainly very depressing to the spectator. For
this reason the Book of Lamentations strikes us as the most depressing
part of the Bible--would it not be just to say, as the _only_ part
that can be so described? But it would not be fair to this Book to
suppose that it did nothing beyond realising the significance of its
title. It contains more than a melancholy series of laments. In the
passage before us the poet raises his voice to a higher strain.
This new and more elevated turn in the elegy is itself suggestive. The
transition from lamentation to prayer is always good for the sufferer.
The first action may relieve his pent-up emotions; it cannot destroy
the source from which they flow. But prayer is more practical, for it
aims at deliverance. That, however, is its least merit. In the very
act of seeking help from God the soul is brought into closer relations
with Him, and this condition of communion is a better thing than any
results that can possibly follow in the form of answers to the prayer,
great and helpful as these may be. The trouble that drives us to
prayer is a blessing because the state of a praying soul is a blessed
state.
Like the _muezzin_ on his minaret, the elegist calls to prayer. But
his exhortation is addressed to a strange object--to the _wall_ of the
daughter of Zion. This wall is to let its tears flow like a river. It
is so far personified that mention is made of the apple of its eye; it
is called upon to arise, to pour out its heart, to lift up its hands.
The license of Eastern poetry permits the unflinching application of a
metaphor to an extent that would be considered extravagant and even
absurd in our own literature. It is only in a travesty of melodrama
that Shakespeare permits the Thisbe of _A Midsummer Night's Dream_ to
address a wall. Browning has an exquisitely beautiful little poem
apostrophising an old wall; but this is not done so as to leave out of
account the actual form and nature of his subject. Walls can not only
be beautiful and even sublime, as Mr. Ruskin has shewn in his _Stones
of Venice_; they may also wreathe their severe outlines in a multitude
of thrilling associations. This is especially so when, as in the
present instance, it is the wall of a city that we are contemplating.
Not a new piece of builder's work, neat and clean and bald, bare of
all associations, as meaningless as in too many cases it is ugly, but
an old wall, worn by the passing to and fro of generations that have
turned to dust long years ago, bearing the bruises of war on its
battered face, crumbling to powder, or perhaps half buried in
weeds--such a wall is eloquent in its wealth of associations, and
there is pathos in the thought of its mere age when this is considered
in relation to the many men and women and children who have rested
beneath its shadow at noon, or sheltered themselves behind its solid
masonry amid the terrors of war. The walls that encircle the ancient
English city of Chester and keep alive memories of mediæval life, the
bits of the old London wall that are left standing among the
warehouses and offices of the busy mart of modern commerce, even the
remote wall of China for quite different reasons, and many another
famous wall, suggest to us multitudinous reflections. But the walls of
Jerusalem surpass them all in the pathos of the memories that cling to
their old grey stones. It does not require a great stretch of
imagination to picture these walls as once glowing and throbbing with
an intense life, and now dreaming over the unfathomable depths of
age-long memories.
In personifying the wall of Zion, however, the Hebrew poet does not
indulge in reflections such as these, which are more in harmony with
the mild melancholy of Gray's _Elegy_ than with the sadder mood of the
mourning patriot. He names the wall to give unity and concreteness to
his appeal, and to clothe it in an atmosphere of poetic fancy. But his
sober thought in the background is directed towards the citizens whom
that historic wall once enclosed. Herein is his justification for
carrying his personification so far. This is more than a wild
apostrophe, the outburst of an excited poet's fancy. The imaginative
conceit wings the arrow of a serious purpose.
Let us look at the appeal in detail. First the elegist encourages a
free outflow of grief, that tears should run like a river, literally,
like a torrent--the allusion being to one of those steep watercourses
which, though dry in summer, become rushing floods in the rainy
season. This introduction shews that the call to prayer is not
intended in any sense as a rebuke for the natural expression of grief,
nor as a denial of its existence. The sufferers cannot say that the
poet does not sympathise with them. It might seem needless to give
this assurance. But anybody who has attempted to offer exhortation to
a person in trouble must have discovered how delicate his task is. Let
him approach the subject as carefully as he may, it is almost certain
that he will chafe the quivering nerves he desires to soothe, so
sensitive is the soul in pain to any interference from without. Under
these circumstances, the one method by which it is at all possible to
smooth the way of approach is an expression of genuine sympathy.
There may be a deeper reason for this encouragement of the expression
of grief as a preliminary to a call to prayer. The helplessness which
it so eloquently proclaims is just the condition in which the soul is
most ready to cast itself on the mercy of God. Calm fortitude must
always be better than an undisciplined abandonment to grief. But
before this has been attained there may come an apathy of despair,
under the influence of which the feelings are simply benumbed. That
apathy is the very opposite to drying up the fountain of grief as it
may be dried in the sunshine of love; it is freezing it. The first
step towards deliverance will be to melt the glacier. The soul must
feel before it can pray. Therefore the tears are encouraged to run
like torrents, and the sufferer to give himself no respite, nor let
the apple of his eye cease from weeping.
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 attitude 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 passed; 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 assigned 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 God. 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 God, 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 petition 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 God before any real prayer is at all
possible.
We may go further. The attitude of soul that is here recommended is in
itself the very essence of prayer. The devotions that consist in a
series of definite petitions are of secondary worth, and superficial
in comparison with this outpouring of the heart before God. To enter
into relations of sympathy and confidence with God is to pray in the
truest, deepest way possible, or even conceivable. Prayer in the
heart of it is not petition; that is the beggar's resort. It is
communion--the child's privilege. We must often be as beggars, empty
of everything before God; 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 God. 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 God? Passion
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 petitions. But they do not
apply to the prayer that is a simple act of confidence in God. 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 God, 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 God, that as we come to know and follow Him
our lost confidence in God 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 God, 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 God. 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 God we may bring the
worst trouble. So this becomes the main topic of the prayer that
follows. Here the cases of the principal 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 God. It is God who has summoned His
Terrors as at other times He had summoned His people to the festivals
of the sacred city. But if God 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 chastisement is from the hand of God
it is God alone who can bring deliverance. That is the final point to
be reached.