_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 assumed that the prophet is here revealing his own feelings
under the multitude 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 assumption 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 Personæ_.
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 illustrative 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 documents; 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 accumulated 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 passion. 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
illustration; 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 noble
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 identity 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 Othello. Still all who pass
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 God. This characteristic of the Book of Lamentations throughout is
nowhere more apparent than in the third chapter. So close is the
thought of God to the mind of the writer, he does not even think it
necessary to mention the Divine name. He introduces his pronouns
without any explanation of their objects, saying "_His_ wrath" and
"_He_ hath led me," and so on through the succeeding verses. This
quiet assumption 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 God because He is
never in their thoughts. God 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 God."
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 illustrate 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 God
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 God stands to him, and the
nature and character of the Divine treatment of him throughout. God,
whom he has trusted implicitly, whom he has followed in the simplicity
of ignorance, God 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 God had broken his
bones.[165] Now he can see that God has not only acted as an enemy in
guiding him into the darkness; God's dealings have shewn more overt
antagonism. The helpless sufferer is like a besieged city, and God,
who is conducting the assault, 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 circumstances. 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 assume 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
God 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 amusement in his misery. Thus, while even a
misguided Don Quixote is a noble 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 God, 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.
[177] iii. 15.
[178] iii. 16.
Reviewing the whole course of his wretched sufferings from the climax
of misery, the man who has seen all this affliction declares that God
has cast him on from peace.[179] The Christian sufferer knows what a
profound consolation there is in the possession of the peace of God,
even when he is passing through the most acute agonies--a peace which
can be maintained both amid the wildest tempests of external adversity
and in the presence of the fiercest paroxysms of personal anguish. Is
it not the acknowledged secret of the martyrs' serenity? Happily many
an obscure sufferer has discovered it for himself, and found it better
than any balm of Gilead. This most precious gift of heaven to
suffering souls is denied to the man who here bewails his dismal fate.
So too it was denied to Jesus in the garden, and again on the cross.
It is possible that the dark day will come when it will be denied to
one or another of His people. Then the experience of the moment will
be terrible indeed. But it will be brief. An angel ministered to the
Sufferer in Gethsemane. The joy of the resurrection followed swiftly
on the agonies of Calvary. In the elegy we are now studying a burst of
praise and glad confidence breaks out almost immediately after the
lowest depths of misery have been sounded, shewing that, as Keats
declares in an exquisite line--
"There is a budding morrow in midnight."
[179] iii. 17.
It is not surprising, however, that, for the time being, the exceeding
blackness of the night keeps the hope of a new day quite out of sight.
The elegist exclaims that he has lost the very idea of prosperity. Not
only has his strength perished, his hope in God has perished
also.[180] Happily God is far too good a Father to deal with His
children according to the measure of their despair. He is found by
those who are too despondent to seek Him, because He is always seeking
His lost children, and not waiting for them to make the first move
towards Him.
[180] iii. 18.
When we come to look at the series of pictures of affliction as a
whole we shall notice that one general idea runs through them. This is
that the victim is hindered, hampered, restrained. He is led into
darkness, besieged, imprisoned, chained, driven out of his way, seized
in ambuscade, hunted, even forced to eat unwelcome food. This must all
point to a specific character of personal experience. The troubles of
the sufferer have mainly assumed the form of a thwarting of his
efforts. He has not been an indolent, weak, cowardly creature,
succumbing at the first sign of opposition. To an active man with a
strong will resistance is one of the greatest of troubles, although it
will be accepted meekly, as a matter of course, by a person of servile
habits. If the opposition comes from God, may it not be that the
severity of the trouble is just caused by the obstinacy of self-will?
Certainly it does not appear to be so here; but then we must remember
the writer is stating his own case.
Two other characteristics of the whole passage may be mentioned. One
is the _persistence_ of the Divine antagonism. This is what makes the
case look so hard. The pursuer seems to be ruthless; He will not let
his victim alone for a moment. One device follows sharply on another.
There is no escape. The second of these characteristics of the passage
is a gradual _aggravation_ in the severity of the trials. At first God
is only represented as a guide who misleads; then He appears as a
besieging enemy; later like a destroyer. And correspondingly the
troubles of the sufferer grow in severity, till at last he is flung
into the ashes, crushed and helpless.
All this is peculiarly painful reading to us with our Christian
thoughts of God. It seems so utterly contrary to the character of our
Father revealed in Jesus Christ. But then it is not a part of the
Christian revelation, nor was it uttered by a man who had received the
benefits of that highest teaching. That, however, is not a complete
explanation. The dreadful thoughts about God that are here recorded
are almost without parallel even in the Old Testament. How contrary
they are to such an idea as that of the pitiful Father in Psalm ciii.!
On the other hand, it should be remembered that if ever we have to
make allowance for the personal equation we must be ready to do so
most liberally when we are listening to the tale of his wrongs as this
is recounted by the sufferer himself. The narrator may be perfectly
honest and truthful, but it is not in human nature to be impartial
under such circumstances. Even when, as in the present instance, we
have reason to believe that the speaker is under the influence of a
Divine inspiration, we have no right to conclude that this gift would
enable him to take an all-round vision of truth. Still, can we deny
that the elegist has presented to our minds but one facet of truth? If
we do not accept it as intended for a complete picture of God, and if
we confine it to an account of the Divine action under certain
circumstances as this appears to one who is most painfully affected by
it, without any assertion concerning the ultimate motives of God--and
this is all we have any justification for doing--it may teach us
important lessons which we are too ready to ignore in favour of less
unpleasant notions. Finally it would be quite unfair to the elegist,
and it would give us a totally false impression of his ideas, if we
were to go no further than this. To understand him at all we must hear
him out. The contrast between the first part of this poem and the
second is startling in the extreme, and we must not forget that the
two are set in the closest juxtaposition, for it is plain that the one
is intended to balance the other. The harshness of the opening words
could be permitted with the more daring, because a perfect corrective
to any unsatisfactory inferences that might be drawn from it was about
to be immediately supplied.
The triplet of verses 19 to 21 serves as a transition to the picture
of the other side of the Divine action. It begins with prayer. Thus a
new note is struck. The sufferer knows that God is not at heart his
enemy. So he ventures to beseech the very Being concerning whose
treatment of him he has been complaining so bitterly, to remember his
affliction and the misery it has brought on him, the wormwood, the
gall of his hard lot. Hope now dawns on him out of his own
recollections. What are these? The Authorised Version would lead us to
think that when he uses the expression, "This I recall to my
mind,"[181] the poet is referring to the encouraging ideas of the
verses that immediately follow in the next section. But it is not
probable that the last line of a triplet would thus point forward to
another part of the poem. It is more consonant with the method of the
composition to take this phrase in connection with what precedes it in
the same triplet, and a perfectly permissible change in the
translation of the 20th verse gives good sense in that connection. We
may read this:
"Thou (O God) wilt surely remember, for my soul is bowed down within me."
Thus the recollection that God too has a memory and that He will
remember His suffering servant becomes the spring of a new hope.
[181] iii. 21.