We may deal with the words as representing very various states of mind.
They may express the impatience of sufferers. Afflictions are too often
wasted. Whatever the purpose of chastisement, the true lesson of it is
so seldom learned, even in regard to the lowest wisdom it is adapted to
teach. In an epidemic, how few people learn to take precautions, such
as cleanliness or attention to diet! In hard times commercially, how
slow most are to learn the warning against luxury, over-trading, haste
to be rich! And in regard to higher lessons, men have a dim sense
sometimes that the blow comes from God, but, like Balaam, go on their
way in spite of the angel with the sword. It does not soften, nor
restrain, nor drive to God. The main result is, impatient longing for
its removal.
The text may express the rooted dislike to the thought and the fact of
punishment as an element in divine government. This is a common phase
of feeling always, and especially so now. There is a present tendency,
good in many aspects, but excessive, to soften away the thought of
punishment; or to suppose that God's punishments must have the same
purposes as men's. We cannot punish by way of retribution, for no
balance of ours is fine enough to weigh motives or to determine
criminality. Our punishments can only be deterrent or reformatory, but
this is by reason of our weakness. He has other objects in view.
Current ideas of the love of God distort it by pitting it against His
retributive righteousness. Current ideas of sin diminish its gravity by
tracing it to heredity or environment, or viewing it as a necessary
stage in progress. The sense of God's judicial action is paralysed and
all but dead in multitudes.
All these things taken together set up a strong current of opinion
against any teaching of punitive energy in God.
The text may express the pitying reluctance of the prophet.
Jeremiah is remarkable for the weight with which 'the burden of the
Lord' pressed upon him. The true prophet feels the pang of the woes
which he is charged to announce more than his hearers do.
Unfair charges are made against gospel preachers, as if they delighted
in the thought of the retribution which they have to proclaim.