Lamentations 3:51

"Handfuls of Purpose"

For All Gleaners

"Mine eye affecteth mine heart because of all the daughters of my city." Lam 3:51

Here is the proper use of observation. We are not to look upon life with the eye of the statistician or the political economist or the collector of facts so called; our heart is to be in our eye, and our observation is to be conducted in the light of our tenderest sympathy. When the prophet says "affecteth" he means harms, or causes grief, to my heart: it is as if he said, What I see hurts me; does not merely hurt me outwardly, but hurts me within, strikes me at the very heart, gives me pain of soul, distresses the very springs of life. Note then how keenly sensitive was the prophetic heart. We need not wait for the New Testament in order to show us the range and duality of truest sympathy. The prophets were in their day and according to their light and their capacity as was Jesus Christ himself. They felt all sickness, they mourned in the presence of all oppression, they pronounced the doom of all sin, they sympathised with every one who was groaning under a burden or suffering from some stinging and often unspeakable pain. Speaking of "the daughters of my city," we are to understand the reference to be to the maidens of Jerusalem, and of the maidens of the daughter town which looked towards Jerusalem as children might look towards a mother. The prophet sees here an image of the destruction and desolation of youth and beauty and music. The tears of Jeremiah were easily accessible; hence he has been called the weeping prophet. He hesitates not to say, "Mine eye trickleth down, and ceaseth not, without any intermission." Not only were the prophet's eyes moistened, as modern sensibility often professes that its eyes are bedewed: Jeremiah speaks of a fuller sorrow, a richer sympathy; he says, "Mine eye runneth down with rivers of water for the destruction of the daughter of my people." In another passage he desires that he might have even greater power of weeping, that he might express his sympathy with the destruction proceeding around him: "Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!" Not only was this copious weeping characteristic of the prophet Jeremiah, it would seem to have been characteristic of the whole prophetic life of the Old Testament. Speaking in the Psalmist's day, we read of the tears of sympathy, because of the destruction that was proceeding in the city and in the household: "Rivers of water run down mine eyes, because they keep not thy law." And again: "My tears have been my meat day and night, while they continually say unto me, Where is thy God?" Prophets and psalmists have wished to escape from the evil visions that filled their eyes. Thus Jeremiah himself, strong and valiant as he was, seems to have seen enough, and to have desired to run away to quiet places: "Oh that I had in the wilderness a lodging place of wayfaring men; that I might leave my people, and go from them!" The Psalmist desired that he also might fly away and find rest in unknown places. "Oh that I had wings like a dove! for then would I fly away, and be at rest. Lo, then would I wander far off, and remain in the wilderness." Why is it that our hearts are so little affected by the destruction that is wrought in the city? Simply because we are content to look at surfaces, to look with the eye of science or art or social mechanism. Prophets looked with the eye of the heart, and they could not bear the sad and tragic visions of the streets. Were our hearts right with Christ, were we one with the living God in all the tenderness of his love, a walk down the city thoroughfares would crush us, disable us, and drive us into the utterest despair; only then by some other vision that is to say, by the very vision of the Cross itself could we be recovered from our dejection, and constrained to renew our efforts at amelioration.