p. 19 | The Bible Year

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Aug 3, 1916

The Bible Year

Assignment for August 6 to 12

August 6: Jeremiah 37 to 39. August 7: Jeremiah 50, 51. August 8: Jeremiah 40 to 43. August 9: Jeremiah 44, 52. August 10: Psalms 79, 74, 83, 94. August 11: Lamentations 1 to 3. August 12: Lamentations 4, 5.

Psalms 79, 74, 83, 94

This group of post-Davidic psalms, says Anderson, was written “presumably by Asaph during the captivity of the Jews at Babylon. They refer to the condition of the captives, and express their sorrows, desolations, longing desires, and prayers for deliverance.”

The Book of Lamentations

Like many other books of the Bible, Lamentations receives its title, in Hebrew, from the word with which it opens. The authorship is attributed to Jeremiah, sometimes called the “weeping prophet.” Sorrows indeed darkened the life of this earnest man,—persecutions from his own beloved people, and grief at the ruin that was about to engulf them. “Though naturally mild, sensitive, and retiring, he shrank from no danger when duty called; threats could not silence him, nor ill usage alienate him. Tenderly compassionate to his infatuated countrymen, he shared with them the woes he could not induce them to avert from their own heads.”

The Lamentations is an elegiac, or mournful, poem. Further, each of the five chapters of which the book is composed “is a separate poem, complete in itself, and having a distinct subject, but brought at the same time under a plan that includes them all.”

A well-defined arrangement marks the structure of this book. The first four chapters are in the acrostic form. Chapters 1, 2, and 4 each have twenty-two verses, each one of which begins with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet,—the first verse beginning with the first letter, the second verse with the second letter, and so on. Chapter 3 has three short verses under each letter, or sixty-six verses in all. Chapter 5 has twenty-two verses, but without the alphabetic order.

In this book Jeremiah “was not merely a patriot poet, weeping over the ruin of his country; he was a prophet who had seen all this coming, and had foretold it as inevitable.” “One would think, as has often been said, that every letter was written with a tear, and every word was a sob of a broken heart. Yet he does not forget that a covenant God still reigns.”

And across the dark pages of this inspired lament there flash divine rays of light from the throne of God. The Lord's mercies “are new every morning;” “his compassions fail not.” To those who seek him, and wait for him, he is good. Not only are we to hope, but also to wait for his salvation; for “it is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord.”