BIBLE STUDIES —No. 46 Lamentations and Baruch

By Charles G. Mortimer
B0TH these books form a sort of appendix to the prophecies of Jeremiah and can be treated together for that reason, In fact the book of Lamentations is not always given in the Ecclesiastical Lists, but this in no way reflects -upon its authenticity or rightful place in the Canon of the Old Testament ; it was embraced in the writings of Jeremiah.
Lamentations is an elegy or threnody—in characteristic Hebrew style. " Jeremias," says St. Jerome, "'bewailed the ruin of his City in a.
fourfold alphabet which we have restored to the measure of metre and to verses. The first four chapters form an acrostic, and the fifth chapter, called the prayer of Jeremiah, contains 22 verses, the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet. It seems idle to discuss exactly when or where the Prophet composed this
poem — it may have occupied his thoughts for years both before and after the actual catastrophe, the fall of
Jerusalem. We can imagine the poet's mind so full of his theme that the words of sorrow gushed out to relieve
his own heart. But Jeremiah never loses his grip upon faith, even in the midst of his agony. " Turn to God, the Redeemer," he says: "God is just and the City must repent; its enemies must be left to the Divine Providence."
The tone and subject of Lamentations are so reminiscent of Jeremiah that it would seem to be his work indisputably, but modern criticism — outside the Church—Is against that view.
Baruch is also an appendix to Jeremiah in this sense, that he was the devoted secretary who stood by the Prophet throughout. Baruch was exceedingly skilful in the language of his country—so the historian Josephus states in a later commentary. We are so accustomed to the idea to-day that anyone can write with ease in his own language that we forget that "Letters" were of old the product and perquisite of the few, who again had their interpreters to the common people.
That is why Our Lord, when teaching in the synagogue, brought to light again the true meaning of passages from the Old Testament—just as when a boy He was found in the Temple, engaged upon His Father's business.
Baruch is himself described as reading the book in the presence of the Babylonian captives. and the sixth chapter is a separate epistle of Jeremiah, addressed to the captives going into Babylon. In Europe to-day we hear once more of the deportations of people conquered in war—nor are they without their prophets, who trust, as the Hebrew Prophets trusted of old, that the judgment will be in time reversed.
The terms in which God is addressed in the book of Baruch are of especial interest : the Eternal God, the Everlasting Saviour, the Holy One, the Most High, the Maker, the Almighty. The most striking of the Messianic prophecies, constantly quoted by the Fathers, is to be found in Baruch iii. 36-38:
" This is our God and there shall be no other accounted in comparison of Him. He found out all the way of knowledge and gave it to Jacob His servant and to Israel His beloved. Afterwards He was seen upon earth and conversed with men," The prophets often speak of coming events in the past tense. This is a Hebrew idiom that should be especially remarked : it expresses the certainty of the event foretold.
How lightly we pass over these treasures of Old Testament prophecy! Yet how great is their evidential value! " What think ye of Christ? Whose Son is HE?" This was no sudden question posed to the contemporaries of Christ. Years of patient preparation had gone before, that the Jews might feel assured of His Divine claim. Man in his perversity rejects the loving hand stretched out to help and save him. He wraps himself in the fog of his own un-faith. "He came unto His own and His own received Him not."
Next week: The Prophecies of Ezecbicl.