The Bible

 

Lamentations 5

Study

   

1 Remember, O Jehovah, what hath befallen us, Look attentively, and see our reproach.

2 Our inheritance hath been turned to strangers, Our houses to foreigners.

3 Orphans we have been -- without a father, our mothers [are] as widows.

4 Our water for money we have drunk, Our wood for a price doth come.

5 For our neck we have been pursued, We have laboured -- there hath been no rest for us.

6 [To] Egypt we have given a hand, [To] Asshur, to be satisfied with bread.

7 Our fathers have sinned -- they are not, We their iniquities have borne.

8 Servants have ruled over us, A deliverer there is none from their hand.

9 With our lives we bring in our bread, Because of the sword of the wilderness.

10 Our skin as an oven hath been burning, Because of the raging of the famine.

11 Wives in Zion they have humbled, Virgins -- in cities of Judah.

12 Princes by their hand have been hanged, The faces of elders have not been honoured.

13 Young men to grind they have taken, And youths with wood have stumbled.

14 The aged from the gate have ceased, Young men from their song.

15 Ceased hath the joy of our heart, Turned to mourning hath been our dancing.

16 Fallen hath the crown [from] our head, Wo [is] now to us, for we have sinned.

17 For this hath our heart been sick, For these have our eyes been dim.

18 For the mount of Zion -- that is desolate, Foxes have gone up on it.

19 Thou, O Jehovah, to the age remainest, Thy throne to generation and generation.

20 Why for ever dost Thou forget us? Thou forsakest us for length of days!

21 Turn us back, O Jehovah, unto Thee, And we Turn back, renew our days as of old.

22 For hast Thou utterly rejected us? Thou hast been wroth against us -- exceedingly?

   

Commentary

 

Father

  
Rudolf von Arthaber with his Children, by Friedrich von Amerling

Father in the Word means what is most interior, and in those things that are following the Lord's order, it means what is good. In the highest sense Father means the Lord Himself, the creator. In the generation of natural children it is the father who provides the soul or the most interior receptacle of life, and an internal heredity, and the mother who provides all of the substance that the soul uses to form its body, plus an external heredity. In this process the soul comes from the Lord through the father, and not from the father, since all life is from the Lord. The wise person calls the Lord his father and the church his mother because his interior loves come from the Lord, but are given form and actuality through the truths taught by the church. Those things thus brought forth are a person's spiritual "children". In the New Testament, when speaking of Jesus and the Father, what is meant is the outward manifestation with the divine itself as the soul inside. Because Jesus was born from a natural mother, He had a natural body and a natural Jewish heredity. Throughout his life as He was tempted by the hells, He slowly put off all he had from His mother and replaced it with what He had from Himself inside, the Father. In doing this he made himself one with the Father that was His inmost so He could truly say, "I and my Father are one".