John Calvin Commentary Lamentations 1:18

"Jehovah is righteous; for I have rebelled against his commandment: Hear, I pray you, all ye peoples, and behold my sorrow: My virgins and my young men are gone into captivity." — Lamentations 1:18 (ASV)

Jerusalem again acknowledges, and more clearly expresses, that she suffered a just punishment. She had previously confessed that her enemies were cruel through God's command; but it was necessary to point out again the cause of that cruelty, namely, that she had too long provoked the wrath of God.

She says, first, that God was just, or righteous, because she had provoked His mouth. By the mouth of God we are to understand the prophetic doctrine, as is well known. But the phrase is emphatic, for when the word of God was proclaimed by the mouth of prophets, it was despised as an empty sound.

Since, then, prophetic doctrine is not ascribed its own majesty, God calls whatever His servants declare His mouth. This way of speaking is taken from Moses and often occurs in his writings.

Jehovah, then, is just. How so? Because I have provoked His mouth. And it was more grievous and less excusable to provoke the mouth of God than simply to offend God.

The ungodly often offend God when they labor under ignorance. But when the Lord is pleased to open His mouth to recall the erring and to show the way of salvation, and then people rush headlong, as it were, intentionally into sins, it is certainly a mark of extreme impiety.

From this we understand why the Prophet mentions the mouth of God, or the teaching of the prophets: namely, to emphasize the wickedness of Jerusalem, which had so obstinately disregarded God speaking by His prophets.

The greatness of her sorrow is again deplored; and what follows is addressed to all nations: Hear, I pray, all you people; see my sorrow. And what was the reason for this great sorrow? Because, she says, my virgins and my young men have been driven into captivity. This might seem a light thing, for a previous account has been given of other calamities, which were far more severe; and exile in itself is but a moderate punishment.

But we must bear in mind what we have previously stated: that the Jews lived in that land as though they had been placed there by the hand of God, that Jerusalem was to be a perpetual rest granted to them from above—in short, that it was, as it were, a pledge of the eternal inheritance.

When, therefore, they were driven into captivity, it was as if God had cast them down from heaven and banished them from His kingdom.

For the Jews would not have been deprived of that land if God had not rejected them and shown His alienation from them. It was, then, the same as repudiation. It is therefore no wonder that Jerusalem so greatly lamented because her sons and her daughters were driven into exile.

Prayer:

Grant, Almighty God, that as You have until now dealt so mercifully with us, we may anticipate Your dreadful judgment; and that if You should more severely chastise us, we may not yet fail, but that being humbled under Your mighty hand, we may flee to Your mercy and cherish this hope in our hearts, that You will be a Father to us, and not hesitate to call continually on You, until, being freed from all evils, we shall at length be gathered into Your celestial kingdom, which Your only-begotten Son has procured for us by His own blood. — Amen.