John Calvin Commentary Lamentations 4:17

"Our eyes do yet fail [in looking] for our vain help: In our watching we have watched for a nation that could not save." — Lamentations 4:17 (ASV)

Here the Prophet charges the people with another crime: that, neglecting God and even despising His favor, they had always attached themselves to vain and false hopes. This was an unbearable sacrilege because they thus robbed God of His rights. What does He demand more than that we should depend on Him, and that our minds should acquiesce in Him alone? When, therefore, salvation is expected from others rather than from God alone, He is, in a way, reduced to nothing. The Prophet, then, accuses the Jews of this great sacrilege: that they never turned to God, nor had any hope in Him, but on the contrary wandered here and there for help.

As yet for us, he says, that is, while we were still standing. This circumstance deserves to be noticed, for after the Jews had been overthrown, they finally began to know how they had been previously deceived when they placed confidence in the Egyptians.

Prosperity intoxicates people, so that they take delight in their own vanities. While we seem to ourselves to be standing, or while we remain alive, God is disregarded, and we seek help here and there, thinking our safety is beyond all danger. The Prophet then says that the Jews had been intoxicated with false confidence, so that they disregarded God and, in the meantime, fled to the Egyptians. When, he says, we were standing, our eyes failed, etc. We have previously seen what this phrase means: the eyes are said to fail when, with unwearied perseverance, we pursue a hope to the very end, as it is said in the Psalms:

Our eyes have failed for the living God (Psalms 69:3); that is, we have persevered, and though many trials may have wearied us, yet we have been constant in our hope in God.

So now the Prophet says that the eyes of the people had failed; but he adds, this was for a vain help, or a 'help of vanity,' by which term he designates the Egyptians. There is an implied contrast between empty and deceitful help and the help of God, which the people rejected when they preferred the Egyptians.

Our eyes, he says, failed; that is, we were unwearied in hoping vainly, for we always thought that the Egyptians would be a sufficient defense to us. This is one thing.

He afterwards adds, In our looking out, we looked out to a nation which could not save us. He repeats the same thing in other words. Some consider a relative pronoun to be understood, as in “In our expectation with which we have expected,” etc.; but this seems unnecessary.

I, then, connect the Prophet's words in such a way that the meaning is that the Jews always turned their eyes to Egypt as long as they stood as a state and kingdom, and thus they willfully deceived themselves because they took delight in their own vanity. The other clause that follows has the same meaning, In our expectation we expected a nation, etc.; and this clause is added as an explanation. For the Prophet explains how their eyes failed for a vain hope, or for a vain help, precisely because the people did not look to God, but only to the Egyptians.

Now the words 'to look out' and 'looking out' are appropriate, for they refer to those vain imaginations to which unbelievers give heed. For God called them, but turning away from Him, they transferred their hope to the Egyptians. It was, then, their own 'looking out' or speculation when, through a foolish conceit, they imagined that safety would be secured for them by the Egyptians.

He says that they were a nation which could not save; and there is no doubt that the Prophet here reminds them of the many warnings that had not been heeded by the Jews, for God had tried to call them back from that ruinous confidence, but without success. For we know how much the Prophets labored in this respect, but they were never believed until finally experience proved how vain the help of Egypt was, as God had testified by His servants.

Prayer:

Grant, Almighty God, that as we are beset on every side by so many allurements, and as Satan does not cease to draw us here and there by vain flatteries — O grant that we may rest on You alone, even on Your power, and, in short, on Your word, nor doubt that You will be our deliverer, whatever may happen, and that we may always so seek You in our difficulties, and so rest in the faithfulness of Your promises, that we may calmly endure all the assaults of afflictions, until You at last gather us into that blessed rest which is prepared for us in heaven by Christ our Lord. — Amen.