Lamentations 5:2

Our inheritance is turned to strangers, our houses to aliens. OUR INHERITANCE - which is at the same time "thine inheritance" (). The land given of old to us by thy gift....

A catalogue of many calamities is now given by the Prophet, and as I have reminded you, for this end, that he may obtain God’s favor for himself and for the whole people. It was by no means a reasonable thing, that the inheritance of the elect people should be given to aliens; for we know that the land had been promised to Abraham four hundred years before his children possessed it; we know that this promise had been often repeated, “This land shall be to you for an inheritance.” For though God sustained all nations, yet he was pleased to take a peculiar care of his people. In short, no land has ever been given to men in so singular a way as the land of Canaan to the posterity of Abraham. As, then, this inheritance had been for so many ages possessed by the chosen people, Jeremiah does not without reason complain that it was turned over to aliens. In the second clause he repeats the same...

1-16 Is any afflicted? Let him pray; and let him in prayer pour out his complaint to God. The people of God do so here; they complain not of evils feared, but of evils felt. If penitent and patient under what we suffer for the sins of our fathers, we may expect that He who punishes, will return in mercy to us. They acknowledge, Woe unto us that we have sinned! All our woes are owing to our own sin and folly. Though our sins and God's just displeasure cause our sufferings, we may hope in his pardoning mercy, his sanctifying grace, and his kind providence. But the sins of a man's whole life will be punished with vengeance at last, unless he obtains an interest in Him who bare our sins in his own body on the tree....

Verse Lamentations 5:2. _OUR INHERITANCE IS TURNED TO STRANGERS_] The greater part of the Jews were either slain or carried away captive; and even those who were left under _Gedaliah_ were not _free_, for they were vassals to the _Chaldeans_....

TURNED - “transferred.” The inheritance was the land of Canaan Leviticus 20:24. ALIENS - Or, “foreigners:” i. e. the Chaldaeans upon their conquest of the country....

EXPOSITION LAMENTATIONS 5:1 INSULT UPON INSULT HAS BEEN HEAPED UPON JERUSALEM. LAMENTATIONS 5:2 OUR INHERITANCE. The land had been "given" to Abraham (Genesis 13:1; Genesis 17:8), and was consequently inherited by Abraham's posterity. OUR HOUSES. Not as it the Chaldeans had actually taken up their abode in some of the houses of Jerusalem. The expressions are forcible, but inexact. The land wa

OUR INHERITANCE IS TURNED TO STRANGERS,.... The land of Canaan in general, which was given to Abraham and his seed to be their inheritance; and their field, and vineyards in particular, which came to them by inheritance from their fathers, were now in the hands of the Chaldeans, strangers to God, and aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, as all Gentiles were, Ephesians 2:12; OUR HOUSES TO ALIENS; which they had built or purchased, or their fathers had left them, were now inhabited by those of another country....

CHAPTER 5 THE PRAYER OF HOPE The lamentations end with a prayer: “Remember, O LORD, what is come upon us; consider and behold our reproach.” It is the prayer of confession and of hope, which reaches the heart of the God of Israel. The prophet, in behalf of the nation, pours out his confession: “The crown is fallen from our head; woe unto us that we have sinned.” And there is hope in the Lord who remaineth, whose throne is from generation to generation. The prayer, “Turn Thou us unto Thee, O LORD, and we shall be turned; renew our days as of old.” (Lamentations 5:21) will some day be blessedly answered. The Eightieth Psalm contains the same prayer a number of times, and there He is mentioned who will yet save His people Israel from their sins. “Let Thy hand be upon the Man of Thy right hand, upon the Son of Man whom Thou madest strong for Thyself. So will not we go back from Th

LAMENTATIONS 5. A PRAYER. This chapter differs much from the previous four. It is not a Lament, but one long pleading; and it is not the chant of an individual, but of a company, a plural, we. It may be called a hexameter poem, having six and not five beats in each of its twenty-two lines; it keeps, however, to this alphabetical number of lines, although it is not an alphabetic acrostic. Possibly, the composer intended to think out later other initial words for his lines, and thus to make them acrostic: so it may be an acrostic in the making. But it may perhaps have been appended to the book as a sort of satire on the alphabetic fancies of chs. 1- 4. It is not deeply spiritual, and yet at the close there comes a pathetic and even affectionate appeal to God. The cry in Lamentations 5:1 opens the prayer; then in...

INHERITANCE: i.e. Canaan....