How does the city sit lovely, that was full of people! how has she become as a widow! she that was great among the nations, and princess among the provinces, how has she become a slave!
All Commentaries on Lamentations 1:1 Go To Lamentations 1
Glossa Ordinaria
AD 1480
ALEPH: ‘doctrine’, that man may know both himself and God. This, the Jewish people did not have and were thus subject to the enemies.
How does the city sit solitary: He proclaims that the overthrow of the poor city and the fall of the crooked people not only took place under the Chaldeans, but were to be fulfilled to even greater extent under Titus and Vespasian. In fact, before the final captivity, she is not rightly said to be sitting alone, if not perhaps due to some exaggeration of pain. They are said to have been left by the Chaldeans as poor cultivators of the land, over whom Godolias is put in charge, and the city is not entirely destroyed, but is, after the death of Christ, dispersed to become desolated, so that neither stone upon stone, nor the people, shall be left in her. For against them, returned from captivity, grew the rod of anger, since they were not turned towards the Lord through the prophets’ admonitions and reproofs, but had always been ungrateful to the mercies of God. Hence Moses: For I know thy obstinacy, and thy most stiff neck, you have always been rebellious against the Lord, and Stephanus said: You stiff-necked &c. Therefore, although often torn by the lashes of the scourge, overpowered by the enemies, afflicted by every evil, they believed not, but provoked the most high God. So, with ten tribes already captured in Assyria, the two that had remained, following David home and worshiping God according to their kind, eventually, with malevolence increasing, were for the first time captured in Chaldea, wherefore the city is here lamented: How doth the city sit solitary.
Gilbert. Albeit I say nothing, the careful reader will not pass in silence over the splendor of the rhetorical colors, the weight of the sentences and the adornment of speech. For nothing, he will also find the multitude of heads of rhetoric, the choice dialectic and the plainness of the arguments. Moreover, he will teach, without instruction, the abjectness of the rhetorical complaint (conquestio), and occasionally the severity of disdain (indignatio), or the combination of both. To satisfy the unskilled, however, I shall not unwillingly explain the rhetorical complaint and disdain by their proper definitions.
‘Complaint’, as Tully says, ‘is speech seeking to arouse the pity of the audience’. Its first head is that by which we show what prosperity we once enjoyed and what misery we are in now, as it is here: How doth the city sit solitary &c.
‘Disdain is speech by which either hatred is aroused against some person or offense at some event’; the first head of which is from authority, when it is related of how much concern this event has been to the immortal gods &c. As it is said here: Her Nazarites were whiter than snow &c.
In the first alphabet I therefore show the more careful, penetrating reader the right way by denoting a few heads of complaint and disdain &c.
Historical interpretation. HOW DOTH THE CITY SIT SOLITARY: that is to say Jerusalem, deprived of its people, full of disgrace, humiliated among her enemies, once populous and glorious among her enemies; THE MISTRESS OF THE GENTILES IS BECOME AS A WIDOW, deserted by her kings, forsaken by her priests, the temple profaned and the glory of the vessels repudiated, deprived of God’s assistance; THE MISTRESS OF THE GENTILES, whom she before had overthrown or forced under the yoke.
Allegorical interpretation. The Church is to be lamented with more tears than her sins require, being made a WIDOW due to the absence of her spouse. HOW DOTH THE CITY SIT SOLITARY, forsaken by the assistance of God and the angels! If the bridegroom were together with the bride, the bride need not be mourned for, since the children of the bridegroom cannot mourn, as long as the bridegroom is with them, but they rejoice with joy because of the bridegroom’s voice, but when they noticed that their mother, that is to say the Church, had been widowed from the bridegroom, it was fit that not only the sons cry, but also all their friends. Hence Jeremiah deplored more than everyone and on behalf of everyone not the ruin of boulders but of men.
HOW DOTH THE CITY SIT SOLITARY: this shows the disposition of the crying, hence, for the mourner’s emotion to be expressed, also Job is said to have sat on a dunghill, who himself is interpreted ‘mourning’. Of this captivity it is said: Upon the rivers of Babylon, there we sat and cried. Namely we, who did not want to stand in the throne of the kingdom and in the supreme height of heaven; by rights we wail when we sit on the rivers of temptation, whence Isaiah: Come down, sit in the dust, O virgin daughter of Babylon, sit on the ground: there is no throne for the daughter of the Chaldeans. Thus, for our Jerusalem, when she has landed in the shame of her sins, there is no throne of dignity, but she is defiled with mortal offenses, whence Jeremiah laments, not only because of her being contaminated with worldly undertakings, but because she sits SOLITARY, and solitary because she is AS A WIDOW, and a widow because she is deserted by her spouse for the sake of the ugliness of her nefarious actions. AS A WIDOW, not really a widow, namely, for if she at times is despised by the bridegroom, nevertheless the rights of matrimony are retained, so that, if she should wish to return by means of penitence, she would recover her spouse, when she has made satisfaction, and the raiment of immortality, clad anew in which she will yield to the tribute of no one. Hence St Paul: Owe no man any thing, but to love one another.
Moral interpretation. The soul SITS SOLITARY AS A WIDOW, divested of the goods of virtue, since she has submitted herself to the lordship of the Chaldeans and defied the spouse of her youth. The Chaldeans are interpreted ‘they who take captive’; they are demons, who recall the soul from the seat of the heavenly fatherland and capture it in their power. Hence: Get thee into darkness, O daughter of the Chaldeans. Since, namely, you, daughter of God, refused to stay in the light of virtue, go, change your name and enter into the shadows of blindness! Hence Jeremiah exclaims with sighs: HOW DOTH THE CITY SIT SOLITARY, that is to say the soul, once full of virtues and approbations of the saints as A CITY FULL OF PEOPLE, now desolate, she who previously, among the throngs of friends, was mighty by divine aid, now sits wretched among enemies. For her there is no fellowship with the saints, no communion with the sacraments, no partaking with her spouse, but she is brought back to pay tribute to vices. Hence: My father left me subject to many creditors, whom, even if I should labor every day, I would not satisfy. Many are the tributes to offense, to which the soul is subject, until it, through penitence, returns to liberty. Hence: Lament like a virgin girded with sackcloth for the husband of her youth. Thus follows the voice of the one lamenting: WEEPING SHE HAS WEPT IN THE NIGHT.
