AS A MARK FOR THE ARROW

Jeremiah is speaking out of the deepest distress. His sorrow is not only personal. He laments as the representative of God’s people in their sufferings. The prophet was experiencing all that they were experiencing in the calamity of the siege and fall of Jerusalem. ‘Their sorrow was his’, Kaiser. He had spoken for God to the nation. Now he was speaking for the nation to God.

In our text, he pictures himself as ‘a target’ ESV, for God’s arrow. ‘The Lord is pictured as an archer, shooting with deadly accuracy at His prey’, Kaiser. Job had seen himself in the same way, Job 16. 12.

What had brought Jeremiah to such deep anguish? Speaking for the nation, he felt afflicted with the rod of God’s wrath. His spiritual experience was only darkness as God turned His hand against him. Physically, his life was ebbing away in pain and weakness. Trouble and calamity surrounded him like high walls. He felt as hopeless as the dead. Jeremiah was totally hemmed in. Even his cries for help to God did not seem to rise to heaven. He was like a traveller whose way was blocked and who was exposed to attack from the fiercest animals. Jeremiah and the nation were the objects of derision, the laughing stock of the world. It was as if they were forced to take their fill of bitter herbs and gall. Their grief was like having their teeth broken with gravel. They cowered in ashes, their peace was lost. Prophet and nation could not have reached a lower point of dejection than verse 17, where Jeremiah says, ‘I have forgotten what happiness is’ ESV. Indeed, in verse 18, he feels that his lasting hope in the Lord had perished altogether.

Yet that was not the last word. Jeremiah realized that if he brooded on the sad experiences of disaster, he would be cast down into depression and despair. We need to learn the same lesson. He turned his mind to the fact that the people had not been utterly consumed. That began to restore his hope, for it demonstrated the merciful faithfulness and the utterly depend­able love of God. What an anchor for the soul - great is thy faithfulness! The Lord Himself is our portion and in Him alone we can hope. His unfailing mercies are new every morning.