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Lam_1:11 All her people sigh, they seek bread; they have given their pleasant things for meat to relieve the soul: see, O LORD, and consider; for I am become vile.
Ver. 11. All her people sigh.] And so think to ease their grief.
They shall seek bread.] The staff of life, which, without repair by nutrition, would be soon extinct so in the spiritual life, which made Job prefer the Word before his "necessary food." There is a "famine of the Word" which is much worse; {Amo_8:11 Isa_6:9-10} pray against it, and prevent it.
They have given their pleasant things for meat.] Which must be had at any rate; much more must the food of the soul. Our forefathers gave five marks, or more, for a good book; a load of hay for a few chapters of St James, or of St Paul, in English, saith Mr Foxe. {a} The Queen of Castile sold her jewels to furnish Columbus for his discovering voyage to the West Indies, when he had showed his maps, though our Henry VII, loath to part with money, slighted his proffers, and thereby the golden mines were found and gained to the Spanish crown. {b} Let no man think much to part with his pleasant things for his precious soul, or to sacrifice all that he hath to the service of his life, which, next to his soul, should be most dear unto him. Our ancestors in Queen Mary’s days were glad to eat the bread of their souls in peril of their lives.
To relieve the soul.] Heb., To make the soul come again; for A nimantis cuiusque vita in fuga est, Life must be fetched again by food when it is fainting away.
See, O Lord, and consider.] Quam delicata epulatrix facta sim; to what hard meat I am held, to how strait an allowance; see it, and be sensible of my prisoner’s pittance, and how I have made many a meal’s meat upon the promises when I have wanted bread, as that good woman once said.
{a} Acts and Mon., 750.
{b} Keckerm., Praefat. Geograph.