Lamentations 5:8

Servants have ruled over us: there is none that doth deliver us out of their hand.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(8) Servants have ruled over us.—The Chaldæans, it would seem, added insult to injury, sending as rulers those who had filled menial offices in the courts of their kings. (Comp. Jeremiah 39:3.)

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

5:1-16 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.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Servants - i. e. Slaves. A terrible degradation to a high-spirited Jew.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

8. Servants … ruled … us—Servants under the Chaldean governors ruled the Jews (Ne 5:15). Israel, once a "kingdom of priests" (Ex 19:6), is become like Canaan, "a servant of servants," according to the curse (Ge 9:25). The Chaldeans were designed to be "servants" of Shem, being descended from Ham (Ge 9:26). Now through the Jews' sin, their positions are reversed.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

Either those who sometimes were our servants, tributary to us, or the posterity of Ham, condemned of old to be servants to our forefather Shem, Genesis 9:26; or the servants of those masters whom we serve in Babylon: and none will help us and give us more liberty.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Servants have ruled over us,.... The Targum is,

"the sons of Ham, who were given to be servants to the sons of Shem, they have ruled over us;''

referring to the prophecy of Noah, Genesis 9:26; or such as had been tributary to the Jews, as the Edomites; so Aben Ezra; the Babylon, an, are meant; and not the nobles and principal inhabitants only, but even their servants, had power and authority over the Jews and they were at their beck and command; which made their servitude the more disagreeable and intolerable:

there is none that doth deliver us out of their hand; out of the hand of these servants.

Geneva Study Bible

Servants have ruled over us: there is none that doth deliver us out of their hand.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

8. Servants rule] The reference may be to cases where slaves actually rose to positions of authority. Cp. Tobiah in Nehemiah 2:10; Nehemiah 2:19. Budde suggests that such persons may have seized upon property (cp. Habakkuk 1:6) and forced the Jews to earn their bread under them as day-labourers.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 8. - Servants have ruled; rather, slaves. The Babylonians in general might be called slaves, by comparison with the "kingdom of priests" (Exodus 19:6), and the "sons" of Jehovah (Isaiah 45:11; Hosea 1:10). Or the expression may mean that even baseborn hangers on of the conquering host assumed the right to command the defenceless captives. Lamentations 5:8

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

Further description of the miserable condition under which the congregation languishes. Lamentations 5:8. "Servants rule over us," etc. עבדים are not the Chaldean soldiers, who are in 2 Kings 24:10 designated the servants of Nebuchadnezzar (Pareau, Rosenmller, Maurer); still less the Chaldeans, in so far as they, till shortly before, had been the subjects of the Assyrians (Kalkschmidt); nor the Chaldean satraps, as servants of the king of Babylon (Thenius, Ewald); nor even "slaves who had been employed as overseers and taskmasters of the captives while on the march" (Ngelsbach); but the Chaldeans. These are called servants, partly because of the despotic rule under which they were placed, partly in the sense already indicated by C. B. Michaelis, as being those qui nobis potius, si pii fuissemus, servire debuissent, in accordance with the analogous designation of Jerusalem as a princess among the countries of the world, Lamentations 1:1.