Lamentations 3:51 My eye affects my heart because of all the daughters of my city. We are not to look upon life with the eye of the statistician or the political economist or the collector of facts so called; our heart is to be in our eye, and our observation is to be conducted in the light of our tenderest sympathy. When the prophet says "affecteth" he means harms, or causes grief, to my heart: it is as if he said, What I see hurts me; does not merely hurt me outwardly, but hurts me within, strikes me at the very heart, gives me pain of soul, distresses the very springs of life. Note then how keenly sensitive was the prophetic heart. Why is it that our hearts are so little affected by the destruction that is wrought in the city? Simply because we are content to look at surfaces, to look with the eye of science or art or social mechanism. Prophets looked with the eye of the heart, and they could not bear the sad and tragic visions of the streets. Were our hearts right with Christ, were we one with the living God in all the tenderness of His love, a walk down the city thoroughfares would crush us, disable us, and drive us into the utterest despair; only then by some other vision — that is to say, by the very vision of the Cross itself — could we be recovered from our dejection, and constrained to renew our efforts at amelioration. (J. Parker, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Mine eye affecteth mine heart because of all the daughters of my city.WEB: My eye affects my soul, because of all the daughters of my city. |
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