Lamentations3chapter 3

Lamentations 3:1-6

Chapter 3 is a triple acrostic, sixty-six verses for the same twenty-two Hebrew letters, three verses given to each letter instead of one, the discipline of the first two chapters tightened rather than relaxed at the point of deepest grief. The voice shifts from the city's own lament to a single man's, I am the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of his wrath, which the bench reads as the prophet's own witness standing for the city's, one representative sufferer speaking what the whole community bears. He hath led me, and brought me into darkness, but not into light states the opening condition in one line, guidance itself turned toward night, and the images that follow, flesh made old, bones broken, compassed with gall and travail, build the case in the body's own terms before any explanation is offered.

Lamentations 3:7-9

He hath hedged me about, that I cannot get out, he hath made my chain heavy, describes affliction as a walled prison rather than an open wound, escape itself refused along with relief. Even prayer is shut out, when I cry and shout, he shutteth out my prayer, the sufferer's last recourse met with the same silence as every other door. Hewn stone across the ways and paths made crooked complete the picture; Gill reads the unit as despair not of comfort only but of direction, a man who cannot tell which way even leads forward.

Lamentations 3:10-13

He was unto me as a bear lying in wait, and as a lion in secret places, casts the Lord's dealing in the language of ambush, an enemy who waits rather than one who strikes openly. Turned aside my ways, and pulled me in pieces, he hath made me desolate follows the predator figure with the same violence stated plainly, no longer softened by simile. The picture changes to the archer for the unit's close, he hath bent his bow, and set me as a mark for the arrow, the arrows of his quiver entering into my reins, affliction now aimed rather than merely encountered.

Lamentations 3:14-18

Public shame joins private pain, I was a derision to all my people, and their song all the day, the sufferer's grief made into other people's entertainment. He hath filled me with bitterness, he hath made me drunken with wormwood gives the affliction a taste, the same wormwood the Law names as the fruit of turning from the covenant, a word the bench hears chosen deliberately. The unit ends at its lowest point, my strength and my hope is perished from the Lord, hope named as gone in the man's own words, the floor the chapter's turn will rise from.

Lamentations 3:19-21

Remembering mine affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the gall repeats the taste of the previous unit, memory at first only rehearsing the pain rather than relieving it. My soul hath them still in remembrance, and is humbled in me shows grief working its way down into humility before it becomes anything else. The turn arrives in one short sentence, this I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope, and the bench marks the pivot exactly here: something else is recalled to mind, unnamed until the next unit, hope following the recalling rather than replacing the grief that came before it.

Lamentations 3:22-24

What is recalled to mind is named here, and the bench marks this as the book's structural and theological center, the alphabet of ruin interrupted by a confession that does not depend on Jerusalem's circumstances at all: it is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness, the verse behind the hymn that still carries its wording, states the mercy as renewed rather than merely remembered, a fresh grant each day rather than a stock running down. The Lord is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in him answers the earlier despair verse for verse, my strength and my hope is perished from the Lord at 3:18 now met by a chosen portion in that same Lord, hope relocated from the man's circumstances to the object of his faith. Calvin reads the placement as deliberate, the single steadiest confession in the Old Testament set at the center of its bleakest book, grief carried rather than denied and mercy declared in the middle of it rather than after it ends.

Lamentations 3:25-27

The Lord is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him, turns the confession of the previous unit into instruction, goodness as something waited for rather than only received in a moment. It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord names the waiting itself as good, not merely the outcome it leads to, patience given its own worth. It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth closes the unit with a proverb the bench reads alongside Jeremiah's own life, discipline accepted early rather than resented, the same yoke language the book has used of Babylon's rule now turned toward formation.

Lamentations 3:28-30

He sitteth alone and keepeth silence, because he hath borne it upon him, describes a chosen posture, solitude taken up rather than only suffered, the same discipline as the yoke of the verse before it. He putteth his mouth in the dust; if so be there may be hope keeps the posture from becoming despair, an act still aimed at hope even at its lowest physical expression. He giveth his cheek to him that smiteth him closes the unit in nonresistance, and the older commentators read it as the pattern of a sufferer who answers violence with submission rather than retaliation, the same spirit the imprecations later in the chapter will test.

Lamentations 3:31-33

For the Lord will not cast off for ever states the limit on the affliction directly, judgment bounded rather than final. But though he cause grief, yet will he have compassion according to the multitude of his mercies pairs the two acts as the same hand's work, grief and compassion held together rather than set against each other. For he doth not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of men gives the chapter's clearest statement on the nature of divine judgment, the bench reading willingly as reluctance rather than delight, a God who judges because justice requires it and not because he enjoys the sentence.

Lamentations 3:34-36

To crush under his feet all the prisoners of the earth opens a list of the injustices the Lord does not approve, prisoners abused, a man's right turned aside before the face of the most High, a man subverted in his cause. The three lines share one grammatical subject held back until the end, the Lord approveth not, so that the reader hears each wrong named before learning that God stands against it rather than behind it. Barnes reads the unit as answering any reading of the chapter's earlier suffering that would make God the author of injustice generally, the specific complaint against the exile's own cruelty rather than a claim that no suffering is ever just.

Lamentations 3:37-39

Who is he that saith, and it cometh to pass, when the Lord commandeth it not? presses the chapter's theology of sovereignty into a single question, nothing happening apart from what the Lord has commanded. Out of the mouth of the most High proceedeth not evil and good states the same claim from the other direction, calamity and blessing both traced to the one source, which the bench reads as covenant language, the curses and blessings of the Law rather than a claim that God authors moral evil. Wherefore doth a living man complain, a man for the punishment of his sins closes the unit with the chapter's own answer to complaint, judgment read as consequence for sin rather than as an arbitrary blow.

Lamentations 3:40-42

Let us search and try our ways, and turn again to the Lord marks the chapter's turn from the individual voice to the whole community, the man's own confession becoming a summons the people can take up together. Let us lift up our heart with our hands unto God in the heavens pairs inward examination with outward gesture, the hands lifted matching the heart searched. We have transgressed and have rebelled: thou hast not pardoned states the confession in its plainest form, and the bench notes the honesty of the last clause, the community naming its sin without yet claiming the forgiveness the chapter's center already declared for the man who spoke first.

Lamentations 3:43-51

Thou hast covered with anger, and persecuted us: thou hast slain, thou hast not pitied returns to the register of the first two chapters, the corporate voice now describing what the man described of himself. Thou hast covered thyself with a cloud, that our prayer should not pass through names the hardest complaint of the unit, prayer itself apparently blocked, and thou hast made us as the offscouring and refuse in the midst of the people states the community's status among the nations in the plainest terms the book uses. The unit closes where much of the book closes, mine eye runneth down with rivers of water for the destruction of the daughter of my people, weeping continuing till the Lord look down, and behold from heaven, grief that keeps speaking rather than resolving into silence.

Lamentations 3:52-54

Mine enemies chased me sore, like a bird, without cause returns the chapter to the first-person voice and to narrative, a specific memory rather than the general complaint of the verses before it. They have cut off my life in the dungeon, and cast a stone upon me describes an ancient method of sealing a pit prison, ordinarily read as biography rather than figure by the older commentators, ground the bench connects to the cistern Jeremiah was lowered into during the siege. Waters flowed over mine head; then I said, I am cut off marks the low point of the narrative, drowning language used of a dry pit to state despair at its most complete.

Lamentations 3:55-58

I called upon thy name, O Lord, out of the low dungeon answers the drowning language of the verse before it with prayer, the pit itself becoming the place the cry was made from rather than only the place of despair. Thou hast heard my voice: hide not thine ear at my breathing, at my cry and thou drewest near in the day that I called upon thee: thou saidst, Fear not record an answered prayer in the plainest terms the chapter uses, the Lord's own words quoted back. O Lord, thou hast pleaded the causes of my soul; thou hast redeemed my life closes the narrative with deliverance already accomplished, the man's own rescue placed before the imprecation that follows it, testimony given before the plea for judgment on his enemies.

Lamentations 3:59-66

O Lord, thou hast seen my wrong: judge thou my cause turns the chapter's last unit toward the enemies who chased and mocked the sufferer, the case brought to the Judge rather than settled by the sufferer himself. Thou hast heard their reproach and their imaginations against me, the lips of those that rose up against me, and their device against me all the day, catalogues the hostility in detail before the closing plea. Render unto them a recompence, O Lord, according to the work of their hands asks for exact justice rather than excess, and persecute and destroy them in anger from under the heavens of the Lord closes the chapter on the same imprecatory note that closed chapter 1, the bench reading these prayers as appeals to God's own justice rather than private vengeance, the sufferer's case handed over rather than taken into his own hands.