Skip to content
mannafest.faith

Lamentations 3:41

in Lamentations 3

Let us lift up our hearts and hands to God in heaven:

BSB

The same verse in ASV and KJV ▾

ASV

Let us lift up our heart with our hands unto God in the heavens.

KJV

Let us lift up our heart with our hands unto God in the heavens.

This verse in Lamentations 3

Commentary

5 notes on this verse

A commentator

Matthew Henry

1662–1714

Commentary on the Whole Bible (1710)

We must pray to him, with a believing expectation to receive mercy from him; for that is implied in our lifting up our hands to him (a gesture commonly used in prayer and sometimes put for it, as Ps. cxli. 2 , Let the lifting up of my hands be as the evening sacrifice ); it signifies our requesting mercy from him and our readiness to receive that mercy.

This site's exposition

Let us examine and test our ways

on Lamentations 3:40-42

The single voice becomes a summons to the whole people: “Let us examine and test our ways, and turn back to the LORD”. The confession is stated plainly with its last clause kept: “We have sinned and rebelled; You have not forgiven”.

The record, by era

The Church Fathers1 voice

A commentator

Tertullian

ON FASTING 6 · Written before 220.

proposed

One [Elijah] whose "heart" was habitually found "lifted up" rather than fattened up, who in forty days and as many nights maintained a fast above the power of human nature while spiritual faith supplied strength (to his body), both saw with his eyes God's glory, and heard with his ears God's voice and understood with his heart God's law, while he taught him even then (by experience) that humankind lives not on bread alone but on every word of God; in that the people, though fatter than he, could not constantly contemplate even Moses, fed as he had been on God, or his leanness, sated as it had been with God's glory!

The Medieval Church1 voice

A commentator

Thomas Aquinas

Commentary on Lamentations · Written before 1274.

proposed

Second, a place for prayer is prepared through devotion. "Let us lift up our hearts and hands to God in heaven." For, Paul the Apostle beseeches: "I desire then that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling" (1 …

The Puritans and the Awakening1 voice

Let us lift up our heart with our hands,....

The words behind it

7 Hebrew words

Every Hebrew word of this verse in the order it stands, with what it means and the door to its own study. The last column counts the times a word stands in the whole Bible: the rarer the word, the more the places it appears belong together.

  • נִשָּׂ֤אlet us lift up

    nisa'H5375 →656 times

  • לְבָבֵ֙נוּ֙heart our

    levavenuH3824 →

  • אֶל־to

    ʾel-H413 →5510 times

  • כַּפָּ֔יִםpalms

    kapayimH3709 →192 times

  • אֶל־to

    ʾel-H413 →5510 times

  • אֵ֖לGod

    ʾelH410 →

  • בַּשָּׁמָֽיִם׃in the heavens

    bashamayimH8064 →421 times

A shaded row is a word that stands 400 times or fewer in the Bible.

The walk

8 stops

Each card is a verse this one points to, and under it the verses that one points to in turn. Where several paths arrive at the same place, that place is listed first: the text keeps returning to it.

  • Through

    Psalms 25:1

    To You, O LORD, I lift up my soul;

    it leads to

    • Psalms 143:8

      Let me hear Your loving devotion in the morning, for I have put my trust in You. Teach me the way I should walk, for to You I lift up my soul.

      Reached by 2 separate paths from here.

    • Psalms 86:4

      Bring joy to Your servant, for to You, O Lord, I lift up my soul.

    • Psalms 24:4

      He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to an idol or swear deceitfully.

  • Through

    Psalms 141:2

    May my prayer be set before You like incense, my uplifted hands like the evening offering.

    it leads to

    • 1 Timothy 2:8

      Therefore I want the men everywhere to pray, lifting up holy hands, without anger or dissension.

      Reached by 2 separate paths from here.

    • Revelation 8:3–4

      Then another angel, who had a golden censer, came and stood at the altar. He was given much incense to offer, along with the prayers of all the saints, on the golden altar before…

    • Revelation 5:8

      When He had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each one had a harp, and they were holding golden bowls full of incense, which…

    • Daniel 9:21

      while I was still praying, Gabriel, the man I had seen in the earlier vision, came to me in swift flight about the time of the evening sacrifice.

    • Malachi 1:11

      For My name will be great among the nations, from where the sun rises to where it sets. In every place, incense and pure offerings will be presented in My name, because My name…

Where this verse is studied

About Lamentations

People Mourn over the Destruction of Jerusalem, Gustave Doré, 1866. Public domain.
People Mourn over the Destruction of Jerusalem, Gustave Doré, 1866. Public domain.

This page draws on John Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament; John Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament (1748-1763); Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible; Tertullian, ON FASTING 6 and Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Lamentations.