Lamentations 3:14

Lamentations is five poems of mourning for the fall of Jerusalem in 586 BC. The Babylonian army under Nebuchadnezzar besieged the city, broke down its walls, burned Solomon’s Temple and carried the people into exile (2 Kings 25, Jeremiah 52). The line of David’s kings came to an end. For Judah this was a crisis of faith as well as a military defeat, because Jerusalem was the city God had chosen and the Temple was his dwelling place. Among the nations a people’s defeat was taken as the defeat of its gods, as the Rabshakeh had boasted before Jerusalem. Israel had to face something harder, that the LORD himself had judged his own people, just as Jeremiah had warned for decades (Jeremiah 25:8–11).

The first two poems mourn the city as a whole (Lamentations 1, Lamentations 2). In them Jerusalem’s sin is confessed (Lamentations 1:8) and the city cries out in her agony (Lamentations 1:12). Lamentations 3 stands at the centre of the book, and here the voice becomes a single “I”. The poem is an alphabetic acrostic of 66 verses in 22 stanzas of three, and each stanza begins with the next letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Grief this deep is set out in order, letter by letter, so that the whole of it is told. Verses 1–20 are the telling.

From verse 2 onward line after line begins with “He”, and “He” is God. The man names the LORD where he could have named the Babylonians, because he understands his suffering by God’s covenant with Israel. Through Moses God had promised blessing for obedience and had warned of curses for disobedience, among them invasion, famine and exile (Deuteronomy 28). What fell on Jerusalem was what God had said would come.

The prophets say the same of calamity in general. God forms the light and creates darkness, makes peace and brings calamity (Isaiah 45:7), and Amos asks whether disaster comes to a city unless the LORD has done it (Amos 3:6). Job, when everything was taken from him, said that the LORD gave and the LORD had taken away (Job 1:21).

Scripture also tells us what kind of striking this is. The LORD corrects those he loves, as a father corrects the son in whom he delights (Proverbs 3:11–12). Hebrews takes this up at length and says that God disciplines his children for their good, and that the discipline, painful at the time, afterward yields righteousness (Hebrews 12:5–11). God’s aim with Judah was repentance and restoration. That is why the confession “He did this” is the beginning of hope. The God who led into darkness holds the power to lead out, and this same chapter goes on to say that his mercies are new every morning and that he will have compassion on those he has grieved (Lamentations 3:21–26, Lamentations 3:32).

Verses 2–4 begin the account. “He hath led me, and brought me into darkness, but not into light.” The verb nâhag means to drive or lead, the word for driving an animal or a chariot, so the man is being driven where another wills. The road ends in chôshek, darkness, a word that also stands for misery, destruction and sorrow. It is set against ʼôwr, light, which covers illumination of every kind and can picture happiness. Light in Scripture goes with God’s favour and guidance, as when David calls the LORD his light and his salvation (Psalm 27:1), and this darkness recalls the darkness that lay on the deep before God spoke (Genesis 1:2). Judah had lived in the light of God’s presence, and now that light was gone from view.

Verse 3 speaks of God’s stance toward him: “Surely against me is he turned; he turneth his hand against me all the day.” The Hebrew uses two verbs for turning. The first, shûwb, means to turn back or return, and the second, hâphak, means to turn about or overturn and is the verb used of the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah. The hand, yâd, stands for God’s power at work, the hand that had so often protected Israel. “All the day” uses yôwm, the ordinary word for a day or a span of time, and tells us that the blows kept coming without relief. Job spoke the same way of the arrows of the Almighty within him (Job 6:4), and so did the psalmist who was laid in the pit, with God’s wrath lying hard on him and his friends put far away (Psalm 88:6–8).

Verse 4 comes to his body: “My flesh and my skin hath he made old; he hath broken my bones.” bâlâh means to wear out or decay, a slow wasting, while shâbar means to break or shatter. Flesh and skin are what is seen, and the bones, ʻetsem, are the frame that holds a person up, a word that can also stand for the body and the self. He is wasted outside and shattered within. The covenant had warned of long plagues and sore sicknesses (Deuteronomy 28:59–61). Job said that his bones were pierced in the night and his sinews took no rest (Job 30:17), David confessed that there was no soundness in his flesh and no rest in his bones because of God’s anger and his own sin (Psalm 38:3), and another psalm speaks of bones out of joint (Psalm 22:14).

People ask whether this suffering is physical or a picture. It is both. The words draw on the real bodily misery of siege and famine, and the broken body is also a picture of the nation, whose strength and standing had collapsed.

In verses 5–7 and 9 the man describes himself as a city under siege and as a prisoner. “He hath builded against me, and compassed me with gall and travail.” bânâh is the ordinary word for building, and to build against someone is to raise siege works. nâqaph means to strike and so to go round and surround. Jerusalem had been ringed in just this way through the long siege that ended in famine and fire (2 Kings 25:1–10). What surrounds the man is rôʼsh and tᵉlâʼâh. The first is a poisonous plant, probably the poppy, and so poison and bitterness in general, and the second is wearying hardship and distress. Moses had warned of a root that bears gall and wormwood (Deuteronomy 29:18), and through Jeremiah God had said he would feed this people with wormwood and give them water of gall to drink (Jeremiah 9:15).

“He hath set me in dark places, as they that be dead of old.” yâshab means to sit or dwell, and here God has made him sit there. machshâk is a dark place, mûwth is the common verb for dying, and ʻôwlâm is time out of mind. The picture is the grave, which Israel called Sheol, a place of silence and darkness away from the living. He is alive and feels like someone long buried and forgotten. David prays in nearly the same words about dwelling in darkness like those long dead (Psalm 143:3), and Job speaks of the land of darkness and the shadow of death (Job 10:21–22).

“He hath hedged me about, that I cannot get out: he hath made my chain heavy.” gâdar means to wall in or fence round. A hedge from God can be a protection, as it was around Job (Job 1:10), and in judgment God took away the hedge of his vineyard (Isaiah 5:5). Here the wall is a prison, as Job also found when God fenced up his way (Job 19:8). yâtsâʼ is the plain word for going out, which he is unable to do. The chain is nᵉchôsheth, copper or bronze, and so a fetter made of it, and kâbad means to be heavy. Captives were led from Jerusalem in chains like this, and a psalm speaks of prisoners sitting in darkness, bound in affliction and iron (Psalm 107:10).

Verse 9 returns to the wall with the same verb gâdar: “He hath inclosed my ways with hewn stone, he hath made my paths crooked.” gâzîyth is cut and dressed stone, the stone of a builder who means his wall to stand. ʻâvâh means to bend or twist. Isaiah speaks of the crooked paths that the wicked make for themselves (Isaiah 59:8). Here it is God who has closed the straight road and twisted the others, so that every way the man tries leads him astray.

Verse 8 may be the hardest line of all: “Also when I cry and shout, he shutteth out my prayer.” zâʻaq means to cry out, especially for help in hardship, and shâvaʻ means to call aloud for help. tᵉphillâh is the common word for prayer, and çâtham means to stop up or block. Job knew this too when he said, “Oh that I knew where I might find him!” (Job 23:3).

In verses 10–13 God is the hunter. “He was unto me as a bear lying in wait, and as a lion in secret places.” dôb is the bear and ʼărîy the lion, the most feared beasts of the land. ʼârab means to lurk or lie in wait, and miçtâr is a hiding place. Jerusalem’s fall came on the man like an ambush. God had warned of exactly this through Hosea, saying he would meet Israel like a lion and like a bear (Hosea 13:7–8). Job said that God hunted him like a fierce lion (Job 10:16), and David prayed to be delivered from enemies who would tear his soul like a lion (Psalm 7:2). The shock in Lamentations is that the one lying in wait is the God who had been Israel’s security.

Verse 11 carries the picture on: “He hath turned aside my ways, and pulled me in pieces: he hath made me desolate.” çûwr means to turn off or remove, and pâshach means to tear in pieces. shâmêm describes a place laid waste, and a person left alone and appalled. He has been dragged from his road, torn and left.

Then the beast gives way to an archer: “He hath bent his bow, and set me as a mark for the arrow.” dârak means to tread and is the word for bending a bow. nâtsab means to station or set up, maṭṭârâʼ is a target, something closely watched, and chêts is an arrow. The man has been stood up as the mark, so the blow is aimed. Job says the same, that God set him up for his mark (Job 16:12), and a psalm warns that God has bent his bow and made it ready (Psalm 7:12).

“He hath caused the arrows of his quiver to enter into my reins.” The Hebrew calls the arrows the sons of his quiver, using bên, the word for a son, with ʼashpâh, a quiver. bôwʼ means to go or come, and here to go in. The reins are the kidneys, kilyâh, which stand in Hebrew for the inner self, the seat of feeling and conscience. The wound has reached the deepest part of him. The same word is used when Scripture says that God tries the hearts and reins (Psalm 7:9).

Verse 14 is the one line in this stretch about what people did to him: “I was a derision to all my people; and their song all the day.” sᵉchôwq is laughter and mockery. ʻam is a people, and here it is his own people, the community that should have stood with him. nᵉgîynâh is music or a song, and in this place a taunting song that he hears all day. In Israel public shame was a heavy punishment, often felt as worse than bodily pain, and for a prophet it struck at the standing on which his message rested.

Jeremiah knew this well. He had preached judgment for years to people who refused to hear it, and he complained that he was mocked every day while his acquaintances watched for him to stumble (Jeremiah 20:7–10). The psalmist says that God’s people had become a reproach to their neighbours (Psalm 44:13), and Job was mocked by his own friends (Job 12:4). A righteous man who bears his people’s shame in his own person points ahead to the suffering servant of Isaiah 53.

Verses 15 and 16 are about food and mourning. “He hath filled me with bitterness, he hath made me drunken with wormwood.” mᵉrôr is bitterness, or a bitter herb. To be “filled” is sâbaʻ, to have had one’s fill, and râvâh means to drink deeply or be soaked. laʻănâh, wormwood, is a very bitter plant that was regarded as poisonous and accursed. He has been made to eat and drink sorrow until he reels from it. Scripture often speaks of judgment as a cup that must be drunk. Jerusalem had drunk the cup of the LORD’s fury (Isaiah 51:17), Jeremiah was told to carry the wine cup of that fury to the nations (Jeremiah 25:15–16), and in Revelation a star called Wormwood makes the waters bitter (Revelation 8:11).

“He hath also broken my teeth with gravel stones, he hath covered me with ashes.” gâraç means to crush, and châtsâts is gravel. The bread he is given is grit that breaks the teeth, which is a picture of famine and of having nothing left to live on. The covenant had warned of hunger, thirst and want of all things (Deuteronomy 28:48). Ashes, ʼêpher, were the sign of deep grief, repentance and humiliation, as when Job sat down among the ashes (Job 2:8). The man has been pressed down into them.

In verse 17 he stops speaking about God and speaks to him: “And thou hast removed my soul far off from peace: I forgat prosperity.” zânach means to push aside or cast off. nephesh, the soul, is the living, breathing self, the whole person. shâlôwm, peace, is a full word that names completeness, soundness, welfare and safety, everything the covenant promised to an obedient people. nâshâh means to forget, and ṭôwb, here “prosperity”, is the plain word for good. His present misery has so filled his mind that he has lost the memory of what good was like. The covenant had warned that among the nations Israel would find no ease and would have a trembling heart (Deuteronomy 28:65). Scripture also promises that such a night ends, for weeping may endure for a night and joy comes in the morning (Psalm 30:5).

Verse 18 is the bottom: “And I said, My strength and my hope is perished from the LORD.” ʼâmar is the everyday verb for saying. The word behind “strength” is netsach, a word of long duration and of eminence, which the KJV renders as strength here. tôwcheleth is expectation, a hope that waits for good to come. ʼâbad means to wander away, to be lost and so to perish. Yᵉhôvâh is God’s covenant name. All that could carry the man forward, and all that he was waiting for, is lost to him, and he says it is lost “from the LORD”, the very one from whom strength and hope come.

The last two verses gather everything up. “Remembering mine affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the gall.” zâkar means to remember. The affliction is ʻŏnîy again, as in verse 1, and the misery is mârûwd, the state of an outcast who has been driven from home. The wormwood, laʻănâh, and the gall, rôʼsh, come back from verses 15 and 5 and stand side by side, the two bitter and poisonous plants that Scripture pairs as the taste of judgment.

“My soul hath them still in remembrance, and is humbled in me.” His nephesh, his whole self, goes on remembering. Scripture speaks of the soul this way when David calls on his soul and all that is within him to bless the LORD (Psalm 103:1). shûwach means to sink or bow down. His soul sinks within him, as the psalmist’s soul was cast down within him (Psalm 42:6).

This humbling is where the turn begins. Affliction has stripped away pride and every reliance on himself, and a man brought that low has only God left to look to. James says, “Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up” (James 4:10). The next words in the poem are “This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope,” and what he recalls is that the LORD’s compassions never fail and are new every morning (Lamentations 3:22–23). The same memory that held the wormwood and the gall takes hold of the mercy of God.

Jesus is the man who has seen affliction in the fullest sense. Isaiah foretold him as “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3). Jeremiah suffered among a guilty people and bore the weight of their judgment with them. Jesus knew no sin and was made sin for us, so that we might be made the righteousness of God in him (2 Corinthians 5:21). He is “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). God sent his own Son and condemned sin in the flesh (Romans 8:3), and he was wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities (Isaiah 53:5). The rod of wrath fell on him.

Line after line of this lament is heard again at the cross. The man was led into darkness, and Jesus cried, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46, Mark 15:34), taking up the opening words of Psalm 22:1. The man was given gall, and Jesus was offered drink mingled with gall (Matthew 27:34). The man was made drunk with wormwood, and Jesus prayed in Gethsemane about the cup his Father gave him (Matthew 26:39), with his soul “exceeding sorrowful, even unto death” (Matthew 26:38). The man was a derision and a song, and Jesus was mocked by the soldiers (Matthew 27:27–31), by the rulers (Luke 23:35) and by those who passed by the cross (Matthew 27:39–44). The man’s bones were broken, and Jesus’ body was scourged and pierced, though God kept his bones whole as Scripture had said (Psalm 34:20, John 19:36). The man was set among the dead, and Jesus was cut off out of the land of the living (Isaiah 53:8) and laid in a tomb of stone. He humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross, and God has highly exalted him (Philippians 2:8–11). He endured the cross and despised the shame (Hebrews 12:2), and he tasted death for every man (Hebrews 2:9).

His suffering ended in resurrection. He died for our sins, was buried and rose again the third day (1 Corinthians 15:3–4), raised for our justification (Romans 4:25). He is the resurrection and the life (John 11:25), who gives life to those who were dead in trespasses and sins (Ephesians 2:1), and he is the way where every path was closed (John 14:6).

So for those who are in Christ each grief of this passage has its answer. There is now no condemnation (Romans 8:1–2), because the charge against us was nailed to his cross and the powers were defeated there (Colossians 2:14–15). We have been delivered from the power of darkness (Colossians 1:13) and called out of darkness into his marvellous light (1 Peter 2:9), for he is the light of the world (John 8:12), in God there is no darkness at all (1 John 1:5), and the light shines in the darkness (John 1:5). The way to God that the man found shut stands open through the blood of Jesus (Hebrews 10:19–20), and our high priest is touched with the feeling of our infirmities (Hebrews 4:15). We have peace with God (Romans 5:1), made through the blood of his cross (Colossians 1:19–20), for he himself is our peace (Ephesians 2:14) and gives his own peace to his people (John 14:27). We have received the Spirit of adoption (Romans 8:15), rest for the heavy laden (Matthew 11:28–30), a living hope (1 Peter 1:3), a strength made perfect in weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9) and healing by his stripes (1 Peter 2:24). The God who spared not his own Son will with him freely give us all things (Romans 8:32).

Suffering remains in this life, and believers who suffer with Christ will be glorified with him (Romans 8:17). He has overcome the world (John 16:33) and is with his people always (Matthew 28:20). He gives beauty for ashes (Isaiah 61:3), and at the last God will wipe away all tears, and sorrow, crying and pain will be gone (Revelation 21:4).

God put these twenty verses in his word, so the darkest things a believer can feel have a place in Scripture and words already written for them. The man says that God has driven him into the dark, shut out his prayer and hunted him like a beast, and he says all of it before God. That is what lament is: grief carried to the LORD by someone who still holds that the LORD rules. Faith and deep sorrow stand together in this man.

The passage also shows who God is in judgment. He is holy, he keeps his word in warning as surely as in promise, and sin turns as bitter as wormwood in the end. He stays with the people he disciplines, and the hand that struck Judah was the hand that would bring her back.

And it shows where hope is found. By verse 18 the man’s own strength and hope are gone, and by verse 20 his soul is bowed to the ground. Hope comes in the next breath, and it comes from what he calls to mind about the LORD, whose compassions are new every morning. If your own strength has run out, you are standing where this man stood one verse before hope. For those who are in Christ there is a further comfort, since the judgment has been borne by him, and what comes to us from the Father’s hand comes as a child’s discipline and for our good.