Lamentations 3

The TorahRooted Bible (TRB), translated directly from the Hebrew and Greek.

The man who has seen affliction

¹ I am the man who has seen affliction by the rod of His wrath. ² He has driven me and made me walk in darkness and not in light. ³ Surely against me He turns His hand again and again, all the day. ⁴ He has made my flesh and my skin waste away; He has broken my bones. ⁵ He has built against me and surrounded me with gall and hardship. ⁶ He has made me dwell in dark places like those long dead. ⁷ He has walled me in so that I cannot go out; He has made my chain heavy. ⁸ Even when I cry out and call for help, He shuts out my prayer. ⁹ He has walled up my ways with hewn stone; He has made my paths crooked. ¹⁰ He is to me a bear lying in wait, a lion in hiding. ¹¹ He has turned aside my ways and torn me in pieces; He has made me desolate. ¹² He bent His bow and set me as a target for the arrow. ¹³ He has made the arrows of His quiver enter my inmost being. ¹⁴ I have become a laughingstock to all my people, their taunting song all the day. ¹⁵ He has filled me with bitterness; He has made me drunk with wormwood. ¹⁶ He has broken my teeth with gravel; He has made me cower in ashes. ¹⁷ My soul has been cast far from peace; I have forgotten what good is. ¹⁸ So I said, "My strength has perished, and my hope from Yahweh."

Hope renewed every morning

¹⁹ Remember my affliction and my wandering, the wormwood and the gall. ²⁰ My soul remembers it well and is bowed down within me. ²¹ This I call back to my heart; therefore I have hope. ²² Through the lovingkindnesses of Yahweh we are not consumed, for His compassions do not fail. ²³ They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness. ²⁴ "Yahweh is my portion," says my soul, "therefore I will hope in Him."

²⁵ Yahweh is good to those who wait for Him, to the soul who seeks Him. ²⁶ It is good that one should hope and wait quietly for the salvation of Yahweh. ²⁷ It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth. ²⁸ Let him sit alone and keep silent when it is laid on him. ²⁹ Let him put his mouth in the dust; perhaps there may yet be hope. ³⁰ Let him give his cheek to the one who strikes him; let him be filled with reproach. ³¹ For Adonai will not cast off forever. ³² For though He causes grief, He will have compassion according to the abundance of His lovingkindnesses. ³³ For He does not afflict from His heart, nor grieve the children of men.

³⁴ To crush underfoot all the prisoners of the earth, ³⁵ to turn aside the justice due a man before the face of the Most High, ³⁶ to subvert a man in his cause: Adonai does not approve. ³⁷ Who is he who speaks and it comes to pass, unless Adonai has commanded it? ³⁸ Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that both calamities and good come? ³⁹ Why should a living man complain, a man, for the punishment of his sins?

Let us return to Yahweh

⁴⁰ Let us search and examine our ways, and return to Yahweh. ⁴¹ Let us lift up our hearts with our hands to El in the heavens. ⁴² We have transgressed and rebelled; You have not forgiven.

⁴³ You have wrapped Yourself with anger and pursued us; You have slain without pity. ⁴⁴ You have wrapped Yourself with a cloud, so that no prayer can pass through. ⁴⁵ You have made us offscouring and refuse among the peoples. ⁴⁶ All our enemies have opened their mouths against us. ⁴⁷ Terror and the pit have come upon us, devastation and destruction.

⁴⁸ My eye runs down with streams of water for the brokenness of the daughter of my people. ⁴⁹ My eye flows and does not cease, without any respite, ⁵⁰ until Yahweh looks down and sees from heaven. ⁵¹ My eye brings grief to my soul because of all the daughters of my city.

Heard from the pit

⁵² Those who were my enemies without cause hunted me down like a bird. ⁵³ They cut off my life in the pit and cast stones on me. ⁵⁴ Waters flowed over my head; I said, "I am cut off."

⁵⁵ I called on Your name, Yahweh, from the lowest pit. ⁵⁶ You have heard my voice; do not hide Your ear from my sighing, from my cry for help. ⁵⁷ You drew near on the day I called on You; You said, "Do not fear." ⁵⁸ You have pleaded the cause of my soul, Adonai; You have redeemed my life. ⁵⁹ You have seen the wrong done to me, Yahweh; judge my cause. ⁶⁰ You have seen all their vengeance, all their schemes against me. ⁶¹ You have heard their reproach, Yahweh, all their schemes against me, ⁶² the lips of those who rise against me and their muttering against me all the day. ⁶³ Look at their sitting down and their rising up; I am their taunting song.

⁶⁴ You will repay them, Yahweh, according to the work of their hands. ⁶⁵ You will give them hardness of heart; Your curse will be upon them. ⁶⁶ You will pursue them in anger and destroy them from under the heavens of Yahweh.

Notes

• 3:1 This lament is the most intricate of the five: its alphabet pattern is tripled, so verses 1-3 all begin with aleph, verses 4-6 with bet, and so on through the twenty-two letters, giving sixty-six verses. The speaker is a man (gever, a strong man) who has suffered under God's anger. Many have heard Jeremiah's own sufferings in him, while others read him as a figure for the whole people, who begin to speak as "we" in verses 40-47.
• 3:22 The Masoretic Hebrew reads ki lo tamnu, "for we are not consumed": the people still live only because Yahweh's chesed (here plural, His many acts of loyal love) has held. The ancient Aramaic and Syriac translations read tammu, "they have not ceased," which many modern Bibles follow; the TRB follows the Masoretic text, and either way His mercy has not run out. In verse 23 "new" is chadash, the root of chodesh, the new moon: His compassions come back fresh every morning, as sure as the dawn.
• 3:24 Yahweh told Aaron, whose priestly line would receive no share of the land, "I am your portion and your inheritance among the children of Israel" (Numbers 18:20). Stripped of land, city and temple, the man claims the same portion for himself, as the Psalms do (16:5; 73:26; 119:57). Verses 21-26 also repeat the language of hope and waiting (yachal, qavah) until it becomes a steady resolve.
• 3:40 Here the single voice becomes "we": the whole people take up the man's lesson. "Return" is shuv, the root of teshuvah, the Hebrew word for repentance: not only feeling sorry but turning around and coming back to Yahweh. The first step is honest self-examination, and the confession follows at once in verse 42.
• 3:55 The pit (bor, also "cistern") with waters over the head and stones on top has reminded many readers of Jeremiah in the cistern of Malchijah (Jeremiah 38:6), though there "there was no water, but mud." The words also belong to the Psalms' language for being near death ("Out of the depths," Psalm 130:1), so the link is possible rather than certain. Either way, the cry was heard: "Do not fear" (verse 57).

Lamentations 2 · Lamentations 4

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