Lamentations 3 King James Version (KJV)
“I Am the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of his wrath. He hath led me, and brought me into darkness, but not into light. Surely against me is he turned; he turneth his hand against me all the day. My flesh and my skin hath he made old; he hath broken my bones. He hath builded against me, and compassed me with gall and travail. He hath set me in dark places, as they that be dead of old. He hath hedged me about, that I cannot get out: he hath made my chain heavy. Also when I cry and shout, he shutteth out my prayer. He hath inclosed my ways with hewn stone, he hath made my paths crooked. He was unto me as a bear lying in wait, and as a lion in secret places. He hath turned aside my ways, and pulled me in pieces: he hath made me desolate. He hath bent his bow, and set me as a mark for the arrow. He hath caused the arrows of his quiver to enter into my reins. I was a derision to all my people; and their song all the day. He hath filled me with bitterness, he hath made me drunken with wormwood. He hath also broken my teeth with gravel stones, he hath covered me with ashes. And thou hast removed my soul far off from peace: I forgat prosperity. And I said, My strength and my hope is perished from the Lord: Remembering mine affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the gall. My soul hath them still in remembrance, and is humbled in me. This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope. 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 Lord is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in him. The Lord is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him. It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord. It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth. He sitteth alone and keepeth silence, because he hath borne it upon him. He putteth his mouth in the dust; if so be there may be hope. He giveth his cheek to him that smiteth him: he is filled full with reproach. For the Lord will not cast off for ever: But though he cause grief, yet will he have compassion according to the multitude of his mercies. For he doth not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of men.To crush under his feet all the prisoners of the earth. To turn aside the right of a man before the face of the most High, To subvert a man in his cause, the Lord approveth not. Who is he that saith, and it cometh to pass, when the Lord commandeth it not? Out of the mouth of the most High proceedeth not evil and good? Wherefore doth a living man complain, a man for the punishment of his sins? Let us search and try our ways, and turn again to the Lord. Let us lift up our heart with our hands unto God in the heavens. We have transgressed and have rebelled: thou hast not pardoned. Thou hast covered with anger, and persecuted us: thou hast slain, thou hast not pitied. Thou hast covered thyself with a cloud, that our prayer should not pass through. Thou hast made us as the offscouring and refuse in the midst of the people. All our enemies have opened their mouths against us. Fear and a snare is come upon us, desolation and destruction. Mine eye runneth down with rivers of water for the destruction of the daughter of my people. Mine eye trickleth down, and ceaseth not, without any intermission. Till the Lord look down, and behold from heaven. Mine eye affecteth mine heart because of all the daughters of my city. Mine enemies chased me sore, like a bird, without cause. They have cut off my life in the dungeon, and cast a stone upon me. Waters flowed over mine head; then I said, I am cut off. I called upon thy name, O Lord, out of the low dungeon. Thou hast heard my voice: hide not thine ear at my breathing, at my cry. Thou drewest near in the day that I called upon thee: thou saidst, Fear not. O Lord, thou hast pleaded the causes of my soul; thou hast redeemed my life. O Lord, thou hast seen my wrong: judge thou my cause. Thou hast seen all their vengeance and all their imaginations against me. Thou hast heard their reproach, O Lord, and all their imaginations against me; The lips of those that rose up against me, and their device against me all the day. Behold their sitting down, and their rising up; I am their musick. Render unto them a recompence, O Lord, according to the work of their hands.Give them sorrow of heart, thy curse unto them. Persecute and destroy them in anger from under the heavens of the Lord.”
-Lamentations 3 (KJV)
“I am the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of His wrath.” In chapters 1 and 2, Jeremiah wrote mainly as Jerusalem personified. Here he began to write as the voice of an individual sufferer. Yes, this was Jeremiah, but it certainly was not only him. He and many others had “seen affliction,” and they knew that it came as God’s discipline; “the rod of His wrath.”
“The sufferings of the people of Judah are described as though one man had experienced them. It is possible to interpret this chapter as a record of the feelings of Jeremiah himself, or as a personification in an otherwise unknown individual or the nation’s tragic sufferings.”
-G. Harrison
“Jeremiah’s personal lament is a reminder that suffering is always personal. When nations go through times of tragedy and tribulation, the greatest suffering always takes place at the individual level.”
-C. Ryken
“That which is most impressive in this song is the identification of the prophet with the people and with God. He recognized the necessity of the suffering, but suffered with the sufferers.”
-K. Morgan
“This seems to be the hardest part of our lot, that God should lead us into darkness: ‘He hath led me, and brought me into darkness.’ Yet dear brethren, that is, on the other hand, the sweetest thing about our trial; because, if the darkness be in the place where God has led us, it is best for us to be in the dark.”
-C.S. Spurgeon
“Surely against me is He turned.” Jeremiah did not stay in this dark and desperate place, but he would not deny being there. Many times through the affliction he felt God to be his adversary, not his friend.
He has hedged me in: “This also may refer to the lines drawn round the city during the siege. But these and similar expressions in the following verses may be merely metaphorical, to point out their straitened, oppressed, and distressed state.” (Clarke)
“The walling-up of prisoners within confined spaces so that they died very quickly was a form of torture made popular by the Assyrians.”
-M Hanson
“As the convict sometimes drags about his chain, and has a ball at his foot, so the prophet felt as if God had clogged him with a heavy chain, so that he could not move because of its terrible weight.”
-C.S. Spurgeon
“He shutteth out my prayer.” When things are right with our relationship with God He is our refuge and defense in affliction. In their depths of affliction, this was not the experience of Jeremiah and the people of Judah. They were surrounded, hedged, and blocked, “with hewn stone.”
“He was unto me as a bear lying in wait.” Using the eloquence that misery sometimes brings, Jeremiah described all the ways that they felt God opposed and even attacked them.
· God was the like the bear and the lion waiting for a surprise attack.
· God was like the archer who bent His bow and was directed at the target.
· God was like mocker who led the taunting song against His people.
· God was like the judge, giving a cup of judgment and wormwood for the condemned to drink.
· God was the brute, breaking my teeth with gravel.
“He has bent His bow:” This figure shows the power of the archer’s arm, which transfixed the poet with arrows.” ‘
-L. Ellison
“He hath also broken my teeth with gravel: “What a figure to express disgust, pain, and the consequent incapacity of taking food for the support of life; a man, instead of bread, being obliged to eat small pebbles till all his teeth are broken to pieces by endeavouring to grind them. One can scarcely read this description without feeling the toothache.” ‘
-A.C. Clarke
“With gravel” It could be argued that it refers to the type of bread made from the sweepings of the granary floor that Jeremiah must have received toward the end of the siege.”’
-L. Ellison
“My strength and my hope is perished from the Lord:” No wonder Jeremiah and Jerusalem could say this. With God as adversary, what strength is there? What hope is there of either peace or prosperity?
“The poet’s mention of ‘the Lord’ broke the spell of misery that had bound him.”
-L. Ellison
“Remembering mine affliction and my misery.” Jeremiah did not prescribe positive thinking for this deep affliction. He actually felt it useful to remember it, to understand it for what it was, and to not pretend it wasn’t there.
“My soul hath them still in remembrance, and is humbled in me.” It was good for Jeremiah’s soul to sink, to find its bottom point so that he could build on the right foundation.
“It is evident that in the preceding verses there is a bitterness of complaint against the bitterness of adversity, that is not becoming to man when under the chastising hand of God; and, while indulging this feeling, all hope fled. Here we find a different feeling; he humbles himself under the mighty hand of God, and then his hope revives.”
-A. C. Clarke
“This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope.” For perhaps the first time in the book, hope is allowed. Having sunk low in his soul earlier in the book of Lamentations, Jeremiah now remembered something that started hope within.
“In a magnificent expression of faith in the unfailing mercies of God, the writer looks to the distant future with renewed hope.”
-G. Harrison
“At the south of Africa the sea was generally so stormy, when the frail barks of the Portuguese went sailing south, that they named it the Cape of Storms; but after that cape had been well rounded by bolder navigators, they named it the Cape of Good Hope. In your experience you had many a Cape of Storms, but you have weathered them all, and now, let them be a Cape of Good Hope to you.”
-C.S. Spurgeon
Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed: This was one of the things Jeremiah remembered. He remembered that as beat down and defeated the people of Jerusalem and Judah were, they were not yet completely consumed. There was still a remnant, and remnant with a promise of restoration. Wherever God leaves life, He leaves hope.
“See where Jeremiah gets his comfort; he seems to say, ‘Bad as my case is, it might have been worse, for I might have been consumed, and I should have been consumed if the Lord’s compassions had failed.’”
-C.S. Spurgeon
“Because His compassions fail not:” Even in the severity of correction God’s people endured there was evidence of His compassions. There was rich comfort in realizing that the tender affection of God was not completely spent; these compassions were new every morning.
“The passage is full of beauty, as it deals with that tender compassion of God which had never been absent even in the work of punishment.”
-K. Morgan
“They are new every morning.” Each dawning day gives mankind hope in fresh mercies and compassions from God. We need a constant supply and God has promised to send them without fail. No matter how bad the past day was, God’s people can look to the new morning with faith and hope.
These mercies are always new because they come from God.
“Our treasures, which we lay up on earth, are the stagnant pools; but the treasure which God gives us from heaven, in providence and in grace, is the crystal fount which wells up from the eternal deeps, and is always fresh and always new.”
-C.S. Spurgeon
· Every morning ends the night
· Every morning brings a new day
· Every morning brings new provision for the day
· Every morning brings new forgiveness for new sins
· Every morning brings new strength for new temptations, duties, and trials
“Great is Thy faithfulness.” All this made Jeremiah consider the great faithfulness of God; that He never fails in sending His mercies and compassions. Even in their catastrophe, God was faithful. He faithfully announced His judgments and performed them, and God would prove to be just as faithful in His promised restoration.
“The prophet addressed him personally and directly: ‘Great is your faithfulness’. In the process of remembering God’s attributes, Jeremiah was drawn back into living fellowship and intimate communion with his faithful God.”
-T. Ryken
3. (Lam 3:24-26) God’s goodness to the seeking soul.
“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,
“Therefore I hope in Him!”
The Lord is good to those who wait for Him,
To the soul who seeks Him.
It is good that one should hope and wait quietly
For the salvation of the Lord.
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