Lamentations 3

Today’s Passage: Lamentations 3

We have come now to the very heart of the book, and to the deepest place in it. The first two poems wept over a ruined city and a burned temple from the outside, as one who surveys a wreck. This third poem takes us inside a single suffering soul and lets us hear him speak. “I am the man who has seen affliction,” he begins, and for eighteen verses he descends into a darkness so total that his hope itself seems to die. And then, at the exact center of the whole book, comes the turn that the church has clung to ever since, the moment when a man who has lost everything reaches back and takes hold of the one thing that cannot be lost: the character of God. From that turn the poem climbs, verse by verse, into counsel and confession and finally a cry for help. It is a long chapter, sixty-six verses arranged as a triple acrostic, and it is worth walking slowly, for it teaches the people of God how to grieve honestly and where, in the middle of the grief, to plant their hope.

As you read, hold this: Hope is reborn not when circumstances change but when we call to mind the steadfast love of God, whose mercies are new every morning.

Lamentations 3:1–9 (BSB)

¹ I am the man who has seen affliction under the rod of God’s wrath. ² He has driven me away and made me walk in darkness instead of light. ³ Indeed, He keeps turning His hand against me all day long. ⁴ He has worn away my flesh and skin; He has shattered my bones. ⁵ He has besieged me and surrounded me with bitterness and hardship. ⁶ He has made me dwell in darkness like those dead for ages. ⁷ He has walled me in so I cannot escape; He has weighed me down with chains. ⁸ Even when I cry out and plead for help, He shuts out my prayer. ⁹ He has barred my ways with cut stones; He has made my paths crooked.

Hear how the poem opens, and do not rush past it. “I am the man who has seen affliction.” He does not begin with comfort; he begins with the unflinching truth of what he is carrying. Line after line the same terrible sense builds, that the hand pressing him down is God’s own hand, and that there is no way out. He is walled in, chained, driven into a darkness like the grave, and even his prayer seems to strike a shut door and fall back to the ground. This is grief that will not be tidied up or hurried along, and Scripture, tenderly, lets it stand. There is a holy honesty here that the suffering believer needs to learn. You are permitted to tell God the whole of it, the walls and the chains and the shut door, without pretending you feel better than you do.

Lamentations 3:10–18 (BSB)

¹⁰ He is a bear lying in wait, a lion hiding in ambush. ¹¹ He forced me off my path and tore me to pieces; He left me without help. ¹² He bent His bow and set me as the target for His arrow. ¹³ He pierced my kidneys with His arrows. ¹⁴ I am a laughingstock to all my people; they mock me in song all day long. ¹⁵ He has filled me with bitterness; He has intoxicated me with wormwood. ¹⁶ He has ground my teeth with gravel and trampled me in the dust. ¹⁷ My soul has been deprived of peace; I have forgotten what prosperity is. ¹⁸ So I say, “My strength has perished, along with my hope from the LORD.”

The descent goes lower still, and reaches its floor. He feels hunted, torn, set up like a target, his mouth full of gravel and bitterness, mocked by the very people he belongs to. And then, at verse eighteen, he says the darkest thing a soul can say: “My strength has perished, along with my hope from the LORD.” Mark where we have arrived, for it matters enormously. This is not a man who has stopped believing in God. It is a man who believes in God and has lost his hope anyway, who has come to the very end of himself and can see no light in any direction. If you have ever stood in that place, know that Scripture has stood there too, and did not turn away from you. The poem has walked us all the way down to the bottom. And it is precisely from the bottom that it will begin to rise.

Lamentations 3:19–21 (BSB)

¹⁹ Remember my affliction and wandering, the wormwood and the gall. ²⁰ Surely my soul remembers and is humbled within me. ²¹ Yet I call this to mind, and therefore I have hope:

Now watch the hinge of the whole book turn, and turn slowly, because everything depends on this one small motion of the soul. He is still remembering, but notice what he does with his remembering. His memory has been running downhill, circling the wormwood and the gall until his spirit sank under the weight of it. Then, with a deliberate act of will, he pulls his mind off that track and sets it on another. “Yet I call this to mind, and therefore I have hope.” One little word, yet, and the whole poem changes direction. He does not wait to feel hopeful; he chooses what to remember, and hope follows the choosing. He turns his gaze from his circumstances, which have not changed at all, to Someone who does not change. And what he calls to mind is the greatest truth a grieving heart can hold.

Lamentations 3:22–24 (BSB)

²² Because of the loving devotion of the LORD we are not consumed, for His mercies never fail. ²³ They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness! ²⁴ “The LORD is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in Him.”

Here it is, the mountain-top of the book and one of the highest peaks in all of Scripture, and I would have you stop and breathe it in. The reason he and his people are not utterly consumed is not that the judgment was light, and not that their sin was small. It is the loving devotion (חֶסֶד) chesed, pronounced KHEH-sed. Strong's H2617, steadfast love, loyal kindness, covenant faithfulness. This is one of the great words of the whole Old Testament, and the BSB renders it here “loving devotion.” It means far more than a passing kindness. Chesed is loyal, covenant love, the steadfast, committed affection of God who has bound Himself to His people and will not walk away from them no matter what. It is love with a promise inside it. Notice where the poet finds it: not in his changed circumstances, for nothing has changed, but in the settled character of God. That is why it can carry the weight it carries. When he says “we are not consumed,” he is saying that the only reason a guilty, ruined people still draws breath is that God’s covenant love outlasts their sin. Build your hope on your feelings and it will rise and fall like the tide. Build it on the chesed of God and it will hold in the dark, because it rests on Him and not on you. of the LORD, His steadfast covenant love that will not let His people go. His mercies never run out. They are not the last drops of a bucket running dry; they are new every single morning, as fresh at dawn as the sunrise itself, poured out again before the sufferer has even opened his eyes. “Great is Your faithfulness (אֱמוּנָה) emunah, pronounced eh-moo-NAH. Strong's H530, faithfulness, steadiness, firmness, reliability. “Great is Your faithfulness,” the poet cries, and the word is emunah, which speaks of firmness, steadiness, reliability, the quality of something you can lean your whole weight upon and trust never to give way. It shares a root with our word amen, the settled “so be it” of faith. Think of what it means that this word rises here, of all places, from the ashes of a burned city. The buildings have fallen, the walls have crumbled, everything a man might have counted on has proven breakable, and in the middle of it the sufferer names the one thing that has not moved: the faithfulness of God is great, unshaken, new with every dawn. His mercies come like the morning precisely because His faithfulness never sleeps. Whatever else fails you, He will not, for firmness is not merely something God does. It is something God is. ,” he cries, and the whole book has been leaning toward this word. God’s faithfulness is not fragile. It does not depend on our circumstances, or our feelings, or even our faithfulness. It rests on His own unchanging character. And so the soul makes its great declaration: the LORD Himself, not comfort, not deliverance, not any good thing He gives, but the LORD Himself, is my portion, and therefore I will hope in Him. When everything else is stripped away and God is all that is left, the believer discovers that God is enough, and has been all along.

Lamentations 3:25–30 (BSB)

²⁵ The LORD is good to those who wait for Him, to the soul who seeks Him. ²⁶ It is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD. ²⁷ It is good for a man to bear the yoke while he is still young. ²⁸ Let him sit alone in silence, for the LORD has laid it upon him. ²⁹ Let him bury his face in the dust—perhaps there is still hope. ³⁰ Let him offer his cheek to the one who would strike him; let him be filled with reproach.

From the mountain-top the poet turns to counsel, and see how it flows straight out of what he has just remembered. Because the LORD is good and His mercies are new every morning, waiting for Him is not a waste. It is good, he says three times over, good to wait, good to wait quietly, good even to bear a heavy yoke while young, for the God who lays it on is good and knows what He is doing. This is a hard and beautiful wisdom. He does not tell the sufferer to fight his way out or to rage against heaven. He tells him to sit still, to be quiet before God, to let the affliction do its patient work, holding onto that trembling “perhaps there is still hope” as a real hope and not a hollow one. To wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD is one of the deepest acts of faith a soul can perform, because it trusts God’s timing when nothing yet has visibly changed.

Lamentations 3:31–33 (BSB)

³¹ For the Lord will not cast us off forever. ³² Even if He causes grief, He will show compassion according to His abundant loving devotion. ³³ For He does not willingly afflict or grieve the sons of men.

And here is the ground of that quiet waiting, laid bare. The Lord will not cast off His people forever. The grief is real, and the poet does not deny that it comes from God’s own hand, but he sees past its edge to the compassion that is coming, poured out in keeping with that same abundant chesed, that steadfast love that keeps appearing in this poem like sunlight breaking through cloud. And then a line to treasure: He does not willingly afflict or grieve the sons of men. God’s judgment is real, but it is not His delight. He is not a cruel Father who enjoys the tears of His children. Discipline is His strange work, taken up for their good and laid down again as soon as its work is done, while love is His very heart. Hold that close in the dark: even the grief that comes from His hand is bounded by His compassion and aimed at your good.

Lamentations 3:34–39 (BSB)

³⁴ To crush underfoot all the prisoners of the land, ³⁵ to deny a man justice before the Most High, ³⁶ to subvert a man in his lawsuit—of these the Lord does not approve. ³⁷ Who has spoken and it came to pass, unless the Lord has ordained it? ³⁸ Do not both adversity and good come from the mouth of the Most High? ³⁹ Why should any mortal man complain, in view of his sins?

The poet now lifts his eyes from his own sorrow to the great truths that hold the world together. God does not approve of injustice, of the crushing of prisoners or the twisting of a man’s rightful cause; His heart is set against such things. Yet nothing at all, neither adversity nor good, comes to pass unless it has first passed through His sovereign hand. Both truths stand together, and the sufferer must hold them both. And then comes the humbling question that quiets every complaint: why should any living man grumble, in view of his own sins? Here the poem turns from lament toward repentance. The one who has truly seen his own guilt loses the ground for accusing God, and finds instead the ground for returning to Him.

Lamentations 3:40–47 (BSB)

⁴⁰ Let us examine and test our ways, and turn back to the LORD. ⁴¹ Let us lift up our hearts and hands to God in heaven: ⁴² “We have sinned and rebelled; You have not forgiven.” ⁴³ You have covered Yourself in anger and pursued us; You have killed without pity. ⁴⁴ You have covered Yourself with a cloud that no prayer can pass through. ⁴⁵ You have made us scum and refuse among the nations. ⁴⁶ All our enemies open their mouths against us. ⁴⁷ Panic and pitfall have come upon us—devastation and destruction.

Notice that the remembered hope does not lead the poet to pretend everything is well. It leads him back to God in honest repentance. “Let us examine and test our ways, and turn back to the LORD,” he says, and for the first time the lonely “I” becomes a shared “us,” the whole people turning together, lifting up not just their hands but their hearts to God in heaven. And their prayer is no polished thing. It is a raw confession, “We have sinned and rebelled,” followed by the aching cry that God’s face is still hidden behind a cloud no prayer seems able to pierce. This is faith that has hope and still hurts, that has turned back to God and still feels the distance. Both can be true at once. The soul that has found its hope in God’s steadfast love does not thereby lose its tears; it simply weeps in the right direction.

Lamentations 3:48–54 (BSB)

⁴⁸ Streams of tears flow from my eyes over the destruction of the daughter of my people. ⁴⁹ My eyes overflow unceasingly, without relief, ⁵⁰ until the LORD looks down from heaven and sees. ⁵¹ My eyes bring grief to my soul because of all the daughters of my city. ⁵² Without cause my enemies hunted me like a bird. ⁵³ They dropped me alive into a pit and cast stones upon me. ⁵⁴ The waters flowed over my head, and I thought I was going to die.

The tears return, and they are not weakness but love, a heart broken over the ruin of the people it loves. Yet even the weeping now has a horizon it did not have before. He will not stop, he says, “until the LORD looks down from heaven and sees,” and there is hope buried in that little word until, for it expects God to look, and to act. Then he tells his own extremity plainly: hunted like a bird, dropped into a pit, stones cast down, the waters closing over his head, until he was certain he was about to die. He has been as low as a living man can go. And it is from exactly that pit, with the water over his head, that he lifts the cry we hear next.

Lamentations 3:55–58 (BSB)

⁵⁵ I called on Your name, O LORD, out of the depths of the Pit. ⁵⁶ You heard my plea: “Do not ignore my cry for relief.” ⁵⁷ You drew near when I called on You; You said, “Do not be afraid.” ⁵⁸ You defend my cause, O Lord; You redeem my life.

Here is the tender center of the poem’s rising hope, and it deserves to be read aloud. Out of the deepest pit, with everything lost, he called on the name of the LORD, and the LORD heard him. More than heard him: “You drew near when I called on You; You said, ‘Do not be afraid.’” Do not miss the wonder of that. In the very place where God had seemed hidden behind a cloud, the sufferer discovers that God was near all along, close enough to speak the words every frightened heart most longs to hear. God does not shout comfort from a safe distance. He draws near to the one crying in the pit and says, do not be afraid. And He does not stop at nearness; He takes up the case, He defends, He redeems the life that was as good as gone. This is the God whose mercies are new every morning, come down into the pit to find His weeping child.

Lamentations 3:59–66 (BSB)

⁵⁹ You have seen, O LORD, the wrong done to me; vindicate my cause! ⁶⁰ You have seen all their malice, all their plots against me. ⁶¹ O LORD, You have heard their insults, all their plots against me— ⁶² the slander and murmuring of my assailants against me all day long. ⁶³ When they sit and when they rise, see how they mock me in song. ⁶⁴ You will pay them back what they deserve, O LORD, according to the work of their hands. ⁶⁵ Put a veil of anguish over their hearts; may Your curse be upon them! ⁶⁶ You will pursue them in anger and exterminate them from under Your heavens, O LORD.

The poem closes not with everything resolved but with everything handed over. He has been wronged, mocked, plotted against, and instead of taking vengeance into his own hands he lays the whole matter before the God who sees and hears, and asks Him to judge rightly. We should read these final verses soberly. They are not a private grudge but a cry for God’s justice against real cruelty, entrusted entirely to the Judge of all the earth, who alone may repay. And notice where the confidence rests even here: “You have seen.” The God who drew near in the pit is the God who has seen every wrong, and He can be trusted to set it right in His time. So the man who began in total darkness ends having placed his whole cause, his grief and his enemies alike, into the hands of the God whose loving devotion never fails and whose mercies are new every morning.