1 Cor 4 13, We are made as the filth of the world and are the off-scouring of all things. 6 He hath set me in dark places, as they that be dead of old. Lamentations 3 - I am the man who has seen affliction by - Bible Gateway It is all what God orders; every man's judgment proceeds from him. Instead of Adonai, seventeen MSS., of Kennicott's, and one ancient of my own, have Yehovah. Article Images Copyright 2023 Getty Images unless otherwise indicated. There have been various translations of the original: but they all amount to this. Without interruption, See Jeremiah 38:6, &c. Verse 56. 1. But he is in a particular manner good to those that wait for him, to the soul that seeks him. To every mourner we may say, on the authority of God, Fear not! The complaint renewed, ver 42-54. This chapter is another single alphabet of Lamentations for the destruction of Jerusalem, like those in the first two chapters. IV. Through the LORDs mercies we are not consumed, We must set ourselves to answer God's intention in afflicting us, which is to bring sin to our remembrance, and to bring us home to himself, v. 40. Here is, I. Your partnership makes all we do possible. Each of the first four chapters of Lamentations is an acrostic poem. Do not hide Your ear To turn aside the justice due a man From the lowest pit. Remember my affliction and roaming: Jeremiah did not prescribe positive thinking for this deep affliction. Luke-Acts We should observe what makes for us, as well as what is against us. While there is life there is hope; and instead of complaining that things are bad, we should encourage ourselves with the hope they will be better. The malice they had against him: "Thou hast seen all their vengeance, how they desire to do me a mischief, as if it were by way of reprisal for some great injury I had done them." Prayer is the breath of the new man, drawing in the air of mercy in petitions, and returning it in praises; it proves and maintains the spiritual life. Having stated his distress and temptation, the prophet shows how he was raised above it. He sitteth alone He has learned that necessary lesson of independence, that shows him how he is to serve himself; to give no trouble to others; and keep his troubles, as far as possible, in his own bosom. Jerusalem was the tabret they played upon. The streams of mercy acknowledged: We are not consumed. It leads too to the willingness to be treated like a slave (v. 30), for the yoke was a symbol of servitude (but cf. In the sacrificial tariffs of the Pentateuch, animal kidneys were held to be one of the locations of life, this being thought true of human kidneys also. I make to return to my heart (so the margin words it); what we have had in our hearts, and have laid to our hearts, is sometimes as if it were quite lost and forgotten, till God by his grace make it return to our hearts, that it may be ready to us when we have occasion to use it. He has led me and made me walk in darkness: 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. (Spurgeon). of Scripture. Fear and a snare have come upon us, Thus Ezekiel saw it, in vision, a valley full of dead and dry bones. Verse 39. To report dead links, typos, or html errors or suggestions about making these resources more useful use the convenient. One might conjecture that the following thought in the Toozek i Teemour was borrowed from this: -. My soul has them still in remembrance. In their depths of affliction, this was not the experience of Jeremiah and the people of Judah. 3. We have been with him, and it has never been well with us since we forsook him; let us therefore now turn again to him." 49 Mine eye trickleth down, and ceaseth not, without any intermission, 50 Till the Lord look down, and behold from heaven. 15 He hath filled me with bitterness, he hath made me drunken with wormwood. 53 They have cut off my life in the dungeon, and cast a stone upon me. The faithful lament their calamities, and hope in God's mercies. He does not dispense his frowns as he does his favours, ex mero motufrom his mere good pleasure. i. with bitterness and hardship. The reason is, there is nothing more disagreeable to the taste than the one; and nothing more distressing to the mind than the other. Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament. 42 We have transgressed and have rebelled: thou hast not pardoned. By their conduct they will bring on themselves the curse denounced against their enemies. Yet these flashes of light are welcome and necessary. "When I lay gasping for life, and ready to expire, and thought i was breathing my last, then thou tookest cognizance of my distressed case." And be full of reproach. Some make all this to be spoken by the prophet himself when he was imprisoned and persecuted; but it seems rather to be spoken in the person of the church now in captivity and in a manner desolate, and in the desolations of which the prophet did in a particular manner interest himself. It is good for a man to bear They complain of their own excessive grief and fear upon this account. Because His compassions fail not. If inward impressions do not answer to outward expressions, we mock God, and deceive ourselves. 2. d. They are new every morning: Each dawning day gives mankind hope in fresh mercies and compassions from God. Verse 31. Verse 18. He has besieged me V. Encouragement taken to hope in God, and continue waiting for his salvation, with an appeal to his justice against the persecutors of the church, ver 55-66. Early discipline is equally so. The Chaldeans said that they would destroy Jerusalem, and it came to pass, not because they said it, but because God commanded it and commissioned them to do it. Note, It is our duty to make God the portion of our souls, and then to make use of him as our portion and to take the comfort of it in the midst of our lamentations. There was rich comfort in realizing that the tender affection of God was not completely spent; these compassions were new every morning. He silenced their fears, and quieted their spirits. Copyright 2023, Bible Study Tools. He has led me and made me walk In darkness and not in light. 9 He hath inclosed my ways with hewn stone, he hath made my paths crooked. of Who could exist throughout the day, if there were not a continual superintending Providence? Note, The prolonging of troubles is sometimes a temptation, even to praying people, to question whether God be what they have always believed him to be, a prayer-hearing God. i. He has bent his bow, the bow that was ordained against the church's prosecutors, that is bent against her sons, v. 12. They have done it without cause, without any provocation given them. But through all of his long and faithful ministry, he was (like the Lord Jesus) despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with much grief. Lamentations 3:21-23 | It Is Through the Lord's Mercies That We Are Saved III. He has mingled gravel with my bread, so that my teeth are broken with it (v. 16) and what I eat is neither pleasant nor nourishing. And said, Do not fear! I am their taunting song. This comfort I receive from the hand of God, and shall I not receive that evil also? i. Luke-Acts These are the two things which our afflictions should put us upon. hichphishani beepher, "he hath plunged me into the dust." GenesisExodusLeviticusNumbersDeuteronomyJoshuaJudgesRuth1 Samuel2 Samuel1 Kings2 Kings1 Chronicles2 ChroniclesEzraNehemiahEstherJobPsalmsProverbsEcclesiastesSong of SongsIsaiahJeremiahLamentationsEzekielDanielHoseaJoelAmosObadiahJonahMicahNahumHabakkukZephaniahHaggaiZechariahMalachiMatthewMarkLukeJohnActsRomans1 Corinthians2 CorinthiansGalatiansEphesiansPhilippiansColossians1 Thessalonians2 Thessalonians1 Timothy2 TimothyTitusPhilemonHebrewsJames1 Peter2 Peter1 John2 John3 JohnJudeRevelation, Select a Beginning Point You drew near: Jeremiah seems to record this fact with a considerable amount of surprise. b. To the soul who seeks Him. He doth not ascribe his deliverance in any measure to any man, much less to his own merit; but it is thou. (Spurgeon). Of this, death would deprive him; therefore let not a living man complain. If hope become impatient, faith will be impossible: for who can believe for his salvation when his mind is agitated? Their enemies persecuted and slew them, but that was not the worst of it; they were but the instruments in God's hand: "Thou hast persecuted us, and thou hast slain us, though we expected thou wouldst protect and deliver us." "Let us lift up our heart;" let us make fervent prayer and supplication for mercy. Thus restless was the enmity of their persecutors, and yet causeless. All their schemes against me. While we wait for him by faith, we must seek him by prayer: our souls must seek him, else we do not seek so as to find. Quietness is necessary to waiting, for all turbulency and impatience of spirit under sad providences is opposed to waiting. (Poole). Like many psalms (see Psalms 22 and 88 for examples), the poem begins with painful and heartfelt statements about the horrors of the author (Lamentations 3:1-20). (great love [mercies]), the covenant love and loyalty of the Lord that leads to rahamim (compassion, mercy), derived from re?em (womb). (Ellison), ii. Let us try our ways, that by them we may try ourselves, for we are to judge of our state not by our faint wishes, but by our steps, not by one particular step, but by our ways, the ends we aim at, the rules we go by, and the agreeableness of the temper of our minds and the tenour of our lives to those ends and those rules. That prayer should not pass through. Let him sit alone and keep silent, "This is that which I depend upon and rest satisfied with: Therefore will I hope in him. What does Lamentations chapter 3 mean? | BibleRef.com GenesisExodusLeviticusNumbersDeuteronomyJoshuaJudgesRuth1 Samuel2 Samuel1 Kings2 Kings1 Chronicles2 ChroniclesEzraNehemiahEstherJobPsalmsProverbsEcclesiastesSong of SongsIsaiahJeremiahLamentationsEzekielDanielHoseaJoelAmosObadiahJonahMicahNahumHabakkukZephaniahHaggaiZechariahMalachiMatthewMarkLukeJohnActsRomans1 Corinthians2 CorinthiansGalatiansEphesiansPhilippiansColossians1 Thessalonians2 Thessalonians1 Timothy2 TimothyTitusPhilemonHebrewsJames1 Peter2 Peter1 John2 John3 JohnJudeRevelation, Select an Ending Point They silenced my life in the pit He had already begun to appear for them (v. 58): "O Lord! Their sins were repented of, and yet (v. 42), Thou hast not pardoned. Commentary on Lamentations 3:22-33 - Working Preacher 45 Thou hast made us as the offscouring and refuse in the midst of the people. Lamentations 3 The scope of this chapter is the same with that of the two foregoing chapters, but the composition is somewhat different; that was in long verse, this is in short, another kind of metre; that was in single alphabets, this is in a treble one. They cannot but know it is so, and therefore it is in defiance of him that they do it. God never hides His ear from our breathing; or from those in- articulate cries, which express, as words could not do, the deep anguish and yearning of the heart. Why do I fret thus?" This is unfortunate, since his works contain priceless gems of information that are found nowhere except in the ancient writings of the Jews. The lips of my enemies 1. To pierce my loins: Literally, kidneys. Though He causes grief, To God in heaven. Or, "Thou hast covered us up as men that are buried are covered up and forgotten." (3.) Here is one word of comfort. All their schemes against me, The Jewish state may now be fitly compared to a man wrinkled with age, for which there is no remedy (v. 4): "My flesh and my skin has he made old; they are wasted and withered, and I look like one that is ready to drop into the grave; nay, he has broken my bones, and so disabled me to help myself, v. 15. My soul still remembers Through the LORDs mercies we are not consumed: This was one of the things Jeremiah remembered. And my hope That first, that last support of the miserable-it is gone! i. It will make our duty the more acceptable to God, and easy to ourselves, if we engage in it when we are young. i. He hath builded against me Perhaps there is a reference here to the mounds and ramparts raised by the Chaldeans in order to take the city. The Bibles Tab is found in the Tools feature on Bible pages: Note: MLA no longer requires the URL as part of their citation standard. God had been for him, but no "Surely against me is he turned (v. 3), as far as I can discern; for his hand is turned against me all the day. However it be, yet God is good to them (Ps 73 1), and they may by faith see love in his heart even when they see frowns in his face and a rod in his hand. They had not the assurance and comfort of the pardon; the judgments brought upon them for their sins were not removed, and therefore they thought they could not say the sin was pardoned, which was a mistake, but a common mistake with the people of God when their souls are cast down and disquieted within them. There are times when the only thing a sufferer can do is wait for God. Look at their sitting down and their rising up; Do not be in a hurry; do not expect to be delivered out of your trouble the first time you begin to cry unto God. An Arabic poet. Many times through the affliction he felt God to be his adversary, not his friend. 6. a. Luke-Acts You have not pardoned. These streams followed up to the fountain: It is of the Lord's mercies. "This cloud is so thick that our prayers seem as if they were lost in it; they cannot pass through; we cannot obtain an audience."
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