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Lamentations 3 - Mercy in the middle of affliction

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This narration is from a previous version of the study and may include a combined recording of multiple chapters.

Lamentations 3 stands at the center of the book like a candle inside ruins. The speaker is not spared darkness, chains, ridicule, bitterness, or the pit. Yet in the middle of that descent he lays one truth in his heart: the mercies of the Lord have not failed, His compassions are not exhausted, and the soul can still wait for Him.

Overview

The third poem is the longest chapter in Lamentations. It speaks in the voice of “the man that sees poverty,” an afflicted representative who gathers the suffering of Zion into one personal lament. In the Hebrew, each successive letter of the alphabet begins three verses, giving the lament its sixty-six-verse shape. The grief is carefully ordered even when life itself seems to have come apart.

Verses 1-21 carry the afflicted man through darkness to the decision to remember. Verses 22-26 confess the Lord’s inexhaustible mercy. Verses 27-33 teach endurance under the yoke and the assurance that the Lord will not reject forever. Verses 34-42 condemn injustice and call the people to examine their ways. Verses 43-66 return to tears, danger, and prayer from the pit. Hope has entered the poem, but the tears continue. Faith can learn to wait before suffering has ended.

The afflicted man descends into darkness (Lamentations 3:1-21)

1 Aleph. I am the man that sees poverty, through the rod of his wrath upon me. 2 He has taken me, and led me away into darkness, and not into light. 3 Nay, against me has he turned his hand all the day. 4 He has made old my flesh and my skin; he has broken my bones.

5 Beth. He has built against me, and compassed my head, and brought travail upon me. 6 He has set me in dark places, as them that have long been dead. 7 He has builded against me, and I cannot come forth: he has made my brazen chain heavy.

8 Gimel. Yea, though I cry and shout, he shuts out my prayer.

9 Daleth. He has built up my ways, he has hedged my paths; 10 he has troubled me, as a she-bear lying in wait: he is to me as a lion in secret places. 11 He pursued me after I departed, and brought me to a stand: he has utterly ruined me.

12 He. He has bent his bow, and set me as a mark for the arrow. 13 He has caused the arrows of his quiver to enter into my reins. 14 I became a laughing-stock to all my people; and their song all the day.

15 Vau. He has filled me with bitterness, he has drenched me with gall. 16 And he has dashed out my teeth with gravel, he has fed me with ashes. 17 He has also removed my soul from peace: I forgot prosperity. 18 Therefore my success has perished, and my hope from the Lord.

19 Zain. I remembered by reason of my poverty, and because of persecution my bitterness and gall shall be remembered; 20 and my soul shall meditate with me. 21 This will I lay up in my heart, therefore will I endure.

The chapter begins in the first person: “I am the man.” The grief of Jerusalem becomes concentrated in one suffering voice. Poverty, darkness, broken bones, a heavy chain, blocked prayer, bitterness, gall, ashes, and lost peace all appear before any word of comfort. The rod, the wall, the wild beast, and the drawn bow make God Himself seem to the speaker like an adversary. The poem gives us the speech of anguish before it gives us a settled account of God’s purposes.

Scripture does not shame the afflicted person for saying, “I forgot prosperity.” There are seasons when the soul cannot feel peace, when prayer seems shut out, and when hope appears to have perished. Lamentations gives those words a place inside inspired prayer. The person who can say only that prayer feels impossible is still being given words with which to address God.

The first remembering is painful: poverty, persecution, bitterness, and gall occupy the mind. Then verse 21 turns remembrance into a deliberate act: “This will I lay up in my heart, therefore will I endure.” The speaker cannot choose what has happened to him, but he begins to choose what will have the last word within him. That small act opens the way for the confession of mercy. In prayer, we can bring the wound into the Lord’s presence without making the wound the measure of His faithfulness.

Mercies not exhausted (Lamentations 3:22-26)

Before the reading. The numbers below follow the NKJV, while the wording remains Brenton’s. His printed edition numbers the mercy confession 22-24; electronic editions sometimes label these lines 21a-21c. They are three distinct verses, retained separately here. Rahlfs and Ziegler did not include these verses as original in their main Greek texts. Albert Pietersma argues that they belonged to the original translation and were lost during Greek copying: the similar endings of verses 21 and 24 could have led a copyist’s eye to skip the intervening lines. This is an explanation of the textual history, not evidence that the confession was absent from every Greek witness. The Greek tradition also represents the Hebrew acrostic with letter names as labels. Their placement in Brenton does not consistently mark the Hebrew three-verse groups; “Teth,” for example, appears at both 25 and 27. These inherited labels remain in the reading, but they should not be taken as a precise outline of the Hebrew poem.1

22 Heth. It is the mercies of the Lord, that he has not failed me, because his compassions are not exhausted. Pity us, O Lord, early every month: for we are not brought to an end, because his compassions are not exhausted. 23 They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness. 24 The Lord is my portion, says my soul; therefore will I wait for him.

25 Teth. The Lord is good to them that wait for him: the soul which shall seek him 26 is good, and shall wait for, and quietly expect salvation of the Lord.

Hope here is not optimism. Nothing in the visible situation has changed. The city is still ruined. The speaker remembers what suffering cannot cancel: the Lord’s compassions are not exhausted. Mercy is not a mood in God that runs out when human ruin becomes deep. His faithfulness gives the afflicted person something firmer than the changing temperature of his own heart.

The movement from “his compassions” to “thy faithfulness” is especially tender. The speaker begins by saying something true about God and then speaks to Him. Confession becomes prayer. The mercy of which he has heard is the mercy on which he now depends.

“The Lord is my portion” is a radical confession after the loss of land, temple, wealth, and status. A portion is the share one receives as one’s own. The soul that says this has learned that God Himself is its inheritance. We often discover how much we have asked possessions, usefulness, or another person’s approval to secure us only when one of them is taken away. Here the afflicted man reaches for the Giver amid the loss of His gifts.

The Lord is good “to them that wait for him,” and waiting is joined to seeking. This is a patient attention to God: keeping the appointed prayer, doing the duty that remains, and resisting the temptation to pronounce a final judgment on our life in its darkest hour. “New every morning” offers no timetable for the city’s restoration. It gives the soul a reason to receive another day from the Lord.

The yoke, silence, and the offered cheek (Lamentations 3:27-33)

Before the reading. Brenton has no verse 29, so the numbering passes from 28 to 30. The NKJV’s line about putting one’s mouth in the dust has less widespread Greek support than verses 22-24. NETS includes it in brackets, explaining that its history is uncertain: it may have been lost through copying, while Rahlfs and Ziegler treated it as secondary. Its absence here follows Brenton; no replacement line has been supplied.1

27 Teth. It is good for a man when he bears a yoke in his youth. 28 He will sit alone, and be silent, because he has borne it upon him.

30 Jod. He will give his cheek to him that smites him: he will be filled full with reproaches. 31 For the Lord will not reject for ever.

32 Chaph. For he that has brought down will pity, and that according to the abundance of his mercy. 33 He has not answered in anger from his heart, though he has brought low the children of a man.

The yoke gives endurance a shape. Bearing it in youth suggests learning patience before the heart has become accustomed to having its own way. Daily obedience, faithful prayer, accepting a truthful correction, and restraining the tongue can school us in this patience. Silence is sometimes the refusal to feed an angry answer; it can also be the stillness in which grief is borne before God when explanations have failed.

The offered cheek must never be used to keep someone in abuse, conceal violence, or silence a plea for protection. Seeking safety and holding an offender accountable are compatible with refusing vengeance. The chapter itself immediately excludes crushing prisoners and condemning people unjustly. The freedom Christ gives is the freedom to resist evil without letting hatred govern the heart.

Verses 31-33 supply the reason endurance remains possible: “the Lord will not reject for ever.” The one who has brought low will pity according to the abundance of His mercy. His dealings with humanity cannot be read as pleasure in our misery. The yoke is held inside the promise of compassion; suffering is never made into an end worth seeking for itself.

💎 Gems from the Fathers

Origen, in Against Celsus VII.25, cites the yoke, the silence, and the offered cheek to show that Christ’s teaching in Matthew 5:39 is already witnessed in the older Scriptures. Against the idea of two opposed gods, one belonging to the Law and another to the Gospel, he writes: “There is no discrepancy, then, between the God of the Gospel and the God of the law, even when we take literally the precept regarding the blow on the face.”2 The meekness revealed in Christ belongs to the same divine goodness that sustained Israel.

St. John Chrysostom, commenting on Matthew 5:39 in Homily 18 on Matthew, explains how retaliation strengthens the very evil it opposes. His image is plain: “For one fire is not quenched by another, but fire by water.”3 The offered cheek breaks the attempt to make another person’s violence dictate our own conduct. In Christ this becomes visible without surrender to falsehood: when struck, He questions the injustice of the blow (John 18:23). His patience has the strength to tell the truth without becoming vengeful.

On the related theme of chastening, Chrysostom’s Homily 29 on Hebrews describes God’s purpose as making His children capable of receiving His gifts: “He chastens, He does everything, He uses all diligence, that we may become capable of receiving His benefits.”4 This is a thematic witness, not a commentary on Lamentations. It illuminates the passage’s joining of the yoke to compassion: God’s fatherly care seeks our healing and holiness, rather than His own advantage. The Christian meaning of endurance is communion with Him, not a love of pain.

God has not commanded injustice (Lamentations 3:34-42)

Before the reading. After the opening question in verse 37, Brenton prints the denial “the Lord has not commanded it,” followed in verse 38 by the statement “Out of the mouth of the Most High there shall not come forth evil and good.” NETS reads these clauses as questions, including, “Will bad and good not come from the mouth of the Most High?” The NKJV likewise asks whether woe and well-being proceed from Him. The Greek wording can be construed as statement or question; the English punctuation expresses that interpretive choice. The distinction between God’s righteous providence and human wrongdoing rests on the passage as a whole, especially verses 34-36, rather than on a punctuation mark alone.1

34 Lamed. To bring down under his feet all the prisoners of the earth, 35 to turn aside the judgment of a man before the face of the Most High, 36 to condemn a man unjustly in his judgment, the Lord has not given commandment. 37 Who has thus spoken, and it has come to pass? the Lord has not commanded it. 38 Out of the mouth of the Most High there shall not come forth evil and good.

39 Mem. Why should a living man complain, a man concerning his sin?

40 Nun. Our way has been searched out and examined, and we will turn to the Lord. 41 Let us lift up our hearts with our hands to the lofty One in heaven. 42 We have sinned, we have transgressed; and thou hast not pardoned.

This section guards the whole chapter. To crush prisoners, turn aside judgment, or condemn a man unjustly, “the Lord has not given commandment.” These are moral evils, and God’s providence gives their perpetrators no permission to commit them. The suffering of the city cannot make an unjust sentence righteous.

With Brenton’s statement, the reader hears a denial that evil and good proceed indiscriminately from God. With the questions in NETS and the NKJV, the reader hears that calamity and well-being remain under the Most High’s sovereignty. The Orthodox confession holds both truths together: God is never the author of moral evil, and the world’s disasters have not escaped His providence. He can permit what He forbids and bring healing even from what human beings have done wickedly. His permission does not make their cruelty good or disclose to us the hidden reason for each person’s suffering.

The Cross makes this distinction visible. The condemnation of the innocent Lord remains an injustice, even as He freely gives Himself for the salvation of the world. Divine love overcomes sin without renaming it righteousness. We can therefore confess that God has not abandoned us without excusing those who have injured us.

The speaker then turns from the governance of the world to the examination of the heart. “Our way has been searched out and examined, and we will turn to the Lord.” Repentance begins where self-defense loosens its grip. “Let us lift up our hearts with our hands” calls the inner person to accompany the outward act of prayer. It is possible to raise the hands while continuing to shelter resentment, dishonesty, or pride. The verse asks for the whole person to return.

“Thou hast not pardoned” is spoken while judgment is still being felt. It stands in the same chapter as the confession that His compassions are not exhausted. The people confess their transgression without pretending that its consequences have vanished. Their return is an appeal to mercy from within the wreckage, not a demand that God immediately make everything painless.

Prayer from the pit (Lamentations 3:43-66)

Before the reading. Verse divisions sometimes fall at different points within a sentence. Brenton’s verse 45 begins by completing the preceding plea, “and be cast off.” His verse 52 includes the pit, and verse 53 the stone; the NKJV places both images in verse 53. The printed words and their order are preserved here, so the familiar numbers need not imply identical clause boundaries.

43 Samech. Thou hast visited us in wrath, and driven us away: thou hast slain, thou hast not pitied. 44 Thou hast veiled thyself with a cloud because of prayer, that I might be blind, 45 and be cast off. Ain. Thou hast set us alone in the midst of the nations. 46 All our enemies have opened their mouth against us. 47 Fear and wrath are come upon us, suspense and destruction. 48 Mine eye shall pour down torrents of water, for the destruction of the daughter of my people.

49 Phe. Mine eye is drowned with tears, and I will not be silent, so that there shall be no rest, 50 until the Lord look down, and behold from heaven. 51 Mine eye shall prey upon my soul, because of all the daughters of the city.

52 Tsade. The fowlers chased me as a sparrow, all mine enemies destroyed my life in a pit without cause, 53 and laid a stone upon me. 54 Water flowed over my head: I said, I am cut off.

55 Koph. I called upon thy name, O Lord, out of the lowest dungeon. 56 Thou heardest my voice: close not thine ears to my supplication. 57 Thou drewest nigh to my help: in the day wherein I called upon thee thou saidst to me, Fear not.

58 Rechs. O Lord, thou hast pleaded the causes of my soul; thou hast redeemed my life. 59 Thou hast seen, O Lord, my troubles: thou hast judged my cause. 60 Thou hast seen all their vengeance, thou hast looked on all their devices against me.

61 Chsen. Thou hast heard their reproach and all their devices against me; 62 the lips of them that rose up against me, and their plots against me all the day; 63 their sitting down and their rising up: look thou upon their eyes. 64 Thou wilt render them a recompence, O Lord, according to the works of their hands.

65 Thau. Thou wilt give them as a covering, the grief of my heart. 66 Thou wilt persecute them in anger, and wilt consume them from under the heaven, O Lord.

The last part of the poem returns to tears and danger. The speaker is hunted like a sparrow, destroyed in a pit without cause, covered by a stone, and overwhelmed by waters. The person who has confessed God’s mercy can still say, “I am cut off.” Hope does not make him invulnerable. It gives him Someone to call upon when he has no foothold left.

A change has also occurred in the direction of his speech. At the beginning, the speaker described what “he” had done to him; here he addresses the Lord as “thou.” Complaint becomes an encounter. “Thou drewest nigh to my help” answers the earlier cry that prayer had been shut out. The Lord who seemed hidden is remembered as the Lord who has heard, drawn near, and redeemed his life.

The Church’s Voice in Worship ⛪

Coptic Reader appoints Lamentations 3:1-66 for “Great Friday (The Twelfth Hour).” The lament is followed by the psalmody of the lowest pit and the Gospel accounts of Christ’s burial.5 The Church hears the cry from below while contemplating the One who freely entered death to rescue those held there. Coptic Heritage describes the sanctuary veil being opened, the black coverings lifted, and the candles lit again as this hour begins.6 The sorrow of burial is already held within the hope of salvation.

The St. Mary Ottawa Holy Pascha service book also places Jonah’s prayer from the deep in this hour, under the printed reference Jonah 1:10-2:7. This additional reading belongs to that service edition; it is not included in Coptic Reader’s Twelfth Hour. Heard in the Ottawa sequence, the waters over the lamenter’s head stand beside Jonah’s cry from the deep, while the stone over the pit is heard near the burial Gospels. These distinct images gather around the depths into which Christ’s saving love reaches.7

This liturgical setting opens the passage toward Christ without erasing the difference between the repentant people and their sinless Savior. He shares the affliction of His people; He does not share their confession of having sinned. His burial and descent to the dead are the saving act to which the Church brings these ancient cries. The lowest place can become a place of meeting with Him.

In verse 57 the afflicted speaker recalls the Lord’s answer, “Fear not.” These are the words of the lament itself, received with new hope beside Christ’s tomb. The Lord does not only send an idea. He draws near. A soul need not climb out of the pit before it calls upon Him.

The closing appeal for recompense keeps the enemies’ deeds before the righteous Judge. Their violence matters, and the cry for justice must be heard. Prayed in Christ, this appeal also places judgment in God’s hands rather than ours. We ask Him to bring evil to an end, vindicate the afflicted, and lead sinners to repentance, while cleansing our own hearts of the desire to become cruel in return.

Spiritual Fruit 🍇

Begin the morning with remembrance. Before opening messages or rehearsing yesterday’s injuries, pray the confession of verses 22-24. Name one mercy already received, however small, and place the coming day in the Lord’s hands. When gratitude feels remote, remain with the words themselves: His faithfulness is greater than our ability to feel it. This is the work of laying something true in the heart before anxiety fills it.

Let the heart accompany the hands. At evening prayer, bring one specific action before God: an unkind reply, an avoided duty, a dishonest excuse, or resentment carefully protected. Confess it plainly and choose the next act of return. Where another person has been hurt, repentance may require an apology or restitution; bring what needs healing to sacramental confession. The lifted heart becomes truthful as the life begins to turn.

Practice the patience that refuses to spread the fire. When wounded pride demands the last word, pause before replying. Ask Christ to free the answer from the wish to humiliate. Speak truth where it is needed, fulfill the duty that is yours, and pray for the person you would rather punish. The yoke is often borne first in an ordinary conversation, long before any dramatic trial.

Pray from where you actually are. When grief has reduced prayer to a sentence, use the sentence the chapter gives: “I called upon thy name, O Lord, out of the lowest dungeon.” Ask a trusted person in the Church to pray with you rather than disappearing into isolation. The chapter’s tears after its confession of mercy allow you to keep praying without pretending that you are already healed.

The stone lies over the pit, and the water has risen above the head. Even there the afflicted man calls on the Lord. At the burial of Christ, the Church stands before a tomb into which the Lord of life has freely entered. We can entrust Him with the place in us that seems most closed, and receive the next morning as another occasion to seek His face.

Footnotes

  1. Peter J. Gentry, “Lamentations,” A New English Translation of the Septuagint, “To the Reader,” pp. 932-933, and Lamentations 3, https://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/nets/edition/36-lam-nets.pdf. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  2. Origen, Against Celsus, Book VII, chapter 25, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/04167.htm. ↩

  3. St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on Matthew, Homily 18, §1, on Matthew 5:38-39, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/200118.htm. ↩

  4. St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on Hebrews, Homily 29, §3, on Hebrews 12:9, https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/240229.htm. ↩

  5. Coptic Reader, Special > Pascha > Friday > 12th Hour, “Great Friday (The Twelfth Hour),” Lamentations 3:1-66, the composite psalmody, and four burial Gospels, https://copticreader.org/app/. ↩

  6. Coptic Heritage, “16 - Good Friday,” Rite, paragraph beginning “In commencing the prayer of the Twelfth Hour,” https://copticheritage.org/16-good-friday/. ↩

  7. St. Mary Coptic Orthodox Church, Ottawa, The Katameros of the Holy Pascha, Lent 1734 A.M./2018 A.D., eBook edition, “The Twelfth Hour of Good Friday,” pp. 638-644; Jonah is printed on pp. 642-643 as Jonah 1:10-2:7. This is an additional reading in that edition, not in Coptic Reader’s Twelfth Hour. ↩

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