Lamentations 3:1-66
I am [this strong] man who has seen affliction
under the rod of his wrath;
2 he has driven and brought me
into darkness without any light;
3 surely against me he turns his hand
again and again the whole day long.
Lamentations 3 is longer than Jeremiah’s other laments. Like the others, it is an alphabetic acrostic with twenty-two sections, one for each of the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Unlike the others, however, it is a triple acrostic, with three verses for every letter. In the Hebrew Bible, the first three verses all start with aleph, the second three verses with beth, and so forth. Thus the third lament contains sixty-six verses rather than the twenty-two we have come to expect.
This difference in form is matched by a difference in content, a difference that is apparent from the outset as an individual: I am [this strong] man who has seen affliction…. The third lament begins with the pronoun “I.” It is personal rather than communal. While some think it is intended to come from the mouth of Jerusalem, it is better understood as coming from the mouth of Jeremiah. Lamentations 3 is the prophet’s personal response to the sufferings of his people.
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.
Your Bible translation might not include the word “strong.” But the Hebrew word (geber) used here for “man” is most often translated “strong man.” I think that’s important because when you read this text Jeremiah sounds like anything but a strong man. In fact, I would not be at all surprised to find out that the apostle Paul had Lamentations chapter 3 in mind when he wrote to the church at Corinth:
8 Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this [thorn in my flesh], that it should leave me. 9 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. 10 For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
The idea of a wounded healer first appears in Genesis 3:15, where the Promised Seed of Eve will crush the head of the serpent who deceived her and her husband into sin, bringing the curse of death, but humanity’s salvation from the serpent, sin, and death will come only through the wounding of the Seed. The Suffering Savior is further defined in Isaiah’s 4th Servant Song — especially Isaiah 53:5, quoted by the apostle Peter: “he himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we, being dead to sin, might live to righteousness; By his wounds you were healed” (1 Peter 2:24). It is one’s own hurt that is the major of one’s power to heal. Our trauma and torment can be a bridge into the hearts and lives of others who have experienced deep loss. This is Jeremiah, the wounded healer, forced to march into utter “darkness and not light” (3:2).
Lamentations chapter 3 describes the pain of both Jeremiah and Zion. The chapter is both personal and corporate. The one and the many share the same traumatic experiences. The prophet’s acute suffering enables him to become a wounded healer. Without coming to grips with our own despair, losses, and anger, we cannot gain our full humanity, unleash our blocked passions, or live in genuine community with others.
Many details in the third lament match the circumstances of Jeremiah’s life, providing further evidence that Lamentations was written by the prophet himself. By this moment, late in his career, Jeremiah could rightly say, “He has made my flesh and my skin waste away” (v. 4a). Since he was imprisoned in the king’s cistern during part of the siege (see Jeremiah 37:16; 38:1– 6), it would also be appropriate for him to say:
He has besieged and enveloped me with bitterness and tribulation; he has made me dwell in darkness like the dead of long ago. He has walled me about so that I cannot escape; he has made my chains heavy … he has blocked my ways with blocks of stones; he has made my paths crooked. (Lamentations 3: 5– 7, 9)
Further reminders of Jeremiah’s imprisonment come much later in the lament:
I have been hunted like a bird by those who were my enemies without cause; they flung me alive into the pit and cast stones on me; water closed over my head; I said, “I am lost.” (vv. 52– 54)
These verses, especially, sound more like the trials of Jeremiah than the tribulations of Jerusalem. There are many other points of comparison as well. There were times when Jeremiah was forbidden to intercede for his people (Jer 7:16; 11:14; 14:11). So who better to say, “Though I call and cry for help, he shuts out my prayer” (Lamentations 3:8)? And who better than Jeremiah, the pariah, to utter these words: “I have become the laughingstock of all peoples, the object of their taunts all day long” (v. 14; cf. Jeremiah 16:1– 9)? Or who better to write, “My soul is bereft of peace; I have forgotten what happiness is” (v. 17) than the man who so often warned against the dangers of prophesying peace when there is no peace (Jeremiah 6:14; 8:11)?
God practically turned into the prophet’s personal enemy. God was the predator; Jeremiah was the prey.
He is a bear lying in wait for me, a lion in hiding; he turned aside my steps and tore me to pieces; he has made me desolate. (Lamentations 3:10, 11)
To change the image, God was the archer, and Jeremiah was the target. “He bent his bow and set me as a target for his arrow. He drove into my kidneys the arrows of his quiver.” (vv. 12, 13)
God was the hunter who pursued his prophet with deadly skill. There were times when all these sufferings tempted Jeremiah to become bitter. He had tasted the wormwood and the gall. “He has filled me with bitterness; he has sated me with wormwood. He has made my teeth grind on gravel and made me cower in ashes.” (vv. 15, 16)
Physical brutality permeates this chapter. Jeremiah is struck, captured, chained, shot with arrows, forced to drink poison, and forced to eat gravel and dirt. He is hunted like a bird and thrown into a pit. As God’s treasured pieces of art, we are not in need of only a few minor tweaks here and there. No. We must die to live again. That death, accomplished in baptism by the Holy Spirit continues daily as God commands us to put to death what is earthly in us and makes us live anew in Christ.
God’s purposes for us do not include maximum pleasure in this life. Rather, his goal is to maximize our character by conforming us to the image of Christ (Romans 8: 29), even as he promises us a day and place of eternal blessedness in the renewed creation. Jesus was made perfect through suffering (Hebrews 2: 10). We are on the same journey (Philippians 1: 6).
Everything Jeremiah had ever dreamed for had vanished, and he could only lament his loss. “So I say, ‘My endurance has perished; so has my hope from the LORD’” (v. 18). This last exclamation seems to have brought a change to Jeremiah’s melancholy mood, which shows the importance of holding on to God in the midst of suffering. For the mere mention of the divine name (“LORD”) had a dramatic effect on the prophet’s outlook. He could never forget the bitter trials he had faced. Yet before the Weeping Prophet fell into utter despair, he remembered God and his perfections.
Remember my affliction and my wanderings, the wormwood and the gall! My soul continually remembers it and is bowed down within me. But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. “The LORD is my portion,” says my soul, “Therefore I will hope in him.” (vv. 19– 24)
These verses are reminiscent of the “Confessions” in the book of Jeremiah (e.g., 20:7– 18). They are familiar to many Christians because they form the basis for the well-known hymn by Thomas O. Chisholm (1866– 1960):
Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father! There is no shadow of turning with Thee; Thou changest not; Thy compassions, they fail not: As Thou hast been Thou forever wilt be.
Great is Thy faithfulness! Great is Thy faithfulness! Morning by morning new mercies I see; All I have needed Thy hand hath provided— Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me.
The story of how Chisholm came to write his great hymn reveals a profound truth about God’s faithfulness. Some great hymns are written in response to a dramatic spiritual experience. That is not the case with “Great Is Thy Faithfulness,” however. It was not the product of a single experience but of a lifetime of God’s faithful care. Not long before his death, Chisholm wrote:
My income has never been large at any time due to impaired health in the earlier years which has followed me on until now. But I must not fail to record here the unfailing faithfulness of a covenant keeping God and that He has given me many wonderful displays of His providing care which have filled me with astonishing gratefulness.
When the text for Chisholm’s hymn is placed in its proper Biblical context, the wonder of God’s providing care becomes all the more apparent. What Jeremiah wrote were the words of a survivor, of a man who had suffered great evil without abandoning his confidence in God’s faithfulness. Indeed, it was because Jeremiah suffered so greatly that he was able to appreciate the little mercies of daily life. His experience reveals the truth in these stanzas from Robert Browning Hamilton:
I walked a mile with Pleasure; She chattered all the way, But left me none the wiser For all she had to say. I walked a mile with Sorrow; And ne’er a word said she; But, oh, the things I learned from her When sorrow walked with me.
Jeremiah’s sorrows had produced character. Among the many things he learned from his sufferings were important truths about the nature of God. He had learned to praise God for his love, his compassion, and his covenant faithfulness. It is perhaps significant that the word “mercies” (v. 22) is plural. With each new day, the Weeping Prophet had fresh experiences of divine compassion. Even to wake up in the morning was to be reminded of God’s constant care.
The God who had covenanted to care for Jeremiah was not a distant deity, a mere abstraction of the human mind. The prophet addressed him personally and directly: “Great is your faithfulness” (v. 23). In the process of remembering God’s attributes, Jeremiah was drawn back into living fellowship and intimate communion with his faithful God. He did not merely list God’s attributes— he praised God for them, so that his theology became his doxology.
Jeremiah was able to learn from his sufferings because he endured them patiently. His testimony is a reminder of the blessings that come through waiting on God:
The LORD is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD. (vv. 25, 26)
Christians who suffer do more than suffer. They also wait. This is not the passive waiting of stoic endurance. It is rather an active resting in the goodness of God, with the hopeful expectation that someday one’s trials will come to an end. There are times when the only thing a sufferer can do is wait for God. But waiting is good because God is worth waiting for. His salvation will come in due course, provided one surrenders to his will and to his timing.
These verses, in which Jeremiah praises God for his faithful mercies and surrenders to his timetable for salvation, form the climax of the book of Lamentations. According to the canons of Hebrew poetry, the most important truths are contained in a work’s center. In these verses, which form the heart of Jeremiah’s third lament, the prophet reaches a place of comfort and hope that marks a turning point in his spiritual experience.
In the verses that follow, Jeremiah offers his brief theodicy, a vindication of divine righteousness in the light of the covenant relationship. His time of waiting brought new insight into the causes and meaning of suffering:
It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth. Let him sit alone in silence when it is laid on him; let him put his mouth in the dust— there may yet be hope; let him give his cheek to the one who strikes, and let him be filled with insults. For the LORD will not cast off forever, but, though he cause grief, he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love; for he does not afflict from his heart or grieve the children of men. (vv. 27– 33)
Here Jeremiah speaks of God’s unfailing love, a love that makes him reluctant to see his people suffer and that guarantees they will not suffer forever. Yet suffer they must, for God is just:
To crush underfoot all the prisoners of the earth, to deny a man justice in the presence of the Most High, to subvert a man in his lawsuit, the LORD does not approve. (vv. 34– 36)
Whatever Jerusalem has suffered is not unfair, for God is a God of justice. There is no use, therefore, in complaining to God. Nor is there any use arguing with him about the judgments he, in his providence, has ordained.
Who has spoken and it came to pass, unless the LORD has commanded it? Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that good and bad come? Why should a living man complain, a man, about the punishment of his sins? (vv. 37– 39)
When suffering is deserved, it ought to produce confession rather than complaint. The sin that caused the suffering in the first place must be repented of and renounced. Thus Jeremiah calls God’s people to careful self-examination, followed by heartfelt corporate confession of national sin:
Let us test and examine our ways and return to the LORD! Let us lift up our hearts and hands to God in heaven: “We have transgressed and rebelled, and you have not forgiven. You have wrapped yourself with anger and pursued us, killing without pity; you have wrapped yourself with a cloud so that no prayer can pass through. You have made us scum and garbage among the peoples. All our enemies open their mouths against us; panic and pitfall have come upon us, devastation and destruction.” (vv. 40– 47)
The tone of these verses is not accusatory. Rather, these verses acknowledge that everything Judah has suffered is a direct result of her rebellion. Jeremiah knew, of course, that mere words were not enough. One of the surest signs of genuine repentance is sorrow for sin. He himself was a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief by the sins of his people:
My eyes flow with rivers of tears because of the destruction of the daughter of my people. My eyes will flow without ceasing, without respite, until the LORD from heaven looks down and sees; my eyes cause me grief at the fate of all the daughters of my city. (vv. 48– 51)
Jeremiah’s weeping over sin was to serve as a model for Judah’s penitence. Despite his many sorrows, there was an element of joy in Jeremiah’s confession. The prophet was confident that his prayers would be answered, and that Judah’s sins would be forgiven:
I called on your name, O LORD, from the depths of the pit; you heard my plea, “Do not close your ear to my cry for help!” You came near when I called on you; you said, “Do not fear!” (vv. 55– 57)
After this reassurance of God’s presence, the third lament ends with a cry for vengeance. Perhaps it is Jerusalem’s cry for justice against her enemies. Or perhaps it is Jeremiah’s cry to be defended from those who plotted against him (see Jeremiah 26:1– 15; 38:1– 6). The fact that the prayer is offered “from the depths of the pit” (Lamentations 3:55) makes the latter suggestion especially plausible. Either way the plea is the same— that the God who grants mercy to the one who suffers would also carry out his curse against the one who oppresses.
You have taken up my cause, O LORD; you have redeemed my life. You have seen the wrong done to me, O LORD; judge my cause. You have seen all their vengeance, all their plots against me. You have heard their taunts, O LORD, all their plots against me. The lips and thoughts of my assailants are against me all the day long. Behold their sitting and their rising; I am the object of their taunts. You will repay them, O LORD, according to the work of their hands. You will give them dullness of heart; your curse will be on them. You will pursue them in anger and destroy them from under your heavens, O LORD. (vv. 58– 66)
This cry for vengeance is another echo from the book of Jeremiah, where the prophet frequently asked God to destroy his enemies (see Jeremiah 11:20; 12:3; 15:15; 17:18; 18: 21– 23). Having received God’s mercy, he committed his cause to God’s infinite justice.
All the suffering of Jerusalem could not pay for their sins committed against an infinitely holy and all-powerful God. No amount of mere human suffering can pay any human being’s debt for sin. Only God’s infinite justice and infinite chessed Could pay the price for human sin. Only the blood-shedding death of the perfect son of God Can atone for human sin:
…we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.
