Lamentations 3:1 - Meaning and Application

The title of Psalm 102 would fit this chapter very well: “The prayer of the afflicted, when he is overwhelmed, and pours out his complaint before the Lord.” That is exactly how this complaint sounds, full of feeling and flowing freely. Let us notice the main parts of it.

The prophet first complains that God is angry. This is the source of both the pain and the bitterness of the suffering. He says, “I am the man” who has seen affliction and felt it by the rod of his wrath (Lamentations 3:1). God is sometimes angry with his own people, but this is not the anger of a judge who means to destroy. It is the anger of a father who uses a rod to correct his child. His correction is painful for the moment, but it is meant to do good in the end.

By this rod we should expect affliction. If we suffer more than usual under that rod, we should not argue with God. We know his anger is just, and even his affliction is mild and mixed with mercy.

The prophet also says he is lost and completely in the dark. In Scripture, darkness often means great trouble and confusion, with no comfort and no direction. This was his condition. God had led him, through providence and a chain of events he could not explain, into darkness and not into light (Lamentations 3:2). He had been set in dark places, as dark as the grave, like those who have been long dead and forgotten (Lamentations 3:6).

Even God’s people, though they are children of light, sometimes walk in darkness. That is a hard season, but it is not strange.

He also says God seems to stand against him like an enemy, even a public enemy. God had once been for him, but now it seemed, “Surely he has turned against me” (Lamentations 3:3). His hand was against him all day long, like the man in Psalm 73:14 who says, “I am chastened every morning.” When God’s hand seems to stay against us, we are tempted to think his heart has turned too.

God had said, “I will be like a lion to the house of Judah” (Hosea 5:14), and now he had carried out that word. “He was like a bear lying in wait,” the prophet says, and like a lion in secret places (Lamentations 3:10). He could not feel safe anywhere. God’s judgments seemed to come from every side.

The Lord also set him up as a target. “He has bent his bow” (Lamentations 3:12), like a warrior ready to strike. He made him into a mark for his arrow (Lamentations 3:13), and the arrows pierced deeply, even into his inward parts. God has many arrows in his quiver, and they fly quickly and strike hard.

He was also sorely afflicted in both body and mind. The whole nation may be compared to an old man bent with age and beyond repair. “My flesh and my skin has he made old,” he says, and “he has broken my bones” (Lamentations 3:4, 15). He was worn out, weak, and unable to help himself. He says God had filled him with bitterness, because a bitter sense of trouble can spoil every comfort.

God can reach the spirit and make it bitter. When the stomach is sick, even good food turns sour. In the same way, when the soul is burdened, every enjoyment is spoiled. “He has made me drunk with wormwood,” he says, meaning that the force of his affliction made him confused and unable to think clearly. “He has mixed gravel with my bread” (Lamentations 3:16), so even his food was painful and useless. “He has covered me with ashes,” as mourners often did, or, as some read it, “He has fed me with ashes.” Psalm 102:9 says, “I have eaten ashes like bread.”

He also says he could see no way out or any path to deliverance. God had built against him like a city under siege. “He has fenced me in,” he says, “so I cannot get out” (Lamentations 3:5, 7). When Jerusalem was besieged, it was said to be surrounded on every side (Luke 19:43). He felt chained, as if heavily bound in irons. “He has enclosed my ways with hewn stone” (Lamentations 3:9), not just blocking his path with thorns, but sealing it with a stone wall. His paths were made crooked, so every attempt to move forward only turned him back.

It is just with God to make those who walk in crooked paths, crossing his laws, travel crooked paths of affliction. Their plans are crossed, and their measures are broken. “He has turned aside my ways,” the prophet says (Lamentations 3:11). God had ruined all his plans and left him to face his own ruin. He had been torn apart and left desolate, without comfort from others and without comfort in his own soul.

He also says God had turned a deaf ear to his prayers. “When I cry and shout,” he says, “he shuts out my prayer” (Lamentations 3:8). God’s ear is usually open to his people, and his door of mercy is open to those who knock. But now it seemed closed, even to one who cried out earnestly. Sometimes God seems angry even with the prayers of his people (Psalm 80:4). That is a very sad state, when a person is denied not only an answer, but even the comfort of being heard.

His neighbors also made sport of his troubles. “I was a laughingstock to all my people,” he says (Lamentations 3:14), especially to the wicked among them. They mocked the public judgments and Jeremiah’s griefs in particular. “I am their song,” he says, like an instrument they play for amusement. They made his misery their entertainment.

At last he was almost ready to give up hope of relief. “You have not only taken peace from me,” he says, “but removed my soul far from peace” (Lamentations 3:17). Peace was not only out of reach, it was out of sight. He had forgotten prosperity, because it seemed so long gone and so unlikely to return. He had lived so long with sorrow and hardship that he no longer knew what joy and freedom felt like. He concluded, “My strength and my hope have perished from the Lord” (Lamentations 3:18).

That was his weakness, as Psalm 77:10 says of another troubled believer. For God still has endless strength, and he is still the unshakable hope of his people, whatever they may feel in the dark.

His grief returned every time he remembered his troubles, and his thoughts were as sad as his future seemed, as in (Lamentations 3:19, Lamentations 3:20). If he tried, like Job, to forget his complaint (Job 9:27), it did no good. He kept bringing to mind, again and again, the suffering and misery, the wormwood and the gall, that is, the bitterest pain.

He speaks so strongly because that is how deeply he felt it. To him, this affliction was misery itself. Some read the words as, “my affliction and my sin,” meaning the trouble and the sin that caused it. That was the wormwood and gall in the suffering, because sin makes the cup of affliction bitter.

“My soul still remembers them.” The captives in Babylon kept the misery of the siege in mind, along with the flames and ruins of Jerusalem. They wept when they remembered Zion, and they could never forget Jerusalem (Psalm 137:1, Psalm 137:5). In the same way, his soul, remembering these things, is humbled within him.

He is not only weighed down by the trouble, but also made sorrowful because of sin. We should have humble hearts under humbling providence, that is, under God’s painful discipline. Each time we remember our afflictions and miseries, we should also renew our repentance for sin. In this way, we may gain good from earlier correction and be kept from more.