Lamentations 3:1,2 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

I am the man that hath seen affliction I myself have suffered affliction in this time of public calamity. He speaks, probably, with a particular regard to the ill treatment he had met with in the discharge of his prophetical office. Some indeed suppose that he speaks in this and the subsequent verses, to Lamentations 3:21, in the character of the people, but so many passages manifestly refer to his own personal troubles, that such an interpretation seems very improbable. He hath brought me into darkness, but not into light Light is often used in Scripture for happiness or comfort, and darkness for affliction and misery. The prophet's meaning is, that God had been pleased to exercise him with calamity. Perhaps he refers especially to his being put into the dungeon and the stocks, and to the state of darkness and distress which his mind was in during these trials.