Lamentations 3:21-23 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

This I recall to my mind, &c. Here the prophet begins to suggest motives of patience and consolation: as if he had said, I call to mind the following considerations, and thereupon I conceive hope and comfort. And surely they are such as afford a sufficient ground for trusting in God under the severest trials. It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed It is not clear that this is the exact sense of the Hebrew, in which there is nothing for it is of. The LXX. translate the verse, τα ελεη κυριου, οτι ουκ εξελιπε με. The mercies of the Lord, because they have not left, or do not leave, me: that is, I rely on, and derive hope and consolation from, the mercies of the Lord, which still continue to prevent and follow me. Because his compassions fail not Ου συντελεσθησαν, are not finished, exhausted, or brought to an end. They are new every morning: great, &c. Thy mercies are renewed to us every day, one following another; and thy faithfulness in performing them is as great as thy goodness in promising them. God's mercy and truth, or fidelity, are usually joined together. Blaney connects these three verses thus: “This I revolve in my heart, therefore will I have hope; the mercies of Jehovah, that they are not exhausted, that they fail not; new are his compassions every morning; great is thy faithfulness.” According to our translation the prophet represents himself as calling to mind that, as a sinner, he deserved to be cut off, and delivered up to future punishment, and should certainly have been thus destroyed but for the mercies of God; while his people, for their sins, would have been so totally consumed that no remnant of them would have been left. “As, however, the Lord had mercifully spared him, and had not utterly destroyed them; as his compassions were plenteous and unfailing, and every morning renewed to him, in the continuance of his life, and many unmerited benefits; and as God had given many precious promises to Israel, and to every believer, and, in his great faithfulness, had always performed them to those who trusted in them; so he found there was yet encouragement to hope, and to exercise patience and repentance in expectation of returning comfort.” Scott.