Lamentations 3:55 - Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Bible Comments

A prayer for deliverance and for vengeance upon his enemies.

Lamentations 3:55

Out of the low dungeon - “The lowest pit” of Psalms 88:6. Some consider that Psalms 69 was composed by Jeremiah, and is the prayer referred to here (Jeremiah 38:6 note).

Lamentations 3:56

Thou hast heard - In sending Ebedmelech to deliver me. The next clause signifies “Hide not thine ear to my relief to my cry,” i. e. to my cry for relief.

Lamentations 3:58

God now appears as the prophet’s next of kin, pleading the lawsuits of his soul, i. e. the controversies which concern his salvation. and rescuing his life, in jeopardy through the malice of his enemies.

Lamentations 3:59

Wrong - Done to him by the perversion of justice.

Lamentations 3:60, Lamentations 3:61

Imaginations - Or, devices.

Lamentations 3:63

Their sitting down, and their rising up - i. e. all the ordinary actions of their life.

Musick - Or, song, “the subject of it.”

Lamentations 3:64-66

The versions render the verbs in these verses as futures, “Thou shalt render unto them a recompence,” etc.

Lamentations 3:65

Give them sorrow of heart - Or, “Thou wilt give them” blindness “of heart.”

Lamentations 3:66

Persecute ... - Or, pursue them in anger and destroy them, etc.

Lamentations 3:55-66

55 I called upon thy name, O LORD, out of the low dungeon.

56 Thou hast heard my voice: hide not thine ear at my breathing, at my cry.

57 Thou drewest near in the day that I called upon thee: thou saidst, Fear not.

58 O Lord, thou hast pleaded the causes of my soul; thou hast redeemed my life.

59 O LORD, thou hast seen my wrong: judge thou my cause.

60 Thou hast seen all their vengeance and all their imaginations against me.

61 Thou hast heard their reproach, O LORD, and all their imaginations against me;

62 The lips of those that rose up against me, and their device against me all the day.

63 Behold their sitting down, and their rising up; I am their musick.

64 Render unto them a recompence, O LORD, according to the work of their hands.

65 Give them sorrowm of heart, thy curse unto them.

66 Persecute and destroy them in anger from under the heavens of the LORD.