Lamentations 3:1-33

The Voice

3 Afflicted, I have seen and know what it’s like
    to feel the rod of God’s anger:
² An absence of light and only darkness.
    Darkness—that’s where God has driven me.
³ Against me and me alone, over and over,
    God raises His hand incessantly.

⁴ Bones are broken, skin rubbed off, and my flesh wasted;
    this is God’s doing:
⁵ Besieged in hardship,
    wrapped in a husk of bitter poison and trouble;
⁶ Brought to darkness like those dead and decaying,
    and left there alone to live.

⁷ Cut off from every avenue of escape, God has fenced me in
    and tied me up with heavy chains.
⁸ Crying and carrying on do me no good;
    God shuts out my prayer.
⁹ Closed in and blocked by walls of cut stone,
    what paths I have left, He has twisted and confused my steps.

¹⁰ Dangerous as a stalking lion or a lurking bear,
    God lies in wait for me.
¹¹ Dragging me off the path and tearing me up,
    He has left me desolate.
¹² Drawing back His bow, God aims
    straight at me with His own arrow.

¹³ Ever true arrows, ready in His quiver,
    now sink into my gut.
¹⁴ Echoing taunts ring ’round me from the mouths of my own people,
    laughing and joking about me all day long.
¹⁵ Enough! He has filled me with bitterness,
    saturated me with gall.

¹⁶ For He crushes my teeth with a mouth filled with gravel;
    He humiliates me, trampling me in ashes.
¹⁷ Fragmented, my self knows no peace.
    I cannot remember what it’s like to be happy.
¹⁸ “Failed,” I say to myself. “My hope fails
    in the face of what the Eternal One has done.”

¹⁹ Grievous thoughts of affliction and wandering plagued my mind—
    great bitterness and gall.
²⁰ Grieving, my soul thinks back;
    these thoughts cripple, and I sink down.
²¹ Gaining hope,
    I remember and wait for this thought:

²² How enduring is God’s loyal love;
    the Eternal has inexhaustible compassion.
²³ Here they are, every morning, new!
    Your faithfulness, God, is as broad as the day.
²⁴ Have courage, for the Eternal is all that I will need.
    My soul boasts, “Hope in God; just wait.”

²⁵ It is good. The Eternal One is good to those who expect Him,
    to those who seek Him wholeheartedly.
²⁶ It is good to wait quietly
    for the Eternal to make things right again.
²⁷ It is good to have to deal
    with restraint and burdens when young.

²⁸ Just leave in peace the one who waits in silence,
    patiently bearing the burden of God;
²⁹ Just don’t interfere if he falls, gape-mouthed in the dust.
    There may well be hope yet.
³⁰ Just let him offer his cheek when struck.
    Let him be the butt of jokes.

³¹ Kept in God’s care:
    the Lord won’t reject him forever.
³² Kindness prevails: Even though God torments sometimes,
    the greatness of God’s loyal love wins out.
³³ Keeping us down: it is not the desire or way of God’s heart
    to hurt and grieve the children of men.