Lamentations 3:41

Let us search and try our ways, and turn again to the LORD. LET US - Jeremiah and his fellow-countrymen in their calamity. SEARCH - as opposed to the torpor wherewith men rest only on their outward sufferings, without attending to the cause of them. God must search us, if we are to be enabled to search ourselves and our ways. "Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts; and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting" (). Verse 41. LET US LIFT UP OUR HEART WITH OUR HANDS - the antidote to hypocrisy (; ). Verse 42. THOU HAST NOT PARDONED. The Babylonian captivity had not yet ended. [Samech (c)]...

To conversion he joins prayer; for we cannot be reconciled to God except he buries our sins; nor can repentance and faith be separated. Moreover, to taste of God’s mercy opens to us the door of prayer. And this ought to be carefully noticed, because the unbelieving seem at times to be very busy in seeking to return to God’s favor, but they only attend to the outward change of life; and at the same time they are not anxious about pardon, but go boldly before God, as though they were not exposed to his judgment. And we see under the Papacy that while they make long sermons on repentance, they hardly ever make any account of faith, as though repentance without faith were a restoration from death to life. Hence I said that we ought to notice the mode of teaching which our Prophet adopts: he begins with self-examination, then he requires conversion; but he does not separate it from faith. Fo...

37-41 While there is life there is hope; and instead of complaining that things are bad, we should encourage ourselves with the hope they will be better. We are sinful men, and what we complain of, is far less than our sins deserve. We should complain to God, and not of him. We are apt, in times of calamity, to reflect on other people's ways, and blame them; but our duty is to search and try our own ways, that we may turn from evil to God. Our hearts must go with our prayers. If inward impressions do not answer to outward expressions, we mock God, and deceive ourselves....

The prophet urges men to search out their faults and amend them. Lamentations 3:40 AND TURN AGAIN TO THE LORD - Or, “and return to Yahweh.” The prep. (to) in the Hebrew implies not half way, but the whole. Lamentations 3:41 Literally, “Let us lift up our heart unto our hands unto God in heaven;” as if the heart first lifted up the hands, and then with them mounted up in prayer to God. In real prayer the outward expression is caused by the emotion stirring within....

EXPOSITION LAMENTATIONS 3:1 MONOLOGUE SPOKEN BY AN INDIVIDUAL BELIEVER WHOSE FATE IS BOUND UP WITH THAT OF THE NATION; OR PERHAPS BY THE NATION PERSONIFIED (see Introduction). LAMENTATIONS 3:1 SEEN. "To see" in Hebrew often means "to experience;" _e.g._...

LET US LIFT UP OUR HEART WITH [OUR] HANDS,.... Lifting up of the hands is a prayer gesture, and is put for prayer itself; see Psalms 141:2; but the heart must go along with it, or it is of no avail; the soul must be lifted up to God; there must be an ascending of that unto him, in earnest desires after him; in affection and love to him; in faith and dependence on him; and in hope and expectation of good things from him, Psalms 25:1; this is the way in which men return to God, even by prayer and supplication. The Targum is, "let us lift up our hearts, and cast away rapine and prey out of our hands;'' and Jarchi and Abendana mention a Midrash, that paraphrases it, "let us lift up our hearts in truth to God, as a man washes his hands in purity, and casts away al

We are about to read a chapter which is very full of sorrow; while you are listening to it, some of you may be saying, «We are not in that condition.» Well then, be thankful that you are not, and while you hear of the sorrows of others, bless God for the joys you yourself experience. At the same time, remember that there is a way of sorrow which leads at last to rest and peace. There is truth in the words of the poet Cowper, «The path of sorrow, and that path alone, Leads to the land where sorrow is unknown.» If you have never known the sorrows of the weeping prophet, or anything like them, I am not sure that you should congratulate yourselves, for there is a brokenness of heart that is worth more than the whole world, there is a crushed and bruised spirit in which the Lord delights, and which is a token for good to the one who possesses it. L

CHAPTER 3 THE PROPHET'S SUFFERING AND DISTRESS This chapter is intensely personal. None but Jeremiah could have written these wonderful expressions of sorrow, the sorrows of the people of God into which he entered so fully, in such a way that they become his own. He shared all their afflictions, bore them himself and then was hated by them. It was the Spirit of Christ who created these feelings in the heart of the prophet. In reading these words of deep distress and the words of faith and waiting for Him, we must look beyond Jeremiah and see a picture of our Lord, “the Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief,” His sorrow and His afflictions, the emotions of His holy soul, as well as the experiences and soul exercise of the believing remnant of Israel in days to come. The prophet speaks of himself as one who is smitten by the rod of God's wrath, the man that hath seen affliction. He had...

LAMENTATIONS 3. THE THIRD LAMENT. Here it is the singer that comes chiefly to the front; whereas in Lamentations 3:1 it had been Zion, and in Lamentations 3:2 it was Yahweh. EV hardly puts Lamentations 3:1 forcibly enough: it should read, It is I, even I the strong man, who know now, alas, what abasement means. The chant is artistically more clever than Lamentations 3:1 and Lamentations 3:2, but its heart is not so great. In form it has a cunning device all its own; for the first stanza has three initial Alephs, the second h

GOD. Hebrew El. App-4. THE HEAVENS. Supply the _Ellipsis_ thus: "the heavens [saying], We have", &c....