Lamentations 3:8

He hath hedged me about, that I cannot get out: he hath made my chain heavy. HEDGED - (; ). Hosea shows that this hedging up for Israel is not for her eternal ruin, but for good in the end, "I will hedge up thy way with thorns, and make a wall, that she shall not find her paths. And she shall follow after her lovers, but she shall not overtake them: then shall she say, I will go and return to my first husband; for then was it better with me than now.)" MY CHAIN - literally, chain of brass. Verse 8. HE SHUTTETH OUT MY PRAYER - image from a door shutting out any entrance (. So the antitype, Christ (). Verse 9....

The Prophet describes here the extremity of all evils, that it availed him nothing to cry and to pray. And yet we know that we are called to do this in all our miseries. “The strongest tower is the name of the Lord, to it will the righteous flee and shall be safe.” (Proverbs 18:10.) Again, “Whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” (Joel 2:32.) And Scripture is full of testimonies of this kind; that is, that God graciously invites all the faithful to himself: “He shall call upon me, and I will hear him.” (Psalms 91:15.) “In the day when I call, answer me speedily.” (Psalms 102:2.)

1-20 The prophet relates the more gloomy and discouraging part of his experience, and how he found support and relief. In the time of his trial the Lord had become terrible to him. It was an affliction that was misery itself; for sin makes the cup of affliction a bitter cup. The struggle between unbelief and faith is often very severe. But the weakest believer is wrong, if he thinks that his strength and hope are perished from the Lord....

SHOUT - i. e. call for help. SHUTTETH OUT - Or, “shutteth in.” God has so closed up the avenues to the place in which he is immured, that his voice can find no egress....

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._...

ALSO WHEN I CRY AND SHOUT,.... Cry, because of the distress of the enemy within; "shout", or cry aloud for help from others without; as persons in a prison do, to make them hear and pity their case: thus the prophet in his affliction cried aloud to God; was fervent, earnest, and importunate in prayer; and yet not heard: HE SHUTTETH OUT MY PRAYER; shuts the door, that it may not enter; as the door is sometimes shut upon beggars, that their cry may not be heard. The Targum is, "the house of my prayer is shut.'' Jarchi interprets it of the windows of the firmament being shut, so that his prayer could not pass through, or be heard; see Lamentations 3:44. The phrase designs God's disregard, or seeming disregard, of the prayer of the prophet, or of the people; and his shutting his ears against it. Of this, as the Messiah's case, see...

I am about to read a portion of Holy Scripture which may seem very strange to some of you, but it belongs to a part of the congregation, and I hope it may be the means of giving them comfort. I read it as a picture of the suffering of a soul under a sense of sin. I think it is a most graphic portrait of a heart that is aroused and made to feel its lost estate. If there are any such here, they will be sure to see themselves in the picture. Lamentations 3:1. _I am the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of his wrath._ It is a mistake that most souls make when in trouble, to suppose that no others ever felt as they do. John Bunyan describes Christian as being very much comforted by hearing someone quoting Scripture as he went through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, for then he perceived that there were others in like case with his own. Do not think, poor tr

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

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR A SUFFERING PROPHET Lamentations 3:1-66 Again in chapter three the poet has adopted the acrostic style but in a slightly different form from that of the previous Chapter s. In Chapter s 1 and 2 only the first line of each stanza of three lines began with consecutive letters of the Hebrew alphabet. In chapter 3 all three lines of each stanza begin with the same Hebrew letter. Chapter 3 is actually the same length as Chapter s 1 and 2 though the verse numeration makes it appear longer. In the first two Chapter s three lines of Hebrew verse comprise one verse of English text; in chapter 3 each line of Hebrew text has been counted as one verse of English text. Thus the verses of chapter 3 are only one third as long as those of Chapter s 1 and 2 and there are three times as many of them. The major exegetical problem arising in chapter 3 i