I Am the Man Who Has Seen Affliction
1 I am the man who has seen affliction by the rod of his wrath. 2 He has led me and caused me to walk in darkness, and not in light. 3 Surely he turns his hand against me again and again all day long. 4 He has made my flesh and my skin old. He has broken my bones. 5 He has built against me, and surrounded me with bitterness and hardship. 6 He has made me dwell in dark places, as those who have been long dead. 7 He has walled me about, so that I can’t go out. He has made my chain heavy. 8 Yes, when I cry, and call for help, he shuts out my prayer. 9 He has walled up my ways with cut stone. He has made my paths crooked. 10 He is to me as a bear lying in wait, as a lion in hiding. 11 He has turned away my path, and pulled me in pieces. He has made me desolate. 12 He has bent his bow, and set me as a mark for the arrow. 13 He has caused the shafts of his quiver to enter into my kidneys. 14 I have become a derision to all my people, and their song all day long. 15 He has filled me with bitterness. He has stuffed me with wormwood. 16 He has also broken my teeth with gravel. He has covered me with ashes. 17 You have removed my soul far away from peace. I forgot prosperity. 18 I said, “My strength has perished, along with my expectation from Yahweh.”
The central poem drops the city and speaks as one person, and the first eighteen verses give God no name at all.
The third poem changes everything about the book's voice. The city is gone as a speaker; in her place stands a single man: I am the man who has seen affliction by the rod of his wrath.
This chapter also changes form. It is a triple acrostic, three verses to each letter of the alphabet, sixty-six in all — the most rigorously constructed passage in the book, and it carries its most personal material.
The first eighteen verses are a catalogue of what has been done to him, and the images are of enclosure and pursuit. Walled about so he cannot get out; his chain made heavy; his ways walled up with cut stone; his paths made crooked. Then hunting: a bear lying in wait, a lion in hiding, a bow bent with the speaker himself as the target Lamentations 3:10–12.
One detail is worth marking. Through all eighteen verses God is never named — only he, forty times over in pronouns and verbs. The name Yahweh does not appear until verse 18, and it appears there in a sentence of despair: my strength has perished, along with my expectation from Yahweh.
Verse 8 is the sharpest complaint in the book: when I cry and call for help, he shuts out my prayer. Not that God does not hear, but that the way is deliberately blocked — the same picture as the cloud through which no prayer passes Lamentations 3:44.
The section ends at its lowest point, with hope named as the thing that has died. What follows is the turn.
settled What this mark means