Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Lamentations · About this commentary
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Lamentations 3:19-27
19 Remember my affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the bitterness. · WEB
The turn in the book's center is produced by remembering rather than by any change in circumstances, and nothing outside the man has improved.
Verse 19 is still in the pit — remember my affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the bitterness — and verse 20 says his soul remembers them and is bowed down.
Then verse 21, and it is the hinge of the whole book: this I recall to my mind; therefore I have hope.
Everything depends on what the verb is doing. Nothing has changed outside him. The city is still burned, the children are still dead, and the next chapter will return to describing both. What changes is what he calls to mind, and the poem is explicit that hope followed from the recollection rather than from relief.
What he recalls is verses 22 and 23. It is because of Yahweh's covenant love that we are not consumed — the word for that love occurs only twice in this book, both in this chapter Lamentations 3:32 — and his compassions do not fail. Then the line the book is best known for: they are new every morning.
The image is worth pausing on in a book of sleepless nights Lamentations 2:19. Mercy is described as arriving on the same schedule as daylight, in quantities that do not carry over and do not run out. A man who has lain awake all night is told that what he needs is issued fresh at dawn.
Verse 24 states the conclusion as a possession: Yahweh is my portion. Then three sayings on waiting — good to those who wait, good to hope quietly, good to bear the yoke young Lamentations 3:25–27. The word good three times, from the man of verse 1.
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