Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Lamentations · About this commentary
I Called on Your Name from the Pit
Lamentations 3:55-66
55 I called on your name, Yahweh, out of the lowest dungeon. · WEB
Every verb about God in this section is past tense, and the answer came from the lowest point rather than after the climb out.
Verse 55 answers verse 54 immediately. He had said I am cut off — and then: I called on your name, Yahweh, out of the lowest dungeon.
What follows is the only sustained run of good news in the book, and every verb is in the past tense. You heard my voice. You came near in the day that I called on you. You said, do not be afraid. You have pleaded the causes of my soul. You have redeemed my life Lamentations 3:56–58.
The location is the point. The prayer went up from the bottom of the pit, not from the far side of the rescue, and the answer is reported as having already come. Set against the cloud that no prayer could pass Lamentations 3:44, this is the same man saying both things about the same God — which the book allows.
The word in verse 58 is a legal one. God pleaded the causes of my soul — took his case, argued it. The man who complained in verse 8 that his prayer was shut out now says his advocate was on the other side of the door.
From verse 59 the section becomes a petition against enemies, and it does not moderate. Judge my cause; you have seen their vengeance and their plots; you will pay them back according to the work of their hands; you will pursue them in anger and destroy them Lamentations 3:64–66.
What the poem does with the desire for revenge is worth noticing: it hands it over. The man asks God to do it and does nothing himself, which is the only thing that distinguishes a prayer like this from a plan.
settled What this mark means