Lamentations 3:8

8 Even when I cry out and plead for help, He rejects my prayer.[a]

Lamentations 3:8 Meaning and Commentary

Lamentations 3:8

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 ( Psalms 22:2 ) .

Lamentations 3:8 In-Context

6 He has made me dwell in darkness like those who have been dead for ages.
7 He has walled me in so I cannot escape; He has weighed me down with chains.
8 Even when I cry out and plead for help, He rejects my prayer.
9 He has walled in my ways with cut stones; He has made my paths crooked.
10 He is a bear waiting in ambush, a lion in hiding;

Footnotes 1

  • [a]. Lm 3:44; Jb 30:20; Ps 22:2
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