Lamentations 3:51

51 My eyes inflict my soul because of all the daughters of my city.

Lamentations 3:51 Meaning and Commentary

Lamentations 3:51

Mine eye affecteth mine heart
Seeing the desolation of his country; the ruins of the city and temple of Jerusalem; and the multitudes of those that were slain, and carried captive; and the distresses the rest were in; this affected his heart, and filled it with grief; as his heart also affected his eyes, and caused them to run down in rivers of water, as before expressed; or, as the Targum,

``the weeping of mine eyes is the occasion of hurt to my soul or life;''
his excessive weeping endangered his life: because of all the daughters of my city;
not Anathoth, his native place, but Jerusalem; so the Targum,
``of Jerusalem my city.''
The meaning is, that his heart was affected at seeing the ruin of the inhabitants of Jerusalem; or of the towns and cities round about it, which that was the metropolis of. Some, as Jarchi, render it, "more than all the daughters of my city" F16; his heart was more affected with those calamities than those of the most tender sex, even than any or all of them.
FOOTNOTES:

F16 (yrye twnb lkm) "supra cunctas filias civitatis meae"; so some in Vatablus; and Jarchi.

Lamentations 3:51 In-Context

49 My eyes have poured down unceasingly without respite,
50 until Yahweh looks down and sees from heaven.
51 My eyes inflict my soul because of all the daughters of my city.
52 My enemies hunt me without cause, like a bird.
53 {They have silenced me in a pit}, they have thrown a stone at me.
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