Lamentations 3:51

51 When I see what's happened to the young women in the city, the pain breaks my heart.

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 "The tears stream from my eyes, an artesian well of tears,
50 Until you, God, look down from on high, look and see my tears.
51 When I see what's happened to the young women in the city, the pain breaks my heart.
52 "Enemies with no reason to be enemies hunted me down like a bird.
53 They threw me into a pit, then pelted me with stones.
Published by permission. Originally published by NavPress in English as THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language copyright 2002 by Eugene Peterson. All rights reserved.