Lamentations 3:51

51 What I see brings pain to my spirit. All of the people in my city are suffering so much.

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 Tears will never stop flowing from my eyes. My eyes can't get any rest.
50 I'll sob until the LORD looks down from heaven. I'll cry until he notices my tears.
51 What I see brings pain to my spirit. All of the people in my city are suffering so much.
52 Those who were my enemies for no reason at all hunted me down as if I were a bird.
53 They tried to end my life by throwing me into a deep pit. They threw stones down at me.
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