Lamentations 3:51

51 Mon œil afflige mon âme, à cause de toutes les filles de ma ville.

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 Mon œil pleure et ne cesse point, parce qu'il n'y a point de relâche,
50 Jusqu'à ce que l'Éternel regarde et qu'il voie des cieux!
51 Mon œil afflige mon âme, à cause de toutes les filles de ma ville.
52 Ceux qui sont mes ennemis sans cause, m'ont donné la chasse comme à un oiseau.
53 Ils ont voulu anéantir ma vie dans une fosse, ils ont jeté des pierres sur moi.
The Ostervald translation is in the public domain.