Lamentations 3:5

5 He builded in my compass, and he compassed me with gall and travail. (He built all around me, yea, he surrounded me with gall and tribulation.)

Lamentations 3:5 Meaning and Commentary

Lamentations 3:5

He hath builded against me
Fortresses, as the Targum adds; as when forts and batteries were raised by the Chaldeans against the city of Jerusalem, in which the prophet was: and compassed [me] with gall and travail;
or "weariness" ^F5; the same with gall and wormwood, ( Lamentations 3:19 ) ; as Jarchi observes. The sense is, he was surrounded with sorrow, affliction, and misery, which were as disagreeable as gall; or like poison that drank up his spirits, and made him weary of his life. Thus our Lord was exceeding sorrowful, even unto death; (perilupov) , encompassed with sorrows, ( Matthew 26:38 ) . The Targum is,

``he hath surrounded the city, and rooted up the heads of the people, and caused them to fail.''

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FOOTNOTES:

F5 (haltw) "et fatigatione", Montanus, Vatablus, Castalio.

Lamentations 3:5 In-Context

3 Only he turned into me, and turned together his hand all day. (He turned only against me, and he turned his hand against me all day long.)

4 He made eld my skin, and my flesh; he all-brake my bones. (He made old, or wasted, my skin, and my flesh; he broke all my bones.)

5 He builded in my compass, and he compassed me with gall and travail. (He built all around me, yea, he surrounded me with gall and tribulation.)

6 He setted me in dark places, as everlasting dead men. (He put me in dark places, like the everlasting dead.)

7 He builded about against me, (so) that I go not out; he aggrieved my gyves (he made my chains heavy).