Lamentations 3:9

3:1-20 The prophet relates the more gloomy and discouraging part of his experience, and how he found support and relief. In the time of his trial the Lord had become terrible to him. It was an affliction that was misery itself; for sin makes the cup of affliction a bitter cup. The struggle between unbelief and faith is often very severe. But the weakest believer is wrong, if he thinks that his strength and hope are perished from the Lord.

He hath enclosed my ways with hewn stone,.... Not with a hedge of thorns, or mud walls, but with a fence of stones; and these not rough, and laid loosely together, but hewn and put in order, and well cemented. The Targum is, with marble hewn stones, which are harder than common stones, and not so easily demolished; this may respect the case of the prophet in prison, and in the dungeon, and in Jerusalem, when besieged; or in general his afflictive state, from whence he had no prospect of deliverance; or the state of the Jews in captivity, from which there was no likelihood of a release; he hath made my paths crooked; or, "perverted my ways" (h); so that he could not find his way out, when he attempted it; he got into a way which led him wrong; everything went cross and against him, and all his measures were disconcerted, and his designs defeated; no one step he took prospered. (h) "semitas meas pervertit", Pagninus, Montanus, Vatablus, Calvin; "contorsit", Michealis.

Lamentations 3:9-13. He hath enclosed my way with hewn stone — He hath not only hedged it up with thorns, Hosea 2:6 , but stopped it up with a stone wall which cannot be broken through; so that my paths are made crooked — That is, I traverse to and fro, to the right hand and to the left, to try to get forward, but I am still turned back. Observe, reader, if we walk in the crooked ways of sin, crossing or swerving from God’s laws, it is just with God to make us walk in the crooked paths of affliction, crossing our designs and breaking our measures. He was unto me as a bear lying in wait — Surprising me with his judgments; and as a lion in secret places — So that which way soever I went, I was in continual fear of being attacked, and could never think myself safe. He hath turned aside my ways — Hath blasted all my counsels and ruined my projects; (see above on Lamentations 3:9 ;) and pulled me in pieces — Hath torn and gone away, Hosea 5:14 . He hath made me desolate — Deprived me of all society, and of all comfort in my soul. He hath bent his bow — That bow, which was ordained against the church’s persecutors, is bent against her sons. He hath set me as a mark for his arrows — Which he aims at, and is sure to hit: so that the arrows of his quiver enter into my reins — And give me an inward and mortal wound.

Verse 9. - Inclosed ; or, walled up ; the participle of this verb is rendered "masons" in the Authorized Version of 2 Kings 12:12 . Made my paths crooked; i.e. hath compelled me to walk in byways (comp. margin of the Authorized Version, Judges 5:6 ). But this hardly seems appropriate to the context. The semitas meas subvertit of the Vulgate is preferable. Render, therefore, turned my path upside down (comp. Isaiah 24:1 ). An analogous expression m Job 30:13 is rendered in the Authorized Version, "they mar my path." Thenius thinks that the destruction of a raised causeway is the figure intended; but the word is quite correctly rendered "paths;" see the note of Delitzsch on REFERENCE_WORK:Keil & DelitzschIsaiah 59:8. Lamentations 3:9

Ways in Scripture ordinarily signifies men’s courses, and methods of counsels, and actions; if the term be taken in that sense here, it signifieth God’s defeating all their methods and counsels taken for their own security, in the pursuit of which they met not with ordinary, but with insuperable difficulties, like walls of hewn stone. Nay, God had not only defeated their counsels, but had made them prove more fatal and pernicious to themselves, which seemeth to be intended, by making their ways crooked, which should have led right on to the end intended.

Inclosed - Or, hedged Lamentations 3:7 . Hath, made crooked - Or, "hath" turned aside. A solid wall being built across the main road, Jeremiah turns aside into by-ways, but finds them turned aside, so that they lead him back after long wandering to the place from where he started.

In Lamentations 3:9 , the idea of prevention from freedom of action is further carried out on a new side. "He hath walled in my paths with hewn stones." גּזית equals גזית אבּני, 1 Kings 5:31 , are hewn stones of considerable size, employed for making a very strong wall. The meaning is: He has raised up insurmountable obstacles in the pathway of my life. "My paths hath He turned," i.e., rendered such that I cannot walk in them. עוּה is to turn, in the sense of destroying, as in Isaiah 24:1 , not contortas fecit (Michaelis, Rosenmller, Kalkschmidt), nor per viam tortuosam ire cogor (Raschi); for the prophet does not mean to say (as Ngelsbach imagines), "that he has been compelled to walk in wrong and tortuous ways," but he means that God has rendered it impossible for him to proceed further in his path; cf. Job 30:13 . But we are not in this to think of the levelling of a raised road, as Thenius does; for נתיבה does not mean a road formed by the deposition of rubbish, like a mound, but a footpath, formed by constant treading (Gerlach).

10 . If our transgressions ] Better, direct: our transgressions … are upon us. The people had come to regard their calamities as due to their sins and evidence of them. They had come round to the prophet’s view of their history, for they saw his predictions fulfilled. But the new view came with a crushing weight upon them. The calamities of their country were unparalleled ( Lamentations 1:12 ; Lamentations 2:13 ; Lamentations 2:20 ; Lamentations 3:1 ; Lamentations 4:6 ; Lamentations 4:9 ), and equally unparalleled must have been their guilt ( Lamentations 1:9 ; Lamentations 1:14 ; Lamentations 2:14 ; Lamentations 4:13 ; Lamentations 5:7 ). And their calamities seemed final, their sin was expiable only by their complete destruction. we pine away ] Or, waste away. The word expresses not mental but physical wasting away, ending in complete dissolution. See the very similar figures, Isaiah 10:18 ; Isaiah 17:4 ; cf. Ezekiel 4:17 ; Ezekiel 24:23 ; Leviticus 26:39 . 10–20 . Despondency of the people, making the prophet’s appeals to them of none effect. Removal of the despair by two gracious words from the Lord.