It is good for man to bear the yoke from his youth.
Commentaries
3:1 - 3:66
Third Lament.
The third lamentation is a perfect acrostic; unlike the previous ones, where each stanza started with a letter from the Hebrew alphabet, here, each letter is repeated in all three lines of each verse. This pattern appears only one other time in the Bible, in Psalm 119. The structure can be outlined as follows: personal experience of pain (1-20), hope in God’s mercy (21-39), and personal and collective prayer (40-66). The main theme of the third lament remains consistent: God punishes sins justly, but he is also the only one who can save.
The fact that this lament is written almost entirely in the first-person singular has divided researchers’ opinions on the subject: Is it the prophet Jeremiah speaking? Is it Zion personified? Is it King Jehoiachin or Zedekiah? Whoever it is, it is the specific person who best and most deeply expresses the pain and supplication, the acknowledgment of his sins, his hope in divine mercy, his own being, and his belonging to a people.
Commentaries
Third Lament.
The third lamentation is a perfect acrostic; unlike the previous ones, where each stanza started with a letter from the Hebrew alphabet, here, each letter is repeated in all three lines of each verse. This pattern appears only one other time in the Bible, in Psalm 119. The structure can be outlined as follows: personal experience of pain (1-20), hope in God’s mercy (21-39), and personal and collective prayer (40-66). The main theme of the third lament remains consistent: God punishes sins justly, but he is also the only one who can save.
The fact that this lament is written almost entirely in the first-person singular has divided researchers’ opinions on the subject: Is it the prophet Jeremiah speaking? Is it Zion personified? Is it King Jehoiachin or Zedekiah? Whoever it is, it is the specific person who best and most deeply expresses the pain and supplication, the acknowledgment of his sins, his hope in divine mercy, his own being, and his belonging to a people.