to lift · verb, qal imperfect, 1st person common plural
heart
לְבָבֵ֙נוּ֙le.va.Ve.nu
H3824
the heart (as the most interior organ) · noun, common masculine singular construct + pronominal suffix
hands
כַּפָּ֔יִםka.Pa.yim
H3709
the hollow hand or palm (so of the paw of an animal · noun, common feminine dual absolute
God
אֵ֖ל'el
H410
strength · noun, common masculine singular absolute
heavens
בַּשָּׁמָֽיִםba.sha.Ma.yim
H8064
the sky (as aloft · preposition with the article + noun, common masculine plural absolute
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Psalms 25:1 Unto thee, O LORD, do I lift up my soul.
Psalms 28:2 Hear the voice of my supplications, when I cry unto thee, when I lift up my hands toward thy holy oracle.
Psalms 86:4 Rejoice the soul of thy servant: for unto thee, O Lord, do I lift up my soul.
Psalms 143:6-8 I stretch forth my hands unto thee: my soul thirsteth after thee, as a thirsty land. Selah.
Psalms 63:4 Thus will I bless thee while I live: I will lift up my hands in thy name.
Psalms 141:2 Let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense; and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.
1 Thessalonians 2:8 So being affectionately desirous of you, we were willing to have imparted unto you, not the gospel of God only, but also our own souls, beca…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Lamentations 3:37-41
That we may be entitled to the comforts administered to the afflicted in the foregoing verses, and may taste the sweetness of them, we have here the duties of an afflicted state prescribed to us, in the performance of which we may expect those comforts.
I. We must see and acknowledge the hand of God in all the calamities that befal us at any time, whether personal or public, Lam 3:37, Lam 3:38. This is here laid down as a great truth, which will help to quiet our spirits under our afflictions and to sanctify them to us. 1. That, whatever men's actions are, it is God that overrules them: Who is he that saith, and it cometh to pass (that designs a thing and bring his designs to effect), if the…
heart with . . . hands--the antidote to hypocrisy (Psa 86:4; Ti1 2:8).
Adam Clarke on Lamentations 3:40
Let us search - How are we to get the pardon of our sins? The prophet tells us:
1. Let us examine ourselves.
2. "Let us turn again to the Lord."
3. "Let us lift up our heart;" let us make fervent prayer and supplication for mercy.
4. "Let us lift up our hand;" let us solemnly promise to be his, and bind ourselves in a covenant to be the Lord's only: so much lifting up the hand to God implies. Or, let us put our heart on our hand, and offer it to God; so some have translated this clause.
5. "We have transgressed;" let our confession of sin be fervent and sincere.
6. And to us who profess Christianity it may be added, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ as having died for thee; and thou shalt not…
Let us lift up our heart with our hands,.... Lifting up of the hands is a prayer gesture, and is put for prayer itself; see Psalm 141:2; but the heart must go along with it, or it is of no avail; the soul must be lifted up to God; there must be an ascending of that unto him, in earnest desires after him; in affection and love to him; in faith and dependence on him; and in hope and expectation of good things from him, Psalm 25:1; this is the way in which men return to God, even by prayer and supplication. The Targum is,
"let us lift up our hearts, and cast away rapine and prey out of our hands;''
and Jarchi and Abendana mention a Midrash, that paraphrases it,
"let us lift up our hearts in…
The Church Fathers
One [Elijah] whose "heart" was habitually found "lifted up" rather than fattened up, who in forty days and as many nights maintained a fast above the power of human nature while spiritual faith supplied strength (to his body), both saw with his eyes God's glory, and heard with his ears God's voice and understood with his heart God's law, while he taught him even then (by experience) that humankind lives not on bread alone but on every word of God; in that the people, though fatter than he, could not constantly contemplate even Moses, fed as he had been on God, or his leanness, sated as it had been with God's glory! Deservedly, therefore, even while in the flesh, did the Lord show himself to him, the colleague of his own fasts, no less than to Elijah. For Elijah had, by this fact primarily, that he had imprecated a famine, already sufficiently devoted himself to fasts: "The Lord lives," he said, "before whom I am standing in his sight, if there shall be dew in these years and rain shower." Subsequently, fleeing from threatening Jezebel, after one single meal of food and drink, which he had found on being awakened by an angel, he too, in a space of forty days and nights, his belly empty, his mouth dry, arrived at Mount Horeb; where, when he had made a cave his inn, with how familiar a meeting with God was he received! "What are you doing here, Elijah?" Much more friendly was this voice than, "Adam, where are you?" For the latter voice was uttering a threat to a fed man, the former soothing a fasting one. Such is the prerogative of circumscribed food, that it makes God tent fellow with a man—peer, in truth, with peer! For if the eternal God will not hunger, as he testifies through Isaiah, this will be the time for a person to be made equal with God, when he lives without food.
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Desire · SPIRITUAL — SPIRITUAL
Hands, The · Were lifted up: In prayer — Were lifted up: In prayer
Prayer · Is described as: Lifting up the heart — Is described as: Lifting up the heart
Seekers · 5:8;8:5,6; — 5:8;8:5,6;
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
Lamentations 3:41
41. Let us lift our heart with our hands unto God in the heavens.
41. Tollamus corda nostra cum manibus ad Deum in coelis.
To conversion he joins prayer; for we cannot be reconciled to God except he buries our sins; nor can repentance and faith be separated. Moreover, to taste of God's mercy opens to us the door of prayer. And this ought to be carefully noticed, because the unbelieving seem at times to be very busy in seeking to return to God's favor, but they only attend to the outward change of life; and at the same time they are not anxious about pardon, but go boldly before God, as though they were not exposed to his judgment.
And we see under the Papacy that while…
Confession of sins, and complaint against the cruelty of enemies, as well as over the deep misery into which all the people have sunk. Lam 3:40-42. The acknowledgment of guilt implies to prayer, to which also there is a summons in Lam 3:40, Lam 3:41. The transitional idea is not, "Instead of grumbling in a sinful spirit, let us rather examine our conduct" (Thenius); for the summons to examine one's conduct is thereby placed in contrast with Lam 3:39, and the thought, "let every one mourn over his own sins," transformed into a prohibition of sinful complaint. The real transition link is given by Rosenmller: quum mala nostra a peccatis nostris oriantur, culpas nostras et scrutemur et corrigamu…
Repentance is the key to receiving salvation (Isa 1:27; Jer 3:22; Ezek 3:21).
Rashi on Lamentations 3:41
Let us uplift our hearts together with our hands. When we lift up our hands to heaven let us also lift up our hearts with them to return, to bring back our hearts before the Omnipresent, Blessed is He. Another explanation: “With our hands.” אֶל כַּפָּיִם means] to the clouds, to heaven, as [Scripture] states, “There is a cloud as small as a man’s palm, rising.”31I Melochim 18:44. And similarly, “Over the clouds He covers the rain.”32Iyov 36:32. But the Midrash of our Rabbis [states], “Let us uplift our hearts” sincerely to the Holy One, Blessed Is He, like a person who washes his hands to clean them, casts from his hands all contamination, for “he who confesses and abandons will obtain mercy…
