Lamentations 3:5
5. He hath builded against me, and encompassed me with gall and travail.
5. ?dificavit contra me, et circumdedit felle et molestia.
The words, as translated, may seem harsh, yet they have no common beauty in Hebrew. The Prophet says he was blocked up and straitened as it were by walls; and as we shall see, he repeats this comparison three times; in other words, indeed, but for the same purpose.
God, he says, hath built against me, as, when we wish to besiege any one, we build mounds, so that there may be no escape. This, then, is the sort of building of which the Prophet now speaks: God, he says, holds me confined all around, so that there is no way of escape open to me.…
Keil & Delitzsch on Lamentations 3:1-18
Lamentation over grievous sufferings. The author of these sufferings is not, indeed, expressly named in the whole section, but it is unmistakeably signified that God is meant; moreover, at the end of Lam 3:18 the name יהוה is mentioned. The view thus given of the sufferings shows, not merely that he who utters the complaint perceives in these sufferings a chastisement by God, but also that this chastisement has become for him a soul-struggle, in which he may not take the name of God into his mouth; and only after he has given vent in lamentations to the deep sorrow of his soul, does his spirit get peace to mention the name of the Lord, and make complaint to Him of his need. Nothing certain c…
Read the whole note in the consoleRashi on Lamentations 3:5
Encircling. He encompassed me.
Gall and bitter plants. As in, “gall and bitter fruit.”4Devarim 29:17. The Midrash Aggadah [states] that רֹאשׁ, refers to Nevuchadnetzar in the exile of Yehoyachin; and תְלָאָה [refers to] Nevuzaradan, who completed the blow in the days of Tzidkiyahu, and he wearied me.5According to this Midrash, תלאה is an expression similar to Shemos 18:8, where it means travail, hardship. (Sifsei Chachomim)
Henry, Jamieson-Fausset-Brown, Clarke, Gill, Calvin and Keil & Delitzsch are in the public domain; Tyndale Open Study Notes © Tyndale House Publishers, CC BY-SA 4.0 — all from the Free Use Bible API (bible.helloao.org). Rashi: the Rosenbaum & Silbermann Pentateuch (public domain) and the Judaica Press and Metsudah Tanakh (CC BY), via Sefaria. Spurgeon's Treasury of David: public domain (lyteword's markdown edition, CC0).
