Matthew Henry on Lamentations 3:1-20
The title of the 102nd Psalm might very fitly be prefixed to this chapter - The prayer of the afflicted, when he is overwhelmed, and pours out his complaint before the Lord; for it is very feelingly and fluently that the complaint is here poured out. Let us observe the particulars of it. The prophet complains, 1. That God is angry. This gives both birth and bitterness to the affliction (Lam 3:1): I am the man, the remarkable man, that has seen affliction, and has felt it sensibly, by the rod of his wrath. Note, God is sometimes angry with his own people; yet it is to be complained of, not as a sword to cut off, by only as a rod to correct; it is to them the rod of his wrath, a chastening whi…
Read the whole note in the consoleJamieson-Fausset-Brown on Lamentations 3:6
set me--HENDERSON refers this to the custom of placing the dead in a sitting posture.
dark places--sepulchers. As those "dead long since"; so Jeremiah and his people are consigned to oblivion (Psa 88:5-6; Psa 143:3; Eze 37:13).
Adam Clarke on Lamentations 3:5
He hath builded against me - Perhaps there is a reference here to the mounds and ramparts raised by the Chaldeans in order to take the city.
John Gill on Lamentations 3:6
He hath set me in dark places,.... In the dark house of the prison, as the Targum; in the dark dungeon where the prophet was put; or the captivity in which the Jews were, and which was like the dark grave or state of the dead; and hence they are said to be in their graves, Ezekiel 37:12. Christ was laid in the dark grave literally:
as they that be dead of old: that have been long dead, and are forgotten, as if they had never been; see Psalm 88:5; or, "as the dead of the world" (f), or age; who, being dead, are gone out of the world, and no more in it. The Targum is,
"as the dead who go into another world.''
(f) , Sept. "quasi mortuos seculi", Montanus, Calvin.
John Calvin
