Bible · NudgeRead the passage
Lamentations 3:31-32
For the Lord will not cast off forever. For though he causes grief, yet he will have compassion according to the multitude of his loving kindnesses.
In the King James Version
For the Lord will not cast off for ever: But though he cause grief, yet will he have compassion according to the multitude of his mercies.
What was happening around this
The speaker is the first-person afflicted figure introduced in 3:1, but 3:22–33’s relation to that voice is contested: Brennan Breed reports scholars who hear a “voice of tradition” rather than a simple continuation of the lamenter. The poem responds to the destruction of Jerusalem by Babylon in 587 BCE; vv. 28–30 call for silence, dust, and bearing reproach, while v. 33 immediately qualifies the claim by saying God does not afflict willingly.
Source: Breed, “Commentary on Lamentations 3:22–33,” Working Preacher
The verses on either side
- Let him sit alone and keep silence, because he has laid it on him.
- Let him put his mouth in the dust, if it is so that there may be hope.
- Let him give his cheek to him who strikes him. Let him be filled full of reproach.
- For the Lord will not cast off forever.
- For though he causes grief, yet he will have compassion according to the multitude of his loving kindnesses.
- For he does not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of men.
- To crush under foot all the prisoners of the earth,
- to turn away the right of a man before the face of the Most High,
Where this comes up