💧WEB · Lamentations 3:13
What does Lamentations 3:13 mean?
"He has caused the shafts of his quiver to enter into my kidneys."
— Lamentations 3:13 (World English Bible)
Surrounding context
He is to me as a bear lying in wait, as a lion in secret places.
He has turned away my ways, and pulled me in pieces. He has made me desolate.
He has bent his bow, and set me as a mark for the arrow.
He has caused the shafts of his quiver to enter into my kidneys.
I have become a derision to all my people, and their song all day long.
He has filled me with bitterness. He has stuffed me with wormwood.
He has also broken my teeth with gravel. He has covered me with ashes.
Explanation
Lamentations 3:13 is part of a long, intensely personal poem of suffering in which the speaker describes God as an archer who has shot arrows deep into his body. In plain language, the verse says that God has pierced him to the core—the "kidneys" (sometimes translated "heart" or "inward parts" in other versions) represent the innermost seat of a person's feelings and vitality in Hebrew thought. The image is not of a minor wound but of a mortal, agonizing injury inflicted at the deepest possible level of the speaker's being. This is raw, unfiltered pain expressed through vivid battle imagery: God is pictured as a warrior taking deliberate aim and striking true.
The book of Lamentations was traditionally attributed to the prophet Jeremiah, written in the aftermath of the destruction of Jerusalem and the Babylonian exile in 586 BC. The city lay in ruins, the temple was destroyed, and the covenant
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