💧WEB · Lamentations 3:31
What does Lamentations 3:31 mean?
"For the Lord will not cast off forever."
— Lamentations 3:31 (World English Bible)
Surrounding context
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,
Explanation
Lamentations 3:31 makes a simple but profound promise: whatever suffering or discipline the Lord allows to come upon his people, it is not permanent. The verse says God "will not cast off forever" — meaning that even when he seems distant, angry, or absent, that condition is temporary. Rejection is not God's final word toward those who belong to him.
To understand this verse well, it helps to see where it sits. Lamentations is a book of five poems mourning the destruction of Jerusalem and the Babylonian exile in 586 BC, traditionally attributed to the prophet Jeremiah, who witnessed the city's fall. The book gives voice to the raw grief of a nation that has lost its temple, its king, and its home, and it does not shy away from describing suffering as coming from God's own hand as judgment for persistent unfaithfulness. Chapter 3 is the emotional and theological center of the book. The speaker moves from intense personal anguish (verses 1–20) to a dramatic turn of hope (verses 21–24, including the famous words "his compassions fail not
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