💧WEB · Lamentations 3:50
What does Lamentations 3:50 mean?
"until Yahweh looks down, and sees from heaven."
— Lamentations 3:50 (World English Bible)
Surrounding context
Terror and the pit have come on us, devastation and destruction.”
My eye runs down with streams of water, for the destruction of the daughter of my people.
My eye pours down and doesn’t cease, without any intermission,
until Yahweh looks down, and sees from heaven.
My eye affects my soul, because of all the daughters of my city.
They have chased me relentlessly like a bird, those who are my enemies without cause.
They have cut off my life in the dungeon, and have cast a stone on me.
Explanation
Lamentations 3:50 reads simply, "until Yahweh looks down, and sees from heaven." On its surface, this is a statement of resolve and expectation — the speaker commits to weeping and grieving until God himself takes notice of the suffering being described. It is not a passive wish but an active declaration: tears will continue to flow, and the speaker's mourning will not cease, until heaven intervenes.
This verse sits within Lamentations, a book traditionally attributed to the prophet Jeremiah, written in the aftermath of Jerusalem's destruction by the Babylonians in 586 BC. The city had been besieged, the temple burned, and the population killed, exiled, or left in devastation. Lamentations is a collection of funeral-like poems mourning this catastrophe. Chapter 3 shifts from the communal grief of the earlier chapters into a deeply personal voice — often identified as Jeremiah himself or a representative sufferer — who describes affliction, darkness, and being crushed by God's judgment. Verses 48-51 form a unit: "My eye runs down with streams of water, because of
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