Lamentations 3:43

Thou hast covered with anger, and persecuted us: thou hast slain, thou hast not pitied.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(43) Thou hast covered with anger.—Better, as in the next verse, Thou hast covered thyself. Wrath is as the garment in which God wraps Himself to execute His righteous judgments. In Lamentations 3:44 the wrath is represented more definitely as a cloud through which the prayers of the afflicted cannot pass.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

3:42-54 The more the prophet looked on the desolations, the more he was grieved. Here is one word of comfort. While they continued weeping, they continued waiting; and neither did nor would expect relief and succour from any but the Lord.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

In verses 43-66, far from pardoning, God is still actively punishing His people.

Rather, "Thou hast covered" Thyself "with wrath and pursued (Lamentations 1:3 note) us." The covering (here and in Lamentations 3:44) is that of clothing and enwrapping.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

43-45. covered—namely, thyself (so La 3:44), so as not to see and pity our calamities, for even the most cruel in seeing a sad spectacle are moved to pity. Compare as to God "hiding His face," Ps 10:11; 22:25.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

Thou hast covered with anger; either thou hast covered thyself with anger, or covered thy own face with anger, so as not to look upon us to move thy pity; or (which is more probably the sense) thou hast covered, that is, overwhelmed, us with thy wrath. Thou hast slain, thou hast not pitied; thou hast pursued us to a fatal ruin, without showing us any pity.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Thou hast covered with anger,.... Either himself; not as a tender father, that cannot bear to see the affliction of a child; this does not suit with anger; but rather as one greatly displeased, in whose face anger appears, being covered with it; or who covers his face with it, that he may not be seen, withdrawing his gracious presence; or hast put anger as a wall between thee and us, as Jarchi: so that there was no coming nigh to him: or else it means covering his people with it; so the Targum,

"thou hast covered "us" with anger;''

denoting the largeness and abundance of afflictions upon them; they were as it were covered with them, as tokens of the divine displeasure; one wave and billow after another passing over them. Sanctius thinks the allusion is to the covering of the faces of condemned malefactors, as a token of their being guilty:

and persecuted us; the Targum adds, in captivity; that is, pursued and followed us with fresh instances of anger and resentment; to have men to be persecutors is bad, but to have God to be a persecutor is dreadful:

thou hast slain, thou hast not pitied; had suffered them to be stain by the sword of the enemy, and had shown no compassion to them; See Gill on Lamentations 2:21; here, and in some following verses, the prophet, or the people he represents, are got to complaining again; though before he had checked himself for it; so hard it is under afflictions to put in practice what should be done by ourselves and others.

Geneva Study Bible

Thou hast covered with anger, and persecuted us: thou hast slain, thou hast not pitied.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

43. covered] mg., better, covered thyself. Thou hast clothed thyself in wrath. This accords with the next line.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 43. - Thou hast covered with anger. The clause seems imperfect; perhaps "thyself" has fallen out of the text (see next verse). Lamentations 3:43

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

God has not pardoned, but positively punished, the people for their misdeeds. "Thou hast covered with anger," Lamentations 3:43, corresponds to "Thou hast covered with a cloud," Lamentations 3:44; hence "Thou hast covered" is plainly used both times in the same meaning, in spite of the fact that לך is wanting in Lamentations 3:43. סכך means to "cover," here to "make a cover." "Thou didst make a cover with anger," i.e., Thou didst hide Thyself in wrath; there is no necessity for taking סכך as in itself reflexive. This mode of viewing it agrees also with what follows. The objection of J. D. Michaelis, qui se obtegit non persequitur alios, ut statim additur, which Bttcher and Thenius have repeated, does not hold good in every respect, but chiefly applies to material covering. And the explanation of Thenius, "Thou hast covered us with wrath, and persecuted us," is shown to be wrong by the fact that סכך signifies to cover for protection, concealment, etc., but not to cover in the sense of heaping upon, pouring upon (as Luther translates it); nor, again, can the word be taken here in a sense different from that assigned to it in Lamentations 3:44. "The covering of wrath, which the Lord draws around Him, conceals under it the lightnings of His wrath, which are spoken of immediately afterwards" (Ngelsbach). The anger vents itself in the persecution of the people, in killing them unsparingly. For, that these two are connected, is shown not merely in Lamentations 3:66, but still more plainly by the threatening in Jeremiah 29:18 : "I will pursue them with sword, and famine, and pestilence, and give them for maltreatment to all the kingdoms of the earth." On "Thou hast slain, Thou hast not spared," cf. Lamentations 2:21. In Lamentations 3:44, לך is further appended to סכּותה: "Thou makest a cover with clouds for Thyself," round about Thee, so that no prayer can penetrate to Thee; cf. Psalm 55:2. These words form the expression of the painful conclusion drawn by God's people from their experience, that God answered no cry for help that came to Him, i.e., granted no help. Israel was thereby given up, in a defenceless state, to the foe, so that they could treat them like dirt and abuse them. סחי (from סחה, Ezekiel 26:4), found only here as a noun, signifies "sweepings;" and מאוס is a noun, "disesteem, aversion." The words of Lamentations 3:45, indeed, imply the dispersion of Israel among the nations, but are not to be limited to the maltreatment of the Jews in exile; moreover, they rather apply to the conduct of their foes when Judah was conquered and Jerusalem destroyed. Such treatment, especially the rejection, is further depicted in Lamentations 3:46. The verse is almost a verbatim repetition of Lamentations 2:16, and is quite in the style of Jeremiah as regards the reproduction of particular thoughts; while Thenius, from the repetition, is inclined to infer that chs. 2 and 3 had different authors: cf. Gerlach on the other side. The very next verse might have been sufficient to keep Thenius from such a precipitate conclusion, inasmuch as it contains expressions and figures that are still more clearly peculiar to Jeremiah. On פּחד ופחת, cf. Jeremiah 48:43; השׁבר is also one of the favourite expressions of the prophet. hashee't is certainly ἅπ. λεγ., but reminds one of בּני , Numbers 24:17, for which in Jeremiah 48:45 there stands בּני שׁאון. It comes from שׁאה, to make a noise, roar, fall into ruins with a loud noise, i.e., be laid waste (cf. Isaiah 6:11); and, as Raschi has already observed, it has the same meaning as שׁאיּה, "devastation," Isaiah 24:12. It is incorrect to derive the word from the Hiphil of נשׁא (J. D. Michaelis and Ewald), according to which it ought to mean "disappointment," for the ה does not form an essential portion of the word, but is the article, as והשׁבר shows. Still more erroneous are the renderings ἔπαρσις (lxx, from נשׂא) and vaticinatio (Jerome, who has confounded השּׁאת with משּׂא).

Over this terrible calamity, rivers of tears must be shed, until the Lord looks down from heaven on it, Lamentations 3:48-51. The prophet once more utters this complaint in the first person, because he who has risked his life in his endeavour to keep the people in the service of God must feel the deepest sympathy for them in their misfortunes. "Rivers of water" is stronger than "water," Lamentations 1:16, and "tears like a stream," Lamentations 2:18; but the mode of expression is in the main like that in those passages, and used again in Psalm 119:136, but in a different connection. The second member of the verse is the same as in Lamentations 2:11.