What Does Lamentations 1:16 Mean in the King James?
For these things I weep; mine eye, mine eye runneth down with water, because the comforter that should relieve my soul is far from me: my children are desolate, because the enemy prevailed.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The comfort this verse longs for is pictured as the return of the living soul, and the one who could bring it back is far away.
THE MEANING
Tears flow while the comforter feels distant, and the devastation remains plain: the children are desolate, and the enemy has prevailed. The living soul longs to be restored, even as the verse names the absence of the one who might bring that restoration.
THE ROOT
מֵשִׁיב
meshiv
GROWS FROM
שׁוּב
To turn back, return, or bring back.
The Hebrew word translated “relieve” comes from shuv, the root of turning or bringing back. Comfort here reaches the living soul as restoration: a turning back toward wholeness.
ALSO GROWS
shuv: To turn or return.
שׁוּב
This is the root beneath the comforter’s work of bringing the soul back.
teshuvah: Return or turning.
תְּשׁוּבָה
It carries the same movement of coming back that the verse associates with relief.
מְנַחֵם
menachem
GROWS FROM
נחם
To console or comfort; in another verbal form, to be comforted or relent.
“comforter” in this verse is menachem. The verse makes comfort a presence: the menachem who could meet the grief is far away. The root can describe consolation given and received, so the absence is relational as well as inward.
ALSO GROWS
nechamah: Consolation or comfort.
נֶחָמָה
This names the comfort the verse mourns as distant.
nicham: To be comforted or to relent.
נִחַם
The branch shows comfort as something received, not merely an idea.
THE PATTERN
The living soul is restored as comfort returns, and received comfort can become comfort for others.
He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.I have seen his ways, and will heal him: I will lead him also, and restore comforts unto him and to his mourners.Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.THE THREAD
He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.The Hebrew phrase “restoreth my soul” uses the same shuv root as “relieve my soul” here. Psalm 23 gives the return that this lament longs for: the living soul turned back toward restoration.
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