What Does Lamentations 3:27 Mean in the King James?
It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth.
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 Hebrew word for “bear” is the same verb Isaiah uses for bearing the sin of many, placing this yoke within a wider language of weight carried.
THE MEANING
The verse says there is good in the yoke you bear while young. Its verb pictures lifting and carrying a real weight, while the lament around it keeps that weight’s ache in view. The claim makes room for formative burden without calling all suffering good.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It loosens the belief that a hard beginning can only be damage; the verse recognizes that good can come through bearing.
THE ROOT
יִשָּׂא
yissaʾ
GROWS FROM
נשׂא
To lift, carry, or bear.
“bear” in this verse is yissaʾ. The verb makes the yoke a weight taken up and carried. Elsewhere, the same verb is used for bearing guilt, extending its language from physical loads to moral weight.
ALSO GROWS
massaʾ: A load or burden; also a pronouncement.
מַשָּׂא
This noun from the same root makes the connection between carrying and burden explicit.
nasaʾ ʿavon: To bear guilt; in some contexts, to pardon or forgive.
נָשָׂא עָוֹן
The same verb carries moral weight as well as a yoke, showing how far the language of bearing reaches.
THE PATTERN
A burden carried through a season can become a teacher whose fruit appears later.
It is good for me that I have been afflicted; that I might learn thy statutes.Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby.THE THREAD
Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he hath poured out his soul unto death: and he was numbered with the transgressors; and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.Lamentations uses יִשָּׂא (yissaʾ), from נשׂא, for bearing a yoke; Isaiah uses the same root in “he bare the sin of many.” The shared verb lets the weight in this verse echo through scripture’s language of bearing.
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