What Does Lamentations 3:53 Mean in the King James?
They have cut off my life in the dungeon, and cast a stone upon me.
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 language of life remains rooted in living even as the verse describes it being cut off.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks into the moment when danger feels total: the speaker’s life is cut off in a pit, and a stone is hurled against him. It holds the violence plainly, while the word for “my life” still carries the root meaning “to live.”
THE ROOT
חַיָּי
ḥayyay
GROWS FROM
חיה
To live, be alive, keep alive.
The Hebrew word translated “my life” belongs to חַיִּים, a plural-shaped word for life, with “my” attached. The verse places that language of living inside a sentence describing an attempt to cut life off.
ALSO GROWS
ḥay: Living, alive.
חַי
This form names the state of being alive at the root of the life threatened in the verse.
ḥayyah: A living creature.
חַיָּה
The same root names living beings, making the threatened life concrete rather than abstract.
lehaḥayot: To keep alive, revive.
לְהַחֲיוֹת
This form carries the root into the act of sustaining life, a sharp echo beside a verse about life being cut off.
THE PATTERN
Scripture names life amid descent toward the pit, refusing to equate nearness to death with erasure.
He will deliver his soul from going into the pit, and his life shall see the light.O LORD, thou hast brought up my soul from the grave: thou hast kept me alive, that I should not go down to the pit.Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed;THE THREAD
O LORD, thou hast brought up my soul from the grave: thou hast kept me alive, that I should not go down to the pit.The same Hebrew root behind “my life” appears in “kept me alive,” joining the life cut off in the pit with life brought up from it. The connection holds the danger plainly while showing that both lines speak of life through the language of living.
This reading is from Selah Verse.
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