What Does Lamentations 1:14 Mean?
The yoke of my rebellions is fastened by his hand. They are braided and rise upon my neck. He makes my strength stumble. The Lord places me in hands from which I cannot rise.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
The yoke of my transgressions is bound by his hand: they are wreathed, and come up upon my neck: he hath made my strength to fall, the Lord hath delivered me into their hands, from whom I am not able to rise up.THE KEY
The verse turns rebellion into a braided yoke: what breaks away becomes what winds around the neck until strength cannot rise.
THE MEANING
A burden can bind so tightly that it climbs to the neck, makes strength stumble, and leaves rising out of reach. The verse also names the terror of being delivered into others’ hands and having no power to stand back up.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that being unable to rise always means you are not trying hard enough: the verse names being overpowered and handed into others’ control as part of the collapse.
THE ROOT
פְּשָׁעַי
peshaʿay
GROWS FROM
פשע
pashaʿ
To break away or revolt; rebellion.
“rebellions” in this verse is peshaʿay. The root carries the sense of rebellion, of breaking away. Here those breaks are not weightless: they are bound together and wound around the neck until standing fails.
ALSO GROWS
pashaʿ: To rebel, to break away.
פָּשַׁע
The verb makes “transgressions” an active break, fitting the verse’s image of entangled consequences.
posheaʿ: A rebel; one who breaks away.
פֹּשֵׁעַ
The same root names both the break and the one who enacts it, keeping the yoke tied to the condition of separation.
הִכְשִׁיל
hikhshil
GROWS FROM
כשל
kashal
To stumble, totter, or cause to stumble.
“makes my strength stumble” in this verse is hikhshil. The line describes strength being made to stumble, not merely running low. The root connects the loss of strength to lost footing: the speaker cannot stand because standing itself has been interrupted.
ALSO GROWS
kashal: To stumble, totter, or fail.
כָּשַׁל
This is the action behind “made my strength to fall”: strength is thrown off balance.
mikshol: A stumbling block or obstacle.
מִכְשׁוֹל
The related noun shows how the same root can name both stumbling and what causes it.
THE PATTERN
Scripture pictures a constraining burden as a yoke that weighs on the neck and exceeds unaided strength, while also naming its release.
And in that day his burden will be removed from your shoulder, and his yoke from your neck, and the yoke will be ruined because of the oil.Now therefore why do you test God, to put a yoke upon the neck of the learners, which neither our fathers nor we were strong enough to carry?Come to me, all you who toil and have been loaded down, and I will give you rest.THE THREAD
But he was pierced for our rebellion, and crushed for our crookedness. The straightening that made us whole was upon him, and by his bruises we are healed.The same Hebrew root behind “transgressions” appears in both verses. Here rebellion is pictured as a yoke winding around the neck; Isaiah places that same word beside wounding and healing, opening a line from binding toward repair.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us