What Does Lamentations 1:22 Mean?
Let all their harm come before your face, and press upon them, as you have pressed upon me for all my rebellions. My groans are many, and my heart is faint.
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
Let all their wickedness come before thee; and do unto them, as thou hast done unto me for all my transgressions: for my sighs are many, and my heart is faint.THE KEY
The prayer holds self-confession and a demand for reciprocal justice in the same breath.
THE MEANING
Your plea for justice stands beside your admission of wrongdoing; each is brought into God’s sight without erasing the other. Your sighs are many and your heart is faint, the verse gives your grief its full weight while asking that others’ wrongdoing be seen.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Owning your own wrongdoing means you must stay silent about harm done to you.
THE ROOT
פְּשָׁעָי
pəšaʿay
GROWS FROM
פ־ש־ע
To break away; to rebel.
“rebellions” in this verse is pəšaʿay. English “transgressions” can sound like a list of infractions; פשע (p-sh-ʿ; pāshaʿ), meaning “to break away, rebel,” carries the force of rupture. The lament names its own rebellion and still calls the other side’s wickedness into God’s sight, so confession does not silence the demand for justice.
ALSO GROWS
pāshaʿ: To rebel, to break away.
פָּשַׁע
The verb shows the force carried by the speaker’s “transgressions”: a rupture, not merely a vague failing.
pōshēaʿ: One who rebels; a transgressor.
פֹּשֵׁעַ
This branch brings the person who breaks away into view alongside the act of rebellion named in the prayer.
THE PATTERN
God’s sight receives hidden wrongdoing and the unhidden groan alike.
Lord, all my longing lies open before you, and my groaning is not hidden from you.You set our crookedness before you, our hidden things into the light of your face.For there is nothing covered that will not be uncovered, and nothing hidden that will not be known.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.Both verses use פֶּשַׁע (peshaʿ), meaning rebellion or breaking away, for “transgressions.” Isaiah makes the rupture’s bodily cost visible; Lamentations gives its cry and its demand for justice.
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