What Does Lamentations 2:13 Mean?
What shall I bring to witness for you? What shall I level with you, O daughter of Jerusalem? What shall I set in line beside you, that I may comfort you, O virgin daughter of Zion? For your breaking is great as the sea. Who can heal you?
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
What thing shall I take to witness for thee? what thing shall I liken to thee, O daughter of Jerusalem? what shall I equal to thee, that I may comfort thee, O virgin daughter of Zion? for thy breach is great like the sea: who can heal thee?THE KEY
Yerushalayim (יְרוּשָׁלַיִם, Yerushalayim; twofold wholeness) is named beside a breach as vast as the sea, while the healer remains an unanswered question.
THE MEANING
Your breach is not made smaller to make it speakable; it is measured against the sea. The verse asks who can heal you and leaves the question open. Even in that question, you are addressed as Yerushalayim (יְרוּשָׁלַיִם, Yerushalayim; twofold wholeness), holding that name alongside the break.
THE ROOT
שִׁבְרֵךְ
shivrekh
GROWS FROM
שבר
sh-b-r
To break, shatter.
The English “breach” can sound like a condition; שבר carries the act of breaking and what is left broken. The root returns in Psalm 147:3 for “broken,” joining this sea-sized rupture to the verse’s question of healing.
ALSO GROWS
shavar: To break or shatter.
שָׁבַר
The verb shows the breaking inside the noun “breach.”
shavur: Broken.
שָׁבוּר
This form appears in Psalm 147:3, where the brokenhearted are named alongside healing.
יִרְפָּא
yirpa
GROWS FROM
רפא
r-p-ʾ
To heal or restore health.
The question is not what can cover the breach, but who can heal it: this root names an action carried out by a healer. The neighboring רָפָה (raphah, release or let the hands drop) shares the first two consonants but is a distinct root, letting the sound of release echo beside healing without making the words identical.
ALSO GROWS
rophe: Healer; one who heals.
רֹפֵא
The verse’s question is about the one who can perform the healing.
marpe: Healing or health.
מַרְפֵּא
This branch names the healing that the verse asks who can bring.
THE PATTERN
Scripture names the wound without shrinking it, then places healing in the action of a healer.
He mends the broken in heart, and binds up their wounds.For I will bring up healing for you, and I will heal you of your wounds, declares the LORD, for they called you the driven away, saying, This is Zion, no one seeks her.Speak your stumbles into the open to one another, and pray over one another, that you may be made whole. The asking of an aligned one, working within, is very strong.THE THREAD
He mends the broken in heart, and binds up their wounds.Lamentations calls the breach שִׁבְרֵךְ (shivrekh, your breach), from שבר; Psalm 147:3 uses the same root in שָׁבוּר (shavur, broken). Its “healeth” also comes from רפא, the same root as “heal” in Lamentations, bringing both roots together in one short verse.
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