What Does Lamentations 3:13 Mean?
He brings the arrows of his quiver into my kidneys.
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
He hath caused the arrows of his quiver to enter into my reins.THE KEY
The KJV’s “reins” are kidneys, so anguish here is an arrow wound in the body’s hidden vital center.
THE MEANING
The pain is experienced as aimed: the one named “He” sends arrows into the speaker’s hidden vital center. “Reins” means kidneys, placing the wound deep within the body rather than at its surface. The violence in the image remains stark.
THE ROOT
הֵבִיא
hēvî
GROWS FROM
בוא
b-w-ʾ
Come, arrive, enter; in the causative form, bring or cause to enter.
“caused to enter” in this verse is hēvî. The verb makes the arrows come all the way into the kidneys. The KJV’s “reins” names that hidden vital center, so the sentence presents anguish as penetration, not a vague affliction.
ALSO GROWS
bāʾ: Came, arrived.
בָּא
The simple verb names the movement that the verse makes causative: something comes inward.
māvōʾ: Entrance, entry.
מָבוֹא
This branch names the point of entry, sharpening the verse’s image of a wound crossing into the body.
bîʾāh: Coming, entry.
בִּיאָה
This noun preserves the root’s sense of arrival inside, the movement at the center of the verse.
THE PATTERN
Scripture gives invisible assault the image of arrows aimed at or reaching a person’s inward life.
For the arrows of the Almighty are in me, and their heat drinks up my breath; the terrors of God line up against me.For your arrows sink into me, and your hand comes down upon me heavily.Over all, taking up the shield of trust, with which you will be able to put out all the burning arrows of the evil one.THE THREAD
His archers circle me. He splits open my kidneys and does not spare. He pours my gall onto the earth.Both verses use כִּלְיוֹתַי (kilyotai, “my kidneys”), rendered “reins” in the KJV. Job makes the same hidden organs the target of archers who split them apart, turning Lamentations’ inward arrow wound into an even more explicit image of bodily violence.
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