What Does Lamentations 3:31 Mean?
For the Lord does not push away for the ages.
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
For the Lord will not cast off for ever:THE KEY
The verse gives rejection an endpoint: what feels like being cast aside does not define the Lord’s final relation to you.
THE MEANING
The Lord does not leave you in rejection forever. Grief and the feeling of being cast aside can be real now, without becoming the final truth of your relationship with God. This verse places a limit around abandonment.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that feeling rejected now means you are rejected for good.
THE ROOT
זָנַח
zānaḥ
GROWS FROM
ז־נ־ח
z-n-ḥ
To reject, spurn, or cast aside.
“push away” in this verse is zānaḥ. The root names the experience directly: being pushed away or rejected. Here, the verse does not deny that this can be felt; it says the Lord’s rejection does not become the lasting condition.
ALSO GROWS
zənaḥtānî: You have cast me off.
זְנַחְתָּנִי
Psalm 43:2 uses this form for one person’s felt rejection; Lamentations places a limit on that state.
zənaḥtānû: You have cast us off.
זְנַחְתָּנוּ
Psalm 44:9 uses the same root for a shared experience of rejection, showing how the root can name both personal and communal pain.
לְעוֹלָם
ləʿolām
GROWS FROM
ע־ל־ם
ʿ-l-m
To hide or conceal; the root is often associated with what lies beyond sight.
“for the ages” in this verse is ləʿolām. עוֹלָם (ʿolām, “age” or “ages”) can name a span whose limits are not visible from within it. The verse speaks into that unseen stretch and says that being cast off does not fill it.
ALSO GROWS
ʿālam: To be hidden or concealed.
עָלַם
This verb carries the root’s sense of what is out of view, echoing how the end of a painful stretch may be impossible to see from inside it.
heʿlīm: To hide or conceal.
הֶעְלִים
This form keeps the same root idea of concealment alongside עוֹלָם (ʿolām, “age” or “ages”), whose full span remains unseen.
THE PATTERN
The Lord’s rejection and the grief around it are bounded; they do not erase compassion or presence.
For in a small blink I have let go of you; but with great compassion I will gather you.For the burning of his anger lasts a moment, and in his favor is life. Weeping may lodge in the evening, but a ringing cry of joy comes in the morning.Let your way of living be without the love of silver, and let what is at hand be enough, for he has said, I will never let go of you, nor leave you behind.THE THREAD
Does the Lord push away for the ages? Is he pleased no more?Psalm 77:7 uses the same root זָנַח (zānaḥ, “cast off” or “reject”) and the same word עוֹלָם (ʿolām, “age” or “ages”), but frames them as a question. Lamentations 3:31 answers that fear: rejection does not last forever.
This reading is from Selah Verse.
You can read any verse this way in the app, keep it as a card, and send it on.
A Bible app where you send verses from your keyboard and in Messages, and every verse has a Deep Dive.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us