What Does Lamentations 3:4 Mean?
He wears away my flesh and my skin; he breaks my bones.
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
My flesh and my skin hath he made old; he hath broken my bones.THE KEY
Here “made old” carries the image of being worn through: the verse names damage to both the body’s covering and its frame.
THE MEANING
The verse names bodily depletion in the present: flesh and skin wear down, and bones break. It keeps both the visible surface and the hidden frame in view, leaving the harm unsoftened.
THE ROOT
בִּלָּה
billah
GROWS FROM
בלה
Wear out, waste away, become old.
“wears away” in this verse is billah. The verb can describe a garment wearing out, yet here its objects are flesh and skin. English “made old” can sound like age alone; the root carries the sense of wearing through and depletion before the line turns to broken bones.
ALSO GROWS
yivlu: They wear out; they grow old.
יִבְלוּ
Isaiah uses this form for things that wear out like a garment, giving the bodily image here a material edge.
baleh: Worn out, as of clothing.
בָּלֶה
This branch shows that the root can name visible wear in a material thing, while this verse applies it to flesh and skin.
שִׁבַּר
shibber
GROWS FROM
שבר
Break, shatter.
The same root names a fracture or ruin and also appears in a word for breakers, the surf that crashes. That range gives “broken” the force of a body met by breaking pressure.
ALSO GROWS
shever: A break, fracture, or ruin.
שֶׁבֶר
The noun makes clear that the root can name the damage itself, not just the act that causes it.
mishbar: A breaker or crashing wave.
מִשְׁבָּר
This branch carries the root’s force into an image of something breaking over and against what it meets.
THE PATTERN
Lament gives bodily suffering its plain physical names without turning the damage into abstraction.
My bone clings to my skin and to my flesh, and I slip free with the skin of my teeth.From the voice of my groaning my bones cling to my flesh.Therefore we do not give out; though our outer person is worn through, yet our inner person is made new day after day.THE THREAD
Behold, the Lord GOD will gird me. Who is he who will condemn me? Behold, they all wear out like a garment, and the moth eats them up.The verb behind “made old” here shares the root בלה (b-l-h) with Isaiah’s “wax old.” Isaiah applies it to a garment; Lamentations applies it to flesh and skin, keeping the image of wearing through concrete.
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