What Does Lamentations 3:43 Mean?
You wrap us in the burning of anger and pursue us; you slaughter, you do not spare.
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
Thou hast covered with anger, and persecuted us: thou hast slain, thou hast not pitied.THE KEY
The verse makes anger a covering that advances into pursuit, killing, and the refusal to spare.
THE MEANING
This verse gives the reader stark language for anger that covers, pursuit that closes in, killing, and pity withheld. It leaves the injury and the absence of sparing visible without explaining them away.
THE ROOT
סַכּוֹתָה
sakkotah
GROWS FROM
סכך
To cover, screen, or hedge in.
“wrap” in this verse is sakkotah. The same covering-root forms both a sheltering booth and a screen. Here the covering is anger, so enclosure becomes a way of hemming in rather than sheltering.
ALSO GROWS
sukkah: Booth or shelter
סֻכָּה
This sheltering branch shows that covering can protect; the verse’s surrounding words make this covering constricting and dangerous.
masak: Screen or curtain
מָסָךְ
A screen covers by blocking what can be seen, adding concealment to the sense of the verse’s angry covering.
וַתִּרְדְּפֵנוּ
vatirdefenu
GROWS FROM
רדף
To pursue or chase after.
“pursue” in this verse is vatirdefenu. The root describes pursuit itself; Psalm 23:6 uses it for goodness and mercy that “follow” the speaker. Here the pursuer and the outcome make that pursuit lethal.
ALSO GROWS
rodef: Pursuer or persecutor
רֹדֵף
This branch names the one doing the chasing; the verse directly addresses the pursuer as the source of the harm.
yirdefuni: They shall follow me
יִרְדְּפוּנִי
Psalm 23:6 uses this form for goodness and mercy following the speaker, showing how the same force of pursuit can carry a different outcome.
חָמָלְתָּ
ḥāmalta
GROWS FROM
חמל
To spare or show pity.
“spare” in this verse is ḥāmalta. “Not pitied” also means “not spared”: the root holds compassion and restraint from harm together. Its absence is practical as well as inward, no sparing is shown.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāmal: To spare or show pity
חָמַל
The verb names compassion through the act of withholding harm, making the verse’s final words a refusal to spare.
ḥemlāh: Pity or compassion
חֶמְלָה
This noun from the same root shows that what is withheld is compassion itself, not merely a feeling the speaker cannot see.
THE PATTERN
Lament can speak to God in language that names violence, abandonment, or silence without softening the wound.
I cry out to you, and you do not answer me; I stand, and you gaze at me. You become hard to me; with the strength of your hand you press against me.LORD, why do you push away my living soul? Why do you hide your face from me?And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? which is, being interpreted, My God, my God, why have you left me behind?THE THREAD
And I will dash them one against another, the fathers and the sons together, says the LORD. I will not pity, nor spare, nor have compassion, but ruin them.Jeremiah’s “I will not pity” uses the same חמל (ḥāmal, spare or pity) root as Lamentations. The shared root makes the absence of pity concrete: it is also the absence of sparing.
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