What Does Lamentations 3:46 Mean?

All our enemies gape their mouths against us.

Lamentations 3:46 · SDV

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.

This verse in the King James

King James wording

King James Version

All our enemies have opened their mouths against us.

THE KEY

The word for “enemies” shares its Hebrew root with “enmity”: hostility itself is what speaks through the mouths turned against you.

THE MEANING

When hostility gathers against you, it does not remain abstract; it opens its mouth and becomes audible in words aimed at you and those with you. The verse names that exposure plainly: opposition is speaking against the shared “us” now.

WHAT THIS UNDOES

It undoes the belief that words spoken against you are weightless because they are only words; here, the open mouths are the form the opposition takes.

THE ROOT

אֹיְבֵינוּ

ʾōyvēnū

GROWS FROM

איב

ʾ-y-b

to be hostile; enmity

⁨אֹיְבֵינוּ⁩ (ʾōyvēnū, our enemies) carries the same ⁨א־י־ב⁩ consonants as ⁨אֵיבָה⁩ (ʾēvāh, enmity). The verse names more than a group: hostility itself is what speaks through their open mouths.

ALSO GROWS

ʾōyēv: enemy; one who is hostile

אֹיֵב

This singular form keeps the same ⁨א־י־ב⁩ consonants, so the collective “enemies” grows from the same hostility-root.

ʾēvāh: enmity; hostility

אֵיבָה

This abstract noun uses the same root and names the condition expressed by the people called enemies here.

THE PATTERN

Hostility becomes audible when opposition opens its mouth against another.

They gape at me with their mouths, a lion tearing and roaring.

Psalm 22:13 · SDVThe gaping mouths make hostility an open assault rather than a distant label.

They open their mouth wide against me; they say, Aha, aha, our eye has seen it.

Psalm 35:21 · SDVThe mouth opens wide against the speaker, and accusation follows.

Who, when he was insulted, hurled no insult back; when he suffered, he threatened not; but handed himself over to the one who judges by alignment.

1 Peter 2:23 · SDVReviling and threats show verbal opposition at work, even as the verse describes a response that does not echo it.

THE THREAD

And I will set opposition between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.

Genesis 3:15 · SDV

Genesis names ⁨אֵיבָה⁩ (ʾēvāh, enmity), built from the same ⁨א־י־ב⁩ root as ⁨אֹיְבֵינוּ⁩ (ʾōyvēnū, our enemies) here. The shared root reveals hostility as a condition made audible through the enemies’ mouths.

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