What Does Lamentations 3:56 Mean?
You hear my voice; do not hide your ear from my relief, from my cry.
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 heard my voice: hide not thine ear at my breathing, at my cry.THE KEY
The voice is heard, yet the plea persists because the speaker asks for relief and room, not merely for sound to reach an ear.
THE MEANING
Your voice is heard, and still the need for relief remains; the cry is not erased by being received. The Hebrew word translated “breathing” carries a sense of respite and room, giving the prayer the shape of a plea for distress to loosen.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Being heard does not mean the distress is already over; the prayer holds both truths at once.
THE ROOT
לְרַוְחָתִי
ləravḥātî
GROWS FROM
רווח
To be spacious or to find relief and respite.
The KJV’s “breathing” here represents a plea for relief or room. The root’s spaciousness turns this line from a sound at the ear into a cry from constriction for room to open.
ALSO GROWS
rāvaḥ: To have room or find relief.
רָוַח
This verbal form makes relief a movement into room, illuminating what the speaker longs for.
revaḥ: Relief, respite, or enlargement.
רֶוַח
This is the word translated “enlargement” in Esther 4:14, linking the plea for relief with space opening where distress presses in.
שָׁמַעְתָּ
shāmaʿtā
GROWS FROM
שמע
To hear or listen.
English can leave “heard” as a completed sound event, but the verse immediately asks for an ear that does not withdraw. The שמע word family reaches from hearing toward heeding, so the plea is for attention that remains responsive.
ALSO GROWS
shemaʿ: Hear or listen; in an imperative, hear and respond.
שְׁמַע
The familiar command uses the same root, bringing out the responsive attention the speaker seeks.
shemuʿāh: A report or something heard.
שְׁמוּעָה
This noun shows the root’s reach from hearing itself to what is received and attended to.
THE PATTERN
A cry from distress is met with hearing that opens toward relief and deliverance.
The aligned cry out, and the LORD hears, and snatches them out of all their narrow places.For if you altogether hold your tongue at this time, then widening and deliverance will stand forth for the Jews from another place, but you and your father's house will perish. And who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?And this is the open speech we hold toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.THE THREAD
For if you altogether hold your tongue at this time, then widening and deliverance will stand forth for the Jews from another place, but you and your father's house will perish. And who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?Esther’s “enlargement” (רֶוַח) and the word behind this verse’s “breathing” (לְרַוְחָתִי) share the root רווח. The shared root shows the cry as a request for relief and space to open where distress has constricted it.
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