What Does Lamentations 3:60 Mean?
You see all their vengeance, all their plans against me.
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 seen all their vengeance and all their imaginations against me.THE KEY
Their vengeance and the designs behind it are both seen; even the harm’s hidden interior is not hidden from God.
THE MEANING
When others direct vengeance and plans toward you, neither the act nor the intent behind it falls outside God’s sight. The verse holds outward harm and inward plotting together: both are seen now.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that the harm done to you, or the plans aimed at you, can happen unseen by God.
THE ROOT
מַחְשְׁבֹתָם
maḥshevotam
GROWS FROM
חשב
ḥ-š-b
To think, reckon, devise, or plan.
“plans” in this verse is maḥshevotam. Here the word names designs held toward the speaker, not merely passing mental images. The root also carries the sense of reckoning: the plotting has an inner calculation, and the verse says that calculation is seen.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāshav: Think, reckon, devise.
חָשַׁב
The verb shows that these “imaginations” can be deliberate designs or plans.
maḥashavah: A thought, intention, or plan.
מַחְשָׁבָה
This singular form shares the verse’s core word and makes its sense of intention clear.
ḥeshbon: An account or reckoning.
חֶשְׁבּוֹן
This branch echoes the calculating quality that can lie inside a plan.
נִקְמָתָם
niqmatam
GROWS FROM
נקם
n-q-m
To avenge or seek redress for a wrong.
The verse names the vengeance itself alongside the plans aimed at the speaker. What is done and what is intended remain together within what is seen.
ALSO GROWS
nāqam: To avenge.
נָקַם
The verb names the action carried by the noun in this verse.
neqāmāh: Vengeance or redress.
נְקָמָה
This noun form shows the same root as the force directed toward the speaker.
THE PATTERN
God’s sight reaches both visible acts and the thoughts held in secret.
You perceive my sitting and my rising, and from afar you separate out my thought.The eyes of the LORD are in every place, watching the harm and the good.And no creation is hidden before him, but all things are naked and bared at the throat to the eyes of him to whom our account belongs.THE THREAD
The LORD perceives the thoughts of humankind, that they are vapor.Psalm 94:11 uses the same Hebrew word for “thoughts” as Lamentations 3:60: מַחְשְׁבֹת (maḥshevot), from חשב (ḥ-š-b), meaning to think, reckon, or plan. In one verse these thoughts are directed against the speaker; in the other, human thoughts are known by the LORD.
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