What Does Lamentations 3:64 Mean?
Repay them, O LORD, according to the work of their hands.
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
Render unto them a recompence, O LORD, according to the work of their hands.THE KEY
The Hebrew behind “render” means “cause to return”: recompense is what comes back from the work of their hands.
THE MEANING
When harm is before you, this verse gives the cry for justice a measure: let what returns match what hands have done. It keeps the wrong visible and places recompense before the LORD.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that harm can be erased by ignoring it: the work of the hands remains named and answerable.
THE ROOT
תָּשִׁיב
tashiv
GROWS FROM
שׁוּב
shuv
To turn back or return; in this form, to cause something to return.
The request is framed as return: what the hands have done comes back to them. “Render” carries that returning movement beneath its familiar sense of giving what is due.
ALSO GROWS
shuv: To turn back or return.
שׁוּב
This is the root verb behind the verse’s “render,” keeping the idea of return inside the request.
teshuvah: A return or turning.
תְּשׁוּבָה
This related word preserves the root’s movement of turning back, echoing the verse’s image of an action returning to its doer.
גְּמוּל
gemul
GROWS FROM
גָּמַל
gamal
To deal with or requite; the treatment or return that is given.
“Recompence” in this verse is gemul. The word names what is dealt out in response, whether benefit or recompense. Beside תָּשִׁיב (tashiv, cause to return), it sharpens the image: the requested recompense is what comes back from the work of their hands.
ALSO GROWS
gamal: To deal with or requite.
גָּמַל
The verb shows the action beneath “recompence”: someone is dealt with in response to what they have done.
gemulav: His benefits or dealings.
גְּמוּלָיו
This related form shows that the same root can name what is received from another’s action, whether it is benefit or recompense.
THE PATTERN
Actions return to their doers in a measure that corresponds to what they have done.
Give them according to their deeds, and according to the breaking of their doings. Give them according to the work of their hands; turn back upon them their due.Who will give back to each one according to his works.Do not be led astray. God is not sneered at. For whatever a person sows, that also he reaps.THE THREAD
Give them according to their deeds, and according to the breaking of their doings. Give them according to the work of their hands; turn back upon them their due.Psalm 28:4 uses the same גְּמוּל (gemul, recompense) root and repeats the phrase “according to the work of their hands.” That shared wording frames recompense as consequence proportioned to the very work the hands have done.
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