What Does Lamentations 5:21 Mean?
Turn us to you, O LORD, and we will turn; make our days new, as of old.
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
Turn thou us unto thee, O LORD, and we shall be turned; renew our days as of old.THE KEY
The Hebrew holds God’s turning of us and our own return inside the same root: return begins as something received.
THE MEANING
This prayer gives words to the present moment when your days feel constricted: the LORD is asked to turn you toward him, and your returning follows. Renewal asks for the days themselves to be made new in the shape of a remembered wholeness.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that return depends on your own power to find the way back: the prayer asks the LORD to turn you, then speaks of your return.
THE ROOT
הֲשִׁיבֵנוּ
hashivenu
GROWS FROM
שׁוּב
shuv
turn back, return
The root שׁוּב (shuv, turn back or return) appears first as a request for the LORD to turn us, then again in וְנָשׁוּבָה (venashuvah, and we shall return). English renders the second phrase passively, “we shall be turned”, while the Hebrew says “we shall return,” joining God’s initiative with our own movement.
ALSO GROWS
venashuvah: and we shall return
וְנָשׁוּבָה
This form appears in the same verse: the request for God to turn us is answered by our return.
yeshovev: he restores, brings back
יְשׁוֹבֵב
Psalm 23:3 uses this form for restoration, showing the same root as a return to what has been lost.
חַדֵּשׁ
chaddesh
GROWS FROM
חָדַשׁ
chadash
make new, renew
“make new” in this verse is chaddesh. The verb asks for the days to be made new, not merely remembered. Its root also forms חֹדֶשׁ (chodesh, month or new moon), linking renewal with the beginning of a fresh cycle even as the prayer looks back to days of old.
ALSO GROWS
chadash: new
חָדָשׁ
This adjective shares the root and makes explicit the newness contained in the request to renew the days.
chodesh: month, new moon
חֹדֶשׁ
The same root names a recurring new cycle, deepening the image of days made new.
THE PATTERN
Return takes shape as a response to God’s turning, and renewal restores the days themselves.
Turn us again, O God, and cause your face to shine, and we will be delivered.Therefore say to them, Thus says the LORD of hosts, Turn to me, says the LORD of hosts, and I will turn to you, says the LORD of hosts.Turn around, then, and turn back, so that your shortcomings may be wiped away, and the times of breathing again may come from the face of the LORD.THE THREAD
I have surely heard Ephraim rocking himself thus, saying, You have trained me, and I was trained, like a calf untrained to the yoke. Turn me back, and I will turn back, for you are the LORD my God.The same root שׁוּב (shuv, turn back or return) appears in both prayers, and Jeremiah makes the English-hidden second movement explicit: “turn thou me, and I shall be turned.” The echo opens Lamentations’ communal plea as the same movement: God turns us, and our return follows.
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