Lamentations 1:18 (LSB)

Passage

“Yahweh is righteous; For I have rebelled against His command; Hear now, all peoples, And behold my pain; My virgins and my young men Have gone into captivity.

Nearby Context

Lamentations 1:16 For these things I am weeping; My eyes run down with water; Because far from me is a comforter, One who restores my soul. My children are desolate Because the enemy has prevailed.”

Lamentations 1:17 Zion stretches out her hands; There is no one to comfort her; Yahweh has commanded concerning Jacob That the ones round about him should be his adversaries; Jerusalem has become an impure thing among them.

Lamentations 1:18 “Yahweh is righteous; For I have rebelled against His command; Hear now, all peoples, And behold my pain; My virgins and my young men Have gone into captivity.

Lamentations 1:19 I called to my lovers, but they deceived me; My priests and my elders breathed their last in the city While they sought food for themselves in order to restore their souls.

Lamentations 1:20 See, O Yahweh, for I am in distress; My inmost being is greatly disturbed; My heart is overturned within me, For I have been very rebellious. In the street the sword bereaves; In the house it is like death.

Study Lenses

The verse centers on "yahweh", "righteous", "rebelled", "against", "command", "hear", "peoples", and "behold". It is saying that the verse draws attention to "yahweh" and "righteous", so its meaning should be read from those terms before moving to application.

The nearby context moves from verse 17's "Zion stretches out her hands There is..." into verse 19's "I called to my lovers but they...", so "yahweh" and "righteous" belong inside that flow. In Lamentations context, the local focus is covenant, worship, and faithfulness.

A plain takeaway is to answer the verse's own emphasis on "yahweh" and "righteous" with trust shaped by these words, not by a vague optimism outside the passage.