Lamentations 3:5 · Bible study
Lamentations 3:5 Commentary: God as Siege Engineer of Suffering
Hebrew · 10 what the commentators say
Meaning in one sentence
Explore Lamentations 3:5's raw confession: God builds siege works and surrounds with gall and weariness.
Research Summary
- Meaning: God acts like a besieging enemy, surrounding the speaker with poison and exhaustion.
- Key words: H1129 banah (built), H7219 rosh (poison/gall), H8513 te'la'ah (hardship/weariness).
- Main debate: Whether this is faithful lament or despair; the chapter later turns to hope (vv.22-24).
- Theological theme: Divine sovereignty and the reality of suffering; God's agency in judgment.
- Best use: Validating honest grief and providing language for those who feel trapped by suffering.
Translation Comparison
BSB Berean Standard Bible 2020
He has besieged me and surrounded me with bitterness and hardship.
WEB World English Bible 2000
He has built against me, and surrounded me with bitterness and hardship.
KJV King James Version 1769
He hath builded against me, and compassed me with gall and travail.
ASV American Standard Version 1901
He hath builded against me, and compassed me with gall and travail.
YLT Young's Literal Translation 1898
He hath built up against me, And setteth round poverty and weariness.
Darby Darby Bible 1890
He hath built against me, and encompassed [me] with gall and toil.
Douay-Rheims Douay-Rheims Bible 1899
Beth. He hath built round about me, and he hath compassed me with gall, and labour.
Translations in other languages (10 available)
Edificó contra mí, y cercóme de tósigo y de trabajo.
Edificou contra mim, e cercou -me de fel e de trabalho.
Il a bâti autour de moi,
Er hat mich verbaut und mich mit Galle und Mühe umgeben.
Beth. Hij heeft tegen mij gebouwd, en Hij heeft mij met galle en moeite omringd.
Ha costituito una cinta contro di me, m’ha circondato d’amarezza e d’affanno.
Obudował mię a ogarnął żółcią i pracą;
огородил меня и обложил горечью и тяготою;
他築壘 攻擊我，用苦楚（原文是苦膽）和艱難 圍困我。
He has put up a wall against me, shutting me in with bitter sorrow.
Verse in Context
Original Language (Biblical Hebrew)
Old Testament · Biblical Hebrew · Lamentations 3:5
Source: STEPBible TAGNT/TEHB (CC-BY 4.0). Click or tap a morphology code to see the full parsing.
Scholars' Consensus
Commentators across traditions read this verse as a confession that God has become like an enemy besieging a city. Calvin notes the Hebrew metaphor: God builds walls so that there is no escape. Gill specifies "fortresses, as the Targum adds," raised against Jerusalem. Barnes explains that "gall and travail" means bitterness and weariness through toil. The Cambridge Bible treats the two verbs as an idiom: "built against me round about." Matthew Henry places this within the prophet's feeling of being under God's rod. This verse belongs to a cluster in Lamentations 3 (verses 7, 9) where God hedges, walls, and blocks every path. The consensus holds that the speaker gives God full agency for his affliction. This is not a theological denial but an honest complaint, a core feature of biblical lament.
How settled is the interpretation?
Interpretive difficulty: Medium
Main views:
- Expression of despair: The raw accusations of vv.1-18 are later corrected by the hope and trust of vv.22-24; this verse represents a temporary viewpoint.
- Faithful lament: The speaker addresses God directly, holding God responsible — a form of relationship that is an act of faith, not unbelief.
What is clear: God is portrayed as the direct agent of suffering using military siege imagery, and this is part of a biblical book that includes both unfiltered complaint and confident hope.
What Scholars Agree and Debate
| Topic | Agreed | Debated |
|---|---|---|
| Siege imagery | The verse uses military siege as a metaphor for God's opposition. | Some see it as purely metaphorical of spiritual distress; others as referring to the literal Babylonian siege. |
| Gall/poison (rosh) | The word means poison, venom, or bitterness. | Whether it refers to a specific substance (gall, wormwood) or a broader concept of bitterness. |
| Speaker's identity | The speaker is a representative sufferer, traditionally identified as Jeremiah. | Whether the 'I' is individual (Jeremiah) or corporate (personified Jerusalem). |
| God as direct cause | God is presented as the direct agent of suffering. | Traditions differ on whether this is a justified theological claim or a temporary human perspective later corrected by hope. |
Historical & Cultural Context
Lamentations was composed in the wake of Jerusalem's destruction by Babylon in 586 BC. The siege imagery in verse 5 is not abstract. Babylonian armies built earthen ramps (mounds) against city walls to breach them. The prophet takes this historical experience and reattributes it: "He has built against me." The verb is from H1129 (banah, to build), used normally for construction, here twisted to describe divine destruction, a building for the purpose of tearing down.
The two nouns create a layered picture. "Gall" (rosh, H7219) means poison or venom; it appears in Jeremiah's warnings of poisoned water as judgment (Jeremiah 8:14; 9:15; 23:15). "Hardship" (te'la'ah, H8513) means exhaustion from toil or long labour. Together they capture both the quality and the cost of suffering: a bitter, draining affliction that wears out its victim.
This verse occupies the second stanza (Beth) of an alphabetical acrostic. The structured form does not diminish the rawness of the content, it contains grief in a frame that can be held. The speaker (traditionally Jeremiah, though the text is anonymous) is not offering a systematic theology of suffering. He is describing a lived experience of God's apparent hostility, using the most vivid language available: siege, poison, exhaustion. The surrounding verses (vv.1, 18) pile image upon image, all laying the blame squarely at God's feet. This is lament in its most unvarnished form, a cry that refuses to explain away the pain.
Textual Notes
The supplied sources note one textual concern. The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges observes that the combination of "gall" and "travail" (KJV) "suggests some corruption in the text." Calvin records that the Septuagint and Targum render the Hebrew word rosh as "my head" (reading a different Hebrew form), while the Vulgate and Syriac render it as "gall." The Masoretic Text reads rosh (poison/venom), consistent with its use in Jeremiah 8:14, 9:15, and 23:15. No major textual variants are cited for the remainder of the verse. The consulted commentaries treat the verse as textually stable, with the main difficulty being lexical rather than manuscript-based.
Reception History
Lamentations 3:5 falls within the central acrostic poem that has been used in Christian liturgy for centuries. The chapter as a whole is read during Tenebrae services in the Western Church, especially the portion that moves from lament to hope. Early interpreters like Jerome read these verses as Jeremiah's personal grief over Jerusalem, while also seeing typological connections to Christ's suffering, a man of sorrows acquainted with grief. In the Reformation, commentators (Calvin, Luther) emphasised the verse as evidence of the law's condemnation and the need for God's mercy. The verse is less quoted individually than the surrounding chapter, but it functions as part of the sustained confession that leads to the famous turning point in 3:22-24: "The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases." In modern pastoral practice, this verse has been used to give voice to those who feel abandoned by God, affirming that such feelings have scriptural precedent.
Preaching This Verse
Three-point outline
- God as the Builder of Siege Works. The verse begins with a building project, but not one that brings shelter. God takes the role of an engineer constructing ramps to breach defenses. This imagery forces us to ask: what kind of God is this? Jeremiah's generation saw foreign armies as instruments of divine judgment, yet the prophet does not blame Babylon, he blames God. This point helps people name the feeling that God may be against them.
- The Experience of Encirclement. "Surrounded" is passive. The speaker is hemmed in with no route out. In verses 7 and 9 the walls reappear, he is trapped, his paths blocked. This resonates with anyone who has felt stuck in a painful situation with no apparent exit. The confession validates that experience without offering an immediate solution.
- The Taste of Bitterness and the Burden of Weariness. The nouns are concrete: poison and exhaustion. Suffering is not noble or instructive in the moment; it is bitter and draining. The verse does not spiritualise the pain. This allows the preacher to acknowledge that following God does not exempt one from the raw taste of hardship.
Five-point outline
- The Architect of Affliction, God builds.
- The Enemy at the Gates, God surrounds.
- The Poison of Bitterness, gall.
- The Exhaustion of Suffering, toil.
- The Honest Voice of Lament, the speaker does not hide.
Illustration hooks
- A person who loses their job and then their health, and feels every facet of life closing in. They might describe it as a siege.
- After a natural disaster, survivors describe the feeling of being "surrounded" by destruction with no clear way to rebuild.
- Long-term caregivers often speak of exhaustion and bitterness, the compound effect of daily toil and resentment.
Questions your congregation is asking
- If God is loving, why does this verse say he built against me?
- Is it sinful to feel like God has become my enemy?
- How do I pray when every prayer seems to bounce off closed doors?
Leading a Discussion
Lamentations 3:5 confronts us with an uncomfortable portrait: God as the one who builds siege works and surrounds a person with bitterness and weariness. Before we jump to solutions, sit with the honesty of this verse. It does not explain, defend, or apologise for God. It simply says what the speaker feels: God has done this.
Discussion questions
- What does this verse tell you about the speaker's view of God? Is it accurate?
- The verbs "built" and "surrounded" are active. How is God portrayed here? How does that compare to other Bible passages you know?
- Read verses 1-9 together. What patterns do you see? Why do you think the speaker repeats images of being walled in?
- The Hebrew word for "gall" (rosh) can mean poison. "Hardship" (te'la'ah) means weariness. What do these words add to the emotional weight of the verse?
- Lament is a biblical genre that includes complaint, accusation, and raw emotion. Why might God include such language in Scripture?
- If someone in your group shared that they feel God has "built against them," how would you respond?
- Does this verse change how you think about praying honestly when you suffer? Why or why not?
Word Study
The key original-language words in this verse. Select any word for its full lexicon entry — meaning, every occurrence in Scripture, and related words.
Cross-References
Source: Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (TSK, public domain)
| Job 19:8 | He has walled up my way so that I can’t pass, and has set darkness in my paths. |
| Psalms 69:21 | They also gave me poison for my food. In my thirst, they gave me vinegar to drink. |
| Jeremiah 8:14 | “Why do we sit still? Assemble yourselves! Let’s enter into the fortified cities, and let’s be silent there; for Yahweh our God has put us to silence, and given us poisoned water to drink, because we have sinned against Yahweh. |
| Jeremiah 9:15 | Therefore Yahweh of Armies, the God of Israel, says, “Behold, I will feed them, even this people, with wormwood and give them poisoned water to drink. |
| Jeremiah 23:15 | Therefore Yahweh of Armies says concerning the prophets: “Behold, I will feed them with wormwood, and make them drink poisoned water; for from the prophets of Jerusalem ungodliness has gone out into all the land.” |
| Lamentations 3:7 | He has walled me about, so that I can’t go out. He has made my chain heavy. |
| Lamentations 3:9 | He has walled up my ways with cut stone. He has made my paths crooked. |
| Lamentations 3:19 | Remember my affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the bitterness. |
Interlinear and lexical data from STEPBible (CC BY 4.0). Cross-reference data from OpenBible.info (CC BY 4.0). Commentaries are public domain.
For personal reflection
Read the devotional page — prayer, application, and "for families"
What the Commentators Say
9 public-domain commentaries, condensed into plain language.
Adam Clarke's Commentary Methodist/Wesleyan 1826
Clarke interprets the phrase "He hath builded against me" as a direct reference to the siege ramps and earthworks the Chaldean army constructed to breach Jerusalem's walls. He sees this not as a vague figure of speech but as a specific military tactic recorded in the historical account.
Barnes' Notes on the Bible Protestant 1832
Barnes notes that the language here comes from siege warfare: God is pictured as a military engineer building ramps against a city. He also clarifies that "travail" does not mean childbirth but simply weariness from hard labor.
Calvin's Commentaries Reformed 1564
Calvin highlights the striking Hebrew metaphor of God building siege mounds against the prophet, trapping him with no escape. He notes that being "surrounded with gall" means bitter affliction and poison, which in plain terms is being crushed by many troubles. This divine confinement reduces him to a state like the long-dead.
Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges Anglican 1880
The Cambridge Bible notes that the original Hebrew uses two verbs where English would naturally use a verb and an adverb, so the phrase means He built siege works all around. It also questions whether the combination of gall and travail reflects a textual corruption, possibly pointing to bitterness and wormwood.
Geneva Bible Notes Reformed 1599
The Geneva note interprets the verse as picturing God personally besieging Jerusalem. It reads “builded against me” as the construction of siege ramps and “
Gill's Exposition of the Bible Baptist 1748
Gill interprets the gall and travail as bitter sorrow and misery that drains a person's spirits and makes life wearisome, like poison. He connects this directly to Christ's own experience of being surrounded by sorrow in Gethsemane. For Gill, the verse depicts the overwhelming affliction of both the prophet and the Lord.
Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Commentary Protestant 1871
JFB clarifies that "builded" here refers to the construction of siege mounds around a besieged city. The purpose was to trap the inhabitants, leaving no way of escape. This imagery is consistent with similar language elsewhere in Scripture.
Matthew Henry's Commentary Reformed/Presbyterian 1710
Henry's central observation is that the prophet traces every bitter detail of his suffering back to a single source: God's anger. This is what makes the affliction genuine and unbearable, not merely hardship but the felt weight of divine displeasure. The complaint is a prayer poured out by someone overwhelmed, and its raw honesty is itself a form of faith.
Wesley's Explanatory Notes Methodist/Wesleyan 1754
Wesley interprets "builded" as a military image: the enemy constructed siege forts and artillery batteries aimed directly at the city's walls and houses. The word suggests a deliberate, systematic assault on the very structures meant to provide protection and shelter.