12He bent His bow
         And set me as a target for the arrow.

13He made the arrows of His quiver
         To enter into my inward parts.

14I have become a laughingstock to all my people,
         Their mocking song all the day.

15He has filled me with bitterness,
         He has made me drunk with wormwood.

16He has broken my teeth with gravel;
         He has made me cower in the dust.

17My soul has been rejected from peace;
         I have forgotten happiness.

18So I say, “My strength has perished,
         And so has my hope from the LORD.”

Hope of Relief in God’s Mercy

19Remember my affliction and my wandering, the wormwood and bitterness.

20Surely my soul remembers
         And is bowed down within me.

21This I recall to my mind,
         Therefore I have hope.

22The LORD’S lovingkindnesses indeed never cease,
         For His compassions never fail.

23They are new every morning;
         Great is Your faithfulness.

24“The LORD is my portion,” says my soul,
         “Therefore I have hope in Him.”

25The LORD is good to those who wait for Him,
         To the person who seeks Him.

26It is good that he waits silently
         For the salvation of the LORD.

27It is good for a man that he should bear
         The yoke in his youth.

28Let him sit alone and be silent
         Since He has laid it on him.

29Let him put his mouth in the dust,
         Perhaps there is hope.

30Let him give his cheek to the smiter,
         Let him be filled with reproach.

31For the Lord will not reject forever,

32For if He causes grief,
         Then He will have compassion
         According to His abundant lovingkindness.

33For He does not afflict willingly
         Or grieve the sons of men.

34To crush under His feet
         All the prisoners of the land,

35To deprive a man of justice
         In the presence of the Most High,

36To defraud a man in his lawsuit—
         Of these things the Lord does not approve.

37Who is there who speaks and it comes to pass,
         Unless the Lord has commanded it?

38Is it not from the mouth of the Most High
         That both good and ill go forth?

39Why should any living mortal, or any man,
         Offer complaint in view of his sins?

40Let us examine and probe our ways,
         And let us return to the LORD.

41We lift up our heart and hands
         Toward God in heaven;

42We have transgressed and rebelled,
         You have not pardoned.

43You have covered Yourself with anger
         And pursued us;
         You have slain and have not spared.

44You have covered Yourself with a cloud
         So that no prayer can pass through.

45You have made us mere offscouring and refuse
         In the midst of the peoples.

46All our enemies have opened their mouths against us.

47Panic and pitfall have befallen us,
         Devastation and destruction;

48My eyes run down with streams of water
         Because of the destruction of the daughter of my people.

49My eyes pour down unceasingly,
         Without stopping,

50Until the LORD looks down
         And sees from heaven.

51My eyes bring pain to my soul
         Because of all the daughters of my city.

52My enemies without cause
         Hunted me down like a bird;

53They have silenced me in the pit
         And have placed a stone on me.

54Waters flowed over my head;
         I said, “I am cut off!”

55I called on Your name, O LORD,
         Out of the lowest pit.

56You have heard my voice,
         “Do not hide Your ear from my prayer for relief,
         From my cry for help.”

57You drew near when I called on You;
         You said, “Do not fear!”

58O Lord, You have pleaded my soul’s cause;
         You have redeemed my life.

59O LORD, You have seen my oppression;
         Judge my case.

60You have seen all their vengeance,
         All their schemes against me.

61You have heard their reproach, O LORD,
         All their schemes against me.

62The lips of my assailants and their whispering
         Are against me all day long.

63Look on their sitting and their rising;
         I am their mocking song.

64You will recompense them, O LORD,
         According to the work of their hands.

65You will give them hardness of heart,
         Your curse will be on them.

66You will pursue them in anger and destroy them
         From under the heavens of the LORD!

NASB ©1995

American Standard Version
He hath bent his bow, and set me as a mark for the arrow.

Douay-Rheims Bible
Daleth. He hath bent his bow, and set me as a mark for his arrows.

Darby Bible Translation
He hath bent his bow, and set me as a mark for the arrow.

English Revised Version
He hath bent his bow, and set me as a mark for the arrow.

Webster's Bible Translation
He hath bent his bow, and set me as a mark for the arrow.

World English Bible
He has bent his bow, and set me as a mark for the arrow.

Young's Literal Translation
He hath trodden His bow, And setteth me up as a mark for an arrow.February the Twenty-Fourth Moving Towards Daybreak
"He hath brought me into darkness, but not into light." --LAMENTATIONS iii. 1-9. But a man may be in darkness, and yet in motion toward the light. I was in the darkness of the subway, and it was close and oppressive, but I was moving toward the light and fragrance of the open country. I entered into a tunnel in the Black Country in England, but the motion was continued, and we emerged amid fields of loveliness. And therefore the great thing to remember is that God's darknesses are not His goals; …
John Henry Jowett—My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year

February the Twenty-Fifth the Fresh Eye
"His compassions fail not: they are new every morning." --LAMENTATIONS iii. 22-33. We have not to live on yesterday's manna; we can gather it fresh to-day. Compassion becomes stale when it becomes thoughtless. It is new thought that keeps our pity strong. If our perception of need can remain vivid, as vivid as though we had never seen it before, our sympathies will never fail. The fresh eye insures the sensitive heart. And our God's compassions are so new because He never becomes accustomed to …
John Henry Jowett—My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year

Solitude, Silence, Submission
"He sitteth alone and keepeth silence, because he hath borne it upon him. He putteth his mouth in the dust; if so be there may be hope."--Lamentations 3:28, 29. THUS the prophet describes the conduct of a person in deep anguish of heart. When he does not know what to do, his soul, as if by instinct, humbles itself. He gets into some secret place, he utters no speech, he gives himself over to moaning and to tears, and then he bows himself lower and yet lower before the Divine Majesty, as if he felt …
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 42: 1896

"And we all do Fade as a Leaf, and Our Iniquities, Like the Wind, have Taken us Away. "
Isaiah lxiv. 6.--"And we all do fade as a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away." Here they join the punishment with the deserving cause, their uncleanness and their iniquities, and so take it upon them, and subscribe to the righteousness of God's dealing. We would say this much in general--First, Nobody needeth to quarrel God for his dealing. He will always be justified when he is judged. If the Lord deal more sharply with you than with others, you may judge there is a difference …
Hugh Binning—The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning

To the Reader. Christian Reader
To The Reader. Christian Reader, This holy preacher of the gospel had so many convictions upon his spirit of the necessity of the duties of humiliation and mourning, and of people's securing the eternal interest of their souls for the life to come, by flying into Jesus Christ for remission of sins in his blood, that he made these the very scope of his sermons in many public humiliations, as if it had been the one thing which he conceived the Lord was calling for in his days; a clear evidence whereof …
Hugh Binning—The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning

The Lord is My Portion. Lam 3:24
…
John Newton—Olney Hymns

The Disciple, -- what is the Meaning and Purpose of the Cross...
The Disciple,--What is the meaning and purpose of the cross, and why do pain and suffering exist in the world? The Master,--1. The cross is the key to heaven. At the moment when by My baptism I took the cross upon My shoulders for the sake of sinners, heaven was opened, and by means of My thirty-three years bearing of the cross and by death upon it, heaven, which by reason of sin was closed to believers, was for ever opened to them. Now as soon as believers take up their cross and follow Me they …
Sadhu Sundar Singh—At The Master's Feet

How Christ is to be Made Use of as Our Life, in Case of Heartlessness and Fainting through Discouragements.
There is another evil and distemper which believers are subject to, and that is a case of fainting through manifold discouragements, which make them so heartless that they can do nothing; yea, and to sit up, as if they were dead. The question then is, how such a soul shall make use of Christ as in the end it may be freed from that fit of fainting, and win over those discouragements: for satisfaction to which we shall, 1. Name some of those discouragements which occasion this. 2. Show what Christ …
John Brown (of Wamphray)—Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life

The Practice of Piety in Glorifying God in the Time of Sickness, and when Thou Art Called to Die in the Lord.
As soon as thou perceivest thyself to be visited with any sickness, meditate with thyself: 1. That "misery cometh not forth of the dust; neither doth affliction spring out of the earth." Sickness comes not by hap or chance (as the Philistines supposed that their mice and emrods came, 1 Sam. vi. 9), but from man's wickedness, which, as sparkles, breaketh out. "Man suffereth," saith Jeremiah, "for his sins." "Fools," saith David, "by reason of their transgressions, and because of their iniquities, …
Lewis Bayly—The Practice of Piety

How they are to be Admonished who Lament Sins of Deed, and those who Lament Only Sins of Thought.
(Admonition 30.) Differently to be admonished are those who deplore sins of deed, and those who deplore sins of thought. For those who deplore sins of deed are to be admonished that perfected lamentations should wash out consummated evils, lest they be bound by a greater debt of perpetrated deed than they pay in tears of satisfaction for it. For it is written, He hath given us drink in tears by measure (Ps. lxxix. 6): which means that each person's soul should in its penitence drink the tears …
Leo the Great—Writings of Leo the Great

From his Entrance on the Ministry in 1815, to his Commission to Reside in Germany in 1820
1815.--After the long season of depression through which John Yeardley passed, as described in the last chapter, the new year of 1815 dawned with brightness upon his mind. He now at length saw his spiritual bonds loosed; and the extracts which follow describe his first offerings in the ministry in a simple and affecting manner. 1 mo. 5.--The subject of the prophet's going down to the potter's house opened so clearly on my mind in meeting this morning that I thought I could almost have publicly …
John Yeardley—Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel

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