Lamentations 3: his compassions fail not

A poem from a burned city

In 587 or 586 BC the Babylonian army destroyed Jerusalem and its temple, and much of the population was carried into exile. Lamentations is a set of five poems mourning that catastrophe. The book does not name its author; ancient Jewish and Christian tradition attributed it to the prophet Jeremiah, who lived through the siege, and many Bibles still print it right after his book.

The poems are built with great care. Four of the five chapters are alphabetic acrostics, each stanza beginning with the next letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Chapter 3 is the most intricate: sixty-six verses, three for each of the twenty-two letters.

What does Lamentations 3:22 mean?

Chapter 3 opens with a single voice describing his suffering in raw terms: darkness, walls, chains, broken bones. Then, around verse 21, the speaker says that he calls something to mind, and therefore has hope. What he remembers is verses 22 and 23: it is of the LORD's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not; they are new every morning; great is thy faithfulness.

The Hebrew word behind “mercies” is hesed, God's steady covenant love, the loyalty that holds even when his people have failed. The claim is modest and fierce at once. The poet does not say things are fine. He says that the fact anyone survived at all is itself a sign that God has not let go, and that each morning brings a fresh supply of that mercy. The hope sits near the center of the whole book, surrounded on every side by lament.

Hymns, fasts and Divine Mercy

In 1923 Thomas Chisholm wrote the words of “Great Is Thy Faithfulness” from these verses, and it remains one of the most sung hymns in American churches. Jewish communities chant Lamentations on Tisha B'Av, the fast that remembers the destruction of the temples, and churches have long used it in the Tenebrae services of Holy Week.

Catholics also connect the verse with the Divine Mercy devotion that grew from the diaries of Saint Faustina Kowalska in 1930s Poland; Pope John Paul II established Divine Mercy Sunday, the Sunday after Easter, in 2000. A print of Lamentations 3:22 is often given to someone grieving or recovering, and it sits well by a bed where mornings are hard.

Mercy that returns

The same trust in morning mercy runs through Psalm 30:5, which promises that weeping may endure for a night but joy comes in the morning. In the New Testament, 2 Corinthians 4 speaks of an inward self renewed day by day, and the first letter of Peter blesses the God who, according to his abundant mercy, has given believers a living hope.