Lamentations 3:19 Meaning and Explanation

The sufferer turns deliberately to memory: 'Remembering mine affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the gall.' He does not look away from his pain but takes a long, honest look at it, gathering up all the bitterness — the wormwood and gall named earlier — and holding it before his mind. This is no denial of grief.

But something is shifting. The act of remembering, which earlier only sharpened the loss, is now becoming the hinge on which the whole poem turns. He is about to remember something else, something greater, alongside the bitterness. The verse stands on the threshold. He has recalled his misery fully; in the next breath he will recall a mercy that is fuller still, and the recalling will give birth to hope.