Lamentations 3:39 Meaning and Explanation

The poem turns gently from God's sovereignty to the sufferer's own response: 'Wherefore doth a living man complain?' The first mercy named is simply being alive. A 'living man' has, by definition, not been consumed — and that survival is itself the proof of the mercy of verse twenty-two. The one still breathing has cause for gratitude before he has cause for complaint.

'A man for the punishment of his sins' adds the note of honesty. Much of the suffering is the just consequence of sin, and to murmur against deserved discipline is to forget both one's guilt and one's mercy. This is not a denial of grief but a redirection of it. Rather than complaining against God, the verse points the way toward examining oneself — which is exactly where the next verses turn.