Lamentations 3:41 Meaning and Explanation

The call to return becomes a call to wholehearted prayer: 'Let us lift up our heart with our hands unto God in the heavens.' Lifting the hands was the ancient posture of prayer, but the verse insists on more — that the heart be lifted with the hands. Outward gestures of devotion mean little unless the heart rises with them.

This guards against the danger of empty religion, of going through motions while the heart stays earthbound. God in the heavens looks for the lifted heart, not merely the lifted hands. True return to God engages the whole person, the inner life as well as the outward act. The sufferer calls his people to a repentance that is real all the way down, hands and heart together reaching toward the God who waits to receive them.