Lamentations 3:22-23 Meaning: His Mercies Are New Every Morning
The most hopeful verse in the Bible is sitting in the middle of the saddest book in the Bible.
“The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.”Lamentations 3:22-23 (ESV)
A funeral song
Lamentations is five poems of grief over the fall of Jerusalem to Babylon in 586 BC. The city had just been burned to the ground. Tradition says Jeremiah wrote them.
The first four chapters are acrostics: each verse, or group of verses, starts with the next letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Grief, written in order, A to Z. Chapter 3 sits right in the middle and is the longest, at 66 verses.
The turn
Right in the middle of all that grief, verse 21 turns: "But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope." Nothing outside had changed yet. The writer chose what to remember.
And what he remembers is this. Steadfast love is the Hebrew word hesed, the same word behind "mercy" in Psalm 23:6. Loyal, covenant love that does not let go. Mercies is rachamim: deep, gut-level compassion. Faithfulness is emunah, and the hymn "Great Is Thy Faithfulness" (Thomas Chisholm, 1923) is built on this line.
You don't start today in debt
New every morning means yesterday doesn't carry over. Yesterday's failure, yesterday's mess, yesterday's grief. His mercy for today is fresh, not leftovers.
Verse 24 closes the thought: "The LORD is my portion, therefore I will hope in him."
What do you need fresh mercy for today?
Open your Bible and read Lamentations 3:19-24. Sit with it a minute, then go.