Bible Strands
Jeremiah 45:3
You have said, ‘Woe is me because the LORD has added sorrow to my pain! I am worn out with groaning and have found no rest.’”
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — Jeremiah delivers a message to Baruch amid national ruin and personal despair. Baruch voices his exhaustion, reporting that Yahweh has intensified his grief.
The words — The verb יָסַף (ya.Saf) means “he has added,” paired with יָגוֹן (ya.Gon), literally “sorrow.” Baruch claims Yahweh has layered sorrow upon his existing pain.
The thread — This pattern of divine addition to suffering appears in lament literature and parallels New Testament exhortations against spiritual exhaustion, as in 2 Corinthians 4:16 and Galatians 6:9. The text contrasts human weariness with the call to persevere without losing heart.
Why it lands — The verse demands recognition that despair often misreads God’s actions as malicious intensification rather than sovereign purpose. It requires the reader to confront personal exhaustion while rejecting the assumption that God’s involvement equals abandonment or cruelty.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
Thou didst say, Woe is me now! for the Lord hath added grief to my sorrow; I fainted in my sighing, and I find no rest.
Cross-references
- 2 Corinthians 4:1 Therefore, since God in His mercy has given us this ministry, we do not lose heart.
- 2 Corinthians 4:16 Therefore we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, yet our inner self is being renewed day by day.
- Galatians 6:9 Let us not grow weary in well-doing, for in due time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.
- Genesis 37:34 Then Jacob tore his clothes, put sackcloth around his waist, and mourned for his son many days.
- Genesis 42:36 Their father Jacob said to them, “You have deprived me of my sons. Joseph is gone and Simeon is no more. Now you want to take Benjamin. Everything is going against me!”
- Numbers 11:11 So Moses asked the LORD, “Why have You brought this trouble on Your servant? Why have I not found favor in Your sight, that You have laid upon me the burden of all these people?
- Joshua 7:7 “O, Lord GOD,” Joshua said, “why did You ever bring this people across the Jordan to deliver us into the hand of the Amorites to be destroyed? If only we had been content to stay on the other side of the Jordan!
- Job 16:11 God has delivered me to unjust men; He has thrown me to the clutches of the wicked.
- Job 23:2 “Even today my complaint is bitter. His hand is heavy despite my groaning.
- Psalms 6:6 I am weary from groaning; all night I flood my bed with weeping and drench my couch with tears.