Bible Strands
Lamentations 3:53
They dropped me alive into a pit and cast stones upon me.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — The speaker, identified by context as a persecuted prophet, addresses God while being hunted without cause by hostile enemies. He describes his current moment of entrapment and imminent death during a period of national and personal collapse.
The words — The text states they dropped the speaker alive into a pit (בּוֹר, bOr) and cast stones upon him. The Hebrew verb צָֽמְתוּ (tza.me.Tu) carries the literal sense of "they destroyed" or "they bound," describing the act of sealing the speaker in the pit.
The thread — The imagery of being dropped into a pit and sealed with a stone parallels the accounts in Jeremiah 38:6 and Jeremiah 38:9, where enemies cast Jeremiah into a cistern. The motif of a stone placed over a pit or den also appears in Daniel 6:17 to describe sealing a captive.
Why it lands — The verse demands recognition of unprovoked violence and the concrete reality of being trapped by human cruelty. It requires the reader to face the physical and spiritual weight of persecution without softening the description of the suffering.
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
They have cut off my life in the dungeon, and cast a stone upon me.
Cross-references
- Jeremiah 38:6 So they took Jeremiah and dropped him into the cistern of Malchiah, the king’s son, which was in the courtyard of the guard. They lowered Jeremiah with ropes into the cistern, which had no water but only mud, and Jeremiah sank down into the mud.
- Jeremiah 38:9 “My lord the king, these men have acted wickedly in all that they have done to Jeremiah the prophet. They have dropped him into the cistern, where he will starve to death, for there is no more bread in the city.”
- Daniel 6:17 A stone was brought and placed over the mouth of the den, and the king sealed it with his own signet ring and with the rings of his nobles, so that nothing concerning Daniel could be changed.
- Jeremiah 37:16 So Jeremiah went into a cell in the dungeon and remained there a long time.
- Jeremiah 37:20 But now please listen, O my lord the king. May my petition come before you. Do not send me back to the house of Jonathan the scribe, or I will die there.”
- Matthew 27:60 and placed it in his own new tomb that he had cut into the rock. Then he rolled a great stone across the entrance to the tomb and went away.
- Matthew 27:66 So they went and secured the tomb by sealing the stone and posting the guard.