Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Lamentations 3:66
Persecute and destroy them in anger from under the heavens of the LORD.
Verse 66. Persecute and destroy them] Thou wilt pursue them with destruction. These are all declaratory, not imprecatory.
From under the heavens of the Lord.] This verse seems to allude to the Chaldaic prediction, in Jer 10:11. By their conduct they will bring on themselves the curse denounced against their enemies.
The Septuagint and Vulgate seem to have read “From under heaven, O Jehovah:” and the Syriac reads, “Thy heavens, O Jehovah!” None of these makes any material change in the meaning of the words.
It has already been noticed in the introduction, that this chapter contains a triple acrostic, three lines always beginning with the same letter; so that the Hebrew alphabet is thrice repeated in this chapter, twenty-two multiplied by three being equal to sixty-six.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Bring them to a temporal ruin and destruction. How far such petitions are lawful we have before showed, in our notes on Psa 69:22-24, &c.; Psa 119:6-10, &c.; Jer 11:20; 15:15; see also Lam 1:22. It is hard to interpret all passages of this nature which we meet with as prophecies, though some of them are so, and others may be both prophecies and prayers.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
66. from under . . . heavens of . .. Lorddestroy them so that it may be seen everywhereunder heaven that thou sittest above as Judge of the world.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Persecute and destroy them in anger,…. As they have persecuted the people of God, do thou persecute them; and never leave pursuing them untie thou hast made a full end of them, as the effect of vindictive wrath and vengeance:
from under the heavens of the Lord; which are made by him, and in which he dwells; let them not have the benefit of them, nor so much as the sight of them; but let them perish from under them, Jer 10:11.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
He first asks God to persecute them in wrath, that is, to be implacable to them; for persecution is, when God not only chastises the wicked for a short time, but when he adds evils to evils, and accumulates them until they perish. He then adds, and prays God to destroy them from under the heavens of Jehovah This phrase is emphatical; and they extenuate the weightiness of the sentence, who thus render it, “that God himself would destroy the ungodly from the earth.” For the Prophet does not without a design mention the heavens of Jehovah, as though he had said, that though God is hidden from us while we sojourn in the world, he yet dwells in heaven, for heaven is often called the throne of God, —
“
The heaven is my throne.” (Isa 66:1.)
“
O God, who dwellest in the sanctuary.” (Psa 22:4; Psa 77:14.)
By God’s sanctuary is often meant heaven. For this reason, then, the Prophet asked here that the ungodly should be destroyed from under the heaven of Jehovah, that is, that their destruction might testify that he sits in heaven, and is the judge of the world, and that things are not in such a confusion, but that the ungodly must at length render an account before the celestial judge, whom they have yet long neglected. This is the end of the chapter.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(66) From under the heavens of the Lord.The phrase is exceptional, but it is obviously equivalent to the whole world, considered as Gods kingdom.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
Lam 3:66 Persecute and destroy them in anger from under the heavens of the LORD.
Ver. 66. Persecute and destroy them in anger. ] Since they are thine and our implacable and irreformable enemies, be thou, Lord, implacably bent against them, to their utter destruction; and since they think us not worthy to breathe in the common air – whom thou hast made heirs of the world together with faithful Abraham our progenitor – destroy them from under these heavens of thine, in the compass and cope whereof thou reignest and rulest all.
From under the heavens of the Lord.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Persecute: Lam 3:43, Psa 35:6, Psa 73:15
under: Deu 7:24, Deu 25:19, Deu 29:20, 2Ki 14:27, Jer 10:11
heavens: Psa 8:3, Psa 115:16, Isa 66:1
Reciprocal: Hos 8:3 – the enemy Col 1:23 – under
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Lam 3:66. Persecute is from a Hebrew word that means to pursue with hostile intent. That is just what the Lord predicted he would do toward the Babylonians after they had served the end desired for the
chastisement of the Jews.
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
The Lord would pursue them anywhere they might go and destroy them in His anger. The Lord did this to Jeremiah’s enemies when the city fell to the Babylonians (cf. Jer 39:4-7; Jer 52:7-11; Jer 52:24-27).