They have cut off my life in the dungeon, and cast a stone upon me.
He now employs other comparisons. Some improperly confine this to Jeremiah himself, as though he explained here before God the wrongs done to himself: but there is no doubt but that he undertakes the cause of the whole people; and his object was to encourage by his own example the faithful to lament their state so that they might obtain pardon from God.
It is easier to chide ourselves for complaining than to chide ourselves out of it. The Prophet owns his sin and calls it rebellion, laying the load upon himself; yet the wound bleeds afresh when he considers that his sins are confessed but not pardoned, his case pitiable but unpitied. In sharp trials we must think and speak kindly of God even when our souls are cast down.
AI summary
Commenting on Lamentations 3:42-54
O Lord, thou hast pleaded the cause of my soul,.... Or, causes of "my soul", or "life" (u); such as concerned his soul and life: not one only, but many of them; and this respects not Jeremiah only, and the Lord's pleading his cause against Zedekiah and his nobles; but the people of the Jews in former times, when in Egypt, and in the times...