Scofield Reference Bible Notes/Lamentations

=Book Introduction - Lamentations= Read first chapter of Lamentations The touching significance of this book lies in the fact that it is the disclosure of the love and sorrow of Jehovah for the very people who He is chastening--a sorrow wrought by the Spirit in the heart of Jeremiah (Jeremiah 13:17; Matthew 23:36,38; Romans 9:1-5). The chapters indicate the analysis, viz., five lamentations. =CHAPTER 3=

Verse 1
The literary form of Lamentations is necessarily obscured in the translation. It is an acrostic dirge, the line arranged in couplets or triplet, each of which begins with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet. In the third Lament, which consists of sixty-six stanzas instead of twenty-two, each line of each triplet begins with the same letter, so that the entire sixty six verses are required to give the twenty-two letters of the alphabet. Thus verses 1-3 or our version form but three lines of the original, each line beginning with A, etc.

Verse 58
redeemed Heb. "goel," Redemp. (Kinsman type).  (See Scofield "Isaiah 59:20").