Lamentations 3:27

It is good for a man ¹  to bear ²  the yoke ³  while he is young. ⁴ 

Ps 90:12; Ps 94:12; Ps 119:71; Ec 12:1; Mt 11:29,30; Heb 12:5-12

¹ tn See note at 3:1 on the Hebrew term for “man” here.

² tn Heb “that he bear.”

³ sn Jeremiah is referring to the painful humiliation of subjugation to the Babylonians, particularly to the exile of the populace of Jerusalem. The Babylonians and Assyrians frequently used the phrase “bear the yoke” as a metaphor: their subjects were made as subservient to them as yoked oxen were to their masters. Because the Babylonian exile would last for seventy years, only those who were in their youth when Jerusalem fell would have any hope of living until the return of the remnant. For the middle-aged and elderly, the yoke of exile would be insufferable; but those who bore this “yoke” in their youth would have hope.

⁴ tn Heb “in his youth.” The preposition ב (bet) functions in a temporal sense: “when.”