Lamentations 3:27

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

It is good for a man to bear the yoke while he is young.

It is good for a man that he should bear The yoke in his youth.

And it is good for the young to submit to the yoke of his discipline.

It's a good thing when you're young to stick it out through the hard times.

It is good for a man to undergo the yoke when he is young.

It is good for one to bear the yoke in youth,

It is good for a man to bear The yoke in his youth.

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

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.”