Lamentations 3:64 is a prayer asking God to repay the people who have wronged the speaker, with the justice matching what they have done. The writer believes that God sees injustice and will set things right, so the desire for vengeance is handed over to the Lord rather than carried out by the sufferer. The words come from the poet of Lamentations, a voice speaking for the people of Jerusalem after the city fell to Babylon in 586 BC, addressing God directly in the middle of grief and enemy oppression.
You will pay them back, the LORD, according to the work of their hands.
Lamentations 3:64 (WEB)
What Lamentations 3:64 Means
The verse begins with the Lord as the one who will “pay back,” a word that means to requite or return something to someone. The phrase “according to the work of their hands” means the repayment will match what those enemies have actually done. The poet is not asking for an unlimited or random punishment. He is asking that God’s judgment be fair, measured against the real harm that was committed.
The verse does not describe the sufferer taking revenge with their own hands. It is a request spoken to God, placing the outcome in the divine court. It also does not promise that every hurt will be resolved on a timetable the reader can see, or that the speaker will feel better right away. What it does affirm is that wrongdoing is not ignored by God and that the hope for justice is directed toward Him.
The Context of Lamentations 3:64
Lamentations is a collection of five poems mourning the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple. Tradition ties the book to the prophet Jeremiah, though the text itself does not name its author, and the first audience was the grieving survivors of the siege. The poems give voice to the pain of a people who watched their city burned, their leaders taken, and their neighbors turn against them.
The verses just before and after 3:64 show the poet describing enemies who mock him, plot against him, and sing about his suffering. Verse 63 says they are his song, meaning he has become the subject of their mockery. Verse 64 answers that mockery by turning to God as the one who will act. The shift is important: the poet moves from describing what the enemies have done to trusting that God has seen it all, and this changes how the verse reads from a bare wish for revenge into a cry for divine justice.
Key Phrases in Lamentations 3:64
Romans 12:19
Don’t seek revenge yourselves, beloved, but give place to God’s wrath. For it is written, “Vengeance belongs to me; I will repay, says the Lord.”
(WEB)
Paul echoes the same trust that vengeance belongs to God and tells believers not to take it into their own hands. Reading it beside Lamentations 3:64 shows that handing justice to the Lord is a theme that runs across both testaments and shapes how Christians respond to injury.
Psalm 94:1
The LORD, you God to whom vengeance belongs, you God to whom vengeance belongs, shine out.
(WEB)
This psalm opens with a plea to the God of vengeance to shine forth, the same kind of appeal the poet makes in Lamentations. Together the two passages show the Hebrew tradition’s honest prayers for God to act against wrongdoing.
A Short Prayer From Lamentations 3:64
Lord, you have seen the wrong that has been done to me, and you know the words and plans of those who have hurt me. I bring my anger to you instead of carrying it alone. Please deal with them justly, in a way that matches what they have actually done, and keep my heart from becoming hard or bitter as I wait. Help me trust that you see everything and that you will set things right in your time. Give me the wisdom to act rightly while you work. Amen.
