He has led me into darkness, shutting out all light.
Parallel translations
- WEB He has led me and caused me to walk in darkness, and not in light.
- KJV He hath led me, and brought me into darkness, but not into light.
- BSB He has driven me away and made me walk in darkness instead of light.
- NKJV He has led me and made me walk In darkness and not in light.
- NASB He has driven me and made me walk In darkness and not in light.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
He feels driven by God into darkness rather than light. It expresses the disorientation of walking through divine judgment.
Overview
The sufferer pictures God himself leading him into darkness, a reversal of the LORD who normally leads his people into light (Psalm 23). The image conveys lostness and the absence of God's felt favor. Yet this darkness is not the end; the chapter moves toward the One whose mercies are 'new every morning,' and ultimately to Christ, the light shining in the darkness (John 1:5).
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 11
- Job 30:26When I looked for good, then evil came; When I waited for light, there came darkness.
- Isa 59:9Therefore is justice far from us, and righteousness doesn’t overtake us. We look for light, but see darkness; for brightness, but we walk in obscurity.
- Amos 5:18–20“Woe to you who desire the day of Yahweh! Why do you long for the day of Yahweh? It is darkness, and not light.
- Lam 3:53–55They have cut off my life in the dungeon, and have cast a stone on me.
- Jer 4:23I saw the earth, and, behold, it was waste and void; and the heavens, and they had no light.
- Job 18:18He shall be driven from light into darkness, and chased out of the world.
- Jude 1:13wild waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, for whom the blackness of darkness has been reserved forever.
- Jer 13:16Give glory to Yahweh your God, before he causes darkness, and before your feet stumble on the dark mountains, and, while you look for light, he turns it into the shadow of death, and makes it gross darkness.
- Lam 2:1How has the Lord covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in his anger! He has cast down from heaven to the earth the beauty of Israel, And hasn’t remembered his footstool in the day of his anger.
- Jude 1:6Angels who didn’t keep their first domain, but deserted their own dwelling place, he has kept in everlasting bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day.
- Deut 28:29You will grope at noonday, as the blind gropes in darkness, and you shall not prosper in your ways. You will only be oppressed and robbed always, and there will be no one to save you.
Themes, concepts, people & topics
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Hebrew/Greek interlinear, word definitions, and cross-references for this verse.
Christ at the center
The weeping over a ruined city and the steadfast mercies that are new every morning point to the man of sorrows who wept over Jerusalem and whose mercy rises new from the grave.
How Lamentations 3:2 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Hebrew word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.