For the Lord will not cast us off forever.
Parallel translations
- WEB For the Lord will not cast off forever.
- KJV For the LORD will not cast off for ever:
- NKJV For the Lord will not cast off forever.
- NASB For the Lord will not reject forever,
- NLT For no one is abandoned by the Lord forever.
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
God will not reject His people forever; His rejection is not the final word.
Overview
This verse grounds the hope of the preceding lines in God's character: His casting off is temporary, not permanent. Though Judah feels abandoned, the Lord's covenant faithfulness ensures restoration. This anticipates the assurance that in Christ God will never finally forsake those who are His (Rom. 11:1-2; Heb. 13:5).
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 11
- Ps 94:14For the LORD will not forsake His people; He will never abandon His heritage.
- Ps 103:8–10The LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in loving devotion.
- Ps 77:7“Will the Lord spurn us forever and never show His favor again?
- Isa 54:7–10“For a brief moment I forsook you, but with great compassion I will bring you back.
- Jer 32:40I will make an everlasting covenant with them: I will never turn away from doing good to them, and I will put My fear in their hearts, so that they will never turn away from Me.
- Isa 57:16For I will not accuse you forever, nor will I always be angry; for then the spirit of man would grow weak before Me, with the breath of those I have made.
- 1 Sam 12:22Indeed, for the sake of His great name, the LORD will not abandon His people, because He was pleased to make you His own.
- Jer 31:37This is what the LORD says: “Only if the heavens above could be measured and the foundations of the earth below searched out would I reject all of Israel’s descendants because of all they have done,” declares the LORD.
- Mic 7:18Who is a God like You, who pardons iniquity and passes over the transgression of the remnant of His inheritance—who does not retain His anger forever, because He delights in loving devotion?
- Jer 33:24“Have you not noticed what these people are saying: ‘The LORD has rejected the two families He had chosen’? So they despise My people and no longer regard them as a nation.
- Rom 11:1–6I ask then, did God reject His people? Certainly not! I am an Israelite myself, a descendant of Abraham, from the tribe of Benjamin.
Resources, by level
Commentaries & study tools
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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 3:31 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.