Lamentations 3:30

Hebrew Bible

28 י (Yod) Let a person sit alone in silence, when the Lord is disciplining him. 29 Let him bury his face in the dust; perhaps there is hope. 30 Let him offer his cheek to the one who hits him; let him have his fill of insults. 31 כ (Kaf) For the Lord will not reject us forever. 32 Though he causes us grief, he then has compassion on us according to the abundance of his loyal kindness.

Isaiah 50:6

Hebrew Bible

4 The Sovereign Lord has given me the capacity to be his spokesman, so that I know how to help the weary. He wakes me up every morning; he makes me alert so I can listen attentively as disciples do. 5 The Sovereign Lord has spoken to me clearly; I have not rebelled, I have not turned back. 6 I offered my back to those who attacked, my jaws to those who tore out my beard; I did not hide my face from insults and spitting. 7 But the Sovereign Lord helps me, so I am not humiliated. For that reason I am steadfastly resolved; I know I will not be put to shame. 8 The one who vindicates me is close by. Who dares to argue with me? Let us confront each other! Who is my accuser? Let him challenge me!

 Notes and References

"... Job describes his condition. “My flesh is clothed in worms / my skin coagulates and runs” (7:5). Job 16:7–17 is rich in embodied imagery: being seized or compressed (16:8), being torn (16:9) by an enemy, perhaps the deity himself. Again, language is framed in first-person terms: “my skin,” “compressed me,” “he has gnashed against me with his teeth” (16:9). God or an unnamed enemy’s body, pictured as that of a wild beast, lacerates Job. In verse 10, the enemy, now referred to in the plural, strikes Job’s (“my”) cheeks, an image common in lament literature. (For example, Lamentations 3:30 and Isaiah 50:6. On references to the impaired or punished body and lament literature, see Amy Erikson, “‘Without My Flesh I Will See God’: Job’s Rhetoric of the Body,” Journal of Biblical Literature 132 (2013): 303, and see, for example, Psalms 6:7 and 31:10–11) The reference to body parts is especially striking in Job’s speeches ..."

Niditch, Susan The Responsive Self: Personal Religion in Biblical Literature of the Neo-Babylonian and Persian Periods (p. 52) Yale University Press, 2015

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