“My heart is poured out in grief”
My eyes fail from weeping; I am churning within. My heart is poured out in grief over the destruction of the daughter of my people (Lamentations 2:11 BSB)
What it sounds like today
A conventional phrase about a broken heart.
The cultural key
To modern ears this is a stock expression for heartbreak. The Hebrew is more visceral and specific: it says 'my liver is poured out on the earth.' Ancient Hebrew located the emotions in various inner organs, and the liver (kaved, a heavy, blood-rich organ) was regarded as a seat of the deepest feeling, much as we say 'heart.' So the poet pictures his very core, the innermost organ of grief, rupturing and spilling onto the ground, an image of total emotional devastation at the sight of children fainting in the streets. Translators render it 'heart' because that is how English speaks of the emotions, but the force is stronger: not a metaphorical ache but the sense of one's inner self pouring out like liquid. Job uses the same physical language when God 'pours out my gall on the ground' (Job 16:13). The English smooths a raw, bodily image of grief into a familiar idiom.
Recovered meaning
'My heart is poured out' renders a Hebrew phrase that literally says 'my liver is poured out on the ground.' The liver was a seat of deep emotion, so the image is the innermost organ of grief rupturing and spilling out, total devastation the English idiom softens.