Lamentations 3:9

Lamentations 3:9. He hath enclosed my ways with hewn stone; he hath made my paths crooked.

It was believed that hewn stones made the strongest wall as the joints would the more closely fit into one another. Jeremiah seems to speak as if God had taken care and trouble to build, not as men do, roughly with common stones, but with polished and well-shapen troubles built like strong barriers in his way.