Lamentations 4:8

8 [Now] their appearance is blacker than soot, they are not recognized in the streets; their skin has shriveled on their bones, it has become dry like wood.

Lamentations 4:8 Meaning and Commentary

Lamentations 4:8

Their visage is blacker than a coal
Or, "darker than blackness"; or, "dark through blackness" F25; by reason of the famine, and because of grief and trouble for themselves and their friends, which changed their complexions, countenances, and skins; they that looked before as pure as snow, as white as milk, as clear as pearls, as polished as sapphire, now as black as charcoal, as blackness itself: they are not known in the streets;
not taken notice of in a distinguished manner; no respect shown them as they walk the streets, as used to be; nay, their countenances were so altered, and their apparel so sordid, as not to be known by their friends, when they met them in public: their skin cleaveth to their bones;
have nothing but skin and bone, who used to be plump and fat: it is withered, it is become like a stick;
the skin wrinkled and shrivelled up, the flesh being gone; and the bone became like a stick, or a dry piece of wood, its moisture and marrow being dried up.


FOOTNOTES:

F25 (rwxvm Kvx) "obscurior ipsa nigredine", Tigurine version; "magis quam nigredo vel carbo", Vatablus; "prae caligines", Calvin; "ex nigredine", Piscator.

Lamentations 4:8 In-Context

6 The iniquity of the daughter of my people is greater than the sin of Sodom; it was overthrown in a moment and no hands were laid on her.
7 Her princes were purer than snow, they were whiter than milk; [their] bodies were more ruddy than rubies, sapphire their appearance.
8 [Now] their appearance is blacker than soot, they are not recognized in the streets; their skin has shriveled on their bones, it has become dry like wood.
9 Happier were [the] victims of [the] sword than the victims of famine; they have pined away, very hungry for the crops of my field.
10 [The] hands of compassionate women, have cooked their children; they became as something to eat in the destruction of the daughter of my people.
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