Lamentations 4:8

Khet

8 [Now] they appear darker 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.

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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 punishment of my dear people is greater than that of Sodom, which was overthrown in an instant without a hand laid on it.

7 Her dignitaries were brighter than snow, whiter than milk; [their] bodies were more ruddy than coral, their appearance [like] sapphire.

8 [Now] they appear darker than soot; they are not recognized in the streets. Their skin has shriveled on their bones; it has become dry like wood.

9 Those slain by the sword are better off than those slain by hunger, who waste away, pierced [with pain] because the fields lack produce.

10 The hands of compassionate women have cooked their own children; they became their food during the destruction of my dear people.