Lamentations 4:8

8 Now they lie unknown in the streets, their faces blackened in death; their skin, dry as wood, has shriveled on their bones.

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 My people have been punished even more than the inhabitants of Sodom, which met a sudden downfall at the hands of God.
7 Our princes were undefiled and pure as snow, vigorous and strong, glowing with health.
8 Now they lie unknown in the streets, their faces blackened in death; their skin, dry as wood, has shriveled on their bones.
9 Those who died in the war were better off than those who died later, who starved slowly to death, with no food to keep them alive.
10 The disaster that came to my people brought horror; loving mothers boiled their own children for food.
Scripture taken from the Good News Translation - Second Edition, Copyright 1992 by American Bible Society. Used by Permission.