Lamentations 4:8

8 But now they are blacker than coal, and no one recognizes them in the streets. Their skin hangs on their bones; it is as dry as 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 My people have been punished more than Sodom was. Sodom was destroyed suddenly, and no hands reached out to help her.
7 Our princes were purer than snow, and whiter than milk. Their bodies were redder than rubies; they looked like sapphires.
8 But now they are blacker than coal, and no one recognizes them in the streets. Their skin hangs on their bones; it is as dry as wood.
9 Those who were killed in the war were better off than those killed by hunger. They starve in pain and die, because there is no food from the field.
10 With their own hands kind women cook their own children. They became food when my people were destroyed.
Scripture taken from the New Century Version. Copyright © 1987, 1988, 1991 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.