Ekhah 4:8

8 Their visage is blacker than soot; they are not known in the streets; their skin cleaveth to their atzmot; it is dried up, it is become like a stick.

Ekhah 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.

Ekhah 4:8 In-Context

6 For the punishment of the iniquity of the Bat Ami is greater than the punishment of the sin of Sodom, that was overthrown as in a moment, and no hands helped her.

7 Her nobles were purer than snow; they were whiter than cholov, they were more ruddy in body than rubies, their appearance was of sapphire;

8 Their visage is blacker than soot; they are not known in the streets; their skin cleaveth to their atzmot; it is dried up, it is become like a stick.

9 They that are slain with the cherev are better than they that are slain with hunger; for these pine away, being pierced for want of the increase of the sadeh.

10 The hands of the pitiful nashim have cooked their own yeladim; they were their meat in the destruction of the Bat Ami.