Lamentations 4:8

8 But now their faces are blacker than soot. No one recognizes them in the streets. Their skin sticks to their bones; it is as dry and hard 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 The guilt of my people is greater than that of Sodom, where utter disaster struck in a moment and no hand offered help.
7 Our princes once glowed with health— brighter than snow, whiter than milk. Their faces were as ruddy as rubies, their appearance like fine jewels.
8 But now their faces are blacker than soot. No one recognizes them in the streets. Their skin sticks to their bones; it is as dry and hard as wood.
9 Those killed by the sword are better off than those who die of hunger. Starving, they waste away for lack of food from the fields.
10 Tenderhearted women have cooked their own children. They have eaten them to survive the siege.
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