8 Their face is blacker than night; in the streets no one has knowledge of them: their skin is hanging on their bones, they are dry, they have become like wood.
My skin is black and dropping off me; and my bones are burning with the heat of my disease.
My days are wasted like smoke, and my bones are burned up as in a fire. My heart is broken; it has become dry and dead like grass, so that I give no thought to food. Because of the voice of my sorrow, my flesh is wasted to the bone.
My bones are joined to my skin, and I have got away with my flesh in my teeth.
For I have become like a wine-skin black with smoke; but I still keep the memory of your rules.
So the two of them went on till they came to Beth-lehem. And when they came to Beth-lehem all the town was moved about them, and they said, Is this Naomi? And she said to them, Do not let my name be Naomi, but Mara, for the Ruler of all has given me a bitter fate.
And lifting up their eyes when they were still far off, it did not seem that the man they saw was Job because of the change in him. And they gave way to bitter weeping, with signs of grief, and put dust on their heads.
The flesh is gone from my bones, and they give me no rest; there is no end to my pains. With great force he takes a grip of my clothing, pulling me by the neck of my coat. Truly God has made me low, even to the earth, and I have become like dust.
For the weight of your hand was on me day and night; my body became dry like the earth in summer. (Selah.)
My flesh is wasted because of your wrath; and there is no peace in my bones because of my sin.
As peoples were surprised at him, And his face was not beautiful, so as to be desired: his face was so changed by disease as to be unlike that of a man, and his form was no longer that of the sons of men.
How dark has the gold become! how changed the best gold! the stones of the holy place are dropping out at the top of every street. The valued sons of Zion, whose price was the best gold, are looked on as vessels of earth, the work of the hands of the potter!
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on Lamentations 4
Commentary on Lamentations 4 Matthew Henry Commentary
Chapter 4
This chapter is another single alphabet of Lamentations for the destruction of Jerusalem, like those in the first two chapters.
Lam 4:1-12
The elegy in this chapter begins with a lamentation of the very sad and doleful change which the judgments of God had made in Jerusalem. The city that was formerly as gold, as the most fine gold, so rich and splendid, the perfection of beauty and the joy of the whole earth, has become dim, and is changed, has lost its lustre, lost its value, is not what it was; it has become dross. Alas! what an alteration is here!
Lam 4:13-20
We have here,
Lam 4:21-22
David's psalms of lamentation commonly conclude with some word of comfort, which is as life from the dead and light shining out of darkness; so does this lamentation here in this chapter. The people of God are now in great distress, their aspects all doleful, their prospects all frightful, and their ill-natured neighbours the Edomites insult over them and do all they can to exasperate their destroyers against them. Such was their violence against their brother Jacob (Obad. 10), such their spleen at Jerusalem, of which they cried, Rase it, rase it, Ps. 137:7. Now it is here foretold, for the encouragement of God's people,