8 Their visage is blacker than a coal; they are not known in the streets: Their skin cleaves to their bones; it is withered, it is become like a stick.
My skin grows black and peels from me. My bones are burned with heat.
For my days consume away like smoke. My bones are burned as a firebrand. My heart is blighted like grass, and withered, For I forget to eat my bread. By reason of the voice of my groaning, My bones stick to my skin.
My bones stick to my skin and to my flesh. I have escaped by the skin of my teeth.
For I have become like a wineskin in the smoke. I don't forget your statutes.
So they two went until they came to Bethlehem. It happened, when they were come to Bethlehem, that all the city was moved about them, and [the women] said, Is this Naomi? She said to them, "Don't call me Naomi, call me Mara; for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me.
When they lifted up their eyes from a distance, and didn't recognize him, they raised their voices, and wept; and they each tore his robe, and sprinkled dust on their heads toward the sky.
In the night season my bones are pierced in me, And the pains that gnaw me take no rest. By great force is my garment disfigured. It binds me about as the collar of my coat. He has cast me into the mire. I have become like dust and ashes.
For day and night your hand was heavy on me. My strength was sapped in the heat of summer. Selah.
There is no soundness in my flesh because of your indignation, Neither is there any health in my bones because of my sin.
Like as many were astonished at you (his visage was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men),
How is the gold become dim! [how] is the most pure gold changed! The stones of the sanctuary are poured out at the head of every street. The precious sons of Zion, comparable to fine gold, How are they esteemed as earthen pitchers, 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,