Lamentations 4:8
Their visage is blacker than a coal; they are not known in the streets: their skin cleaveth to their bones; it is withered, it is become like a stick.
Lamentations 4:8 in other translations
| BSB | But now their appearance is blacker than soot; they are not recognized in the streets. Their skin has shriveled on their bones; it has become as dry as a stick. |
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| WEB | Their appearance is blacker than a coal. They are not known in the streets. Their skin clings to their bones. It is withered. It has become like wood. |
| ASV | Their visage is blacker than a coal; they are not known in the streets: Their skin cleaveth to their bones; it is withered, it is become like a stick. |
| YLT | Darker than blackness hath been their visage, They have not been known in out-places, Cleaved hath their skin unto their bone, It hath withered--it hath been as wood. |
| DARBY | Their visage is darker than blackness, they are not known in the streets; their skin cleaveth to their bones, it is withered, it is become like a stick. |
| BBE | 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. |
| Webster | Their visage is blacker than a coal; they are not known in the streets: their skin cleaveth to their bones; it is withered, it is become like a stick. |
What does Lamentations 4:8 mean?
Jamieson-Fausset-Brown
Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary on Lamentations 4:1-12
The deplorable state of the nation is contrasted with its ancient prosperity. Verses 1-12 What a change is here! Sin tarnishes the beauty of the most exalted powers and the most excellent gifts; but that gold, tried in the fire, which Christ bestows, never will be taken from us; its outward appearance may be dimmed, but its real value can never be changed. The horrors of the siege and destruction of Jerusalem are…
Lamentations 4:8 in the original Hebrew
Word-by-word with transliteration, English gloss and Strong's number. Tap a number for the full definition and every place the word is used.
Source: STEPBible TAHOT/TAGNT (Tyndale House, CC BY 4.0).
Cross references for Lamentations 4:8
- Lamentations 5:10
Our skin was black like an oven because of the terrible famine.
- Job 30:30
My skin is black upon me, and my bones are burned with heat.
- Psalms 102:3-5
For my days are consumed like smoke, and my bones are burned as an hearth. My heart is smitten, and withered like grass; so that I forget to eat my bread. By reason of the voice of my groaning my bones cleave to my skin.
- Job 19:20
My bone cleaveth to my skin and to my flesh, and I am escaped with the skin of my teeth.
- Psalms 119:83
For I am become like a bottle in the smoke; yet do I not forget thy statutes.
- Psalms 38:3
There is no soundness in my flesh because of thine anger; neither is there any rest in my bones because of my sin.
- Job 2:12
And when they lifted up their eyes afar off, and knew him not, they lifted up their voice, and wept; and they rent every one his mantle, and sprinkled dust upon their heads toward heaven.
- Psalms 32:4
For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me: my moisture is turned into the drought of summer. Selah.
- Job 30:17-19
My bones are pierced in me in the night season: and my sinews take no rest. By the great force of my disease is my garment changed: it bindeth me about as the collar of my coat. He hath cast me into the mire, and I am become like dust and ashes.
- Joel 2:6
Before their face the people shall be much pained: all faces shall gather blackness.
- Ruth 1:19-20
So they two went until they came to Beth–lehem. And it came to pass, when they were come to Beth–lehem, that all the city was moved about them, and they said, Is this Naomi? And she said unto them, Call me not Naomi, call me Mara: for the Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with me.
- Psalms 102:11
My days are like a shadow that declineth; and I am withered like grass.
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Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
5:10; Job 30:17-19,30; Joe 2:6; Na 2:10
blacker than a coal. Heb. darker than blackness.Or, as Dr. Blayney renders, "duskier than the dawn;" {shachar} signifying "the dawn of the day, when it is neither light nor dark, but between both, at which time objects are not easily distinguished."
they.
1,2; Ru 1:19,20; Job 2:12; Isa 52:14
their skin.
Job 19:20; 33:21; Ps 32:4; 38:3; 102:3-5,11; 119:83
Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (Samuel Bagster, c. 1836) · public domain
Context
- Lamentations 4:7
Her Nazarites were purer than snow, they were whiter than milk, they were more ruddy in body than rubies, their polishing was of sapphire:
- Lamentations 4:8
Their visage is blacker than a coal; they are not known in the streets: their skin cleaveth to their bones; it is withered, it is become like a stick.
- Lamentations 4:9
They that be slain with the sword are better than they that be slain with hunger: for these pine away, stricken through for want of the fruits of the field.
Lamentations 4:8 in other languages
| Spanish Reina-Valera 1909 | Oscura más que la negrura es la forma de ellos; no los conocen por las calles: su piel está pegada á sus huesos, seca como un palo. |
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| French Bible J.N. Darby 1885 | Leur figure est plus sombre que le noir, on ne les connaît pas dans les rues; leur peau s’attache à leurs os, elle est sèche comme du bois. |
| German Elberfelder 1871 | Dunkler als Schwärze ist ihr Aussehen, man erkennt sie nicht auf den Straßen; ihre Haut klebt an ihrem Gebein, ist dürr geworden wie Holz. |
| Latin Clementine Vulgate | Denigrata est super carbones facies eorum et non sunt cogniti in plateis; adhæsit cutis eorum ossibus: aruit, et facta est quasi lignum. |