Lamentations 4:9 · KJV
“{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. {pine...: Heb. flow out}”
— Lamentations 4:9
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. {blacker...: Heb. darker than blackness}
The hands of the pitiful women have sodden their own children: they were their meat in the destruction of the daughter of my people.
Lamentations 4 — Context
Her Nazarites were purer than snow, they were whiter than milk, they were more ruddy in body than rubies, their polishing {was} of sapphire:
8Their 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. {blacker...: Heb. darker than blackness}
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. {pine...: Heb. flow out}
10The hands of the pitiful women have sodden their own children: they were their meat in the destruction of the daughter of my people.
11The LORD hath accomplished his fury; he hath poured out his fierce anger, and hath kindled a fire in Zion, and it hath devoured the foundations thereof.
Cross References
Jeremiah 16:4
They shall die of grievous deaths; they shall not be lamented; neither shall they be buried; {but} they shall be as dung upon the face of the earth: and they shall be consumed by the sword, and by famine; and their carcases shall be meat for the fowls of heaven, and for the beasts of the earth.
Ezekiel 24:23
And your tires {shall be} upon your heads, and your shoes upon your feet: ye shall not mourn nor weep; but ye shall pine away for your iniquities, and mourn one toward another.
Leviticus 26:39
And they that are left of you shall pine away in their iniquity in your enemies' lands; and also in the iniquities of their fathers shall they pine away with them.
Ezekiel 33:10
Therefore, O thou son of man, speak unto the house of Israel; Thus ye speak, saying, If our transgressions and our sins {be} upon us, and we pine away in them, how should we then live?