Lamentations 4
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Lamentations 4:2:
The precious sons of Zion, comparable to fine gold, how are they esteemed as earthen pitchers, the work of the hands of the potter! |
 R.K. Harrison
"For those who esteemed themselves as high-quality gold, the kind of experience which reduced them to the level of base metal in the opinion of their enemies was of harrowing psychological and spiritual proportions." -R. K. Harrison, Jeremiah and Lamentations: An Introduction and Commentary
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Lamentations 4:7-8:
Her Nazarites were purer than snow, they were whiter than milk, they were more ruddy in body than rubies, their polishing was of sapphire: 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. |
 R.K. Harrison
"This chapter (Lam 4) is one of the most graphic in the book in its description of the physical suffering of the people of Jerusalem, and what makes it especially vivid is the use of color. In fact, color is one of the striking features of the chapter: gold and scarlet (vv. 1, 2, 5), white, red, sapphire, black (vv. 7, 8). Bright colors represent the earlier conditions; as the famine progresses, the colors are erased from the picture and all that remains is dullness and blackness."
-R. K. Harrison, Jeremiah and Lamentations: An Introduction and Commentary |
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Lamentations 4:9-10:
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. 10 The hands of the pitiful women have sodden their own children: they were their meat in the destruction of the daughter of my people. |
 Robin A Parry
"The sick irony is that the children were the means by which the women would survive into the future (by caring for them as they got older and by surviving them), and yet in order to survive the mothers must eat their own means of survival. One may assume that the mothers only ate the children who were already dead, but even so one could hardly imagine a more shocking and sickening image to serve as a climax to the description of the famine in vv. 1-10. -Robin A Parry; Lamentations. The Two Horizons Old Testament Commentary series. Grand Rapids and Cambridge, U.K.: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2010.
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R.K. Harrison
"We look back and think how horrible this was but today many mothers are having abortions, actually murdering their babies. If we don't want a baby, we must take responsibility for our actions before a baby becomes a reality. God has made us capable of having babies and when one has been conceived, it is His intention for that child to come into the world. The moment the child is conceived, he is a person and to abort a pregnancy is murder of a human being."
-R. K. Harrison, Jeremiah and Lamentations: An Introduction and Commentary
-R. K. Harrison, Jeremiah and Lamentations: An Introduction and Commentary
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Lamentations 4:21-22:
Rejoice and be glad, O daughter of Edom, that dwellest in the land of Uz; the cup also shall pass through unto thee: thou shalt be drunken, and shalt make thyself naked. 22 The punishment of thine iniquity is accomplished, O daughter of Zion; he will no more carry thee away into captivity: he will visit thine iniquity, O daughter of Edom; he will discover thy sins. |
 Robin A Parry
"4:21-22 comes right out of the blue! The tone of chapter 4 has been to focus on the absolutely dire situation in Jerusalem, and by 4:20 the audience is left with the distinct feeling that the end has come. Suddenly, from left field, comes what has the feel of a prophetic oracle proclaiming divine judgment on Edom for its treatment of Judah and an end to Judah's exile."-Robin A Parry; Lamentations. The Two Horizons Old Testament Commentary series. Grand Rapids and Cambridge, U.K.: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2010.
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