Lamentations 4:8 Meaning and Explanation
“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.”
King James Version (KJV)
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Read Full Chapter →Now those radiant ones are blackened and emaciated by famine, unrecognizable in the streets.
What Does Lamentations 4:8 Mean?
The contrast with the previous verse is crushing. Those who were whiter than milk now have faces 'blacker than a coal,' darkened by starvation and exposure. They are 'not known in the streets' — so wasted that even their own neighbors cannot recognize them. Famine has erased their very identities.
'Their skin cleaveth to their bones; it is withered, it is become like a stick.' The flesh has shrunk away until skin clings to bone, the body dried to something brittle as a dead branch. The radiant ones of yesterday are living skeletons today. The poem's unflinching honesty about the body's ruin under famine is part of its truthfulness. It will not prettify the cost of the city's fall, and in this it honors the reality of those who suffered.
Frequently Asked Questions About Lamentations 4:8
What does Lamentations 4:8 mean?
Now those radiant ones are blackened and emaciated by famine, unrecognizable in the streets.