Lamentations 4:5
ה (He)
5 Those who once feasted on delicacies ▼
▼tn Heb “eaters of delicacies.” An alternate English gloss would be “connoisseurs of fine foods.”
are now starving to death ▼
▼tn Heb “are desolate.”
in the streets. Those who grew up ▼
▼tn Heb “were reared.”
wearing expensive clothes ▼▼tn Heb “in purple.” The term תוֹלָע (tolaʿ, “purple”) is a figurative description of expensive clothing, a metonymy of association where the color of the dyed clothes (= purple) stands for the clothes themselves.
are now dying ▼
▼tn Heb “embrace garbage.” One may also translate “rummage through” (cf. NCV “pick through trash piles”; TEV “pawing through refuse”; NLT “search the garbage pits”).
amid garbage. ▼▼tn The Hebrew word אַשְׁפַּתּוֹת (ʾashpatot) can also mean “ash heaps.” Though not used as a combination elsewhere, to “embrace ash heaps” might also envision a state of mourning or even dead bodies lying on the ash heaps.
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