How the Gold Has Become Dim
1 How the gold has become dim! The most pure gold has changed! The stones of the sanctuary are poured out at the head of every street. 2 The precious sons of Zion, comparable to fine gold, how they are esteemed as earthen pitchers, the work of the hands of the potter! 3 Even the jackals offer their breast. They nurse their young ones. But the daughter of my people has become cruel, like the ostriches in the wilderness. 4 The tongue of the nursing child clings to the roof of his mouth for thirst. The young children ask for bread, and no one breaks it for them. 5 Those who ate delicacies are desolate in the streets. Those who were brought up in purple embrace dunghills. 6 For the iniquity of the daughter of my people is greater than the sin of Sodom, which was overthrown as in a moment. No hands were laid on her. 7 Her nobles were purer than snow. They were whiter than milk. They were more ruddy in body than rubies. Their polishing was like sapphire. 8 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. 9 Those who are killed with the sword are better than those who are killed with hunger; for these pine away, stricken through, for lack of the fruits of the field. 10 The hands of the pitiful women have boiled their own children. They were their food in the destruction of the daughter of my people. 11 Yahweh has accomplished his wrath. He has poured out his fierce anger. He has kindled a fire in Zion, which has devoured its foundations.
The fourth poem returns to the funeral cry and works entirely by devaluation, and its comparison of the city to Sodom is the harshest in Scripture.
The cry opens for the third and last time — how — and this poem's method is metallurgy. Gold gone dim, the finest gold changed, the sanctuary's stones poured out in the streets like rubble Lamentations 4:1. Then the same figure applied to people: the sons of Zion, comparable to fine gold, valued now like clay pots Lamentations 4:2.
Verses 7 and 8 run the transformation on individual bodies. Nobles once purer than snow, whiter than milk, ruddier than coral — now blacker than soot, skin clinging to bone, unrecognized in the streets. The poem does not editorialize; it simply sets before and after next to each other, which is what the first chapter did with the city.
Verse 3 makes an accusation through the animal world. Jackals nurse their young, and the daughter of my people has become cruel. Verse 10 states what that means without metaphor, and it is the second time the book has recorded it Lamentations 2:20: mothers boiling their own children for food. The law had named this as what a siege produces Deuteronomy 28:53.
Verse 9 is the coldest sentence in the poem: those killed by the sword are better than those killed by hunger. A quick death rated above a slow one, as a considered judgment.
And verse 6 makes the comparison the book will be remembered for. The punishment of this people is greater than the sin of Jerusalem's ancient counterpart, overthrown in a moment, with no hands laid on her. The point is duration. Sodom's end was instantaneous; this has taken months, and the siege is what the poem calls worse.
settled What this mark means