Text -- Lamentations 4:5 (NET)

4:5 ה(He) Those who once feasted on delicacies are now starving to death in the streets. Those who grew up wearing expensive clothes are now dying amid garbage.

Commentary -- Verse Notes / Footnotes

NET Notes: Lam 4:5

¹ tn Heb “eaters of delicacies.” An alternate English gloss would be “connoisseurs of fine foods.”

² tn Heb “are desolate.”

³ tn Heb “were reared.”

⁴ tn Heb “in purple.” The term תוֹלָע (tola’, “purple”) is a figurative description of expensive clothing: it is a metonymy of association: the color of the dyed clothes (= purple) stands for the clothes themselves.

⁵ 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.”

⁶ tn The Hebrew word אַשְׁפַּתּוֹת (’ashpatot) 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.