ד (Dalet)
4:4 The infant’s tongue sticks
to the roof of its mouth due to thirst;
little children beg for bread, 1
but no one gives them even a morsel. 2
ה (He)
4:5 Those who once feasted on delicacies 3
are now starving to death 4 in the streets.
Those who grew up 5 wearing expensive clothes 6
are now dying 7 amid garbage. 8
י (Yod)
4:10 The hands of tenderhearted women 9
cooked their own children,
who became their food, 10
when my people 11 were destroyed. 12
1 tn Heb “bread.” The term “bread” might function as a synecdoche of specific (= bread) for general (= food); however, the following parallel line does indeed focus on the act of breaking bread in two.
2 tn Heb “there is not a divider to them.” The term פָּרַשׂ (paras), Qal active participle ms from פָּרַס (paras, “to divide”) refers to the action of breaking bread in two before giving it to a person to eat (Isa 58:7; Jer 16:7; Lam 4:4). The form פָּרַשׂ (paras) is the alternate spelling of the more common פָּרַס (paras).
3 tn Heb “eaters of delicacies.” An alternate English gloss would be “connoisseurs of fine foods.”
4 tn Heb “are desolate.”
5 tn Heb “were reared.”
6 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.
7 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.”
8 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.
9 tn Heb “the hands of compassionate women.”
10 tn Heb “eating.” The infinitive construct (from I בָּרָה, barah) is translated as a noun. Three passages employ the verb (2 Sam 3:35; 12:17; 13:5,6,10) for eating when ill or in mourning.
11 tn Heb “the daughter of my people.”
12 tn Heb “in the destruction of the daughter of my people.”