Lamentations 2:12
What does Lamentations 2:12 mean?
A plain-English look at Lamentations 2:12 in WEB alongside six other public-domain English translations, with cross-references and chapter context.
What Lamentations 2:12 means
The children call to their mothers, “Where is grain and wine?”—simple, everyday needs that have vanished. They collapse like the wounded in the streets, their life ebbing out as if dying in their mothers’ arms. This is not poetic exaggeration but the bitter reality of siege and famine. The verse shows the utter breakdown of family security: mothers cannot provide, and children’s pleas haunt the city. Suffering is measured here not in statistics but in cries at street corners. The pathos reminds us that judgment, though just, is profoundly painful at the human level, touching homes with piercing loss.
Parallel translations
WEB
World English Bible · 2000They say to their mothers, Where is grain and wine? When they swoon as the wounded in the streets of the city, When their soul is poured out into their mothers’ bosom.
KJV
King James Version · 1611They say to their mothers, Where is corn and wine? when they swooned as the wounded in the streets of the city, when their soul was poured out into their mothers’ bosom.
ASV
American Standard Version · 1901They say to their mothers, Where is grain and wine? When they swoon as the wounded in the streets of the city, When their soul is poured out into their mothers’ bosom.
BBE
Bible in Basic English · 1949They say to their mothers, Where is grain and wine? when they are falling like the wounded in the open squares of the town, when their life is drained out on their mother's breast.
YLT
Young's Literal Translation · 1862To their mothers they say, `Where <FI>are<Fi> corn and wine?' In their becoming feeble as a pierced one In the broad places of the city, In their soul pouring itself out into the bosom of their mothers.
DRA
Douay-Rheims (Challoner) · 1752Lamed. They said to their mothers: Where is corn and wine? when they fainted away as the wounded in the streets of the city: when they breathed out their souls in the bosoms of their mothers.
DBY
Darby Bible · 1890They say to their mothers, Where is corn and wine? when they swoon as the wounded in the streets of the city; when they pour out their soul into their mothers' bosom.
Context
Verse 12 follows Jeremiah’s tears (v. 11) with the children’s own desperate speech, intensifying the emotional center of the chapter. It paves the way for verse 13’s question about finding any adequate comparison or comfort for Jerusalem’s wound. The focus moves from the immediate scene of hunger to the larger, unhealable breach in Zion. This sets up the indictment against false prophets in verse 14, who failed to reveal iniquity and thus prevent such a fate, tying the present suffering to past spiritual negligence.
v.11Mine eyes do fail with tears, my heart is troubled; My liver is poured upon the earth, because of the destruction of the daughter of my people, Because the young children and the sucklings swoon in the streets of the city.
v.12This passage
v.13What shall I testify unto thee? what shall I liken to thee, O daughter of Jerusalem? What shall I compare to thee, that I may comfort thee, O virgin daughter of Zion? For thy breach is great like the sea: who can heal thee?
Cross references
Related passages from across Scripture, drawn from the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge.
- Ezekiel 30:24
And I will strengthen the arms of the king of Babylon, and put my sword in his hand: but I will break the arms of Pharaoh, and he shall groan before him with the groanings of a deadly wounded man.
- Isaiah 53:12
Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he poured out his soul unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors: yet he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.
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