Lamentations 4:9
What does Lamentations 4:9 mean?
A plain-English look at Lamentations 4:9 in WEB alongside six other public-domain English translations, with cross-references and chapter context.
What Lamentations 4:9 means
It would have been better, the poet says, to die by the sword than by hunger. Starvation is a slow, wasting death that pierces day after day, especially when the fields yield nothing. The verse captures the cruelty of siege warfare: surrounding armies cut off supplies, turning life into a drawn-out dying. This line is not morbid sensationalism; it is a sober recognition that judgment can be both just and unimaginably painful. Quick violence pales beside relentless deprivation. The statement also implies the land’s loss—once fruitful fields now inaccessible—highlighting how the blessings of God’s provision have been reversed under the weight of sin.
Parallel translations
WEB
World English Bible · 2000They that are slain with the sword are better than they that are slain with hunger; For these pine away, stricken through, for want of the fruits of the field.
KJV
King James Version · 1611They that be slain with the sword are better than they that be slain with hunger: for these pine away, stricken through for want of the fruits of the field.
ASV
American Standard Version · 1901They that are slain with the sword are better than they that are slain with hunger; For these pine away, stricken through, for want of the fruits of the field.
BBE
Bible in Basic English · 1949Those who have been put to the sword are better off than those whose death is caused by need of food; for these come to death slowly, burned up like the fruit of the field.
YLT
Young's Literal Translation · 1862Better have been the pierced of a sword Than the pierced of famine, For these flow away, pierced through, Without the increase of the field.
DRA
Douay-Rheims (Challoner) · 1752Teth. It was better with them that were slain by the sword, than with them that died with hunger: for these pined away being consumed for want of the fruits of the earth.
DBY
Darby Bible · 1890The slain with the sword are happier than the slain with hunger; for these pine away, stricken through for want of the fruits of the field.
Context
Verse 9 follows the nobles’ disfigurement by stating a grim comparative: a quick death is preferable to slow starvation. This observation intensifies the portrait of suffering and anticipates the horror of verse 10, where compassion itself is overturned. The sequence builds emotional gravity, compelling the reader to seek an explanation beyond human cruelty. That explanation comes in verse 11: Jehovah has poured out His fierce anger and kindled a fire in Zion. The chapter thus alternates lament and reason, each reinforcing the other, before turning to the failures of leaders in verses 12–16.
v.8Their visage is blacker than a coal; they are not known in the streets: Their skin cleaveth to their bones; it is withered, it is become like a stick.
v.9This passage
v.10The hands of the pitiful women have boiled their own children; They were their food in the destruction of the daughter of my people.
Cross references
Related passages from across Scripture, drawn from the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge.
- Jeremiah 16:4
They shall die grievous deaths: they shall not be lamented, neither shall they be buried; they shall be as dung upon the face of the ground; and they shall be consumed by the sword, and by famine; and their dead bodies shall be food for the birds of the heavens, and for the beasts of the earth.
- Leviticus 26:39
And they that are left of you shall pine away in their iniquity in your enemies’ lands; and also in the iniquities of their fathers shall they pine away with them.
- Ezekiel 24:23
And your tires shall be upon your heads, and your shoes upon your feet: ye shall not mourn nor weep; but ye shall pine away in your iniquities, and moan one toward another.
- Ezekiel 33:10
And thou, son of man, say unto the house of Israel: Thus ye speak, saying, Our transgressions and our sins are upon us, and we pine away in them; how then can we live?
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