Lamentations 5:4
What does Lamentations 5:4 mean?
A plain-English look at Lamentations 5:4 in WEB alongside six other public-domain English translations, with cross-references and chapter context.
What Lamentations 5:4 means
They must pay for water and buy their own firewood, resources once freely gathered in their land. This signals occupation and exploitation: basic necessities are controlled by others, or access is restricted, forcing constant dependence and humiliation. Everyday survival has become a transaction under pressure. The verse exposes how judgment is felt not only in armies and ruins but in the price of drinking and warming a home. It is a lived reminder that they are no longer masters in their own place. Bringing this to God acknowledges that only His mercy can loosen the grip of those who profit from their weakness.
Parallel translations
WEB
World English Bible · 2000We have drunken our water for money; Our wood is sold unto us.
KJV
King James Version · 1611We have drunken our water for money; our wood is sold unto us.
ASV
American Standard Version · 1901We have drunken our water for money; Our wood is sold unto us.
BBE
Bible in Basic English · 1949We give money for a drink of water, we get our wood for a price.
YLT
Young's Literal Translation · 1862Our water for money we have drunk, Our wood for a price doth come.
DRA
Douay-Rheims (Challoner) · 1752We have drunk our water for money: we have bought our wood.
DBY
Darby Bible · 1890Our water have we to drink for money, our wood cometh unto us for a price.
Context
From family vulnerability, the prayer turns to daily deprivation. Verse 4 shows the economic squeeze under foreign control. The next verse will add the sense of relentless pursuit and exhaustion, portraying life as a grind with no respite. Step by step, the lament deepens the reader’s grasp of Jerusalem’s condition, so that the later plea for renewal is not abstract but anchored in concrete hardships.
Cross references
Related passages from across Scripture, drawn from the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge.
- Deuteronomy 28:48
therefore shalt thou serve thine enemies that Jehovah shall send against thee, in hunger, and in thirst, and in nakedness, and in want of all things: and he shall put a yoke of iron upon thy neck, until he have destroyed thee.
- Isaiah 3:1
For, behold, the Lord, Jehovah of hosts, doth take away from Jerusalem and from Judah stay and staff, the whole stay of bread, and the whole stay of water;
- Ezekiel 4:9
Take thou also unto thee wheat, and barley, and beans, and lentils, and millet, and spelt, and put them in one vessel, and make thee bread thereof; according to the number of the days that thou shalt lie upon thy side, even three hundred and ninety days, shalt thou eat thereof.
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