Lamentations 4:9 - Exposition

The miserable condition just now described maintains a sad pre-eminence even when compared with the fate of the slain in battle. And why! For these pine away (literally, melt away ) , stricken through (with the pangs of hunger). The Authorized Version takes the subject of the second half of the verse to be the famished. But it is, perhaps, more natural to take it to be those wounded in a battle, to whom the expression, "stricken through," is actually applied in ch. 37:10; 51:4. In this case the line had better be rendered thus: For those pine away, stricken through, leaving the fruits of the field (which they no longer need). The word rendered "pine away" would be particularly applicable to those who perished from loss of blood.