Lamentations 5:10

10. Our skin was black The word rendered “black” occurs in three other passages, namely, in Genesis 43:30, and 1 Kings 3:26, in both which places it is translated “yearned;” and in Hosea 11:8, where it is rendered “kindled.” The use of the word oven, or furnace, seems decisive for this last sense in this place; though Furst says, “The explanation of Kimchi, ‘to grow warm,’ is only conjectural.” The allusion is to the fever produced by famine, and the clause should read, Our skin glows like an oven, because of the fever of famine.