Beat your breasts in sorrow for your bountiful farms and your fruitful grapevines.
Parallel translations
- WEB Beat your breasts for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine.
- KJV They shall lament for the teats, for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine.
- BSB Beat your breasts for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vines,
- NKJV People shall mourn upon their breasts For the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine.
- NASB Beat your breasts for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine,
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
They are to beat their breasts in grief over the loss of pleasant fields and fruitful vines. It matters because coming desolation will turn prosperity into mourning.
Overview
Isaiah pictures lamentation over ruined fields and vineyards once enjoyed. The mourning over lost abundance underscores the reversal that judgment brings. It is a sober reminder that comforts not held with God can be swept away, directing hope toward God rather than perishable plenty.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 7
- Lam 4:3–4Even the jackals draw out the breast, they nurse their young ones: But the daughter of my people has become cruel, like the ostriches in the wilderness.
- Ezek 20:15Moreover also I swore to them in the wilderness, that I would not bring them into the land which I had given them, flowing with milk and honey, which is the glory of all lands;
- Deut 11:11–12but the land, where you go over to possess it, is a land of hills and valleys which drinks water from the rain of the sky,
- Nah 2:7It is decreed: she is uncovered, she is carried away; and her servants moan as with the voice of doves, beating on their breasts.
- Deut 8:7–8For Yahweh your God brings you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of springs, and underground water flowing into valleys and hills;
- Lam 2:11My eyes fail with tears, my heart is troubled; My liver is poured on the earth, because of the destruction of the daughter of my people, Because the young children and the infants swoon in the streets of the city.
- Ezek 20:6in that day I swore to them, to bring them out of the land of Egypt into a land that I had searched out for them, flowing with milk and honey, which is the glory of all lands.
Resources, by level
Commentaries & study tools
Free animated overview and word-study videos for this book.
Sermons and teaching on this passage from across YouTube.
Clear, readable, conservative exposition — the best free place to start on any passage.
Matthew Henry, Barnes, Gill, the Pulpit Commentary, Ellicott, Cambridge, and more — stacked on one page for this exact verse.
The beloved Puritan exposition of this whole book — warm, devotional, and verse by verse (free, CCEL).
Hebrew/Greek interlinear, word definitions, and cross-references for this verse.
Christ at the center
Isaiah sees him most clearly: the virgin's son Immanuel, the child on David's throne, the shoot from Jesse, the light to the nations, and above all the Suffering Servant pierced for our transgressions (ch. 53).
How Isaiah 32:12 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Hebrew word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.