The precious sons of Zion, Weighed against pure gold, How they are regarded as earthenware jars, The work of a potter’s hands!
Parallel translations
- WEB The precious sons of Zion, comparable to fine gold, How are they esteemed as earthen pitchers, the work of the hands of the potter!
- KJV The precious sons of Zion, comparable to fine gold, how are they esteemed as earthen pitchers, the work of the hands of the potter!
- BSB How the precious sons of Zion, once worth their weight in pure gold, are now esteemed as jars of clay, the work of a potter’s hands!
- NKJV The precious sons of Zion, Valuable as fine gold, How they are regarded as clay pots, The work of the hands of the potter!
- NLT See how the precious children of Jerusalem, worth their weight in fine gold, are now treated like pots of clay made by a common potter.
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
Zion's precious people, once worth their weight in gold, are now treated as cheap clay pots.
Overview
The 'precious sons of Zion' have been devalued, esteemed as common, breakable earthenware. The contrast between fine gold and clay pitchers dramatizes their fall from honor to ruin. It reflects how sin debases what God made glorious, and points to the gospel's reversal in which God restores worth to broken vessels (2 Cor. 4:7).
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 10
- Isa 30:14He will break it as a potter’s vessel is broken, breaking it in pieces without sparing, so that there won’t be found among the broken piece a piece good enough to take fire from the hearth, or to dip up water out of the cistern.”
- Rom 9:21–23Or hasn’t the potter a right over the clay, from the same lump to make one part a vessel for honor, and another for dishonor?
- Jer 19:11and shall tell them, ‘Yahweh of Armies says: “Even so will I break this people and this city, as one breaks a potter’s vessel, that can’t be made whole again; and they shall bury in Topheth, until there is no place to bury.
- 2 Tim 2:20Now in a large house there are not only vessels of gold and of silver, but also of wood and of clay. Some are for honor, and some for dishonor.
- 2 Cor 4:7But we have this treasure in clay vessels, that the exceeding greatness of the power may be of God, and not from ourselves.
- Lam 5:12Princes were hanged up by their hand: The faces of elders were not honored.
- Isa 51:18There is no one to guide her among all the sons to whom she has given birth; and there is no one who takes her by the hand among all the sons who she has brought up.
- Zech 9:13For indeed I bend Judah as a bow for me. I have filled the bow with Ephraim; and I will stir up your sons, Zion, against your sons, Greece, and will make you like the sword of a mighty man.
- Lam 2:21“The youth and the old man lie on the ground in the streets. My virgins and my young men have fallen by the sword. You have killed them in the day of your anger. You have slaughtered, and not pitied.
- Jer 22:28Is this man Coniah a despised broken vessel? Is he a vessel in which no one delights? Why are they cast out, he and his offspring, and cast into a land which they don’t know?
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Christ at the center
The weeping over a ruined city and the steadfast mercies that are new every morning point to the man of sorrows who wept over Jerusalem and whose mercy rises new from the grave.
How Lamentations 4:2 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
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