Their visage is blacker than a coal; they are not known in the streets: their skin cleaveth to their bones; it is withered, it is become like a stick.
Parallel translations
- WEB Their appearance is blacker than a coal; they are not known in the streets: Their skin clings to their bones; it is withered, it has become like a stick.
- BSB But now their appearance is blacker than soot; they are not recognized in the streets. Their skin has shriveled on their bones; it has become as dry as a stick.
- NKJV Now their appearance is blacker than soot; They go unrecognized in the streets; Their skin clings to their bones, It has become as dry as wood.
- NASB Their appearance is darker than soot, They are not recognized in the streets; Their skin is shriveled on their bones, It is dry, it has become like wood.
- NLT But now their faces are blacker than soot. No one recognizes them in the streets. Their skin sticks to their bones; it is as dry and hard as wood.
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
Now those same nobles are blackened, gaunt, and unrecognizable from famine.
Overview
In sharp contrast to verse 7, the once-radiant leaders are now darkened, skin shriveled on their bones, unknown in the streets. The famine has wasted them beyond recognition. This dramatic reversal portrays the wages of sin and the wasting effects of judgment, deepening the longing for the restoration God provides in Christ (Rom. 6:23).
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 16
- Lam 5:10Our skin was black like an oven because of the terrible famine.
- Job 30:30My skin is black upon me, and my bones are burned with heat.
- Ps 102:3–5For my days are consumed like smoke, and my bones are burned as an hearth.
- Ps 119:83For I am become like a bottle in the smoke; yet do I not forget thy statutes.
- Job 19:20My bone cleaveth to my skin and to my flesh, and I am escaped with the skin of my teeth.
- Ps 102:11My days are like a shadow that declineth; and I am withered like grass.
- Isa 52:14As many were astonied at thee; his visage was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men:
- Joel 2:6Before their face the people shall be much pained: all faces shall gather blackness.
- Job 33:21His flesh is consumed away, that it cannot be seen; and his bones that were not seen stick out.
- Ps 32:4For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me: my moisture is turned into the drought of summer. Selah.
- Lam 4:1–2How is the gold become dim! how is the most fine gold changed! the stones of the sanctuary are poured out in the top of every street.
- Ruth 1:19–20So they two went until they came to Bethlehem. And it came to pass, when they were come to Bethlehem, that all the city was moved about them, and they said, Is this Naomi?
- Ps 38:3There is no soundness in my flesh because of thine anger; neither is there any rest in my bones because of my sin.
- Job 2:12And when they lifted up their eyes afar off, and knew him not, they lifted up their voice, and wept; and they rent every one his mantle, and sprinkled dust upon their heads toward heaven.
- Job 30:17–19My bones are pierced in me in the night season: and my sinews take no rest.
- Nah 2:10She is empty, and void, and waste: and the heart melteth, and the knees smite together, and much pain is in all loins, and the faces of them all gather blackness.
Themes, concepts, people & topics
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Hebrew/Greek interlinear, word definitions, and cross-references for this verse.
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 4:8 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.