Our skin is hot as an oven, Because of the fever of famine.
Parallel translations
- WEB Our skin is black like an oven, Because of the burning heat of famine.
- KJV Our skin was black like an oven because of the terrible famine.
- BSB Our skin is as hot as an oven with fever from our hunger.
- NASB Our skin has become as hot as an oven, Because of the ravages of hunger.
- NLT The famine has blackened our skin as though baked in an oven.
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
Their skin has grown scorched and black from the fever of starvation. The verse pictures famine ravaging their very bodies.
Overview
The poet describes flesh burning hot like an oven from the consuming heat of hunger—a vivid image of the body wasting under prolonged famine. This is the physical toll of the covenant curses warned of in the Law (Deuteronomy 28:48-53). The suffering is real and unsparing, yet even here the lament is voiced to God, anticipating the One who entered our hunger and affliction to redeem us (Hebrews 4:15).
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 4
- Lam 4:8Their 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.
- Job 30:30My skin grows black and peels from me. My bones are burned with heat.
- Ps 119:83For I have become like a wineskin in the smoke. I don’t forget your statutes.
- Lam 3:4He has made my flesh and my skin old; he has broken my bones.
Themes, concepts, people & topics
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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 5:10 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.