Lamentations 4:5

Footnotes

1. 15 Heb “eaters of delicacies.” An alternate English gloss would be “connoisseurs of fine foods.”
2. 16 Heb “are desolate.”
3. 17 Heb “were reared.”
4. 18 Heb “in purple.” The term תוֹלָע (tola’, “purple”) is a figurative description of expensive clothing: it is a metonymy of association: the color of the dyed clothes (= purple) stands for the clothes themselves.
5. 19 Heb “embrace garbage.” One may also translate “rummage through” (cf. “pick through trash piles”; “pawing through refuse”; “search the garbage pits.”
6. 20 The Hebrew word אַשְׁפַּתּוֹת (’ashpatot) can also mean “ash heaps.” Though not used as a combination elsewhere, to “embrace ash heaps” might also envision a state of mourning or even dead bodies lying on the ash heaps.