Ratapan 1:12

ל (Lamed)

1:12 Is it nothing to you, ¹  all you who pass by on the road? ² 

Look and see!

Is there any pain like mine?

The Lord ³  has afflicted me, ⁴ 

he ⁵  has inflicted it on me

when ⁶  he burned with anger. ⁷ 

Ratapan 4:3-5

ג (Gimel)

4:3 Even the jackals ⁸  nurse their young

at their breast, ⁹ 

but my people ¹⁰  are cruel,

like ostriches ¹¹  in the desert.

ד (Dalet)

4:4 The infant’s tongue sticks

to the roof of its mouth due to thirst;

little children beg for bread, ¹² 

but no one gives them even a morsel. ¹³ 

ה (He)

4:5 Those who once feasted on delicacies ¹⁴ 

are now starving to death ¹⁵  in the streets.

Those who grew up ¹⁶  wearing expensive clothes ¹⁷ 

are now dying ¹⁸  amid garbage. ¹⁹ 

[1:12]  ¹ tc The Heb לוֹא אֲלֵיכֶם (lo’ ’alekhem, “not to you”) is awkward and often considered corrupt but there is no textual evidence yet adduced to certify a more original reading.

[1:12]  ² tn The line as it stands is imbalanced, such that the reference to the passersby may belong here or as a vocative with the following verb translated “look.”

[1:12]  ³ tn Heb “He.” The personal pronoun “he” and the personal name “the Lord,” both appearing in this verse, are transposed in the translation for the sake of readability. In the Hebrew text, “He” appears in the A-line and “the Lord” appears in the B-line – good Hebrew poetic style, but awkward English style.

[1:12]  ⁴ tn Heb “which was afflicted on me.” The Polal of עָלַל (’alal) gives the passive voice of the Polel. The Polel of the verb עָלַל (’alal) occurs ten times in the Bible, appearing in agricultural passages for gleaning or some other harvest activity and also in military passages. Jer 6:9 plays on this by comparing an attack to gleaning. The relationship between the meaning in the two types of contexts is unclear, but the very neutral rendering “to treat” in some dictionaries and translations misses the nuance appropriate to the military setting. Indeed it is not at all feasible in a passage like Judges 20:45 where “they treated them on the highway” would make no sense but “they mowed them down on the highway” would fit the context. Accordingly the verb is sometimes rendered “treat” or “deal severely,” as HALOT 834 s.v. poel.3 suggests for Lam 3:51, although simply suggesting “to deal with” in Lam 1:22 and 2:20. A more injurious nuance is given to the translation here and in 1:22; 2:20 and 3:51.

[1:12]  ⁵ sn The delay in naming the Lord as cause is dramatic. The natural assumption upon hearing the passive verb in the previous line, “it was dealt severely,” might well be the pillaging army, but instead the Lord is named as the tormentor.

[1:12]  ⁶ tn Heb “in the day of.” The construction בְּיוֹם (bÿyom, “in the day of”) is a common Hebrew idiom, meaning “when” or “on the occasion of” (e.g., Gen 2:4; Lev 7:35; Num 3:1; Deut 4:15; 2 Sam 22:1; Pss 18:1; 138:3; Zech 8:9).

[1:12]  ⁷ tn Heb “on the day of burning anger.”

[4:3]  ⁸ tn The noun תַּנִּין (tannin) means “jackals.” The plural ending ־ִין (-in) is diminutive (GKC 242 §87.e) (e.g., Lam 1:4).

[4:3]  ⁹ tn Heb “draw out the breast and suckle their young.”

[4:3]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “the daughter of my people.”

[4:3]  ¹¹ tc The MT Kethib form כִּי עֵנִים (ki ’enim) is by all accounts a textual corruption for כַּיְעֵנִים (kay’enim, “like ostriches”) which is preserved in the Qere and the medieval Hebrew mss, and reflected in the LXX.

[4:4]  ¹² tn Heb “bread.” The term “bread” might function as a synecdoche of specific (= bread) for general (= food); however, the following parallel line does indeed focus on the act of breaking bread in two.

[4:4]  ¹³ tn Heb “there is not a divider to them.” The term פָּרַשׂ (paras), Qal active participle ms from פָּרַס (paras, “to divide”) refers to the action of breaking bread in two before giving it to a person to eat (Isa 58:7; Jer 16:7; Lam 4:4). The form פָּרַשׂ (paras) is the alternate spelling of the more common פָּרַס (paras).

[4:5]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “eaters of delicacies.” An alternate English gloss would be “connoisseurs of fine foods.”

[4:5]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “are desolate.”

[4:5]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “were reared.”

[4:5]  ¹⁷ tn 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.

[4:5]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “embrace garbage.” One may also translate “rummage through” (cf. NCV “pick through trash piles”; TEV “pawing through refuse”; NLT “search the garbage pits.”

[4:5]  ¹⁹ tn 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.