Ratapan 4:5
Konteksה (He)
4:5 Those who once feasted on delicacies 1
are now starving to death 2 in the streets.
Those who grew up 3 wearing expensive clothes 4
are now dying 5 amid garbage. 6
Ratapan 4:11
Konteksכ (Kaf)
4:11 The Lord fully vented 7 his wrath;
he poured out his fierce anger. 8
He started a fire in Zion;
it consumed her foundations. 9
[4:5] 1 tn Heb “eaters of delicacies.” An alternate English gloss would be “connoisseurs of fine foods.”
[4:5] 2 tn Heb “are desolate.”
[4:5] 4 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] 5 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] 6 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.
[4:11] 7 tn Heb “has completed.” The verb כִּלָּה (killah), Piel perfect 3rd person masculine singular from כָּלָה (kalah, “to complete”), has a range of closely related meanings: (1) “to complete, bring to an end,” (2) “to accomplish, finish, cease,” (3) “to use up, exhaust, consume.” Used in reference to God’s wrath, it describes God unleashing his full measure of anger so that divine justice is satisfied. This is handled admirably by several English versions: “The
[4:11] 8 tn Heb “the heat of his anger.”
[4:11] 9 tn The term יְסוֹד (yÿsod, “foundation”) refers to the ground-level and below ground-level foundation stones of a city wall (Ps 137:7; Lam 4:11; Mic 1:6).
