The young men perform menial labor; ¹  boys stagger from their labor. ² 

biblegateway Lam 5:13

Young men worked at the grinding mill, And youths stumbled under loads of wood.

Young men labor at millstones; boys stumble under loads of wood.

Our young men work at the mill, and our boys stagger under loads of wood.

biblegateway Lam 5:13

Young men toil at the millstones; boys stagger under loads of wood.

Young men are compelled to grind at the mill, and boys stagger under loads of wood.

bibleoremus Lam 5:13

Young men are compelled to grind, and boys stagger under loads of wood.

Young men toil, grinding at the mill; boys stagger under loads of wood.

biblegateway Lam 5:13

Young men ground at the millstones; Boys staggered under loads of wood.

They took the young men to grind, and the children fell under the wood.

biblegateway Lam 5:13

The young men perform menial labor; ¹  boys stagger from their labor. ² 

¹ tn The text is difficult. Word by word the MT has “young men hand mill(?) they take up” Perhaps it means “they take [our] young men for mill grinding,” or perhaps it means “the young men take up [the labor of] mill grinding.” This expression is an example of synecdoche where the mill stands for the labor at the mill and then that labor stands for performing menial physical labor as servants. The surface reading, “young men carry hand mills,” does not portray any great adversity for them. The Vulgate translates as an abusive sexual metaphor (see D. R. Hillers, Lamentations [AB], 99), but this gives no known parallel to the second part of the verse.

² tc Heb “boys trip over wood.” This phrase makes little sense. The translation adopts D. R. Hillers’ suggestion (Lamentations [AB], 99) of בְּעֶצֶב כָּשָׁלוּ (bÿ’etsev kashalu). Due to letter confusion and haplography the final ב (bet) of בְּעֶצֶב (bÿ’etsev) which looks like the כ (kaf) beginning the next word, was dropped. This verb can have an abstract noun after the preposition ב (bet) meaning “from, due to” rather than “over.”