Lamentations 5:9

We gat our bread with the peril of our lives because of the sword of the wilderness. WE GAT OUR BREAD WITH THE PERIL OF OUR LIVES - i:e., those of us left in the city after its capture by the Chaldeans. BECAUSE OF THE SWORD OF THE WILDERNESS - because of the liability to attack by the robber-Arabs of the wilderness, through which the Jews had to pass to get "bread" from Egypt (cf. )....

The word חרב, _chereb_, means drought as well as sword. As the Prophet is speaking of famine and the desert,, I have no doubt but that dryness or drought is _sword _the word means here; and I wonder that the word sword had occurred to any; they could not have regarded the context. He then says that the people sought bread with the soul, that is, at the hazard of their own life. If danger be preferred, I do not object. But as he simply says, with the soul, he seems to express this, that for food they hazarded their own life. Food, indeed, is the support of life, for why is bread sought but for sustaining life? But the hungry so rush headlong to procure food, that they expose themselves to thousand dangers, and they also weary themselves with many labors; and this is to seek bread with their soul, that is, when men not only anxiously labor to procure food, but pour forth as it were their o...

1-16 Is any afflicted? Let him pray; and let him in prayer pour out his complaint to God. The people of God do so here; they complain not of evils feared, but of evils felt. If penitent and patient under what we suffer for the sins of our fathers, we may expect that He who punishes, will return in mercy to us. They acknowledge, Woe unto us that we have sinned! All our woes are owing to our own sin and folly. Though our sins and God's just displeasure cause our sufferings, we may hope in his pardoning mercy, his sanctifying grace, and his kind providence. But the sins of a man's whole life will be punished with vengeance at last, unless he obtains an interest in Him who bare our sins in his own body on the tree....

Verse 9. _WE GAT OUR BREAD WITH_ THE PERIL OF _OUR LIVES_] They could not go into the wilderness to feed their cattle, or to get the necessaries of life, without being harassed and plundered by marauding parties, and by these were often exposed to the peril of their lives. This was predicted by Moses, Deuteronomy 28:31....

WE GAT - Or, We get “our bread at the peril of our lives.” This verse apparently refers to those who were left in the land, and who in gathering in such fruits as remained, were exposed to incursions of the Bedouin, here called “the sword of the desert.”...

EXPOSITION LAMENTATIONS 5:1 INSULT UPON INSULT HAS BEEN HEAPED UPON JERUSALEM. LAMENTATIONS 5:2 OUR INHERITANCE. The land had been "given" to Abraham (Genesis 13:1; Genesis 17:8), and was consequently inherited by Abraham's posterity. OUR HOUSES. Not as it the Chaldeans had actually taken up their abode in some of the houses of Jerusalem. The expressions are forcible, but inexact. The land wa

WE GAT OUR BREAD [WITH THE PERIL OF] OUR LIVES,.... This seems to refer to the time of the siege when they privately went out of the city to get in some provision, but went in danger of their lives: BECAUSE OF THE SWORD OF THE WILDERNESS: or, "of the plain" t; because of the, word of the Chaldean army, which lay in the plain about Jerusalem into whose hand there was danger of falling, and of being cut to pieces. t מפני חרב המדבר "propter gladium [in] deserto, [sive] plano", Gataker....

CHAPTER 5 THE PRAYER OF HOPE The lamentations end with a prayer: “Remember, O LORD, what is come upon us; consider and behold our reproach.” It is the prayer of confession and of hope, which reaches the heart of the God of Israel. The prophet, in behalf of the nation, pours out his confession: “The crown is fallen from our head; woe unto us that we have sinned.” And there is hope in the Lord who remaineth, whose throne is from generation to generation. The prayer, “Turn Thou us unto Thee, O LORD, and we shall be turned; renew our days as of old.” (Lamentations 5:21) will some day be blessedly answered. The Eightieth Psalm contains the same prayer a number of times, and there He is mentioned who will yet save His people Israel from their sins. “Let Thy hand be upon the Man of Thy right hand, upon the Son of Man whom Thou madest strong for Thyself. So will not we go back from Th

LAMENTATIONS 5. A PRAYER. This chapter differs much from the previous four. It is not a Lament, but one long pleading; and it is not the chant of an individual, but of a company, a plural, we. It may be called a hexameter poem, having six and not five beats in each of its twenty-two lines; it keeps, however, to this alphabetical number of lines, although it is not an alphabetic acrostic. Possibly, the composer intended to think out later other initial words for his lines, and thus to make them acrostic: so it may be an acrostic in the making. But it may perhaps have been appended to the book as a sort of satire on the alphabetic fancies of chs. 1- 4. It is not deeply spiritual, and yet at the close there comes a pathetic and even affectionate appeal to God. The cry in Lamentations 5:1 opens the prayer; then in...

WE GAT OUR BREAD. We brought home our bread. LIVES. souls. Hebrew. _nephesh._ App-13. Some codices, with one early printed edition, read "souls". SWORD OF THE WILDERNESS. "The sword" is put, by Figure of speech _Metonymy_ (of Cause), for the raids and fightings of the inhabitants of the wilderness....