◄ Lamentations 4:9 ►
Verse  (Click for Chapter)
Good News Translation
Those who died in the war were better off than those who died later, who starved slowly to death, with no food to keep them alive.

New Revised Standard Version
Happier were those pierced by the sword than those pierced by hunger, whose life drains away, deprived of the produce of the field.

Contemporary English Version
Being killed with a sword is better than slowly starving to death.

New American Bible
Better for those pierced by the sword than for those pierced by hunger, Better for those who bleed from wounds than for those who lack food.

Douay-Rheims Bible
Teth. It was better with them that were slain by the sword, than with them that died with hunger: for these pined away being consumed for want of the fruits of the earth.

Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

Teth. It was better with them that were slain by the sword, than with them that died with hunger: for these pined away being consumed for want of the fruits of the earth.

for

Leviticus 26:39 And if of them also some remain, they shall pine away in their iniquities, in the land of their enemies: and they shall be afflicted for the sins of their fathers, and their own.

Ezekiel 24:23 You shall have crowns on your heads, and shoes on your feet: you shall not lament nor weep, but you shall pine away for your iniquities, and every one shall sigh with his brother.

Ezekiel 33:10 Thou therefore, O son of man, say to the house of Israel: Thus you have spoken, saying: Our iniquities, and our sins are upon us, and we pine away in them: how then can we live?

pine away.

Context
The Distress of Zion
…8Heth. Their face is now made blacker than coals, and they are not known in the streets: their skin hath stuck to their bones, it is withered, and is become like wood. 9Teth. It was better with them that were slain by the sword, than with them that died with hunger: for these pined away being consumed for want of the fruits of the earth.10Jod. The hands of the pitiful women have sodden their own children: they were their meat in the destruction of the daughter of my people.…
Cross References
Exodus 16:3
And the children of Israel said to them: Would to God we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat over the fleshpots, and ate bread to the full: Why have you brought us into this desert, that you might destroy all the multitude with famine?

Leviticus 26:39
And if of them also some remain, they shall pine away in their iniquities, in the land of their enemies: and they shall be afflicted for the sins of their fathers, and their own.

2 Kings 25:3
The ninth day of the month: and a famine prevailed in the city, and there was no bread for the people of the land.

Jeremiah 16:4
They shall die by the death of grievous illnesses: they shall not be lamented, and they shall not be buried, they shall be as dung upon the face of the earth: and they shall be consumed with the sword, and with famine: and their carcasses shall be meat for the fowls of the air, and for the beasts of the earth.

Ezekiel 24:23
You shall have crowns on your heads, and shoes on your feet: you shall not lament nor weep, but you shall pine away for your iniquities, and every one shall sigh with his brother.

Lamentations 4:8
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