Bible Strands
Isaiah 32:12
Beat your breasts for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vines,
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — Isaiah addresses the "ladies of leisure" and "daughters of complacency" in Jerusalem, commanding them to strip bare and wear sackcloth as the nation's agricultural prosperity turns to desolation.
The words — The text pairs סֹֽפְדִ֑ים (so.fe.Dim, mourning) with שָׁדַ֖יִם (sha.Da.yim, breasts) to describe a physical expression of grief, directing that mourning toward שְׂדֵי־ חֶ֕מֶד (fields of delight) and גֶּ֖פֶן (vines).
The thread — The contrast between promised fertility and current ruin runs through Deuteronomy 8:7 and 11:11, while the bodily posture of corporate grief aligns with the lament recorded in Lamentations 2:11.
Why it lands — The text demands readers acknowledge that prolonged comfort breeds spiritual complacency, and that the loss of material security is intended to provoke sober recognition of divine judgment.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
They shall lament for the teats, for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine.
Cross-references
- Deuteronomy 8:7 For the LORD your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks and fountains and springs that flow through the valleys and hills;
- Deuteronomy 11:11 But the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess is a land of mountains and valleys that drinks in the rain from heaven.
- Lamentations 2:11 My eyes fail from weeping; I am churning within. My heart is poured out in grief over the destruction of the daughter of my people, because children and infants faint in the streets of the city.
- Lamentations 4:3 Even jackals offer their breasts to nurse their young, but the daughter of my people has become cruel, like an ostrich in the wilderness.
- Ezekiel 20:6 On that day I swore to bring them out of the land of Egypt into a land that I had searched out for them, a land flowing with milk and honey, the glory of all lands.
- Ezekiel 20:15 Moreover, with an uplifted hand I swore to them in the wilderness that I would not bring them into the land that I had given them—a land flowing with milk and honey, the glory of all lands—
- Nahum 2:7 It is decreed that the city be exiled and carried away; her maidservants moan like doves, and beat upon their breasts.