Bible Strands
Lamentations 1:11
All her people groan as they search for bread. They have traded their treasures for food to keep themselves alive. Look, O LORD, and consider, for I have become despised.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — The speaker is Zion personified, addressing YHWH during the siege that followed Jerusalem's fall. The moment captures the city's desolation after enemies breached its defenses and violated its sanctuary.
The words — נֶאֱנָחִים (ne'enhachim) denotes the people's groaning, and מַחֲמַדֵיהֶם (machamadéhem) refers to the precious things they surrendered. These terms literally record the exchange of cultural and material wealth for survival bread.
The thread — The famine's progression matches Jeremiah 52:6, where the land's people have no food by the fourth month. The desperate search for sustenance parallels the fainting crowds crying for grain and wine in Lamentations 2:12, while the plea for divine attention aligns with Lamentations 1:12.
Why it lands — The text states that desperation reduces a community to trading its treasures for bread and demands God's direct observation of their despised state. It requires the reader to acknowledge that material collapse precedes any appeal for divine intervention.
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
All her people sigh, they seek bread; they have given their pleasant things for meat to relieve the soul: see, O Lord, and consider; for I am become vile.
Cross-references
- Jeremiah 52:6 By the ninth day of the fourth month, the famine in the city was so severe that the people of the land had no food.
- Jeremiah 38:9 “My lord the king, these men have acted wickedly in all that they have done to Jeremiah the prophet. They have dropped him into the cistern, where he will starve to death, for there is no more bread in the city.”
- Lamentations 2:12 They cry out to their mothers: “Where is the grain and wine?” as they faint like the wounded in the streets of the city, as their lives fade away in the arms of their mothers.
- Deuteronomy 28:52 They will besiege all the cities throughout your land, until the high and fortified walls in which you trust have fallen. They will besiege all your cities throughout the land that the LORD your God has given you.
- 1 Samuel 30:11 Now his men found an Egyptian in the field and brought him to David. They gave the man water to drink and food to eat—
- 2 Kings 6:25 So there was a great famine in Samaria. Indeed, they besieged the city so long that a donkey’s head sold for eighty shekels of silver, and a quarter cab of dove’s dung sold for five shekels of silver.
- Job 40:4 “Behold, I am insignificant. How can I reply to You? I place my hand over my mouth.
- Psalms 25:15 My eyes are always on the LORD, for He will free my feet from the mesh.
- Jeremiah 19:9 I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and daughters, and they will eat one another’s flesh in the siege and distress inflicted on them by their enemies who seek their lives.’
- Lamentations 1:9 Her uncleanness stains her skirts; she did not consider her end. Her downfall was astounding; there was no one to comfort her. Look, O LORD, on my affliction, for the enemy has triumphed!