Bible Strands
Lamentations 5:13
Young men toil at millstones; boys stagger under loads of wood.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — The speaker addresses the surviving community of Jerusalem following the execution of princes and the stripping of respect from elders. The voice describes the immediate aftermath of the city's fall, focusing on the forced labor imposed on the remaining population.
The words — The text uses בַּחוּרִים (ba.chu.Rim) and נְעָרִים (ne.'a.Rim), both literally meaning "young men," to identify the laborers. The verbs נָשָׂאוּ (na.Sa.'u) and כָּשַׁל (ka.Sha.lu) literally mean "they have lifted" and "they have staggered," directly describing the physical act of carrying wood and working at millstones.
The thread — This account of exhausted laborers parallels the Israelite forced labor under Egyptian taskmasters (Exodus 1:11) and the Pharisaic practice of binding heavy burdens on others (Matthew 23:4). The imagery of captives reduced to grueling work also aligns with the description of Samson bound in Gaza (Judges 16:21).
Why it lands — The verse requires the reader to observe that societal collapse reduces the young to exhausted laborers bearing unrelenting physical weight. It demands acknowledgment of concrete humiliation and bodily strain without abstracting the suffering into symbolic terms.
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 took the young men to grind, and the children fell under the wood.
Cross-references
- Judges 16:21 Then the Philistines seized him, gouged out his eyes, and brought him down to Gaza, where he was bound with bronze shackles and forced to grind grain in the prison.
- Matthew 23:4 They tie up heavy, burdensome loads and lay them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them.
- Exodus 1:11 So the Egyptians appointed taskmasters over the Israelites to oppress them with forced labor. As a result, they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh.
- Exodus 2:11 One day, after Moses had grown up, he went out to his own people and observed their hard labor. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people.
- Exodus 11:5 and every firstborn son in the land of Egypt will die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sits on his throne, to the firstborn of the servant girl behind the hand mill, as well as the firstborn of all the cattle.
- Exodus 23:5 If you see the donkey of one who hates you fallen under its load, do not leave it there; you must help him with it.
- Nehemiah 5:1 About that time there was a great outcry from the people and their wives against their fellow Jews.
- Job 31:10 then may my own wife grind grain for another, and may other men sleep with her.
- Isaiah 47:2 Take millstones and grind flour; remove your veil; strip off your skirt, bare your thigh, and wade through the streams.
- Isaiah 58:6 Isn’t this the fast that I have chosen: to break the chains of wickedness, to untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and tear off every yoke?