Lamentations 4:9 - New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition 2021

⁹ Happier were those pierced by the sword than those pierced by hunger, whose life drains away, deprived of the produce of the field.

More versions

King James Version (Oxford) 1769

⁹ They that be slain with the sword Are better than they that be slain with hunger: For these pine away, stricken Through for want of the fruits of the field.

Amplified Bible - Classic Edition

⁹ Those who are slain with the sword are more fortunate than those who are the victims of hunger [slain by the famine]; for they [the hungry] pine and ebb away, stricken through for want of the fruits of the field.

American Standard Version (1901)

⁹ They that are slain with the sword are better than they that are slain with hunger; For these pine away, stricken through, for want of the fruits of the field.

Common English Bible

⁹ Things were better for those stabbed by the sword than for those stabbed by famine— those who bled away, pierced, lacking food from the field.

Catholic Public Domain Version

⁹ TETH. It was better for those slain by the sword, than for those put to death by famine. For these waste away, being consumed by the sterility of the land.

Douay-Rheims version of The Bible - 1752 version

⁹ 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.

Lamentations 4:9 Cross References

2 Kings 25:3

On the ninth day of the fourth month, the famine became so severe in the city that there was no food for the people of the land.

Exodus 16:3

The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the pots of meat and ate our fill of bread, for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.”

Isaiah 22:2

city full of shouting, tumultuous city, panic-stricken town? Your slain are not slain by the sword, nor are they dead in battle.

Jeremiah 16:4

They shall die of deadly diseases. They shall not be lamented, nor shall they be buried; they shall become like dung on the surface of the ground. They shall perish by the sword and by famine, and their dead bodies shall become food for the birds of the air and for the wild animals of the earth.

Ezekiel 24:23

Your turbans shall be on your heads and your sandals on your feet; you shall not mourn or weep, but you shall pine away in your iniquities and groan to one another.

Ezekiel 33:10

Now you, mortal, say to the house of Israel: Thus you have said: “Our transgressions and our sins weigh upon us, and we waste away because of them; how then can we live?”

Ezekiel 4:16

Then he said to me, “Mortal, I am going to cut off the supply of bread in Jerusalem; they shall eat bread by weight and with fearfulness, and they shall drink water by measure and in dismay.

Ezekiel 7:15

The sword is outside; pestilence and famine are inside; those in the field die by the sword; those in the city—famine and pestilence devour them.

Leviticus 26:39

And those of you who survive shall languish in the land of your enemies because of their iniquities; they shall also languish because of the iniquities of their ancestors.

Deuteronomy 28:51

It shall consume the fruit of your livestock and the fruit of your ground until you are destroyed, leaving you neither grain, wine, and oil nor the increase of your cattle and the issue of your flock, until it has made you perish.