Lamentations 4:9 - The Scriptures 2009

⁹ Better off were those pierced by the sword Than those pierced by hunger; For these pine away, Pierced through for lack of the fruits 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.

Lamentations 4:9 Cross References

2 Kings 25:3

By the ninth of the new moon the scarcity of food had become so severe in the city that there was no food for the people of the land.

Exodus 16:3

And the children of Yisra’ĕl said to them, “If only we had died by the hand of יהוה in the land of Mitsrayim, when we sat by the pots of meat and when we ate bread to satisfaction! For you have brought us out into this wilderness to put all this assembly to death with hunger.”

Isaiah 22:2

you who are filled with turmoils, a noisy city, a city of revelry? Your slain are not slain with the sword, nor the dead in battle.

Jeremiah 16:4

“They shall die of deaths from diseases, they shall not be lamented nor be buried, but be like dung on the face of the earth, and be consumed by sword and by scarcity of food. And their corpses shall be meat for the birds of the heavens and for the beasts of the earth.”

Ezekiel 24:23

and let your turbans remain on your heads and your sandals on your feet. Do not mourn, nor weep, but you shall pine away in your crookednesses and groan with one another.

Ezekiel 33:10

“And you, O son of man, say to the house of Yisra’ĕl, ‘This is what you have said, “If our transgressions and our sins lie upon us, and we pine away in them, how then shall we live?” ’

Ezekiel 4:16

And He said to me, “Son of man, see, I am going to cut off the supply of bread in Yerushalayim, and they shall eat bread by weight and with fear, and drink water by measure and with dread,

Ezekiel 7:15

The sword is outside, and the pestilence and the scarcity of food inside. He who is in the field dies by the sword, and he who is in a city, scarcity of food and pestilence devour him,

Leviticus 26:39

and those of you who are left rot away in their crookedness in your enemies’ lands, and also in their fathers’ crookednesses rot away with them.

Deuteronomy 28:51

and they shall eat the fruit of your livestock and the fruit of your land, until you are destroyed. They leave you no grain, nor new wine, nor oil, nor the increase of your cattle or the offspring of your flocks, until they have destroyed you.