Lamentations 4:7

The Message

The splendid and sacred nobles once glowed with health. Their bodies were robust and ruddy, their beards like carved stone.

Cross References

Psalm 144:12

Make our sons in their prime like sturdy oak trees, Our daughters as shapely and bright as fields of wildflowers. Fill our barns with great harvest, fill our fields with huge flocks; Protect us from invasion and exile— eliminate the crime in our streets.

Psalm 51:7

Soak me in your laundry and I’ll come out clean, scrub me and I’ll have a snow-white life. Tune me in to foot-tapping songs, set these once-broken bones to dancing. Don’t look too close for blemishes, give me a clean bill of health. God, make a fresh start in me, shape a Genesis week from the chaos of my life. Don’t throw me out with the trash, or fail to breathe holiness in me. Bring me back from gray exile, put a fresh wind in my sails! Give me a job teaching rebels your ways so the lost can find their way home. Commute my death sentence, God, my salvation God, and I’ll sing anthems to your life-giving ways. Unbutton my lips, dear God; I’ll let loose with your praise.

Song of Solomon 5:10

My dear lover glows with health— red-blooded, radiant! He’s one in a million. There’s no one quite like him! My golden one, pure and untarnished, with raven black curls tumbling across his shoulders. His eyes are like doves, soft and bright, but deep-set, brimming with meaning, like wells of water. His face is rugged, his beard smells like sage, His voice, his words, warm and reassuring. Fine muscles ripple beneath his skin, quiet and beautiful. His torso is the work of a sculptor, hard and smooth as ivory. He stands tall, like a cedar, strong and deep-rooted, A rugged mountain of a man, aromatic with wood and stone. His words are kisses, his kisses words. Everything about him delights me, thrills me through and through! That’s my lover, that’s my man, dear Jerusalem sisters.

1 Samuel 16:12

Jesse sent for him. He was brought in, the very picture of health—bright-eyed, good-looking. God said, “Up on your feet! Anoint him! This is the one.”