Lamentations 5:9

We gat our bread with the peril of our lives because of the sword of the wilderness.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(9) The sword of the wilderness.—Another element of suffering is hinted at. Those who were left in the land were attacked, as they gathered in their scanty harvest, by the nomad tribes of the wilderness. Amalekites, Midianites, and others. (Comp. Jeremiah 40:14.)

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

5:1-16 Is any afflicted? Let him pray; and let him in prayer pour out his complaint to God. The people of God do so here; they complain not of evils feared, but of evils felt. If penitent and patient under what we suffer for the sins of our fathers, we may expect that He who punishes, will return in mercy to us. They acknowledge, Woe unto us that we have sinned! All our woes are owing to our own sin and folly. Though our sins and God's just displeasure cause our sufferings, we may hope in his pardoning mercy, his sanctifying grace, and his kind providence. But the sins of a man's whole life will be punished with vengeance at last, unless he obtains an interest in Him who bare our sins in his own body on the tree.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

We gat - Or, We get "our bread at the peril of our lives." This verse apparently refers to those who were left in the land, and who in gathering in such fruits as remained, were exposed to incursions of the Bedouin, here called "the sword of the desert."

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

9. We gat our bread with … peril—that is, those of us left in the city after its capture by the Chaldeans.

because of … sword of … wilderness—because of the liability to attack by the robber Arabs of the wilderness, through which the Jews had to pass to get "bread" from Egypt (compare La 5:6).

Matthew Poole's Commentary

The enemies lay encamped in all the plains, so as they could stir out no way but the sword of the Chaldeans was upon them, and what victuals they got they adventured their lives for, during the time of the siege.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

We gat our bread with the peril of our lives,.... This seems to refer to the time of the siege when they privately went out of the city to get in some provision, but went in danger of their lives:

because of the sword of the wilderness: or, "of the plain" (t); because of the, word of the Chaldean army, which lay in the plain about Jerusalem into whose hand there was danger of falling, and of being cut to pieces.

(t) "propter gladium in deserto, sive plano", Gataker.

Geneva Study Bible

We procured our bread with the peril of our lives because of the sword {e} of the wilderness.

(e) Because of the enemy that came from the wilderness and would not suffer us to go and seek our necessary food.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

9. We get our bread] The reference is to the bands of wild Arabs (Bedaween), who plundered them as they ventured from the shelter of the city to reap the harvest or to tend the cattle or sheep of their masters.

the sword of the wilderness] a unique expression in O.T. For the sense see last note. A suggestion, involving only changes of vocalisation and of one consonant (ûmiddeber instead of hammidbar), is to read for “of the wilderness” and because of pestilence. Cp. Jeremiah 14:12; Jeremiah 21:7; Jeremiah 27:13; Jeremiah 34:17 (Stade, ZATW, xv. p. 285). But pestilence has no proper place in this context. Enc. Bibl. (2700) suggests Arabian for “sword” (‘ărâb for ḥereb).

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 9. - We gat our bread; rather, we get our bread. The allusion in the following words is perhaps to murderous attacks of Bedawins (as we should call the Ishmaelites) on the Jews who attempted to gather in the scanty harvest. Lamentations 5:9

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

And in addition to this humiliation under dishonourable servitude, we can get our daily bread only at the risk of our life. Thus there is fulfilled to them the threatening in Deuteronomy 28:28, "Ye shall be servants among your enemies, in hunger and thirst, in nakedness and want of everything." בּנפשׁנוּ, "for the price of our soul," i.e., with our life at stake, we bring in our bread. The danger is more exactly described by what is added: "before the sword of the wilderness." By this expression are meant the predatory Bedouins of the desert, who, falling upon those that were bringing in the bread, plundered, and probably even killed them. The bringing of the bread is not, however, to be referred (with Rosenmller, Maurer, and Kalkschmidt) to the attempts made to procure bread from the neighbouring countries; still less is it to be referred (with Thenius, Ewald, and Ngelsbach) to the need for "wringing the bread from the desert and its plunderers;" but it refers to the ingathering of the scanty harvest in the country devastated by war and by the visitations of predatory Bedouins: הביא is the word constantly employed in this connection; cf. 2 Samuel 9:10; Haggai 1:6.