What Does Lamentations 4:4 Mean in the King James?
The tongue of the sucking child cleaveth to the roof of his mouth for thirst: the young children ask bread, and no man breaketh it unto them.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The Hebrew pictures bread spread toward the children, exposing the hand that never reaches them.
THE MEANING
You see a nursing child parched with thirst and young children asking for bread; their needs are unmistakable, yet no one extends food to them. The verse exposes what happens when a community leaves its most dependent people without nourishment.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that suffering stays hidden because no one asked: these children ask for bread, and still no one gives it.
THE ROOT
פֹּרֵשׂ
pōrēs
GROWS FROM
פרשׂ
pāras
To spread out or stretch forth.
Under “breaketh” sits the image of spreading something outward: bread exists, but no hand extends it to the children. Elsewhere this root pictures hands spread toward God; here, food never reaches dependent bodies.
ALSO GROWS
pāras: To spread out or stretch forth.
פָּרַשׂ
This basic verb carries the outward motion pictured in the bread that is not extended to the children.
pērastî: I spread forth; Psalm 143:6 uses it of spreading out hands.
פֵּרַשְׂתִּי
The same root pictures hands reaching outward there, while here no one reaches out with food.
שָׁאֲלוּ
sha'alu
GROWS FROM
שאל
sha'al
To ask or request.
The verb names a voiced request, not only a need felt inwardly. The children ask for bread, so the verse locates the failure after their need becomes audible: the appeal still meets no provision.
ALSO GROWS
sha'al: To ask or request.
שָׁאַל
This root form names the act the children make plainly: they ask for what sustains them.
she'elah: A question or request.
שְׁאֵלָה
This noun carries the same root of asking, making the children’s appeal part of the verse’s central action.
צָמָא
tsama
GROWS FROM
צמא
tsama
To thirst or become thirsty.
The child’s dry mouth is not an abstraction: this root names thirst in a person and, in another form, thirst or drought across a land. The verse compresses that same deprivation from one vulnerable body to a wider condition.
ALSO GROWS
tsamē: Thirsty.
צָמֵא
This form names a person experiencing the condition described in the verse.
tsimmā'on: Thirst or drought.
צִמָּאוֹן
The same root can name a wider condition of deprivation, echoing how a child’s thirst can expose a community’s larger failure to provide.
THE PATTERN
A community’s care becomes visible in whether it extends food to the hungry and dependent.
But thou shalt open thine hand wide unto him, and shalt surely lend him sufficient for his need, in that which he wanteth.Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:THE THREAD
Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?Lamentations shows children asking for bread while no one spreads it toward them; Isaiah pictures bread being given to the hungry. The contrast turns the absence here into a clear measure of nourishment reaching someone who needs it.
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