What Does Lamentations 4:5 Mean in the King James?
They that did feed delicately are desolate in the streets: they that were brought up in scarlet embrace dunghills.
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 for “delicately” shares a word-family with Eden’s name for delight: here, those once surrounded by delight embrace refuse.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks a stark present truth: a life once fed on delicacies and dressed in scarlet can be exposed in the streets, holding close what it once would have cast away. Comfort and visible refinement do not keep a person beyond need, loss, or humiliation.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that comfort, refinement, or a high place in life can guarantee protection from collapse.
THE ROOT
מַעֲדַנִּים
maʿadannim
GROWS FROM
עדן
Delight, pleasure, luxury.
English “delicately” can sound like only a manner of eating, while the Hebrew points to delight and luxury, the same word-family heard in Eden. The verse places that delight beside public desolation: refinement is no shelter against loss.
ALSO GROWS
ʿeden: Delight; the name Eden.
עֵדֶן
The shared word-family ties the former delicacies to delight, giving the verse’s lost abundance an echo of Eden.
maʿadan: A delicacy or luxury.
מַעֲדָן
This related form names the kind of sumptuous food the verse says they once enjoyed.
הָאֱמֻנִים
haʾemunim
GROWS FROM
אמן
Support, foster, make firm.
The word rendered “brought up” belongs to a family of fostering and sustaining. That former care stands in sharp contrast with the scene now: those once reared in scarlet cling to heaps of refuse.
ALSO GROWS
ʾomen: A fosterer or nurse.
אֹמֵן
This branch makes the nurturing sense within “brought up” visible.
ʾemunah: Steadfastness, trust, leaning one’s full weight on something.
אֱמוּנָה
This branch carries the family’s sense of firmness and support, sharpening the contrast between former nurture and present desolation.
THE PATTERN
Visible abundance can collapse into exposed need, stripping away the signs that once marked status.
Wilt thou set thine eyes upon that which is not? for riches certainly make themselves wings; they fly away as an eagle toward heaven.And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat: and no man gave unto him.For the sun is no sooner risen with a burning heat, but it withereth the grass, and the flower thereof falleth, and the grace of the fashion of it perisheth: so also shall the rich man fade away in his ways.THE THREAD
And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.The Hebrew for “delicately” is מַעֲדַנִּים (maʿadannim), from ע־ד־ן, the same word-family associated with עֵדֶן (ʿeden), “delight.” Genesis places humanity in a garden named for delight; Lamentations shows former delicacy collapsing into public desolation and refuse.
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