What Does Lamentations 5:4 Mean?
We drink our waters for silver, and our wood comes at a price.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
We have drunken our water for money; our wood is sold unto us.THE KEY
The constriction reaches the necessities themselves: water must be purchased, and even wood comes at a price.
THE MEANING
The verse places you where drinking water and wood for daily use both require money. When what sustains life has a price, even the simplest needs become a place of constriction.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the comforting idea that hardship leaves basic necessities untouched: here, even water and wood carry a cost.
THE ROOT
יָבֹאוּ
yavo'u
GROWS FROM
בוא
boʾ, to come, enter, arrive
“comes at a price” in this verse is yavo'u. The Hebrew word beneath “sold unto us” says that the wood “comes” to them, with the price named in the same line. The root keeps the arrival in view: what they need reaches them only through a costly exchange.
ALSO GROWS
boʾ: come, enter
בּוֹא
This is the root verb; it makes arrival the image carried by the wood in the verse.
mavo: entrance, entryway
מָבוֹא
An entrance is a point through which something comes in, echoing the costly arrival of the wood.
tevu'ah: produce, yield
תְּבוּאָה
This word for produce belongs to the same “coming in” family, linking arrival with what the land yields.
שָׁתִינוּ
shatinu
GROWS FROM
שתה
shatah, to drink
“drink” in this verse is shatinu. The root for drinking also forms מִשְׁתֶּה (mishteh), a drinking feast. Hebrew holds ordinary drinking and a feast of drinking in one word-family; here, the act is narrowed to water that must be bought.
ALSO GROWS
shatah: to drink
שָׁתָה
This is the root verb behind “we have drunken,” naming the basic act that now carries a price.
mishteh: drinking feast
מִשְׁתֶּה
This branch shows the same root opening into a feast, while this verse shows drinking reduced to paid necessity.
THE PATTERN
Under constriction, access to life’s necessities is converted into a priced or controlled exchange.
Therefore you shall serve your enemies whom the LORD shall send against you, in hunger, and in thirst, and in nakedness, and in the emptiness of all things; and he shall set a yoke of iron upon your neck, until he has destroyed you.And I hear a voice in the midst of the four living creatures, saying, A measure of wheat for a denarius, and three measures of barley for a denarius, and do not harm the oil and the wine.THE THREAD
Ho, every one who thirsts, come to the waters, and whoever has no silver, come, break open and eat. Yes, come, break open wine and milk, without silver and without price.The Hebrew verb בוא (boʾ), “come,” appears in both verses: the wood comes at a price here, while Isaiah invites the thirsty to come to the waters without money. The same root of arrival frames both costly access and provision without price.
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