Lamentations 5:7-10

Our fathers have sinned, and are not Death hath secured our fathers from these evils, though they had sinned; but the punishment they escaped, we suffer in the most grievous degree: see note on Jeremiah 31:29. The expression, is not, or, are not, is often used of those who are departed out of this world, Genesis 42:13. Servants have ruled over us Servants to the great men among the Chaldeans, and other strangers, are become our masters, Nehemiah 5:15. We gat our bread with the peril of our lives, &c. It was at the hazard of our lives that we brought in the grain out of the fields, on account of the robbers who infested the country. Blaney thinks that the prophet refers here to the incursions of the Arabian free-booters, who, he supposes, might not be improperly styled, the sword of the wilderness, to whose depredations the people, on account of their weak and helpless state, were continually exposed, while they followed their necessary business. Our skin was black like an oven Famine and other hardships changed the very colour of our countenances.