Lam 4:5 | NETfull | STEP | Those who once feasted on delicacies are now starving to death in the streets. Those who grew up wearing expensive clothes are now dying amid garbage.

Lamentations 4:5

ה (He)

5 Those who once feasted on delicacies ^{▼▼ Heb “eaters of delicacies.” An alternate English gloss would be “connoisseurs of fine foods.”}
are now starving to death ^{▼▼ Heb “are desolate.”} in the streets.
Those who grew up ^{▼▼ Heb “were reared.”} wearing expensive clothes ^{▼▼ Heb “in purple.” The term תוֹלָע (tola’, “purple”) is a figurative description of expensive clothing: it is a metonymy of association: the color of the dyed clothes (= purple) stands for the clothes themselves.}
are now dying ^{▼▼ Heb “embrace garbage.” One may also translate “rummage through” (cf. NCV “pick through trash piles”; TEV “pawing through refuse”; NLT “search the garbage pits.”} amid garbage. ^{▼▼ The Hebrew word אַשְׁפַּתּוֹת (’ashpatot) can also mean “ash heaps.” Though not used as a combination elsewhere, to “embrace ash heaps” might also envision a state of mourning or even dead bodies lying on the ash heaps.}