They took the young men to grind, and the children fell under the wood.
Young men toil at millstones; boys stagger under loads of wood.
Young men to grind they have taken, And youths with wood have stumbled.
The young men have borne the mill, and the youths have stumbled under the wood.
Lamentations — Five poems over the ruin of Jerusalem. The first four are alphabetic acrostics — every letter of the Hebrew alphabet drafted to hold the weight of grief. At the book's centre, mercy renewed every morning.
The verses this one reaches12
And the Philistines laid hold on him, and put out his eyes; and they brought him down to Gaza, and bound him with fetters of brass; and he did grind in the prison-house.
Yea, they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with their finger.
Thy sons have fainted, they lie at the head of all the streets, as an antelope in a net; they are full of the wrath of Jehovah, the rebuke of thy God.
And it came to pass in those days, when Moses was grown up, that he went out unto his brethren, and looked on their burdens: and he saw an Egyptian smiting a Hebrew, one of his brethren.
If thou see the ass of him that hateth thee lying under his burden, thou shalt forbear to leave him, thou shalt surely release it with him.
and all the first-born in the land of Egypt shall die, from the first-born of Pharaoh that sitteth upon his throne, even unto the first-born of the maid-servant that is behind the mill; and all the first-born of cattle.
Then let my wife grind unto another, And let others bow down upon her.
Is not this the fast that I have chosen: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the bands of the yoke, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?
Therefore they did set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens. And they built for Pharaoh store-cities, Pithom and Raamses.
Take the millstones, and grind meal; remove thy veil, strip off the train, uncover the leg, pass through the rivers.
Then there arose a great cry of the people and of their wives against their brethren the Jews.
Now therefore, what do I here, saith Jehovah, seeing that my people is taken away for nought? they that rule over them do howl, saith Jehovah, and my name continually all the day is blasphemed.
1 more places the canon echoes this verse are mapped by book below ↓
The whole remaining floor, clustered by book in canonical order. The first references in each book travel with their words; the rest are one click from theirs.
Cross-reference data: Treasury of Scripture Knowledge; OpenBible.info (CC-BY).
The walk8
Two steps out along the cross-reference floor, votes-ranked — destinations reached by more than one path rise (the text's own hubs). Every stop is a page, and every stop travels with its words.
Through
Matthew 23:4Yea, they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with their finger.
leads to
And he said, Woe unto you lawyers also! for ye load men with burdens grievous to be borne, and ye yourselves touch not the burdens with one of your fingers.
Now therefore why make ye trial of God, that ye should put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear?
For not even they who receive circumcision do themselves keep the law; but they desire to have you circumcised, that they may glory in your flesh.
Through
Exodus 2:11And it came to pass in those days, when Moses was grown up, that he went out unto his brethren, and looked on their burdens: and he saw an Egyptian smiting a Hebrew, one…
leads to
By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter;
And Moses was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians; and he was mighty in his words and works.
Therefore they did set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens. And they built for Pharaoh store-cities, Pithom and Raamses.
Through
Exodus 23:5If thou see the ass of him that hateth thee lying under his burden, thou shalt forbear to leave him, thou shalt surely release it with him.
leads to
Thou shalt not see thy brother’s ass or his ox fallen down by the way, and hide thyself from them: thou shalt surely help him to lift them up again.
Through
Judges 16:21And the Philistines laid hold on him, and put out his eyes; and they brought him down to Gaza, and bound him with fetters of brass; and he did grind in the prison-house.
leads to
None that go unto her return again, Neither do they attain unto the paths of life:
The whole web at once: see the Arc.
Rare words are the text's own signal of a deliberate thread — the fewer the occurrences, the more the places it appears belong together.