Lamentations 5:4
We must buy the water we drink; our wood comes at a price.
BSB
ASV
We have drunken our water for money; Our wood is sold unto us.
KJV
We have drunken our water for money; our wood is sold unto us.
We have drunken our water for money - I suppose the meaning of this is, that every thing was taxed by the Chaldeans, and that they kept the management in their own hands, so that wood and water were both sold, the people not being permitted to help themselves. They were now so lowly reduced by servitude, that they were obliged to pay dearly for those things which formerly were common and of no price.
Thus, "our" means the water which we need, the commonest necessary of life. our wood--In Judea each one could get wood without pay; in Babylon, "our wood," the wood we need, must be paid for.
Rare words are the text's own signal of a deliberate thread: the fewer the occurrences, the more the places it appears belong together.
The walk8
Follow this verse’s cross-references two steps out. Each card is a verse this one points to, and beneath it the verses that one points to in turn. Where several different paths arrive at the same place, that place is listed first: the text keeps returning to it. Every stop shows its own words, and every stop is a page.
Through
Isaiah 3:1For behold, the Lord GOD of Hosts is about to remove from Jerusalem and Judah both supply and support: the whole supply of food and water,
leads to
Then He told me, “Son of man, I am going to cut off the supply of food in Jerusalem. They will anxiously eat bread rationed by weight, and in despair they will drink water…
Reached by 2 independent paths from here.
When I cut off your supply of bread, ten women will bake your bread in a single oven and dole out your bread by weight, so that you will eat but not be satisfied.
“Son of man, if a land sins against Me by acting unfaithfully, and I stretch out My hand against it to cut off its supply of food, to send famine upon it, and to…
Therefore the Lord GOD of Hosts, the Mighty One of Israel, declares: “Ah, I will be relieved of My foes and avenge Myself on My enemies.
“My lord the king, these men have acted wickedly in all that they have done to Jeremiah the prophet. They have dropped him into the cistern, where he will starve to death, for there…
Through
Deuteronomy 28:48you will serve your enemies the LORD will send against you in famine, thirst, nakedness, and destitution. He will place an iron yoke on your neck until He has destroyed you.
leads to
“Go and tell Hananiah that this is what the LORD says: ‘You have broken a yoke of wood, but in its place you have fashioned a yoke of iron.’
So the LORD could no longer endure the evil deeds and detestable acts you committed, and your land became a desolation, a horror, and an object of cursing, without inhabitant, as it is this…
Instead, we will do everything we vowed to do: We will burn incense to the Queen of Heaven and offer drink offerings to her, just as we, our fathers, our kings, and our officials…