Made my teeth grind on gravel is literally “broke my teeth on gravel,” which is somewhat ambiguous. The sense can be “He made me chew gravel and so ground down my teeth,” or “He pushed my face into the rocks and broke my teeth,” or “He hit me in the teeth with rocks and so broke them.” It is probably best understood as a figure of extreme suffering or humiliation. In other words, the poet’s suffering is like rocks breaking the teeth. Bible en français courant says suitably “He made me chew rocks,” or we may say “He made me suffer, and it was like breaking my teeth on rocks.”

The Hebrew verb translated cower (to crouch down from fear) is changed by some scholars to mean “to feed someone,” and so New English Bible has “fed on ashes.” Hebrew Old Testament Text Project gives the Hebrew text an “A” rating and translates “He laid me in the dust.”

Both expressions in this verse may be taken to mean that the man was humiliated, degraded, rejected. In translation it may be necessary to make this point clear by saying, for example, “He made me bite rocks which broke my teeth, and put me down in the dust to show that I was worth nothing.”

Quoted with permission from Reyburn, William D. A Handbook on Lamentations. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1992. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .