In this verse the contrast is not between past and present but between two forms of death experienced by the inhabitants of Jerusalem.

Happier translates the Hebrew for “better,” meaning that those who were killed by the enemy were more fortunate than those who starved to death. Victims of the sword translates a phrase meaning “pierced by the sword,” as also used in Numbers 19.16, “slain by the sword.” “Pierced” occurs as “slain” by itself in Deuteronomy 21.1. In a more general way of speaking we may say “killed by the enemy,” “died fighting the enemy,” “killed while fighting.”

Victims of hunger: victims is the same word repeated, and so the poet creates a parallel poetic image in which hunger is the slayer, “killed by hunger.” If this is possible in the translator’s language, it may be poetically useful to attempt to retain the parallelism of expression.

In Revised Standard Version and others the expression who pined away refers back to those who died of hunger in the previous unit of the verse. But the Hebrew is not clear. AB makes who refer to those who died of wounds, and so makes the second half of the verse parallel to the first half: “Those killed by the sword had it better than those killed by famine, Those who perished of wounds, than those who lacked the fruits of the field.”

Pined away translates a word meaning to flow or melt, and in this context “wasted away” (New English Bible) is the equivalent of Revised Standard Version. Stricken translates a word which appears to mean “pierced.” See also the same word translated “wounded” in Jeremiah 37.10; 51.4. Here want of the fruits of the field serves the same purpose as the sword and hunger. Fruits of the field means food, produce, something to eat. It is the contrast between a quick death in battle and a slow death by starvation that is the main theme of the verse, whatever may be the details about the way in which this is expressed.

The contrast expressed in Happier were the victims … than … must be expressed in a different way in many languages, so that the comparison is seen to be in the degree of suffering; for example, “Those who were killed in battle suffered, but those who slowly starved to death suffered more,” or “The suffering of those who died in battle was much, but the suffering of those who died from starvation was still more.”

For the second half of the verse, translators may follow the model of AB above; or, if following Revised Standard Version who pined away, stricken by …, they may need to express this, for example, as “They are the ones who slowly starved because there was no food to eat” or “They slowly died from lack of something to eat.”

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 .