Lamentations 3:16
Translations
King James Version (KJV)
He has also broken my teeth with gravel stones, he has covered me with ashes.
American King James Version (AKJV)
He has also broken my teeth with gravel stones, he has covered me with ashes.
American Standard Version (ASV)
He hath also broken my teeth with gravel stones; he hath covered me with ashes.
Basic English Translation (BBE)
By him my teeth have been broken with crushed stones, and I am bent low in the dust.
Webster's Revision
He hath also broken my teeth with gravel stones, he hath covered me with ashes.
World English Bible
He has also broken my teeth with gravel stones; he has covered me with ashes.
English Revised Version (ERV)
He hath also broken my teeth with gravel stones, he hath covered me with ashes.
Clarke's Lamentations 3:16 Bible Commentary
He hath also broken my teeth with gravel stones - What a figure to express disgust, pain, and the consequent incapacity of taking food for the support of life; a man, instead of bread, being obliged to eat small pebbles till all his teeth are broken to pieces by endeavoring to grind them. One can scarcely read this description without feeling the toothache. The next figure is not less expressive.
He hath covered me with ashes - הכפישני באפר hichphishani beepher, "he hath plunged me into the dust." To be thrown into a mass or bed of perfect dust, where the eyes are blinded by it, the ears stopped, and the mouth and lungs filled at the very first attempt to respire after having been thrown into it - what a horrible idea of suffocation and drowning! One can scarcely read this without feeling a suppression of breath, or a stricture upon the lungs! Did ever man paint sorrow like this man?
Barnes's Lamentations 3:16 Bible Commentary
Broken my teeth with gravel stones - His bread was so filled with grit that in eating it his teeth were broken.
Wesley's Lamentations 3:16 Bible Commentary
3:16 Ashes - Mourners were wont to throw ashes on their heads.