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Monday, July 21st, 2025
the Week of Proper 11 / Ordinary 16
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Read the Bible

Literal Standard Version

Isaiah 32:12

They are lamenting for breasts, || For fields of desire, for the fruitful vine.

Bible Study Resources

Concordances:

- Nave's Topical Bible - Church;   Israel, Prophecies Concerning;   Women;  

Dictionaries:

- American Tract Society Bible Dictionary - Isaiah;   Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible - Isaiah, Book of;   Mourning Customs;   Taber;   The Hawker's Poor Man's Concordance And Dictionary - Rain;  

Encyclopedias:

- International Standard Bible Encyclopedia - Isaiah;   Relationships, Family;   Teat;   The Jewish Encyclopedia - Beautiful, the, in Jewish Literature;  

Parallel Translations

Christian Standard Bible®
Beat your breasts in mourningfor the delightful fields and the fruitful vines,
Hebrew Names Version
They shall strike on the breasts for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine.
King James Version
They shall lament for the teats, for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine.
English Standard Version
Beat your breasts for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine,
New American Standard Bible
Beat your breasts for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine,
New Century Version
Beat your breasts in grief, because the fields that were pleasant are now empty. Cry, because the vines that once had fruit now have no more grapes.
Amplified Bible
Beat your breasts [in mourning] for the beautiful fields, for the fruitful vine,
World English Bible
They shall strike on the breasts for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine.
Geneva Bible (1587)
Men shall lament for the teates, euen for the pleasant fieldes, and for the fruitefull vine.
Legacy Standard Bible
Beat your breasts for the desirable fields, for the fruitful vine,
Berean Standard Bible
Beat your breasts for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vines,
Contemporary English Version
Slap your breasts in sorrow because of what happened to the fruitful fields and vineyards,
Complete Jewish Bible
Beat your breasts in mourning for the pleasant fields and fruitful vines,
Darby Translation
They shall smite on the breasts [in lamentation] for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vineyards.
Easy-to-Read Version
Beat your breasts in sorrow. Cry because your fields are empty. Your vineyards once gave grapes, but now they are empty.
George Lamsa Translation
Mourn and beat upon your breasts, for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine.
Good News Translation
Beat your breasts in grief because the fertile fields and the vineyards have been destroyed,
Lexham English Bible
mourning over breasts, over fields of delight, over the fruitful vine,
Literal Translation
be wailing over breasts, over pleasant fields, over the fruitful vine.
Miles Coverdale Bible (1535)
Ye shal knock vpo youre brestes, because of the pleasaunt felde, and because of the fruteful vynyarde.
American Standard Version
They shall smite upon the breasts for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine.
Bible in Basic English
Have sorrow for the fields, the pleasing fields, the fertile vine;
JPS Old Testament (1917)
Smiting upon the breasts for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine;
King James Version (1611)
They shall lament for the teats, for the pleasant fieldes, for the fruitfull vine.
Bishop's Bible (1568)
For as the infantes weepe when their mothers teates are dryed vp: so shall you weepe for your faire fieldes and fruitfull vineyardes.
Brenton's Septuagint (LXX)
and beat your breasts, because of the pleasant field, and the fruit of the vine.
English Revised Version
They shall smite upon the breasts for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine.
Wycliffe Bible (1395)
girde youre leendis; weile ye on brestis, on desirable cuntrei, on the plenteuouse vyner.
Update Bible Version
They shall smite on the breasts for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine.
Webster's Bible Translation
They shall lament for the breasts, for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine.
New English Translation
Mourn over the field, over the delightful fields and the fruitful vine!
New King James Version
People shall mourn upon their breasts For the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine.
New Living Translation
Beat your breasts in sorrow for your bountiful farms and your fruitful grapevines.
New Life Bible
Beat your breasts for the good fields, for the vine full of fruit,
New Revised Standard
Beat your breasts for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine,
J.B. Rotherham Emphasized Bible
Upon your breasts, continue smiting: For desirable fields, For fruitful vine.
Douay-Rheims Bible
Mourn for your breasts, for the delightful country, for the fruitful vineyard.
Revised Standard Version
Beat upon your breasts for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine,
Young's Literal Translation
For breasts they are lamenting, For fields of desire, for the fruitful vine.
New American Standard Bible (1995)
Beat your breasts for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine,

Contextual Overview

9Women, easy ones, rise, hear my voice, || Daughters, confident ones, give ear [to] my saying, 10In days and a year || You are troubled, O confident ones, || For harvest has been consumed, || The gathering does not come. 11Tremble, you women, you easy ones, || Be troubled, you confident ones, || Strip and make bare, with a girdle on the loins, 12They are lamenting for breasts, || For fields of desire, for the fruitful vine.13Over the ground of my people thorn [and] brier go up, || Surely over all houses of joy of the exulting city, 14The palace has been left, || The multitude of the city forsaken, || Fort and watchtower have been for dens for all time, || A joy of wild donkeys—a pasture of herds; 15Until the Spirit is emptied out on us from on high, || And a wilderness has become a fruitful field, || And the fruitful field is reckoned for a forest. 16And judgment has dwelt in the wilderness, || And righteousness remains in the fruitful field. 17And a work of the righteousness has been peace, || And a service of the righteousness—Keeping quiet and confidence for all time. 18And My people have dwelt in a peaceful habitation, || And in steadfast dwelling places, || And in quiet resting places.

Bible Verse Review
  from Treasury of Scripure Knowledge

lament: Lamentations 2:11, Lamentations 4:3, Lamentations 4:4

pleasant fields: Heb. fields of desire, Deuteronomy 8:7, Deuteronomy 8:8, Deuteronomy 11:11, Deuteronomy 11:12, Ezekiel 20:6, Ezekiel 20:15

Reciprocal: Isaiah 7:23 - be for briers Isaiah 28:22 - a consumption Jeremiah 49:3 - gird Ezekiel 26:12 - thy pleasant houses

Cross-References

Genesis 22:17
that blessing I bless you, and multiplying I multiply your seed as stars of the heavens, and as sand which [is] on the seashore; and your Seed possesses the gate of His enemies;
Genesis 32:3
And Jacob sends messengers before him to his brother Esau, toward the land of Seir, the field of Edom,
Genesis 32:4
and commands them, saying, "Thus you say to my lord, to Esau, Thus said your servant Jacob: I have sojourned with Laban, and I linger until now;
Genesis 32:6
And the messengers return to Jacob, saying, "We came to your brother, to Esau, and he is also coming to meet you, and four hundred men with him";
Genesis 32:13
And he lodges there during that night, and takes from that which is coming into his hand, a present for his brother Esau:
Genesis 32:15
suckling camels and their young ones thirty, cows forty, and bullocks ten, female donkeys twenty, and foals ten;
Exodus 32:13
Be mindful of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Israel, Your servants, to whom You have sworn by Yourself, and to whom You speak: I multiply your seed as stars of the heavens, and all this land, as I have said, I give to your seed, and they have inherited [it] for all time";
Numbers 23:19
God [is] not a man—and lies, || And a son of man—and relents! Has He said—and He does not do [it]? And spoken—and He does not confirm it?
1 Samuel 15:29
and also, the Preeminence of Israel does not lie nor relent, for He [is] not a man that He should relent."
Matthew 24:35
The heaven and the earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away.

Gill's Notes on the Bible

They shall lament for the teats,.... Either of the beasts of the field, that should be dried up, and give no milk, through the great drought that should be upon the land; or through the waste of the herbage by the enemy; or else of the women, their breasts and paps, which should afford no milk for their infants, through the famine that should press them sore, which would occasion great lamentation, both in mothers and children; though some think are to be understood of the fields, and are explained by them in the next clause; the fruitful earth being compared to a woman, its fields are like breasts or paps, which yield food and nourishment, but now should not afford any, and therefore there would be cause of lamentation. Jarchi interprets it, "they shall beat upon their breasts" m a gesture used in lamentation to express exceeding great grief and sorrow, Luke 18:13 some, because the word rendered "lament" is of the masculine gender, and so not applicable to women, render the words in connection with the preceding verse Isaiah 32:11 thus,

"gird sackcloth on your loins, and on your mourning breasts'' n;

though they may be interpreted indefinitely, "there shall be lamentation for the teats", among all sorts of people, men, women, and children:

for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine; as the fields are when covered with corn and grass, and the vines with clusters of grapes, but now should not be, either through drought, or by being foraged and trampled on by the enemy.

m So it is explained in T. Bab. Moed Katon, fol. 27. 2. n So Castalio.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

They shall lament for the teats - Interpreters have been not a little perplexed by this expression. Lowth supposes it is to be taken in connection with the previous verse, and that it denotes that sackcloth was to be girded upon the breast as well as upon the loins. Others have supposed that it denotes to ‘smite upon the breasts,’ as a token of grief; others, that the word ‘breast’ here denotes children by a synecdoche, as having been nourished by the breast, and that the women here were called to mourn over their children. But it is evident, I think, that the word breasts here is used to denote that which nourishes or sustains life, and is synonymous with fruitful fields. It is so used in Homer (Iliad, ix. 141), where οίθαρ ἀρούρης oithar arourēs denotes fertility of land. And here the sense doubtless is, that they would mourn over the fields which once contributed to sustain life, but which were now desolate. In regard to the grammatical difficulties of the place, Rosenmuller and Gesenius may be consulted.

The pleasant fields - Margin, as in Hebrew, ‘Fields of desire.’

Clarke's Notes on the Bible

Verse Isaiah 32:12. They shall lament - for the pleasant fields - "Mourn ye for the pleasant field"] The Septuagint, Syriac, and Vulgate read ספדו siphdu, mourn ye, imperative; twelve MSS., (five ancient,) two editions, the Septuagint, Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion, Syriac, and Vulgate, all read שדה sadeh, a field; not שדי shedey, breasts.


 
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