Isaiah 32:12

THE MESSAGE

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

⁹Take your stand, indolent women! Listen to me! Indulgent, indolent women, listen closely to what I have to say. In just a little over a year from now, you'll be shaken out of your lazy lives. The grape harvest will fail, and there'll be no fruit on the trees. Oh tremble, you indolent women. Get serious, you pampered dolls! Strip down and discard your silk fineries. Put on funeral clothes. Shed honest tears for the lost harvest, the failed vintage. Weep for my people's gardens and farms that grow nothing but thistles and thornbushes. Cry tears, real tears, for the happy homes no longer happy, the merry city no longer merry. The royal palace is deserted, the bustling city quiet as a morgue, The emptied parks and playgrounds taken over by wild animals, delighted with their new home. ¹⁵Yes, weep and grieve until the Spirit is poured down on us from above And the badlands desert grows crops and the fertile fields become forests. Justice will move into the badlands desert. Right will build a home in the fertile field. And where there's Right, there'll be Peace and the progeny of Right: quiet lives and endless trust. My people will live in a peaceful neighborhood— in safe houses, in quiet gardens. The forest of your pride will be clear-cut, the city showing off your power leveled. But you will enjoy a blessed life, planting well-watered fields and gardens, with your farm animals grazing freely.

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 32:3
Then Jacob sent messengers on ahead to his brother Esau in the land of Seir in Edom. He instructed them: "Tell my master Esau this, ‘A message from your servant Jacob: I've been staying with Laban and couldn't get away until now. I've acquired cattle and donkeys and sheep; also men and women servants. I'm telling you all this, my master, hoping for your approval.'"

Genesis 32:6
The messengers came back to Jacob and said, "We talked to your brother Esau and he's on his way to meet you. But he has four hundred men with him."

Genesis 32:13
He slept the night there. Then he prepared a present for his brother Esau from his possessions: two hundred female goats, twenty male goats, two hundred ewes and twenty rams, thirty camels with their nursing young, forty cows and ten bulls, twenty female donkeys and ten male donkeys. He put a servant in charge of each herd and said, "Go ahead of me and keep a healthy space between each herd."

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.