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Read the Bible

New King James Version

Isaiah 32:12

People shall mourn upon their breasts For the pleasant fields, 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 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

9 Rise up, you women who are at ease, Hear my voice; You complacent daughters, Give ear to my speech. 10 In a year and some days You will be troubled, you complacent women; For the vintage will fail, The gathering will not come. 11 Tremble, you women who are at ease; Be troubled, you complacent ones; Strip yourselves, make yourselves bare, And gird sackcloth on your waists. 12 People shall mourn upon their breasts For the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine. 13 On the land of my people will come up thorns and briers, Yes, on all the happy homes in the joyous city; 14 Because the palaces will be forsaken, The bustling city will be deserted. The forts and towers will become lairs forever, A joy of wild donkeys, a pasture of flocks-- 15 Until the Spirit is poured upon us from on high, And the wilderness becomes a fruitful field, And the fruitful field is counted as a forest. 16 Then justice will dwell in the wilderness, And righteousness remain in the fruitful field. 17 The work of righteousness will be peace, And the effect of righteousness, quietness and assurance forever. 18 My people will dwell in a peaceful habitation, In secure dwellings, 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
blessing I will bless you, and multiplying I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore; and your descendants shall possess the gate of their enemies.
Genesis 32:3
Then Jacob sent messengers before him to Esau his brother in the land of Seir, the country of Edom.
Genesis 32:4
And he commanded them, saying, "Speak thus to my lord Esau, "Thus your servant Jacob says: "I have dwelt with Laban and stayed there until now.
Genesis 32:6
Then the messengers returned to Jacob, saying, "We came to your brother Esau, and he also is coming to meet you, and four hundred men are with him."
Genesis 32:13
So he lodged there that same night, and took what came to his hand as a present for Esau his brother:
Genesis 32:15
thirty milk camels with their colts, forty cows and ten bulls, twenty female donkeys and ten foals.
Exodus 32:13
Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, Your servants, to whom You swore by Your own self, and said to them, 'I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven; and all this land that I have spoken of I give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.' " Genesis 13:15 and Genesis 22:17">[fn]
Numbers 23:19
"God is not a man, that He should lie, Nor a son of man, that He should repent. Has He said, and will He not do? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?
1 Samuel 15:29
And also the Strength of Israel will not lie nor relent. For He is not a man, that He should relent."
Matthew 24:35
Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will by no means 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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