Jeremiæ 4:18

Jerome's Latin Vulgate

Lubricaverunt vestigia nostra
in itinere platearum nostrarum;
appropinquavit finis noster, completi sunt dies nostri,
quia venit finis noster.

Parallel Translations

Clementine Latin Vulgate (1592)
Vi� tu� et cogitationes tu� fecerunt h�c tibi : ista malitia tua, quia amara, quia tetigit cor tuum.

Nova Vulgata (1979)
SADE. Insidiati sunt vestigiis nostris, ne iremus per plateas nostras. "Appropinquavit finis noster, completi sunt dies nostri, quia venit finis noster".

Bible Verse Review
  from Treasury of Scripure Knowledge

hunt: Lamentations 3:52, 1 Samuel 24:14, 2 Kings 25:4, 2 Kings 25:5, Job 10:16, Psalms 140:11, Jeremiah 16:16, Jeremiah 39:4, Jeremiah 39:5, Jeremiah 52:7-9

our end is near: Jeremiah 1:12, Jeremiah 51:33, Ezekiel 7:2-12, Ezekiel 12:22, Ezekiel 12:23, Ezekiel 12:27, Amos 8:2

Reciprocal: Judges 5:6 - the highways 1 Samuel 24:11 - thou huntest Jeremiah 51:13 - thine Lamentations 1:3 - all Ezekiel 7:25 - and they Micah 7:2 - hunt

Gill's Notes on the Bible

They hunt our steps, that we cannot go in our streets,.... The Chaldeans, from their forts and batteries, as they could see, they watched the people as they came out of their houses, and walked about the streets, and shot their arrows at them; so that they were obliged to keep within doors, and not stir out, which they could not do without great danger:

our end is near, for our days are fulfilled; for our end is come; either the end of their lives, the days, months, and years appointed for them being fulfilled; or the end of their commonwealth, the end of their civil and church state, at least as they thought; the time appointed for their destruction was not only near at hand, but was actually come; it was all over with them.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

A rapid sketch of the last days of the siege and the capture of the king.

Lamentations 4:17

Rather, “Still do our eyes waste away looking for our vain help.”

In our watching - Or, “on our watchtower.”

Lamentations 4:18

Or, They hunted “our steps that we could not go out into the streets. To hunt” means here to lie in ambush, and catch by snares; and the streets are literally “the wide places,” especially at the gates. Toward the end of the siege the towers erected by the enemy would command these places.

Lamentations 4:19

Our persecutors are ... - Our pursuers (Lamentations 1:3 note) “were swifter thorn the eagles of heaven.”

They pursued us - Or, they chased us.

Mountains ... wilderness - The route in going from Jerusalem to Jericho leads first over heights, beginning with the Mount of Olives, and then descends into the plain of the Ghor.

Lamentations 4:20

The breath of our nostrils - Zedekiah is not set before us as a vicious king, but rather as a man who had not strength enough of character to stem the evil current of his times. And now that the state was fallen he was as the very breath of life to the fugitives, who would have no rallying point without him.

In their pits - The words are metaphorical, suggesting that Zedekiah was hunted like a wild animal, and driven into the pitfall.

Clarke's Notes on the Bible

Verse 18. We cannot go in our streets — Supposed to refer to the darts and other missiles cast from the mounds which they had raised on the outside of the walls, by which those who walked in the streets were grievously annoyed, and could not shield themselves.