Beat your breasts for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine.
Parallel Translations
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Beat your breasts for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine.
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They shall lament for the teats, for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine.
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Smiting upon the breasts for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine;
Cross-references (7)
Passages linked to Isaiah 32:12 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- Deuteronomy 8:7-8 For Yahweh your God brings you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of springs, and underground water flowing into valleys and hills; a land of wheat, barley, vines, fig trees, and pomegranates; a land of olive trees and honey;
- Deuteronomy 11:11-12 but the land that you go over to possess is a land of hills and valleys which drinks water from the rain of the sky, a land which Yahweh your God cares for. Yahweh your God’s eyes are always on it, from the beginning of the year even to the end of the year.
- Lamentations 2:11 My eyes fail with tears. My heart is troubled. My liver is poured on the earth, because of the destruction of the daughter of my people, because the young children and the infants swoon in the streets of the city.
- Lamentations 4:3-4 Even the jackals offer their breast. They nurse their young ones. But the daughter of my people has become cruel, like the ostriches in the wilderness. The tongue of the nursing child clings to the roof of his mouth for thirst. The young children ask bread, and no one breaks it for them.
- Ezekiel 20:6 in that day I swore to them, to bring them out of the land of Egypt into a land that I had searched out for them, flowing with milk and honey, which is the glory of all lands.
- Ezekiel 20:15 Moreover also I swore to them in the wilderness, that I would not bring them into the land which I had given them, flowing with milk and honey, which is the glory of all lands;
- Nahum 2:7 It is decreed: she is uncovered, she is carried away; and her servants moan as with the voice of doves, beating on their breasts.
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this verse (13 sources)
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Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain By the teats he meaneth the plentiful fields, whereby…
By the teats he meaneth the plentiful fields, whereby men are nourished as children with the teat: or, the mothers for sorrow and heaviness shall lack milk.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain Isa 32:12 They shall lament for the teats, for…
Isa 32:12 They shall lament for the teats, for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine.
Ver. 12. They shall mourn for the teats.] That is, for their grain and wine. The heathens called Ceres their goddess of plenty, πολυμασθον, Mammosam, full teated. Some sense it thus, Let them (infants) mourn for the teats denied them in this day of humiliation, {Jon 3:5-6} or so dried up that there is no milk for them. Others render it, Beating upon their breasts, Plangentes pectora palmis.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain They shall lament for the teats; either,
They shall lament for the teats; either,
1. Properly, because through famine your teats are destitute of milk for the nourishment of your poor children. Or rather,
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2. Metaphorically, as the following words explain it,
for the pleasant and fruitful fields, which like teats yielded you plentiful and excellent nourishment, for which the land was said to flow with milk, Eze 20:6. And the earth being compared to the womb that bare us, Job 1:21, it is not strange if its fruitful fields be compared to the breasts which nourish us.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain They shall lament for the teats,.... Either of the…
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, Luk 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 Isa 32:11 thus,
"gird sackcloth on your loins, and on your mourning breasts'' (n);
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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.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain The teats - For the pleasant and fruitful fields,…
The teats - For the pleasant and fruitful fields, which like teats yielded you plentiful and excellent nourishment.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain Verse 12. They shall lament - for the pleasant…
Verse 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.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain They shall lament for the teats - Interpreters have…
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.’
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain Mourn. Septuagint, "beat." (Haydock) --- Breasts, suckling infants. In…
Mourn. Septuagint, "beat." (Haydock) --- Breasts, suckling infants. In mourning, women beat and uncovered their breasts, which, on any other occasion, would have been deemed very indecent. (Calmet) (Ezechiel xxiii. 34.) (Herodotus ii. 84.)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain lament for . . . teats--rather, shall smite on…
lament for . . . teats--rather, shall smite on their breasts in lamentation "for thy pleasant fields" (Nah 2:7) [MAURER]. "Teats" in English Version is used for fertile lands, which, like breasts, nourish life. The transition from "ye" to "they" (Isa 32:11-12) is frequent.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain 12. Lament, etc. — Better rendered, Smiting the breasts,…
12. Lament, etc. — Better rendered, Smiting the breasts, as on funeral occasions.
Pleasant fields — The loss of these, and the loss of successive vintages, are the ground of lament. Desolation generally is to befal the proud daughters of Zion.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain 12. They shall lament for the teats] R.V. gives…
12. They shall lament for the teats] R.V. gives a better translation: they shall smite upon the breasts; but the construction is difficult. The verb is a masculine plural participle and signifies strictly “to mourn.” The word for “breasts” might by a slight change of points be read as “fields”; hence some commentators think that the reference to the women is here abandoned, and render, “men shall mourn for the fields.” If the R.V. is right we must suppose that the word “mourn” (like the Greek κόπτεσθαι) meant originally “smite upon (the breast)” and is here used in its literal sense. The clause would be somewhat more easily construed if read as the conclusion of Isa_32:11 (Duhm, “smiting on the breasts”), but even with this change the masculine gender is exceedingly harsh.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (12) They shall lament for the teats . .…
(12) They shall lament for the teats . . .—Better, shall smite upon the breasts. The Hebrew nouns for “teats” and “fields,” Shâdaim and Sadè, have an assonance which may be represented by the Latin ubera and ubertas. In the renewed, unabated luxury of the women of Jerusalem Isaiah sees the precursor of another time of desolation like that which he had foretold before in the reign of Ahaz (Isa_7:24). “Thorns and briers” are again to take the place of the fair gardens in the outskirts of Jerusalem during the invasion of Sennacherib, as they had once before in that of Rezin and Pekah. The “houses of joy” are manifestly what we should call the stately villas of the rich.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain They shall lament for the teats, etc.; rather, they…
They shall lament for the teats, etc.; rather, they shall beat upon the breasts for the pleasant fields, etc. (so the LXX, the Vulgate, Jarchi, Gesenius, Ewald, Maurer, Knobel, Delitzsch, and Mr. Cheyne). Dr. Kay prefers the rendering of the Authorized Version, understanding by "the teats" such "dry breasts" as Hosea speaks of. (Hos_9:14) But nothing has been said in this place of any such affliction. For the pleasant fields, etc.; i.e. for their loss (see ver. 10).
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.