They that did eat delicacies are desolate in the streets: they that were brought up in scarlet embrace ash heaps.
All Commentaries on Lamentations 4:5 Go To Lamentations 4
Thomas Aquinas
AD 1274
Here is considered famine as to dainties of nutritions. First is noticed the affliction from that famine, second, the comparison. As there in Verse 6: "For the chastisement of the daughter of my people has been greater than the punishment of Sodom, which was overthrown in a moment, on hand being laid on it."
Such famine is indicated by two signs. One sign is death, as expressed in Verse 5: "Those perish in the streets." And by vile foods by those who were brought up in purple." As by expelling foods from their mouth: "lie on ash heaps." That is, they avidly devour vile foodstuffs. As literally expressed in 4 Kings, Chapter 7 (The Syrians flee). As said in Job 6:7: "My appetite refuses to touch them; they are as food that is loathsome to me."
