My flesh and my skin hath he made old; he hath broken my bones.
The language portrays bodily suffering in which flesh and skin have grown old and wasted away while the bones have been broken. The wasting of the outer person and the breaking within together depict a condition of complete physical affliction. It belongs to a mournful poem attributed to Jeremiah, whose sorrows included persecution by his own people and grief over the ruin he foresaw for them. That grief was bound up with rejection at home and with anguish over the coming destruction he anticipated for his nation. It stands in the last three chapters of Lamentations, dating from the time when Jeremiah was prophesying in Jerusalem while his contemporary Ezekiel was prophesying in the land of captivity.
The language portrays bodily suffering in which flesh and skin have grown old and wasted away while the bones have been broken. The wasting of the outer person and the breaking within together depict a condition of complete physical affliction. It belongs to a mournful poem attributed to Jeremiah, whose sorrows included persecution by his own people and grief over the ruin he foresaw for them. That grief was bound up with rejection at home and with anguish over the coming destruction he anticipated for his nation. It stands in the last three chapters of Lamentations, dating from the time when Jeremiah was prophesying in Jerusalem while his contemporary Ezekiel was prophesying in the land of captivity.