Lamentations 4:8
Their visage is blacker than a coal; they are not known in the streets: their skin cleaveth to their bones; it is withered, it is become like a stick. Their visage is blacker than a coal; they are not known in the streets: their skin cleaveth to their bones; it is withered, it is become like a stick.
The verse portrays people wasted by extreme suffering and emaciation until they are unrecognizable in the streets, their faces darkened and blacker than coal, their skin clinging to their bones and their withered bodies become like a stick. This condition came from famine and distress amid the destruction of Jerusalem under the Babylonians. The emaciation it describes illustrates the black horse as a symbol of famine, since famine leaves people emaciated with skin clinging to bone.
It shows that the Jews under the Babylonians already suffered tribulation comparable to the suffering at Jerusalem's destruction and to the great distress described in Matthew 24. Therefore the destruction of Jerusalem was not the greatest tribulation ever experienced, as described in Matthew 24.