Isaiah 32:12

Amplified Bible

Beat your breasts [in mourning] for the beautiful fields, for the fruitful vine,

Parallel Translations

Christian Standard Bible®
Beat your breasts in mourningfor the delightful fields and the fruitful vines,

Hebrew Names Version
They shall strike on the breasts for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine.

King James Version
They shall lament for the teats, for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine.

English Standard Version
Beat your breasts for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine,

New American Standard Bible
Beat your breasts for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine,

New Century Version
Beat your breasts in grief, because the fields that were pleasant are now empty. Cry, because the vines that once had fruit now have no more grapes.

World English Bible
They shall strike on the breasts for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine.

Geneva Bible (1587)
Men shall lament for the teates, euen for the pleasant fieldes, and for the fruitefull vine.

Legacy Standard Bible
Beat your breasts for the desirable fields, for the fruitful vine,

Berean Standard Bible
Beat your breasts for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vines,

Contemporary English Version
Slap your breasts in sorrow because of what happened to the fruitful fields and vineyards,

Complete Jewish Bible
Beat your breasts in mourning for the pleasant fields and fruitful vines,

Darby Translation
They shall smite on the breasts [in lamentation] for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vineyards.

Easy-to-Read Version
Beat your breasts in sorrow. Cry because your fields are empty. Your vineyards once gave grapes, but now they are empty.

George Lamsa Translation
Mourn and beat upon your breasts, for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine.

Good News Translation
Beat your breasts in grief because the fertile fields and the vineyards have been destroyed,

Lexham English Bible
mourning over breasts, over fields of delight, over the fruitful vine,

Literal Translation
be wailing over breasts, over pleasant fields, over the fruitful vine.

Miles Coverdale Bible (1535)
Ye shal knock vpo youre brestes, because of the pleasaunt felde, and because of the fruteful vynyarde.

American Standard Version
They shall smite upon the breasts for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine.

Bible in Basic English
Have sorrow for the fields, the pleasing fields, the fertile vine;

JPS Old Testament (1917)
Smiting upon the breasts for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine;

King James Version (1611)
They shall lament for the teats, for the pleasant fieldes, for the fruitfull vine.

Bishop's Bible (1568)
For as the infantes weepe when their mothers teates are dryed vp: so shall you weepe for your faire fieldes and fruitfull vineyardes.

Brenton's Septuagint (LXX)
and beat your breasts, because of the pleasant field, and the fruit of the vine.

English Revised Version
They shall smite upon the breasts for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine.

Wycliffe Bible (1395)
girde youre leendis; weile ye on brestis, on desirable cuntrei, on the plenteuouse vyner.

Update Bible Version
They shall smite on the breasts for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine.

Webster's Bible Translation
They shall lament for the breasts, for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine.

New English Translation
Mourn over the field, over the delightful fields and the fruitful vine!

New King James Version
People shall mourn upon their breasts For the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine.

New Living Translation
Beat your breasts in sorrow for your bountiful farms and your fruitful grapevines.

New Life Bible
Beat your breasts for the good fields, for the vine full of fruit,

New Revised Standard
Beat your breasts for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine,

J.B. Rotherham Emphasized Bible
Upon your breasts, continue smiting: For desirable fields, For fruitful vine.

Douay-Rheims Bible
Mourn for your breasts, for the delightful country, for the fruitful vineyard.

Revised Standard Version
Beat upon your breasts for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine,

Young's Literal Translation
For breasts they are lamenting, For fields of desire, for the fruitful vine.

New American Standard Bible (1995)
Beat your breasts for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine,

Contextual Overview

⁹Rise up, you women who are carefree, And hear my voice, You confident and unsuspecting daughters! Listen to what I am saying. ¹⁰In little more than a year You will tremble [with anxiety], you unsuspecting and complacent women; For the vintage has ended, And the harvest will not come. ¹¹Tremble, you women who are carefree; Tremble with fear, you complacent ones! Strip, undress and wear sackcloth on your waist [in grief], ¹²Beat your breasts [in mourning] for the beautiful fields, for the fruitful vine,¹³For the land of my people growing over with thorns and briars— Yes, [mourn] for all the houses of joy in the joyous city. ¹⁴For the palace has been abandoned, the populated city deserted; The hill [of the city] and the watchtower have become caves [for wild animals] forever, A delight for wild donkeys, a pasture for flocks, ¹⁵Until the Spirit is poured out upon us from on high, And the wilderness becomes a fertile field, And the fertile field is valued as a forest. ¹⁶Then justice will dwell in the wilderness, And righteousness will live in the fertile field. ¹⁷And the effect of righteousness will be peace, And the result of righteousness will be quietness and confident trust forever. ¹⁸Then my people will live in a peaceful surrounding, And in secure dwellings and in undisturbed resting places.

Bible Verse Review
  from Treasury of Scripure Knowledge

lament: Lamentations 2:11, Lamentations 4:3, Lamentations 4:4

pleasant fields: Heb. fields of desire, Deuteronomy 8:7, Deuteronomy 8:8, Deuteronomy 11:11, Deuteronomy 11:12, Ezekiel 20:6, Ezekiel 20:15

Reciprocal: Isaiah 7:23 - be for briers Isaiah 28:22 - a consumption Jeremiah 49:3 - gird Ezekiel 26:12 - thy pleasant houses

Cross-References

Genesis 22:17
indeed I will greatly bless you, and I will greatly multiply your seed like the stars of the heavens and like the sand on the seashore; and your seed shall possess the gate of their enemies [by conquering them].

Genesis 32:3
Then Jacob sent messengers ahead of him to his brother Esau in the land of Seir, the country of Edom.

Genesis 32:4
He commanded them, saying, "This is what to say to my lord Esau: 'Your servant Jacob says this, "I have been living temporarily with Laban, and have stayed there until now;

Genesis 32:6
The messengers returned to Jacob, saying, "We went to your brother Esau, and now he is coming to meet you, and there are four hundred men with him."

Genesis 32:13
So Jacob spent the night there. Then he selected a present for his brother Esau from the livestock he had acquired:

Genesis 32:15
thirty milking camels with their colts, forty cows, ten bulls, twenty female donkeys, and ten [donkey] colts.

Exodus 32:13
"Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel (Jacob), Your servants to whom You swore [an oath] by Yourself, and said to them, 'I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heavens, and all this land of which I have spoken I will give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever.'"

Numbers 23:19
"God is not a man, that He should lie, Nor a son of man, that He should repent. Has He said, and will He not do it? Or has He spoken and will He not make it good and fulfill it?

1 Samuel 15:29
"Also the Splendor and Glory and Eminence of Israel will not lie or change His mind; for He is not a man that He should change His mind."

Matthew 24:35
"Heaven and earth [as now known] will pass away, but My words will not pass away.

Gill's Notes on the Bible

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, Luke 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 Isaiah 32:11 thus,

"gird sackcloth on your loins, and on your mourning breasts'' n;

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.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

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.’

Clarke's Notes on the Bible

Verse Isaiah 32:12. 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.