We get our bread at the risk of our lives because of the sword in the wilderness.
The word חרב, chereb, means drought as well as sword. As the Prophet is speaking of famine and the desert,, I have no doubt but that dryness or drought is sword the word means here; and I wonder that the word sword had occurred to any; they could not have regarded the context.
In trouble, pour out your complaint before God and make it known; He sees and remembers all that befalls you. Their whole grief compressed into one word: reproach. This reproach cut deeper because it reflected on God's own honor, who had once owned them as His people.
AI summary
Commenting on Lamentations 5:1-16
We gat our bread with the peril of our lives,.... This seems to refer to the time of the siege when they privately went out of the city to get in some provision, but went in danger of their lives: because of the sword of the wilderness: or, "of the plain" (t); because of the, word of the Chaldean army, which lay in the plain...