Lamentations 5:9

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" F20 מפני חרב המדבר "propter gladium in deserto, sive plano", Gataker. ; because of the, word of the Chaldean army, which lay in the plain about Jerusalem into whose hand there was danger of falling, and of being cut to pieces.