“The breath of our life”
The LORD's anointed, the breath of our life, was captured in their pits. We had said of him, 'Under his shadow we will live among the nations.' (Lamentations 4:20 BSB)
What it sounds like today
An overwrought poetic way of saying they loved the king.
The cultural key
These are formal royal titles, not merely fond words. Across the ancient Near East, and especially in Egypt, the king was addressed as 'the breath of our nostrils', the very air his people breathed, the one whose life gave them life, and as their 'shadow' or 'shade,' the protective shelter under which they lived safe from the scorching sun of enemies and disaster (a vital image in a hot land). So calling the captured king 'the breath of our life,' under whose 'shadow we will live among the nations,' is the courtly language of a people who believed their king was their life-support and their canopy of protection. The tragedy the poet voices is the collapse of that belief: the LORD's anointed, the nation's very breath and shade, has been run down and 'captured in their pits' like a hunted animal, and with him the life and shelter of the people. Read flatly it sounds like exaggeration; heard as royal idiom, it is the shattering of a whole theology of kingship.
Recovered meaning
'The breath of our life' and 'under his shadow' are royal epithets: the king was hailed as his people's very life-breath and protective shade. Lamenting the captured King Zedekiah, the poet mourns the collapse of the belief that the nation's life and shelter rested on him.