Charles Ellicott Commentary Lamentations 4:5

"They that did feed delicately are desolate in the streets: They that were brought up in scarlet embrace dunghills." — Lamentations 4:5 (ASV)

Those who were brought up ... —Literally, that were carried (as children are carried). “Scarlet” as in 2 Samuel 1:24, stands for the shawls or garments of the rich, dyed, as they were, in the Tyrian purple or crimson. Those who had once been wrapped in such shawls now threw themselves, “embracing” them as their only refuge, on dunghills.