2 Kings 6:25

6:25 Samaria’s food supply ran out. ¹  They laid siege to it so long that ²  a donkey’s head was selling for eighty shekels of silver ³  and a quarter of a kab ⁴  of dove’s droppings ⁵  for five shekels of silver. ⁶ 

Deuteronomy 28:53-57

28:53 You will then eat your own offspring, ⁷  the flesh of the sons and daughters the Lord your God has given you, because of the severity of the siege ⁸  by which your enemies will constrict you. 28:54 The man among you who is by nature tender and sensitive will turn against his brother, his beloved wife, and his remaining children. 28:55 He will withhold from all of them his children’s flesh that he is eating (since there is nothing else left), because of the severity of the siege by which your enemy will constrict ⁹  you in your villages. 28:56 Likewise, the most ¹⁰  tender and delicate of your women, who would never think of putting even the sole of her foot on the ground because of her daintiness, ¹¹  will turn against her beloved husband, her sons and daughters, 28:57 and will secretly eat her afterbirth ¹²  and her newborn children ¹³  (since she has nothing else), ¹⁴  because of the severity of the siege by which your enemy will constrict you in your villages.

Psalms 73:8

73:8 They mock ¹⁵  and say evil things; ¹⁶ 

they proudly threaten violence. ¹⁷ 

Lamentations 4:5

ה (He)

4:5 Those who once feasted on delicacies ¹⁸ 

are now starving to death ¹⁹  in the streets.

Those who grew up ²⁰  wearing expensive clothes ²¹ 

are now dying ²²  amid garbage. ²³ 

Ezekiel 4:13

4:13 And the Lord said, “This is how the people of Israel will eat their unclean food among the nations ²⁴  where I will banish them.”

Ezekiel 4:15

4:15 So he said to me, “All right then, I will substitute cow’s manure instead of human excrement. You will cook your food over it.”

¹ tn Heb “and there was a great famine in Samaria.”

² tn Heb “and look, [they] were besieging it until.”

³ tn Heb “eighty, silver.” The unit of measurement is omitted.

⁴ sn A kab was a unit of dry measure, equivalent to approximately one quart.

⁵ tn The consonantal text (Kethib) reads, “dove dung” (חֲרֵייוֹנִים, khareyonim), while the marginal reading (Qere) has “discharge” (דִּבְיוֹנִים, divyonim). Based on evidence from Akkadian, M. Cogan and H. Tadmor (II Kings [AB], 79) suggest that “dove’s dung” was a popular name for the inedible husks of seeds.

⁶ tn Heb “five, silver.” The unit of measurement is omitted.

⁷ tn Heb “the fruit of your womb” (so NAB, NRSV); NASB “the offspring of your own body.”

⁸ tn Heb “siege and stress.”

⁹ tn Heb “besiege,” redundant with the noun “siege.”

¹⁰ tc The LXX adds σφόδρα (sfodra, “very”) to bring the description into line with v. 54.

¹¹ tn Heb “delicateness and tenderness.”

¹² tn Heb includes “that which comes out from between her feet.”

¹³ tn Heb “her sons that she will bear.”

¹⁴ tn Heb includes “in her need for everything.”

¹⁵ tn The verb מוּק (muq, “mock”) occurs only here in the OT.

¹⁶ tn Heb “and speak with evil.”

¹⁷ tn Heb “oppression from an elevated place they speak.” The traditional accentuation of the MT places “oppression” with the preceding line. In this case, one might translate, “they mock and speak with evil [of] oppression, from an elevated place [i.e., “proudly”] they speak.” By placing “oppression” with what follows, one achieves better poetic balance in the parallelism.

¹⁸ tn Heb “eaters of delicacies.” An alternate English gloss would be “connoisseurs of fine foods.”

¹⁹ tn Heb “are desolate.”

²⁰ tn Heb “were reared.”

²¹ tn Heb “in purple.” The term תוֹלָע (tola’, “purple”) is a figurative description of expensive clothing: it is a metonymy of association: the color of the dyed clothes (= purple) stands for the clothes themselves.

²² tn Heb “embrace garbage.” One may also translate “rummage through” (cf. NCV “pick through trash piles”; TEV “pawing through refuse”; NLT “search the garbage pits.”

²³ tn The Hebrew word אַשְׁפַּתּוֹת (’ashpatot) can also mean “ash heaps.” Though not used as a combination elsewhere, to “embrace ash heaps” might also envision a state of mourning or even dead bodies lying on the ash heaps.

²⁴ sn Unclean food among the nations. Lands outside of Israel were considered unclean (Josh 22:19; Amos 7:17).