Deuteronomy 28:18

28:18 Your children ¹  will be cursed, as well as the produce of your soil, the calves of your herds, and the lambs of your flocks.

Deuteronomy 28:55

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 ²  you in your villages.

Deuteronomy 28:57

28:57 and will secretly eat her afterbirth ³  and her newborn children ⁴  (since she has nothing else), ⁵  because of the severity of the siege by which your enemy will constrict you in your villages.

Leviticus 26:29

26:29 You will eat the flesh of your sons and the flesh of your daughters. ⁶ 

Leviticus 26:2

26:2 You must keep my Sabbaths and reverence ⁷  my sanctuary. I am the Lord.

Leviticus 6:28-29

6:28 Any clay vessel it is boiled in must be broken, and if it was boiled in a bronze vessel, then that vessel ⁸  must be rubbed out and rinsed in water. 6:29 Any male among the priests may eat it. It is most holy. ⁹ 

Jeremiah 19:9

19:9 I will reduce the people of this city to desperate straits during the siege imposed on it by their enemies who are seeking to kill them. I will make them so desperate that they will eat the flesh of their own sons and daughters and the flesh of one another.”’” ¹⁰ 

Lamentations 2:20

Jerusalem Speaks:

ר (Resh)

2:20 Look, O Lord! Consider! ¹¹ 

Whom have you ever afflicted ¹²  like this?

Should women eat their offspring, ¹³ 

their healthy infants? ¹⁴ 

Should priest and prophet

be killed in the Lord’s ¹⁵  sanctuary?

Lamentations 4:10

י (Yod)

4:10 The hands of tenderhearted women ¹⁶ 

cooked their own children,

who became their food, ¹⁷ 

when my people ¹⁸  were destroyed. ¹⁹ 

Ezekiel 5:10

5:10 Therefore fathers will eat their sons within you, Jerusalem, ²⁰  and sons will eat their fathers. I will execute judgments on you, and I will scatter any survivors ²¹  to the winds. ²² 

Matthew 24:19

24:19 Woe ²³  to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing their babies in those days!

¹ tn Heb “the fruit of your womb” (so NAB, NIV, NRSV).

² tn Heb “besiege,” redundant with the noun “siege.”

³ tn Heb includes “that which comes out from between her feet.”

⁴ tn Heb “her sons that she will bear.”

⁵ tn Heb includes “in her need for everything.”

⁴ tn Heb “and the flesh of your daughters you will eat.” The phrase “you will eat” has not been repeated in the translation for stylistic reasons.

⁵ tn Heb “and my sanctuary you shall fear.” Cf. NCV “respect”; CEV “honor.”

⁶ tn Heb “it”; the words “that vessel” are supplied in the translation to clarify the referent.

⁷ tn Heb “holiness of holinesses [or holy of holies] it is” (also in 7:1).

⁸ tn This verse has been restructured to try to bring out the proper thought and subordinations reflected in the verse without making the sentence too long and complex in English: Heb “I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and daughters. And they will eat one another’s flesh in the siege and in the straits which their enemies who are seeking their lives reduce them to.” This also shows the agency through which God’s causation was effected, i.e., the siege.

⁹ tn Heb “Look, O Lord! See!” When used in collocation with verbs of cognition, רָאָה (ra’ah) means “to see for oneself” or “to take notice” (1 Sam 26:12). The parallelism between seeing and understanding is often emphasized (e.g., Exod 16:6; Isa 5:19; 29:15; Job 11:11; Eccl 6:5). See also 1:11 and cf. 1:9, 12, 20; 3:50, 59, 60; 5:1.

¹⁰ tn For the nuance “afflict” see the note at 1:12.

¹¹ tn Heb “their fruit.” The term פְּרִי (pÿri, “fruit”) is used figuratively to refer to children as the fruit of a mother’s womb (e.g., Gen 30:2; Deut 7:13; 28:4, 11, 18, 53; 30:9; Pss 21:11; 127:3; 132:11; Isa 13:18; Mic 6:7).

¹² tn Heb “infants of healthy childbirth.” The genitive-construct phrase עֹלֲלֵי טִפֻּחִים (’olale tippukhim) functions as an attributive genitive construction: “healthy newborn infants.” The noun טִפֻּחִים (tippukhim) appears only here. It is related to the verb טָפַח (tafakh), meaning “to give birth to a healthy child” or “to raise children” depending on whether the Arabic or Akkadian cognate is emphasized. For the related verb, see below at 2:22.

¹³ tc The MT reads אֲדֹנָי (’adonay, “the Lord”) here rather than יהוה (YHWH, “the Lord”) as at the beginning of the verse. See the tc note at 1:14.

¹⁰ tn Heb “the hands of compassionate women.”

¹¹ tn Heb “eating.” The infinitive construct (from I בָּרָה, barah) is translated as a noun. Three passages employ the verb (2 Sam 3:35; 12:17; 13:5,6,10) for eating when ill or in mourning.

¹² tn Heb “the daughter of my people.”

¹³ tn Heb “in the destruction of the daughter of my people.”

¹¹ tn In context “you” refers to the city of Jerusalem. To make this clear for the modern reader, “Jerusalem” has been supplied in the translation in apposition to “you.”

¹² tn Heb “all of your survivors.”

¹³ tn Heb “to every wind.”

¹² tn Here δέ (de) has not been translated.