Lamentations 2:20

Jerusalem Speaks:

ר (Resh)

2:20 Look, O Lord! Consider! ¹ 

Whom have you ever afflicted ²  like this?

Should women eat their offspring, ³ 

their healthy infants? ⁴ 

Should priest and prophet

be killed in the Lord’s ⁵  sanctuary?

Lamentations 4:10

י (Yod)

4:10 The hands of tenderhearted women ⁶ 

cooked their own children,

who became their food, ⁷ 

when my people ⁸  were destroyed. ⁹ 

Leviticus 26:29

26:29 You will eat the flesh of your sons and the flesh of your daughters. ¹⁰ 

Deuteronomy 28:52-57

28:52 They will besiege all of your villages ¹¹  until all of your high and fortified walls collapse – those in which you put your confidence throughout the land. They will besiege all your villages throughout the land the Lord your God has given you. 28:53 You will then eat your own offspring, ¹²  the flesh of the sons and daughters the Lord your God has given you, because of the severity of the siege ¹³  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 ¹⁴  you in your villages. 28:56 Likewise, the most ¹⁵  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, ¹⁶  will turn against her beloved husband, her sons and daughters, 28:57 and will secretly eat her afterbirth ¹⁷  and her newborn children ¹⁸  (since she has nothing else), ¹⁹  because of the severity of the siege by which your enemy will constrict you in your villages.

Deuteronomy 28:2

28:2 All these blessings will come to you in abundance ²⁰  if you obey the Lord your God:

Deuteronomy 6:1

Exhortation to Keep the Covenant Principles

6:1 Now these are the commandments, ²¹  statutes, and ordinances that the Lord your God instructed me to teach you so that you may carry them out in the land where you are headed ²² 

Isaiah 49:15

49:15 Can a woman forget her baby who nurses at her breast? ²³ 

Can she withhold compassion from the child she has borne? ²⁴ 

Even if mothers ²⁵  were to forget,

I could never forget you! ²⁶ 

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.”’” ²⁷ 

Ezekiel 5:10

5:10 Therefore fathers will eat their sons within you, Jerusalem, ²⁸  and sons will eat their fathers. I will execute judgments on you, and I will scatter any survivors ²⁹  to the winds. ³⁰ 

Luke 23:28-29

23:28 But Jesus turned to them and said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, ³¹  do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves ³²  and for your children. 23:29 For this is certain: ³³  The days are coming when they will say, ‘Blessed are the barren, the wombs that never bore children, and the breasts that never nursed!’ ³⁴ 

[2:20]  ¹ 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.

[2:20]  ² tn For the nuance “afflict” see the note at 1:12.

[2:20]  ³ 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).

[2:20]  ⁴ 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.

[2:20]  ⁵ 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.

[4:10]  ⁶ tn Heb “the hands of compassionate women.”

[4:10]  ⁷ 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.

[4:10]  ⁸ tn Heb “the daughter of my people.”

[4:10]  ⁹ tn Heb “in the destruction of the daughter of my people.”

[26:29]  ¹⁰ 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.

[28:52]  ¹¹ tn Heb “gates,” also in vv. 55, 57.

[28:53]  ¹² tn Heb “the fruit of your womb” (so NAB, NRSV); NASB “the offspring of your own body.”

[28:53]  ¹³ tn Heb “siege and stress.”

[28:55]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “besiege,” redundant with the noun “siege.”

[28:56]  ¹⁵ tc The LXX adds σφόδρα (sfodra, “very”) to bring the description into line with v. 54.

[28:56]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “delicateness and tenderness.”

[28:57]  ¹⁷ tn Heb includes “that which comes out from between her feet.”

[28:57]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “her sons that she will bear.”

[28:57]  ¹⁹ tn Heb includes “in her need for everything.”

[28:2]  ²⁰ tn Heb “come upon you and overtake you” (so NASB, NRSV); NIV “come upon you and accompany you.”

[6:1]  ²¹ tn Heb “commandment.” The word מִצְוָה (mitsvah) again is in the singular, serving as a comprehensive term for the whole stipulation section of the book. See note on the word “commandments” in 5:31.

[6:1]  ²² tn Heb “where you are going over to possess it” (so NASB); NRSV “that you are about to cross into and occupy.”

[49:15]  ²³ tn Heb “her suckling”; NASB “her nursing child.”

[49:15]  ²⁴ tn Heb “so as not to have compassion on the son of her womb?”

[49:15]  ²⁵ tn Heb “these” (so ASV, NASB).

[49:15]  ²⁶ sn The argument of v. 15 seems to develop as follows: The Lord has an innate attachment to Zion, just like a mother does for her infant child. But even if mothers were to suddenly abandon their children, the Lord would never forsake Zion. In other words, the Lord’s attachment to Zion is like a mother’s attachment to her infant child, but even stronger.

[19:9]  ²⁷ 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.

[5:10]  ²⁸ 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.”

[5:10]  ²⁹ tn Heb “all of your survivors.”

[5:10]  ³⁰ tn Heb “to every wind.”

[23:28]  ³¹ sn The title Daughters of Jerusalem portrays these women mourning as representatives of the nation.

[23:28]  ³² sn Do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves. Judgment now comes on the nation (see Luke 19:41-44) for this judgment of Jesus. Ironically, they mourn the wrong person – they should be mourning for themselves.

[23:29]  ³³ tn Grk “For behold.”

[23:29]  ³⁴ tn Grk “Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that have not borne, and the breasts that have not nursed!”