This last pericope is a prayer to the Lord.
2:20 Jeremiah responded to this call to prayer by asking the Lord to consider who was suffering so greatly that women were cannibalizing their own newborn children to stay alive in the famine (cf. Lev. 26:27-29; Deut. 28:53-57; 2 Kings 6:24-31). Would He allow such a fate for healthy children? Would He permit the slaying of Judahite priests and prophets in the very temple of the Lord?
2:21 People of all ages and both sexes, even the youths who were the hope of Judah's future, lay dead in the streets because the Lord had slaughtered them without sparing.
2:22 There had been as much carnage in the city as there was on feast days when the priests slew large quantities of sacrificial animals. No one had escaped Yahweh's anger, not even those whom the city had produced, when the Babylonian enemy annihilated them.
