The hands of the pitiful women have boiled their own children. They were their food in the destruction of the daughter of my people.
Parallel Translations
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The hands of the pitiful women have boiled their own children. They were their food in the destruction of the daughter of my people.
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The hands of the pitiful women have sodden their own children: they were their meat in the destruction of the daughter of my people.
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The hands of women full of compassion have sodden their own children; they were their food in the destruction of the daughter of my people.
Cross-references (9)
Passages linked to Lamentations 4:10 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- 2 Kings 6:26-29 As the king of Israel was passing by on the wall, a woman cried to him, saying, “Help, my lord, O king!” He said, “If Yahweh doesn’t help you, where could I get help for you? From of the threshing floor, or from the wine press?” The king said to her, “What is your problem?” She answered, “This woman said to me, ‘Give your son, that we may eat him today, and we will eat my son tomorrow.’ So we boiled my son, and ate him: and I said to her on the next day, ‘Give your son, that we may eat him;’ and she has hidden her son.”
- Isaiah 49:15 “Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yes, these may forget, yet I will not forget you!
- Lamentations 2:20 “Look, Yahweh, and see to whom you have done thus! Should the women eat their offspring, the children that they held and bounced on their knees? Should the priest and the prophet be killed in the sanctuary of the Lord?
- Jeremiah 19:9 I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters. They will each eat the flesh of his friend in the siege and in the distress, with which their enemies, and those who seek their life, will distress them.” ’
- Leviticus 26:29 You will eat the flesh of your sons, and you will eat the flesh of your daughters.
- Lamentations 3:48 My eye runs down with streams of water, for the destruction of the daughter of my people.
- Lamentations 4:3 Even the jackals offer their breast. They nurse their young ones. But the daughter of my people has become cruel, like the ostriches in the wilderness.
- Ezekiel 5:10 Therefore the fathers will eat the sons within you, and the sons will eat their fathers. I will execute judgments on you; and I will scatter the whole remnant of you to all the winds.
- Deuteronomy 28:53-57 You will eat the fruit of your own body, the flesh of your sons and of your daughters, whom Yahweh your God has given you, in the siege and in the distress with which your enemies will distress you. The man who is tender among you, and very delicate, his eye will be evil toward his brother, toward the wife whom he loves, and toward the remnant of his children whom he has remaining, so that he will not give to any of them of the flesh of his children whom he will eat, because he has nothing left to him, in the siege and in the distress with which your enemy will distress you in all your gates. The tender and delicate woman among you, who would not venture to set the sole of her foot on the ground for delicateness and tenderness, her eye will be evil toward the husband that she loves, toward her son, toward her daughter, toward her young one who comes out from between her feet, and toward her children whom she bears; for she will eat them secretly for lack of all things in the siege and in the distress with which your enemy will distress you in your gates.
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this verse (13 sources)
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John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain Here Jeremiah refers to that disgraceful and abominable deed…
Here Jeremiah refers to that disgraceful and abominable deed mentioned yesterday; for it was not only a barbarity, but a beastly savageness, when mothers boiled their own children. That it was done is evident from other writers; but the Prophet is to us a sufficient witness, who had seen it with his own eyes. He then says that the mothers were merciful, that no one might think that they were divested of every natural feeling; but he meant thus to set forth the blindness which proceeds from God’s dreadful vengeance. He does not, then, praise the mothers for their clemency, as though they felt as they ought to have done for their offspring; but. he intimates that though they would have been otherwise humane, they were yet seized with unusual madness, so that they boiled their own children, even their own bowels. We now, then, perceive the meaning of the word merciful, as applied to the mothers by the Prophet. It is not then to be deemed as a praise to them, as though they had a maternal love for their children; but his object was to set forth that monstrous act, which would not have sufficiently touched their minds, had he not testified that the mothers of whom he speaks were not so brutal as not to have gladly given food to their children; but that they were supernaturally blinded by furious madness. It follows —
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain Lam 4:10 The hands of the pitiful women have…
Lam 4:10 The hands of the pitiful women have sodden their own children: they were their meat in the destruction of the daughter of my people.
Ver. 10. The hands of the pitiful women have sodden.] Sodden them rather than roasted them, lest they should be discovered by the smell, and so in danger to be despoiled of them, as it happened at the last siege by the Romans. Lege et luge. Assemble and mourne.
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They were their meat.] In eadem viscera, ex quibus exierant, retrusi sunt; they returned into the same bowels whence they came forth.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain This was according to what God had threatened in…
This was according to what God had threatened in case of disobedience, Deu 28:57, and a thing which hath often happened in sieges, 2Ki 6:29. Such things did happen in the last destruction of Jerusalem, as we read in Josephus; and though we read of no such thing happening in the siege of it by Nebuchadnezzar, yet that there were some such sad instances appears from this text.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain The hands of the pitiful women have sodden their…
The hands of the pitiful women have sodden their own children,.... Such as were naturally, and agreeably to their sex, pitiful and compassionate; merciful to the poor, as the Targum; and especially tenderhearted to their own offspring; yet, by reason of the soreness of the famine, became so cruel and hardhearted, as to take their own children, and slay them with their own hands, cut them to pieces, put them into a pot of water, and make a fire and boil them, and then eat them, as follows:
they were their meat in the destruction of the daughter of my people: at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem. This strange and unnatural action was foretold by Moses, Deu 28:56; and though we have no particular instance of it on record, as done at the siege of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans, yet no doubt there was, as may be concluded from the words: and at the siege of it by the Romans, when many things here spoken of had a fuller accomplishment, we have a remarkable instance of it, which Josephus (a) relates; an illustrious woman, named Mary, pressed with the famine, slew her own son, a sucking child, boiled him, and ate part of him, and laid up the rest; which was found by the seditious party that broke into her house, which struck them with the utmost horror; See Gill on Lam 2:20.
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(a) De Bello Jud. l. 6. c. 3. sect. 4.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain Verse 10. The hands of the pitiful women have…
Verse 10. The hands of the pitiful women have sodden their own children] See Clarke on La 2:20. But here there is a reference to mothers eating their own children; and this was done, not by mothers cruel and brutal, but by נשים רחמניות nashim rachmaniyoth, the compassionate, the tender-hearted mothers. From these horrible scenes it is well to pass with as hasty a step as possible.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain Lam 4:10-11. The hands of the pitiful women have…
Lam 4:10-11. The hands of the pitiful women have sodden their own children — The affection of a mother toward her children is the strongest of all natural affections, and yet the famine hath forced that tender sex to divest themselves of it, and to boil and eat their own children. Thus was the prophecy of Moses, Deu 28:53; Deu 28:57, most awfully fulfilled; where see the notes, and on chap. Lam 2:20. The Lord hath accomplished his fury, &c. — God’s anger hath effected an entire destruction, so as not to leave one stone upon another.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain Pitiful - i. e. tender-hearted, compassionate. meat is used…
Pitiful - i. e. tender-hearted, compassionate. meat is used for food Psa 69:21. What is here stated actually occurred during the siege of Jerusalem by Titus.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain Pitful. So their nature dictates. (Worthington) --- But hunger…
Pitful. So their nature dictates. (Worthington) --- But hunger made them the reverse. Some think they slew their children, to prevent them being exposed to more cruel torments, (Calmet) as the people of Colchis do their sick. (Chardin.) --- Sodden: boiled or roasted; coxerunt, ver. 5., and Deuteronomy xxviii. 55. At the last siege of Jerusalem, this barbarity was manifested. (Calmet) (Josephus, Jewish Wars vii. 8.; Gr. 21.) See chap ii. 20. --- Daughter. So cities are styled. (Worthington)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain (Lam 2:20; Deu 28:56-57).
(Lam 2:20; Deu 28:56-57).
pitiful--naturally at other times compassionate (Isa 49:15). JOSEPHUS describes the unnatural act as it took place in the siege under Titus.
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sodden--boiled.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain 10. A still more terrible feature is added,
10. A still more terrible feature is added,
Pitiful women have sodden their own children — “Pitiful” — tender hearted, compassionate. “Sodden” — cooked or boiled. Josephus gives a horrible account of a like misery in the siege of Jerusalem under Titus.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain 10. Cp. ch. Lam_2:20, and Jer_19:9.
10. Cp. ch. Lam_2:20, and Jer_19:9.
pitiful] (hitherto) compassionate. For this meaning, as opposed to its modern sense, pitiable, cp. Latimer, Sermons, p. 391. “Because I speak here of orphans, I shall exhort you to be pitiful unto them.”—Bible Word Book.
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sodden] boiled (cp. Exo_12:9); the participle of to seethe, for which see 2Ki_4:38.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (10) The hands of the pitiful women.—See Note on…
(10) The hands of the pitiful women.—See Note on Lam_2:20.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain The pitiful women. Strange contrast between the compassionate nature…
The pitiful women. Strange contrast between the compassionate nature of woman (comp. Isa_49:15) and the dread horrors of this moral as well as physical catastrophe. (comp. note on Lam_2:20)
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.