Lamentations 4:3 Cross References

Lamentations 4:3

3: Even the jackals feed their young, but not my people Israel. They ignore their children's cries, like the ostriches of the desert.

Parents will eat their own children, and children will eat their parents. And I will punish you by scattering the few who survive to the far reaches of the earth.

"The ostrich flaps her wings grandly, but they are no match for the feathers of the stork.
She lays her eggs on top of the earth, letting them be warmed in the dust.
She doesn't worry that a foot might crush them or that wild animals might destroy them.
She is harsh toward her young, as if they were not her own. She is unconcerned though they die,

Tenderhearted women have cooked their own children and eaten them in order to survive the siege.

I will see to it that your enemies lay siege to the city until all the food is gone. Then those trapped inside will have to eat their own sons and daughters and friends. They will be driven to utter despair.'

They refuse to understand, break their promises, and are heartless and unforgiving.

One day as the king of Israel was walking along the wall of the city, a woman called to him, "Please help me, my lord the king!"
"If the LORD doesn't help you, what can I do?" he retorted. "I have neither food nor wine to give you."
But then the king asked, "What is the matter?" She replied, "This woman proposed that we eat my son one day and her son the next.
So we cooked my son and ate him. Then the next day I said, `Kill your son so we can eat him,' but she had hidden him."

"O LORD, think about this!" Jerusalem cries. "You are doing this to your own people! Should mothers eat their little children, those they once bounced on their knees? Should priests and prophets die within the Lord's Temple?

But Jesus turned and said to them, "Daughters of Jerusalem, don't weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children.
For the days are coming when they will say, 'Fortunate indeed are the women who are childless, the wombs that have not borne a child and the breasts that have never nursed.'

They will lay siege to your cities until all the fortified walls in your land--the walls you trusted to protect you--are knocked down. They will attack all the towns in the land the LORD your God has given you.
The siege will be so severe that you will eat the flesh of your own sons and daughters, whom the LORD your God has given you.
The most tenderhearted man among you will have no compassion for his own brother, his beloved wife, and his surviving children.
He will refuse to give them a share of the flesh he is devouring--the flesh of one of his own children--because he has nothing else to eat during the siege that your enemy will inflict on all your towns.
The most tender and delicate woman among you--so delicate she would not so much as touch her feet to the ground--will be cruel to the husband she loves and to her own son or daughter.

"Never! Can a mother forget her nursing child? Can she feel no love for a child she has borne? But even if that were possible, I would not forget you!

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