Pitiful Women Eating Their Children Lamentations 4:10

When we look at the beginning of the fourth chapter of Lamentations, we might wonder how it could be any worse for the people of Jerusalem. Their sanctuary was destroyed, their priests were devalued, their children were starving, and their Nazarites who were once esteemed like jewels were like blackened sticks in the streets. Yet in verse ten Jeremiah shares the horror of women cooking and eating their children which takes Jerusalem's conditions to a whole new level. We read:

The hands of the pitiful women have sodden their own children: they were their meat in the destruction of the daughter of my people.

The verse begins, “The hands of the pitiful women have sodden their own children:” Jeremiah tells of “pitiful women” or “compassionate, compassionate women” who might normally use their “hands” for domestic affairs having “sodden” which means “to boil, cook, bake, roast, ripen, or grow ripe" "their own children". Without further imagination we shall not even venture to know the desperation these normally "compassinate" women must have felt to manage such an act.

The verse continues, “they were their meat in the destruction of the daughter of my people.” As though cooking their children was not enough, these women used them as “their meat” or “food, means of devouring or consumption” as well. In other words, these desperate and pitiful women cooked and ate their own children.

Our minds do not want to conceive of the despondency of these women. We might wonder, how does a person get to this state where their own offspring are unsafe from consumption? The amazing part of this description is that God warned the city of Jerusalem through Jeremiah well in advance of these conditions. The people would not listen, and they paid a price far greater than they would ever have conceived. As we ponder these words, are there areas in our lives where God is warning? Are we stubborn and unwilling to alter our paths? We can be assured of this, the women of Jerusalem would never have thought they could have cooked and eaten their own children, and as we factor in the price we might pay for an unaltered path, we may benefit from realizing the rebellion of these women had them behaving in ways they never thought imaginable. May the Lord Jesus help us as we consider His better path.

Next time see the Lord's fury poured out against Jerusalem, so read ahead, and we shall join together then.

 

Until tomorrow...there is more...

 

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