Ulangan 28:57

28:57 and will secretly eat her afterbirth ¹  and her newborn children ²  (since she has nothing else), ³  because of the severity of the siege by which your enemy will constrict you in your villages.

Imamat 26:29

26:29 You will eat the flesh of your sons and the flesh of your daughters. ⁴ 

Imamat 26:2

26:2 You must keep my Sabbaths and reverence ⁵  my sanctuary. I am the Lord.

1 Raja-raja 6:28-29

6:28 He plated the cherubs with gold.

6:29 On all the walls around the temple, inside and out, ⁶  he carved ⁷  cherubs, palm trees, and flowers in bloom.

Ratapan 2:20

Jerusalem Speaks:

ר (Resh)

2:20 Look, O Lord! Consider! ⁸ 

Whom have you ever afflicted ⁹  like this?

Should women eat their offspring, ¹⁰ 

their healthy infants? ¹¹ 

Should priest and prophet

be killed in the Lord’s ¹²  sanctuary?

[28:57]  ¹ tn Heb includes “that which comes out from between her feet.”

[28:57]  ² tn Heb “her sons that she will bear.”

[28:57]  ³ tn Heb includes “in her need for everything.”

[26:29]  ⁴ 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.

[26:2]  ⁵ tn Heb “and my sanctuary you shall fear.” Cf. NCV “respect”; CEV “honor.”

[6:29]  ⁶ sn Inside and out probably refers to the inner and outer rooms within the building.

[6:29]  ⁷ tn Heb “carved engravings of carvings.”

[2:20]  ⁸ 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]  sn Integral to battered Jerusalem’s appeal, and part of the ancient Near Eastern lament genre, is the request for God to look at her pain. This should evoke pity regardless of the reason for punishment. The request is not for God to see merely that there are misfortunes, as one might note items on a checklist. The cognitive (facts) and affective (feelings) are not divided. The plea is for God to watch, think about, and be affected by these facts while listening to the petitioner’s perspective.

[2:20]  ⁹ tn For the nuance “afflict” see the note at 1:12.

[2:20]  ¹⁰ 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]  ¹¹ 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]  sn Placing the specific reference to children at the end of the line in apposition to clarify that it does not describe the normal eating of fruit helps produce the repulsive shock of the image. Furthermore, the root of the word for “infants” (עוֹלֵל, ’olel) has the same root letters for the verb “to afflict” occurring in the first line of the verse, making a pun (F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp, Lamentations [IBC], 99-100).

[2:20]  ¹² 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.