Lamentations 4:10

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.

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.

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.

(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.

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.

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.

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.

(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.

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.

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.

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.

(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.

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.

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).

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.

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 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.

food Heb. לְבָרוֹת, for food, like (II Sam. 12:17): “neither did he eat (בָרָה) bread with them”; (ibid. 3: 35): “to serve (לְהַבְרוֹת) David bread.”

Rashi on the Tanakh — English translations: “The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg” (CC BY 4.0); “Pentateuch with Rashi's commentary by M. Rosenbaum and A.M. Silbermann, 1929-1934” (public domain); “The Metsudah Tanach series, Lakewood, N.J” (CC BY 4.0); and “The Book of Joshua, Metsudah Publications, 1997” (CC BY 4.0). Text via Sefaria.