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 hands of pitiful women have boiled their own children: they were their meat in the ruin of the daughter of my people.

The hands of merciful women have boiled their own children, They have been for food to them, In the destruction of the daughter of my people.

The hands of kind-hearted women have been boiling their children; they were their food in the destruction of the daughter of my people.

The hands of the compassionate women have cooked their own children; they were their food in the destruction of the daughter of my people.

JOD. The hands of pitiable women have boiled their sons. They became their food in the grief of the daughter of my people.

Manus mulierum misericordium coxerunt foetus suos, fuerunt in alimenta ipis in contritione filiae populi mei.

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 --

Pitiful - i. e. tender-hearted, compassionate. meat is used for food Psalm 69:21. What is here stated actually occurred during the siege of Jerusalem by Titus.

The hands of the pitiful women have sodden their own children - See on Lamentations 2:20 (note). 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.

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, Deuteronomy 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 Lamentations 2:20.
(a) De Bello Jude. l. 6. c. 3. sect. 4.

(Lamentations 2:20; Deuteronomy 28:56-57).
pitiful--naturally at other times compassionate (Isaiah 49:15). JOSEPHUS describes the unnatural act as it took place in the siege under Titus.
sodden--boiled.

Still more horrible was the misery of the women. In order to keep themselves from dying of hunger, mothers boiled their children for food to themselves; cf. Lamentations 2:20. By the predicate "compassionate," applied to hands, the contrast between this conduct and the nature, or the innate love, of mothers to their children, is made particularly prominent. בּרות is a noun = בּרוּת, Psalm 69:22. On "the destruction of the daughter of my people," cf. Lamentations 2:11.