Lamentations4chapter 4

The chapter opens with metal and stone: the gold has grown dim, the finest gold changed, the sacred stones lie scattered at the head of every street. Gold does not actually tarnish, which is the point — something that should not be possible has happened. The precious sons of Zion, once worth their weight in fine gold, are now reckoned as clay pots, the cheapest thing in any house.

The famine is given in ordinary domestic detail. Nursing infants' tongues stick to the roof of their mouths; children beg for bread and no one gives it; people who once ate delicacies lie on ash heaps; those raised in purple embrace rubbish piles. Skin has shrivelled on their bones, dry as a stick. The chapter says those killed by the sword were better off than those who wasted away for lack of the fruits of the field.

Then the line that survivors of ancient sieges reported and that this book will not leave out: the hands of compassionate women boiled their own children. Siege cannibalism is recorded elsewhere in the ancient world, in Assyrian accounts and later in Josephus's description of Jerusalem's siege in AD 70. The Law had warned centuries earlier that this was where a besieged, covenant-breaking city would end.

Two political lines close it. The LORD's anointed, the breath of our nostrils, was taken in their pits — that is King Zedekiah, run down on the plains of Jericho. And Edom, who had cheered from across the border, is told to rejoice while she can, because the cup will come round to her.