Jeremiah 19:9

9 The people will turn into cannibals. Dehumanized by the pressure of the enemy siege, they'll eat their own children! Yes, they'll eat one another, family and friends alike.'

Jeremiah 19:9 Meaning and Commentary

Jeremiah 19:9

And I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons, and the
flesh of their daughters
For want of food; the famine should be so great and pressing. Jeremiah, that foretells this, was a witness of it, and has left it on record, ( Lamentations 4:10 ) ; and they shall eat everyone the flesh of his friend.
The Targum interprets it, the goods or substance of his neighbour; which is sometimes the sense of eating the flesh of another; but as it is to be taken in a literal sense, in the preceding clause, so in this: so it should be, in the siege and straitness, wherewith their enemies, and they that
seek their lives, shall straiten them;
the siege of Jerusalem should be so close, that no provision could be got in to the relief of the inhabitants; which obliged them to take the shocking methods before mentioned. Jerom observes, that though this was fulfilled at the Babylonish captivity, yet more fully when Jerusalem was besieged by Vespasian and Titus, and in the times of Hadrian. Josephus ^F17 gives us a most shocking relation of a woman eating her own son.

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FOOTNOTES:

F17 De Bello Jud. l. 6. c. 3. sect. 4.

Jeremiah 19:9 In-Context

7 I'm canceling all the plans Judah and Jerusalem had for this place, and I'll have them killed by their enemies. I'll stack their dead bodies to be eaten by carrion crows and wild dogs.

8 I'll turn this city into such a museum of atrocities that anyone coming near will be shocked speechless by the savage brutality.

9 The people will turn into cannibals. Dehumanized by the pressure of the enemy siege, they'll eat their own children! Yes, they'll eat one another, family and friends alike.'

10 "Say all this, and then smash the pot in front of the men who have come with you.

11 Then say, 'This is what God-of-the-Angel-Armies says: I'll smash this people and this city like a man who smashes a clay pot into so many pieces it can never be put together again. They'll bury bodies here in Topheth until there's no more room.