Jeremiah 19:9

9 I will make the people eat the flesh of their sons and daughters. They will eat each other's flesh during blockades and hardships that their enemies impose on them when they want to kill them."

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 will smash the plans of Judah and Jerusalem in this place. I will cut them down with swords in front of their enemies and with the hands of those who want to kill them. I will give their bodies as food to birds and to animals.

8 I will devastate this city. It will become something to hiss at. Everyone who goes by it will be stunned and hiss with contempt at all the disasters that happen to it.

9 I will make the people eat the flesh of their sons and daughters. They will eat each other's flesh during blockades and hardships that their enemies impose on them when they want to kill them."

10 [The LORD says,] "Then smash the jar in front of the men who went with you.

11 Say to them, 'This is what the LORD of Armies says: I will smash these people and this city as this potter's jar was smashed beyond repair. They will bury [the dead] in Topheth until there's no other place to bury them.