Imamat 26:29

26:29 You will eat the flesh of your sons and the flesh of your daughters. ¹ 

Ulangan 28:53-57

28:53 You will then eat your own offspring, ²  the flesh of the sons and daughters the Lord your God has given you, because of the severity of the siege ³  by which your enemies will constrict you. 28:54 The man among you who is by nature tender and sensitive will turn against his brother, his beloved wife, and his remaining children. 28:55 He will withhold from all of them his children’s flesh that he is eating (since there is nothing else left), because of the severity of the siege by which your enemy will constrict ⁴  you in your villages. 28:56 Likewise, the most ⁵  tender and delicate of your women, who would never think of putting even the sole of her foot on the ground because of her daintiness, ⁶  will turn against her beloved husband, her sons and daughters, 28:57 and will secretly eat her afterbirth ⁷  and her newborn children ⁸  (since she has nothing else), ⁹  because of the severity of the siege by which your enemy will constrict you in your villages.

Ulangan 28:64

28:64 The Lord will scatter you among all nations, from one end of the earth to the other. There you will worship other gods that neither you nor your ancestors have known, gods of wood and stone.

Ulangan 28:2

28:2 All these blessings will come to you in abundance ¹⁰  if you obey the Lord your God:

Kisah Para Rasul 6:1

The Appointment of the First Seven Deacons

6:1 Now in those ¹¹  days, when the disciples were growing in number, ¹²  a complaint arose on the part of the Greek-speaking Jews ¹³  against the native Hebraic Jews, ¹⁴  because their widows ¹⁵  were being overlooked ¹⁶  in the daily distribution of food. ¹⁷ 

Yesaya 9:20

9:20 They devoured ¹⁸  on the right, but were still hungry,

they ate on the left, but were not satisfied.

People even ate ¹⁹  the flesh of their own arm! ²⁰ 

Yesaya 49:26

49:26 I will make your oppressors eat their own flesh;

they will get drunk on their own blood, as if it were wine. ²¹ 

Then all humankind ²²  will recognize that

I am the Lord, your deliverer,

your protector, ²³  the powerful ruler of Jacob.” ²⁴ 

Yeremia 19:9

19:9 I will reduce the people of this city to desperate straits during the siege imposed on it by their enemies who are seeking to kill them. I will make them so desperate that they will eat the flesh of their own sons and daughters and the flesh of one another.”’” ²⁵ 

Ratapan 2:20

Jerusalem Speaks:

ר (Resh)

2:20 Look, O Lord! Consider! ²⁶ 

Whom have you ever afflicted ²⁷  like this?

Should women eat their offspring, ²⁸ 

their healthy infants? ²⁹ 

Should priest and prophet

be killed in the Lord’s ³⁰  sanctuary?

Ratapan 4:10

י (Yod)

4:10 The hands of tenderhearted women ³¹ 

cooked their own children,

who became their food, ³² 

when my people ³³  were destroyed. ³⁴ 

[26:29]  ¹ tn Heb “and the flesh of your daughters you will eat.” The phrase “you will eat” has not been repeated in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[28:53]  ² tn Heb “the fruit of your womb” (so NAB, NRSV); NASB “the offspring of your own body.”

[28:53]  ³ tn Heb “siege and stress.”

[28:55]  ⁴ tn Heb “besiege,” redundant with the noun “siege.”

[28:56]  ⁵ tc The LXX adds σφόδρα (sfodra, “very”) to bring the description into line with v. 54.

[28:56]  ⁶ tn Heb “delicateness and tenderness.”

[28:57]  ⁷ tn Heb includes “that which comes out from between her feet.”

[28:57]  ⁸ tn Heb “her sons that she will bear.”

[28:57]  ⁹ tn Heb includes “in her need for everything.”

[28:2]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “come upon you and overtake you” (so NASB, NRSV); NIV “come upon you and accompany you.”

[6:1]  ¹¹ tn Grk “these.” The translation uses “those” for stylistic reasons.

[6:1]  ¹² tn Grk “were multiplying.”

[6:1]  ¹³ tn Grk “the Hellenists,” but this descriptive term is largely unknown to the modern English reader. The translation “Greek-speaking Jews” attempts to convey something of who these were, but it was more than a matter of language spoken; it involved a degree of adoption of Greek culture as well.

[6:1]  sn The Greek-speaking Jews were the Hellenists, Jews who to a greater or lesser extent had adopted Greek thought, customs, and lifestyle, as well as the Greek language. The city of Alexandria in Egypt was a focal point for them, but they were scattered throughout the Roman Empire.

[6:1]  ¹⁴ tn Grk “against the Hebrews,” but as with “Hellenists” this needs further explanation for the modern reader.

[6:1]  ¹⁵ sn The care of widows is a major biblical theme: Deut 10:18; 16:11, 14; 24:17, 19-21; 26:12-13; 27:19; Isa 1:17-23; Jer 7:6; Mal 3:5.

[6:1]  ¹⁶ tn Or “neglected.”

[6:1]  ¹⁷ tn Grk “in the daily serving.”

[6:1]  sn The daily distribution of food. The early church saw it as a responsibility to meet the basic needs of people in their group.

[9:20]  ¹⁸ tn Or “cut.” The verb גָּזַר (gazar) means “to cut.” If it is understood here, then one might paraphrase, “They slice off meat on the right.” However, HALOT 187 s.v. I גזר, proposes here a rare homonym meaning “to devour.”

[9:20]  ¹⁹ tn The prefixed verbal form is either a preterite without vav consecutive or an imperfect used in a customary sense, describing continual or repeated behavior in past time.

[9:20]  ²⁰ tn Some suggest that זְרֹעוֹ (zÿro’o, “his arm”) be repointed זַרְעוֹ (zar’o, “his offspring”). In either case, the metaphor is that of a desperately hungry man who resorts to an almost unthinkable act to satisfy his appetite. He eats everything he can find to his right, but still being unsatisfied, then turns to his left and eats everything he can find there. Still being desperate for food, he then resorts to eating his own flesh (or offspring, as this phrase is metaphorically understood by some English versions, e.g., NIV, NCV, TEV, NLT). The reality behind the metaphor is the political turmoil of the period, as the next verse explains. There was civil strife within the northern kingdom; even the descendants of Joseph were at each other’s throats. Then the northern kingdom turned on their southern brother, Judah.

[49:26]  ²¹ sn Verse 26a depicts siege warfare and bloody defeat. The besieged enemy will be so starved they will their own flesh. The bloodstained bodies lying on the blood-soaked battle site will look as if they collapsed in drunkenness.

[49:26]  ²² tn Heb “flesh” (so KJV, NASB).

[49:26]  ²³ tn Heb “your redeemer.” See the note at 41:14.

[49:26]  ²⁴ tn Heb “the powerful [one] of Jacob.” See 1:24.

[19:9]  ²⁵ tn This verse has been restructured to try to bring out the proper thought and subordinations reflected in the verse without making the sentence too long and complex in English: Heb “I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and daughters. And they will eat one another’s flesh in the siege and in the straits which their enemies who are seeking their lives reduce them to.” This also shows the agency through which God’s causation was effected, i.e., the siege.

[19:9]  sn Cannibalism is one of the penalties for disobedience to their covenant with the Lord effected through the Mosaic covenant. See Deut 28:53, 55, 57. For examples of this being carried out see 2 Kgs 6:28-29; Lam 4:10.

[2:20]  ²⁶ tn Heb “Look, O Lord! See!” When used in collocation with verbs of cognition, רָאָה (ra’ah) means “to see for oneself” or “to take notice” (1 Sam 26:12). The parallelism between seeing and understanding is often emphasized (e.g., Exod 16:6; Isa 5:19; 29:15; Job 11:11; Eccl 6:5). See also 1:11 and cf. 1:9, 12, 20; 3:50, 59, 60; 5:1.

[2:20]  sn Integral to battered Jerusalem’s appeal, and part of the ancient Near Eastern lament genre, is the request for God to look at her pain. This should evoke pity regardless of the reason for punishment. The request is not for God to see merely that there are misfortunes, as one might note items on a checklist. The cognitive (facts) and affective (feelings) are not divided. The plea is for God to watch, think about, and be affected by these facts while listening to the petitioner’s perspective.

[2:20]  ²⁷ tn For the nuance “afflict” see the note at 1:12.

[2:20]  ²⁸ tn Heb “their fruit.” The term פְּרִי (pÿri, “fruit”) is used figuratively to refer to children as the fruit of a mother’s womb (e.g., Gen 30:2; Deut 7:13; 28:4, 11, 18, 53; 30:9; Pss 21:11; 127:3; 132:11; Isa 13:18; Mic 6:7).

[2:20]  ²⁹ tn Heb “infants of healthy childbirth.” The genitive-construct phrase עֹלֲלֵי טִפֻּחִים (’olale tippukhim) functions as an attributive genitive construction: “healthy newborn infants.” The noun טִפֻּחִים (tippukhim) appears only here. It is related to the verb טָפַח (tafakh), meaning “to give birth to a healthy child” or “to raise children” depending on whether the Arabic or Akkadian cognate is emphasized. For the related verb, see below at 2:22.

[2:20]  sn Placing the specific reference to children at the end of the line in apposition to clarify that it does not describe the normal eating of fruit helps produce the repulsive shock of the image. Furthermore, the root of the word for “infants” (עוֹלֵל, ’olel) has the same root letters for the verb “to afflict” occurring in the first line of the verse, making a pun (F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp, Lamentations [IBC], 99-100).

[2:20]  ³⁰ tc The MT reads אֲדֹנָי (’adonay, “the Lord”) here rather than יהוה (YHWH, “the Lord”) as at the beginning of the verse. See the tc note at 1:14.

[4:10]  ³¹ tn Heb “the hands of compassionate women.”

[4:10]  ³² tn Heb “eating.” The infinitive construct (from I בָּרָה, barah) is translated as a noun. Three passages employ the verb (2 Sam 3:35; 12:17; 13:5,6,10) for eating when ill or in mourning.

[4:10]  ³³ tn Heb “the daughter of my people.”

[4:10]  ³⁴ tn Heb “in the destruction of the daughter of my people.”