Scripture · Old Testament
Lamentations 4:3
Lamentations 4:3 is verse 3 of Lamentations chapter 4, shown here in the Berean Standard Bible.
Berean Standard Bible
Even jackals offer their breasts to nurse their young, but the daughter of my people has become cruel, like an ostrich in the wilderness.
Or serpents or dragons
King James Version
Even the sea monsters draw out the breast, they give suck to their young ones: the daughter of my people is become cruel, like the ostriches in the wilderness.
World English Bible
Even the jackals offer their breast. They nurse their young ones. But the daughter of my people has become cruel, like the ostriches in the wilderness.
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Lamentations 4:1–5 · Berean Standard Bible
1 How the gold has become tarnished, the pure gold has become dull! The gems of the temple lie scattered on every street corner.
2 How the precious sons of Zion, once worth their weight in pure gold, are now esteemed as jars of clay, the work of a potter’s hands!
3 Even jackals offer their breasts to nurse their young, but the daughter of my people has become cruel, like an ostrich in the wilderness.
4 The nursing infant’s tongue clings in thirst to the roof of his mouth. Little children beg for bread, but no one gives them any.
5 Those who once ate delicacies are destitute in the streets; those brought up in crimson huddle in ash heaps.
Read all of Lamentations 4Hebrew words
Data created by STEPBible.org based on work at Tyndale House Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
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Cross-references
The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge lists these related verses. Scripture text comes from the Berean Standard Bible.
Lamentations 2:20Look, O LORD, and consider: Whom have You ever treated like this? Should women eat their offspring, the infants they have nurtured? Should priests and prophets be killed in the sanctuary of the Lord?
Lamentations 4:10The hands of compassionate women have cooked their own children, who became their food in the destruction of the daughter of my people.
Leviticus 26:29You will eat the flesh of your own sons and daughters.
Deuteronomy 28:52They will besiege all the cities throughout your land, until the high and fortified walls in which you trust have fallen. They will besiege all your cities throughout the land that the LORD your God has given you.
Deuteronomy 28:53Then you will eat the fruit of your womb, the flesh of the sons and daughters whom the LORD your God has given you, in the siege and distress that your enemy will inflict on you.
Deuteronomy 28:54The most gentle and refined man among you will begrudge his brother, the wife he embraces, and the rest of his children who have survived,
Deuteronomy 28:55refusing to share with any of them the flesh of his children he will eat because he has nothing left in the siege and distress that your enemy will inflict on you within all your gates.
Deuteronomy 28:56The most gentle and refined woman among you, so gentle and refined she would not venture to set the sole of her foot on the ground, will begrudge the husband she embraces and her son and daughter
Deuteronomy 28:57the afterbirth that comes from between her legs and the children she bears, because she will secretly eat them for lack of anything else in the siege and distress that your enemy will inflict on you within your gates.
2 Kings 6:26As the king of Israel was passing by on the wall, a woman cried out to him, “Help me, my lord the king!”
2 Kings 6:27He answered, “If the LORD does not help you, where can I find help for you? From the threshing floor or the winepress?”
2 Kings 6:28Then the king asked her, “What is the matter?” And she answered, “This woman said to me, ‘Give up your son, that we may eat him, and tomorrow we will eat my son.’
2 Kings 6:29So we boiled my son and ate him, and the next day I said to her, ‘Give up your son, that we may eat him.’ But she had hidden her son.”
Isaiah 49:15“Can a woman forget her nursing child, or lack compassion for the son of her womb? Even if she could forget, I will not forget you!
Jeremiah 19:9I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and daughters, and they will eat one another’s flesh in the siege and distress inflicted on them by their enemies who seek their lives.’
Ezekiel 5:10As a result, fathers among you will eat their sons, and sons will eat their fathers. I will execute judgments against you and scatter all your remnant to every wind.’
Luke 23:28But Jesus turned to them and said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for Me, but weep for yourselves and for your children.
Luke 23:29Look, the days are coming when people will say, ‘Blessed are the barren women, the wombs that never bore, and breasts that never nursed!’
Job 39:13The wings of the ostrich flap joyfully, but cannot match the pinions and feathers of the stork.
Job 39:14For she leaves her eggs on the ground and lets them warm in the sand.
Job 39:15She forgets that a foot may crush them, or a wild animal may trample them.
Job 39:16She treats her young harshly, as if not her own, with no concern that her labor was in vain.
Romans 1:31They are senseless, faithless, heartless, merciless.