Even the monsters draw out the breast to suckle their young. But the daughter of my people is cruel, like the ostriches in the wilderness.

The eye of the tender and dainty woman among you, who would not have ventured to set the sole of her foot on the ground because of her delicateness and tenderness, will quiver with hostility toward the husband of her bosom, and toward her son and her daughter,

and toward her afterbirth which comes forth from between her feet and her children whom she bears; for she shall eat them secretly for lack of everything in the siege and desperate straits in which your enemy shall distress you in all your gates.

Then the woman whose son was living spoke to the king, for her womb yearned for her son; and she said, O my lord, give her the living child, and do not put him to death! But the other said, Let him be neither mine nor yours, but divide him.

So the king answered and said, Give her the living child, and do not put him to death; she is his mother.

And the king said to her, What is troubling you? And she answered, This woman said to me, Give your son, that we may eat him today, and we will eat my son tomorrow.

So we boiled my son, and ate him. And I said to her on the next day, Give your son, that we may eat him; but she hid her son.

Behold, O Jehovah, and consider to whom You have done this. Shall the women eat their offspring, children of their tender care? Shall the priest and the prophet be killed in the sanctuary of the Lord?

without understanding, untrustworthy, without natural affection, unforgiving, unmerciful;

The labor of fools wearies him, because he does not even know how to go to the city.

Behold, is it not of Jehovah of Hosts that the people labor only to feed the fire, and nations weary themselves only for vanity.