Eikha Chapter Four, Part 5: Breakdown of Compassion - Verse 10

 

 

Compassionate women cook their children for food.

 

A spare, unemotional descriptive statement; its calm belies its madness, the grim emblem of an unbalanced world. The unadorned testimony dispassionately notes the collapse of the nation, its utter brokenness, “be-shever bat ammi.”[1] Women consuming their children represent a cataclysm marked by moral bankruptcy; human relationships unravel and people commit unspeakable atrocities, beyond comprehension. Drained of moral accountability, society has no recourse for repair, moving inexorably toward its demise.[2]

 

In spite of its factual tone, this statement stuns, leaving the reader horrified and incredulous.[3] It is made even more remarkable because of its absence of emotion, judgement, or pain, the reader uncomfortably observing the dissonance between the subject matter and its telling.

 

In Eikha 2:20, we empathized as Jerusalem howled in anguish, furiously pointing an accusing finger at God: “Look God and see! To whom have You done this? When women consume their fruits, their well-nurtured children!” The narrator’s detachment here conveys apathy; he appears unmoved by the terrible sights. How can the narrator present this horror in such an understated fashion?

 

In Chapter 2, Jerusalem narrates the account; perhaps the detached observer of Chapter 4 maintains a consciously objective tone. Perhaps the narrator finds language inadequate to express the scope of the horror; therefore, he prefers to present the dry facts, allowing the reader to experience the dreadful scene without embellishment. The copious suffering that he has seen in Jerusalem since the events of Chapter 2 may have numbed the narrator, extinguishing his ability to muster up genuine feeling for each fresh harrowing tale. This represents a moral failing similar to others that we encounter in the chapter; famine produces apathy, callousness, and alienation. The narrator’s apathy mirrors that of the subject that he describes: the heartless mothers who consume their children. This stark representation of human failing emerges as a symbol of a society that has lost its moral moorings.

 

 

The word rachamaniyot (compassionate women) evokes the rechem (womb), highlighting the inherent connection between the biological role of a mother and her emotional involvement. A midrash notes the etymological connection between these words, basing itself on our verse:[4]

 

At that time, she placed her son in her bosom, and stroked him, and kissed him and said, “Woe to your mother that found no joy in you. The arms that carried you should be cut off, and the mouth that kissed you should be sealed, the breast that nursed you should dry up, and the womb that you emerged from should be plucked.”

 

Why is the womb called a rechem? Because it should produce compassion for itself (mitrachem). However, due to the terrible sins, that compassion transformed into cruelty, and she became cruel to her son, like a mongoose, which bears and then eats her children.[5] (Midrash Aggada [Buber], Devarim 1)

 

The compassionate women of Jerusalem (rachamaniyot), who calculatedly cook their children for food, previously nurtured them in their womb (rechem). Bearing children prompts mothers to develop compassion toward their helpless young, who cannot survive in a world absent of altruistic adult care. The betrayal of these mothers represents a flagrant inversion of normalcy, biological behavior gone awry. It hardly matters whether we view the women as victims or perpetrators. The dissolution of the maternal instinct suggests the ultimate betrayal of compassion, and the demoralizing effect of famine.

 

Compassion is not restricted to mothers. All humans can cultivate compassion (rachamim), whether or not they have a womb that has borne a child. In fact, mothers are not the only ones moved to compassion in Tanakh.[6] Fathers also display compassion, stemming from their parental role:

 

As a father has compassion for his children, so does God have compassion for those that fear Him. (Tehillim 103:13).

 

Biblical passages describe compassion between brothers (Bereishit 43:30) and fellow humans (Zekharya 7:9; Tehillim 112:4), as well as compassion that emerges from kings (Nechemya 1:11), court officials (Daniel 1:9), and even formerly cruel captors (I Melakhim 8:50) or enemies (Yirmeyahu 42:12).

 

The womb lays the foundation for human compassion, as is evident from the etymology of the word rachamim. Initially, the womb links the mother and her fetus; in a unique display of altruism, a mother shelters her child for nine months, nurturing, protecting, and sustaining her child with her body. Once the child emerges from her womb, the child continues to require altruistic care and devotion, acts that cultivate compassion among anyone who participates — male and female. Raising children binds humans to their fellows, cultivating relationships based on selflessness, commitment, and shared resources. The experience of child-rearing underlies the success of a society that thrives, educating humans to overcome their innate self-centeredness and linking humans together in a shared quest to create a community, also based on altruism, commitment and shared resources.[7] In this schema, the loss of maternal compassion indicates the implosion of human compassion. As the basis for human relationships evaporates, society invariably caves in, a crumpled heap of moral turpitude and social apathy.

 

 

This scenario turns our attention to the chapter in Devarim in which God informs the people that as punishment for breaking the covenant, a siege and famine will destroy the pampered society, which will lose its moorings:

 

And you will eat the fruit of your womb, the flesh of your sons and daughters that God has given you in the siege and straits that your enemies have pressed against you in all of your gates. He who is most tender and delicate amongst you will set his evil eye against his brother and against the wife of his bosom and against the remainder of his sons that he has left over… She who is most tender and delicate amongst you; she who has not ventured to allow the sole of her foot to be placed upon the ground because of her delicateness and tenderness, her eye shall be evil against the husband of her bosom and against her son and against her daughter... (Devarim 28:53-56)

 

By drawing on Devarim 28, Eikha reminds the reader that these events are the result of a longstanding contract between God and His nation, who abrogated the terms of the contract.  While this does not mitigate the horror of the scene, it places it within a context of sin and punishment.[8]

 

 

In Chapter 2, the image of women consuming their children causes Jerusalem to hurl an angry accusation at God (Eikha 2:20). This verse lacks any such accusation. In fact, God has been noticeably absent from the chapter thus far. Nevertheless, the word rachamim recalls the gever’s abiding confidence in God’s compassion (Eikha 3:22, 32). Generally, biblical passages associate rachamim with God, whose compassion appears far more frequently than that of humans in Tanakh.[9] Some passages compare God’s compassion to the natural, instinctive one maintained by a parent (e.g. Yirmeyahu 31:19).[10] In one striking passage, God maintains that His compassion outweighs even that of the biological mother:

 

And Zion said, “God has forsaken me and God has forgotten me.” Does a mother forget her child? [Can she desist] from having compassion of the son of her womb? Even if she could forget, I would not forget. I have engraved you on the palms [of My hands], your walls are always before me. (Yeshayahu 49:14-15)

 

Nevertheless, God’s compassion for His nation has its limits. Prophets often warn that God may choose to withdraw His compassion toward the nation, deliberately abandoning His natural compassionate state in order to punish and educate them (e.g. Yeshayahu 9:16; Yirmeyahu 13:14; 16:5).[11] Echoes of God’s discarded compassion echo faintly in our verse as well. Mothers were once expected to be compassionate, but so was God (as we saw in Eikha 3:23, 32). A midrash astutely observes this idea:

 

“The hands of compassionate women” — when Yirmeyahu saw this, he began to shout and cry before God. He said, “Master of the Universe, Which nation has experienced troubles like these? Where is Your compassion? Where is Your kindness? Is it not written, ‘God is a merciful God’? You turned compassion into cruelty; You stood up from the chair of compassion and sat [instead] on the chair of judgment.”[12] (Midrash Aggada [Buber], Devarim 1)

 

The dissipation of the mothers’ compassion mirrors the dissipation of God’s compassion. This idea gathers strength in the following verse. There, God pours out His wrathful fury against Jerusalem, igniting a fire that consumes the city’s foundations. The proximity between these verses juxtaposes the scene in which mothers cook their children with the depiction of God’s fire that devours Jerusalem. This suggests a fundamental connection between these scenarios; compassion no longer arrives from its expected sources and the nation suffers the consequences of its absence.

 

This verse does not directly mention God, successfully maintaining the detachment and alienation from God that prevails in the first part of the chapter. Nevertheless, the reader can hear a muffled trace of God’s betrayal resonating quietly in the subtext.

 

 

Language of birth, motherhood, and nursing reverberates throughout the first section of this chapter, underscoring its thematic centrality. Several scholars note the wordplay between shever, which means brokenness, and the word mashber/ mishbar that alludes to birth, namely, the breach of the womb (e.g. II Melakhim 19:3; Yeshayahu 37:3; Hoshea 13:13.)[13] The difficult word “chalu” in verse 6 evokes the writhing pain and fear that accompanies birth (e.g. Yeshayahu 26:17-18; Mikha 4:9; Tehillim 48:7.)[14]

 

Eikha 4:7 employs milk as a metaphor that evokes the healthy glow of the Nazarites. This recalls the image of the female jackal’s breast, generously unsheathed to suckle her young, in terrible contrast to the Judean mothers who cruelly resist nursing their parched children (4:3-4). Perhaps the word saddai (which we rendered “the field,” but literally means “my fields”) in 4:9 also evokes a wordplay with the shad (breast) of Eikha 4:3,[15] drawing a parallel between the field that sustains the population and the breast that sustains the infant. The betrayal of the maternal instinct mirrors the betrayal of the land, whose produce no longer functions to sustain her people.

 

As hope for continuity, seed, and future rapidly fades, images of birth emerge, ironically recalling all that is elusive, all that has been lost. Utilized in in an inverted manner, as death swirls throughout the city, rapaciously claiming its hapless victims, images of fertility and fecundity, once so promising, now emerge to convey the city’s impending demise.

 

 

 

The first half of Chapter 4 (1-10) is entirely devoted to describing the devastation wrought by famine. Illustrating the heavy toll that famine exacts on society, both morally and physically, the section twice declares that other deaths (specifically that of Sodom and death by sword, but presumably meaning any death) are preferable to famine. The intense depictions of the starving city illustrate this point well, exhibiting the damage that famine wreaks on society.

 

The famine results in the unraveling of the moral fabric of society, displayed by the focus upon the mothers and children, which frames this section. Once valued as precious, Jerusalem’s mothers neglect their children, refusing them even the most elemental care (4:1-5). The section ends by casting a harsher spotlight on the mothers, who now pay attention to their children, but only as a means of sustenance (4:10).

 

The effects of the famine progress gradually as the chapter progresses, mirroring the slow spread of starvation throughout Jerusalem. The suffering and demise of the vulnerable children occurs in the earliest stages of the city’s privations (verses 2-5). Unabated, the famine continues to plague the city, collecting victims until even the stronger members of society deteriorate and languish (verses 7-8). The final verse (verse 10) records the desperate straits of a city deep in the throes of utter starvation — only this can account for the incongruous act recorded in the final verse that describes the starved and besieged city.

 

A visceral section, Eikha 4:1-10 explicitly references many individual body parts in various states of health and corrosion. These body parts — hands, breast, tongue, palate, bone, limbs, skin — draw our attention to the intense physicality of the chapter, which, after all, endeavors to convey the physical effects of lack of food.  Evoking the instinctive behavior of animals in comparison (and contrast!) to humans further cements the focus on the corporeal in this chapter. Famine dehumanizes, forcing humans to focus their attention on their bodily functions as they slowly deteriorate and fail.

 

Vivid imagery represents the famine in a series of snapshots, as one might paint an artistic piece, representing not every individual feature, but rather those that capture the moment, the emotion, and the horror. Images remain frozen in various contortions of agony: humans treated as earthenware pots, spilling onto the street and littering it with bodies, like unwanted debris; nursing mothers turn their backs on their infants with indifference; children’s anguished pleading for bread, to no avail; blackened and wizened faces, shrunken skin covering skeletal shadows of human forms; and near-corpses dying on the streets, blending together with those who have already died from sword wounds and starvation.

 

The chapter partially alleviates the terrible scene by unexpectedly conjuring equally vibrant images from the past, of the world that the nation has lost. Glimpsed beyond the ghastly landscape of death, the past beckons dimly, a bright memory that glitters and shines, providing a painful glimpse of a prosperous and pampered life, nearly forgotten in the grim reality that now envelops them. Increasing the disparity between the present and the past, we observe that from the heights of luxury, Jerusalem has collapsed into the pit of despair. By evoking the past, this terrible section allows some positive imagery to enter. Perhaps without intending to do so, Chapter 4 offers a sliver of consolation to a nation steeped in degradation, briefly allowing the reader to recall Jerusalem’s former nobility.