⁵³ “You will eat your children,^[a] the flesh of your sons and daughters the Lord your God has given you^(A) during the siege and hardship your enemy imposes on you. ⁵⁴ The most sensitive and refined man among you will look grudgingly^[b] at his brother, the wife he embraces,^[c] and the rest of his children, ⁵⁵ refusing to share with any of them his children’s flesh that he will eat because he has nothing left during the siege and hardship your enemy imposes on you in all your towns. ⁵⁶ The most sensitive and refined woman among you, who would not venture to set the sole of her foot on the ground because of her refinement and sensitivity, will begrudge the husband she embraces, her son, and her daughter, ⁵⁷ the afterbirth that comes out from between her legs and the children she bears, because she will secretly eat them for lack of anything else during the siege and hardship your enemy imposes on you within your gates.

²⁸ Then the king asked her, “What’s the matter?”^(A)

She said, “This woman said to me, ‘Give up your son, and we will eat him today. Then we will eat my son tomorrow.’ ²⁹ So we boiled my son and ate him, and I said to her the next day, ‘Give up your son, and we will eat him,’^(B) but she has hidden her son.”

⁹ I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and their daughters, and they will eat each other’s flesh in the siege and distress that their enemies, those who want to take their life, inflict on them.^(A)

י Yod