⁸ But now they are blacker than coal.
    No one even recognizes them in the streets.
Their skin is wrinkled on their bones.
    It has become as dry as a stick.

⁹ Those killed by swords are better off
    than those who die of hunger.
Those who are hungry waste away to nothing.
    They don’t have any food from the fields.

¹⁰ With their own hands, loving mothers
    have had to cook even their own children.
They ate their children
    when my people were destroyed.