⁵³ Because of the suffering your enemy will inflict on you during the siege, you will eat the fruit of the womb, the flesh of the sons and daughters the Lord your God has given you.^{(A) 54} Even the most gentle and sensitive man among you will have no compassion on his own brother or the wife he loves or his surviving children, ⁵⁵ and he will not give to one of them any of the flesh of his children that he is eating. It will be all he has left because of the suffering your enemy will inflict on you during the siege of all your cities.^{(B) 56} The most gentle and sensitive^(C) woman among you—so sensitive and gentle that she would not venture to touch the ground with the sole of her foot—will begrudge the husband she loves and her own son or daughter^{(D) 57} the afterbirth from her womb and the children she bears. For in her dire need she intends to eat them^(E) secretly because of the suffering your enemy will inflict on you during the siege of your cities.

²⁸ Then he asked her, “What’s the matter?”

She answered, “This woman said to me, ‘Give up your son so we may eat him today, and tomorrow we’ll eat my son.’ ²⁹ So we cooked my son and ate^(A) him. The next day I said to her, ‘Give up your son so we may eat him,’ but she had hidden him.”

⁹ I will make them eat^(A) the flesh of their sons and daughters, and they will eat one another’s flesh because their enemies^(B) will press the siege so hard against them to destroy them.’