Bible Verses About Famine: Described

Then you will eat the fruit of your womb, the flesh of the sons and daughters whom the LORD your God has given you, in the siege and distress that your enemy will inflict on you.

The most gentle and refined man among you will begrudge his brother, the wife he embraces, and the rest of his children who have survived,

refusing to share with any of them the flesh of his children he will eat because he has nothing left in the siege and distress that your enemy will inflict on you within all your gates.

The most gentle and refined woman among you, so gentle and refined she would not venture to set the sole of her foot on the ground, will begrudge the husband she embraces and her son and daughter

the afterbirth that comes from between her legs and the children she bears, because she will secretly eat them for lack of anything else in the siege and distress that your enemy will inflict on you within your gates.

For wickedness burns like a fire that consumes the thorns and briers and kindles the forest thickets which roll upward in billows of smoke.

By the wrath of the LORD of Hosts the land is scorched, and the people are fuel for the fire. No man even spares his brother.

They carve out what is on the right, but they are still hungry; they eat what is on the left, but they are still not satisfied. Each one devours the flesh of his own offspring.

Manasseh devours Ephraim, and Ephraim Manasseh; together they turn against Judah. Despite all this, His anger is not turned away; His hand is still upraised.

This is the word of the LORD that came to Jeremiah concerning the drought:

“Judah mourns and her gates languish. Her people wail for the land, and a cry goes up from Jerusalem.

The nobles send their servants for water; they go to the cisterns, but find no water; their jars return empty. They are ashamed and humiliated; they cover their heads.

The ground is cracked because no rain has fallen on the land. The farmers are ashamed; they cover their heads.

Even the doe in the field deserts her newborn fawn because there is no grass.

Wild donkeys stand on barren heights; they pant for air like jackals; their eyes fail for lack of pasture.”

My eyes fail from weeping; I am churning within. My heart is poured out in grief over the destruction of the daughter of my people, because children and infants faint in the streets of the city.

They cry out to their mothers: “Where is the grain and wine?” as they faint like the wounded in the streets of the city, as their lives fade away in the arms of their mothers.

What can I say for you? To what can I compare you, O Daughter of Jerusalem? To what can I liken you, that I may console you, O Virgin Daughter of Zion? For your wound is as deep as the sea. Who can ever heal you?

The visions of your prophets were empty and deceptive; they did not expose your guilt to ward off your captivity. The burdens they envisioned for you were empty and misleading.

All who pass by clap their hands at you in scorn. They hiss and shake their heads at the Daughter of Jerusalem: “Is this the city that was called the perfection of beauty, the joy of all the earth?”

All your enemies open their mouths against you. They hiss and gnash their teeth, saying, “We have swallowed her up. This is the day for which we have waited. We have lived to see it!”

The LORD has done what He planned; He has accomplished His decree, which He ordained in days of old; He has overthrown you without pity. He has let the enemy gloat over you and exalted the horn of your foes.

The hearts of the people cry out to the Lord. O wall of the Daughter of Zion, let your tears run down like a river day and night. Give yourself no relief, and your eyes no rest.

Arise, cry out in the night from the first watch of the night. Pour out your heart like water in the presence of the Lord. Lift up your hands to Him for the lives of your children who are fainting from hunger on the corner of every street.

Look, O LORD, and consider: Whom have You ever treated like this? Should women eat their offspring, the infants they have nurtured? Should priests and prophets be killed in the sanctuary of the Lord?