The most horrible result of the famine was this: that mothers started eating their own children. It must be that these mothers went mad with hunger. But a deeper cause lay in back of their sickening behaviour. It was part of God’s covenant curse. Mothers eating their children is something that the Lord warned would happen if his people did not repent (Leviticus 26:29; Deuteronomy 28:53, Deuteronomy 28:56; 2 Kings 6:29). He repeatedly warned them about this, even at the latest stages through Jeremiah and Ezekiel (Jeremiah 19:9; Ezekiel 5:10).
But the people did not listen. The women and mothers of Jerusalem kept on offending the Lord. They were the ones who led their families in the worship of the goddess Ishtar, the “Queen of Heaven” (Jeremiah 7:17–19; Jeremiah 44:19). Ishtar was the goddess of fertility. Now the Lord has taken all fertility and motherly tenderness away from his people. He has given the women over to other, unnatural instincts.
10 The hands of compassionate women have boiled their own children; they became their food during the destruction of the daughter of my people.