Lamentations 4:3

Even the sea monsters draw out the breast,.... Which some interpret of dragons; others of seals, or sea calves; but it is best to understand it of whales, as the word is rendered in Genesis 1:21; and elsewhere: and Bochart d has proved, out of various writers, that these have breasts and milk; but that their breasts, or however their paps, are not manifest, but are hid as in cases, and must be drawn out: and so Jarchi observes that they draw their breasts out of a case, for their breasts have a covering, which they uncover: so Ben Melech. Aristotle e says, that whales, as the dolphin, sea calf, and balaena, have breasts or paps, and milk, which he makes to be certain species of the whale; and each of these, he elsewhere says, have milk, and suckle their young: the dolphin and sturgeon, he observes f have milk, and are sucked; and so the sea calf, he says g, lets out milk as a sheep, and has two breasts, and is sucked by its young, as four footed beasts are. Agreeably to which Aelianus h relates, that the female dolphins have paps like women, and suckle their young, with great plenty of milk; and the balaena, he says i, is a creature like a dolphin, and has milk. And Pliny, speaking of the dolphins, observes k, that they bring forth their "whelps", and so the young of this creature are called here in the next clause in the Hebrew text l, and nourish them with their breasts, as the balaena; and of the sea calves the same writer says m they feed their young with their paps; but the paps of these creatures are not manifest, as those of four footed beasts, as Aristotle observes; but are like two channels or pipes, out of which the milk flows, and the young are suckled;

they give suck to their young ones; as they do, when they are hungry; which is mentioned, as an aggravation of the case of the Jewish women, with respect to their behaviour towards their children, by reason of the famine, during the siege of Jerusalem; which here, and in the following verses, is described in the sad effects of it; and which had a further accomplishment at the destruction of the same city by the Romans: now, though the monsters suckled their young when hungry, yet these women did not suckle theirs;

the daughter of my people [is become] cruel; or, is "unto a cruel one" n: that is, is changed unto a cruel one, or is like unto one, and behaves as such, though of force and necessity: the meaning is, that the Jewish women, though before tenderhearted mothers, yet, by reason of the famine, having no milk in their breasts, could give none to their children, and so acted as if they were cruel to them; nay, in fact, instead of feeding them, they fed upon them, Lamentations 4:10;

like the ostriches in the wilderness; which lay their eggs, and leave them in places easily to be crushed and broken; and when they have any young ones, they are hardened against them, as if they were none of theirs, Job 39:13; and this seemed now to be the case of these women; or, "like the owls", as the word is sometimes rendered; and which also leave their eggs, and for want of food will eat their young, as those women did. So Ben Melech says, it is a bird which dwells in the wilderness, and causes a voice of hooping to be heard.

d Hierozoic. l. 1. c. 7. p. 46. e Hist. Animal. l. 3. c. 20. f Ib. l. 6. c. 12. g lbid. h Hist. de Animal. 1. 10. c. 8. i Ib. l. 5. c. 4. k Nat. Hist. l. 9. c. 8. l גוריהן "catulos suos", Pagninus, Montanus, Junius Tremellius, Piscator, Cocceius. m Nat. Hist. l. 9. c. 13. n לאכזר "in crudelem", Montanus "sub. mutata fuit", Piscator; "similis est crudeli", Munster.