THE CATACOMBS
You are here: Home
> Catacombs > Articles
Lamentations 4:10 -- Are
Jewish Babies on the Dinner Menu?
Editor's Note: This
response answers a reader's question concerning the ISV's rendering of
Lamentations 4:10, which the ISV renders as:
Compassionate women by their own hand
prepare to cook their own children—
their choice of dinner menu—
when my people were destroyed.
The
first two phrases in the ISV (Lamentations 4:10) seem to be right on the
mark. It is the third phrase that I have questioned. Is it not an academic
paraphrase to translate the Hebrew text "to be food" as "their choice of
dinner menu"?
Yes. It's a paraphrase.
It's also an accurate rendering of what's going on in the situation
described by Jeremiah. The ISV is not a literal translation. Please see
our front matter to the ISV where we discuss this in some detail. Neither
is it an idiomatic translation. It's a literal-idiomatic. We use idiomatic
renderings ("choice of dinner menu" is one of them) where it better
connotes the intent of the author, to the extent that that intent is being
communicated in the original language.
I asked this
question because the text does not seem to say what the ISV has rendered.
Actually, you're not really
correct in this conclusion.
And, it does not seem reasonable, that any mother would willingly "choose"
to eat her child.
You are correct about this.
But that's the point of the passage! Nobody is willingly
choosing anything. There's a military siege going on and the famine
perpetrated by the invading army is having its intended consequence:
cannibalism! This situation, Jeremiah is reminding his readers, is the
result of the direct judgment of God upon unbelieving Israel. You're
supposed to be horrified about the passage! After all, this is the
Lamentations of Jeremiah!
These women were
starving, many of their infants were already dead; these "compassionate"
mothers were barely hanging onto their lives. Eating their own children was
an act of utter desperation. The ISV rendering (their choice of dinner menu)
makes it sound as though the children were just the most choice item on the
menu.
You're
misunderstanding the word choice. It's "choice" as in "selection", not
"choice" as in "best thing on the menu". The grammar of the passage is
clear: if we had intended to mean "best thing on the menu" the passage
would have been rendered "their children are the choicest selection for
dinner" or something like that.
In reality there
was no menu; death by starvation was at the door step and eating the fruit
of their womb an act of starvation induced madness.
Don't you get it?
You're precisely correct. And in these desperate times, who wouldn't agree
that the Twilight Zone-like irony of daddy coming home for dinner, fresh
from standing guard on the defensive wall around Jerusalem and asking his
wife, "Honey, what's for dinner tonight?" and she says, "Your menu
selection this evening is roasted 1-year old, sautéed in mother's milk,
accompanied by donkey-dung stew..." Don't you see the horror of it? Of
course we're going to stay with this rendering. The irony communicates the
sense of horror. This mother who cooks her little baby tonight for dinner
is living the ultimate nightmare. Step back, and feel the despair and
hopelessness. We're keeping the rendering.
I believe that
what God has made plain, no one should make obscure.
How much
more plain can we make the horror of what happens when God forsakes a
society? Little baby Jewish boy is on the menu for dinner. Can you not see
the evil? Does one light a candle to see the sun? We're not changing the
rendering, unless you can supply a suggestion that communicates as much
irony and judgment as did our rendering, in which case we'll welcome your
suggested translation of the passage. But be sure to keep the sense of
psychosis that needs to be in your rendering of the "dinner menu", or
you'll miss the point of the passage, we do believe.
|
