And thou shall eat the fruit of thine body,.... Than which nothing can be more shocking and unnatural, which is explained as follows:the flesh of thy sons and of thy daughters, which the Lord thy God hath given thee; which is an aggravation of the cruel and inhuman fact:in the siege, and in the straitness wherewith thine enemies shall distress thee; this shows the cause of it, a famine by reason of the closeness of the siege, so that no provisions could be brought in for their relief; and all within being eaten up, and everything that was eatable, even the most nauseous and disagreeable, they would be led on to this strange, unheard of, and barbarous action, eating their own children.
This was fulfilled in the siege of Samaria, 2Ki 6:25; and in the siege of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, La 2:10 and again in the Apocrypha:"Moreover he hath delivered them to be in subjection to all the kingdoms that are round about us, to be as a reproach and desolation among all the people round about, where the Lord hath scattered them.'