Cannibalism typically evokes a strong negative reaction. The declaration that Israel and Judah might be reduced to cannibalism is possible as prophecy, but may also be prophetic exaggeration of the conditions to come. A famine sufficient to turn a people to cannibalism would be most extreme. This prophecy of cannibalism is also made by Jeremiah before the Babylonian conquest. The Revised English Version gives us:
I shall make this city a scene of desolation, an object of astonishment, so that every passer-by will be desolated and appalled at the sight of all her wounds.
I shall make people eat the flesh of their sons and their daughters; they will devour one another’s flesh in the dire straits to which their enemies and those who would kill them will reduce them in the siege. (Jer. 19:8–9)
Literature: Hunger can be a powerful metaphor for the search for God. Searching on the right and the left without satisfaction is an image of those who are unable to assuage their hunger through worldly ideas. But rather than turn to God for spiritual sustenance, they turn on themselves. Eating the flesh of one’s own arm is a metaphor for a kind of desperate attempt to construct a personal philosophy—a situation chillingly familiar in modern times.