Notice how Good News Translation and Contemporary English Version have combined verses 54-55, for a more natural and clearer statement.

The man who is the most tender and delicately bred among you: something like “most refined and sensitive” represents well the meaning of the text. This is expressed as “most gentle and sensitive” (New International Version); “The gentlest and tenderest man among you” (New Jerusalem Bible); “most refined and gentle” (Revised English Bible); “a man who had been gentle and kind” (Contemporary English Version). Good News Translation “most refined man of noble birth” appears to miss the point.

Will grudge food: that is, “will not share any of his food,” which, in this context, consists of the flesh of some of his own children (verse 55). The Hebrew expression translated grudge is “make the eye hostile” (see 15.9); here it means to look at his family with indifference and hostility. So we may translate as “he will viciously [or, nastily] refuse to share his food with…,” or even “he will look at them with a vicious look and refuse to share….”

Brother: in a number of languages translators will need to indicate the relative age of a brother, whether older or younger. In such a case we may say, for example, “to his older or younger brother.”

The wife of his bosom: that is, his dear, or beloved, wife.

To the last of the children who remain to him: or “any of his children who are left,” or even “… who are still alive.”

He will not give any of them: this repeats information from verse 54 and may be omitted in a number of languages.

Because he has nothing left him: Good News Translation says “because he had no other food.” That is the reason why he is eating the flesh of some of his own children.

In the siege and in the distress: as in verse 53.

A possible translation model combining verses 54 and 55 is the following:

• Because the enemies are surrounding his town, a man who had been gentle and kind will become so desperate that he will eat his own children. He will do this because he feels that there is nothing else he can do; he has no food left. He will viciously refuse to share any of the meat with his brother or his beloved wife or any of his children that are left.

Quoted with permission from Bratcher, Robert G. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on Deuteronomy. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2000. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .