This verse describes the consequences of the situation mentioned in verse 3. Attention is drawn to the thirsting and starving babies and children.

The tongue of the nursling cleaves to the roof of its mouth for thirst: in other words “The nursing babies have such thirst that their tongues stick to the roofs of their mouths.” Good News Translation “They let their babies die” gives the impression that the mothers do so willingly. This may agree with the cruelty suggested in verse 3, but the subject here is not the mothers but the tongues of the babies. Roof of its mouth translates the Hebrew for “palate.”

The second unit speaks of those children who are old enough to beg for food (for translation comments on children see 1.5). Food is the Hebrew for “bread,” as in 1.11. See there for comments. In 2.12 the children were said to be asking their mothers for food, but here they beg from anyone and get nothing. Once again it is implied that the mothers or the inhabitants of Jerusalem are cruel, not because it is their nature to be cruel to their children, but because anyone who has a scrap of food to eat uses it to keep himself alive.

Quoted with permission from Reyburn, William D. A Handbook on Lamentations. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 1992. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .