That we should eat, one the flesh …: Good News Translation begins “Things were so bad…” and Contemporary English Version says “There was so little food…” These words in Good News Translation and Contemporary English Version correspond to nothing in particular in the Greek text, and may well detract attention from the fact that the cannibalism spoken of here (see Lam 4.10) was one of the dire threats made in the Law of Moses just mentioned (see Lev 26.29; Deut 28.53-57). The Greek says “that we should eat one person the flesh of his son and one person the flesh of his daughter.” Good News Translation “we even ate the flesh of our own sons and daughters” expresses the idea concisely. The statement may be stronger without the word “even,” and may then signal more clearly that this was an outcome of the Lord carrying out a threat recorded in Leviticus and Deuteronomy. New American Bible has a slightly different approach to bringing out the effect of the Greek: “that one after another of us should eat the flesh of his son or of his daughter.”

Quoted with permission from Bullard, Roger A. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on The Shorter Books of the Deuterocanon. (UBS Helps for Translators). New York: UBS, 2006. For this and other handbooks for translators see here.