⁵³ Because of the suffering your enemy will inflict on you during the siege, you will eat the fruit of the womb, the flesh of the sons and daughters the Lord your God has given you.^{(A) 54} Even the most gentle and sensitive man among you will have no compassion on his own brother or the wife he loves or his surviving children, ⁵⁵ and he will not give to one of them any of the flesh of his children that he is eating. It will be all he has left because of the suffering your enemy will inflict on you during the siege of all your cities.^{(B) 56} The most gentle and sensitive^(C) woman among you—so sensitive and gentle that she would not venture to touch the ground with the sole of her foot—will begrudge the husband she loves and her own son or daughter^{(D) 57} the afterbirth from her womb and the children she bears. For in her dire need she intends to eat them^(E) secretly because of the suffering your enemy will inflict on you during the siege of your cities.

¹⁰ Therefore in your midst parents will eat their children, and children will eat their parents.^(A) I will inflict punishment on you and will scatter all your survivors to the winds.^(B)