John Calvin Commentary Lamentations 4:10

"The hands of the pitiful women have boiled their own children; They were their food in the destruction of the daughter of my people." — Lamentations 4:10 (ASV)

Here Jeremiah refers to that disgraceful and abominable deed mentioned yesterday; for it was not only a barbarity, but a beastly savageness, when mothers boiled their own children. That it was done is evident from other writers; but the Prophet is a sufficient witness to us, who had seen it with his own eyes.

He then says that the mothers were merciful, that no one might think that they were divested of every natural feeling; but he meant in this way to set forth the blindness that proceeds from God’s dreadful vengeance. He does not, therefore, praise the mothers for their clemency, as though they felt for their offspring as they should have; but he intimates that though they would have been otherwise humane, they were nevertheless seized with unusual madness, so that they boiled their own children, even their own bowels.

We now, therefore, perceive the meaning of the word merciful, as applied to the mothers by the Prophet. It is not, therefore, to be deemed as praise for them, as though they had a maternal love for their children. Instead, his purpose was to set forth that monstrous act, which would not have sufficiently affected them if he had not testified that the mothers of whom he speaks were not ordinarily so brutal as to refuse to gladly give food to their children, but that they were supernaturally blinded by furious madness.