John Calvin Commentary Lamentations 4:5

"They that did feed delicately are desolate in the streets: They that were brought up in scarlet embrace dunghills." — Lamentations 4:5 (ASV)

Here he goes on further and says that those who had been accustomed to the most delicate food had perished from famine. He had said generally that infants found nothing in their mothers’ breasts but pined away with thirst, and also that children died from lack of bread. But he now amplifies this calamity by saying that this happened not only to the children of the common people but also to those who had been brought up delicately and had been clothed in scarlet and purple.

Then he says that they perished in the streets, and also that they embraced the dunghills, because they had no place to lie down, or because they sought food, as famished men do on dunghills. It seems to be a hyperbolical expression; but if we consider what the Prophet has already narrated and will again repeat, it should not seem incredible that those who had been accustomed to delicacies embraced dunghills, for mothers cooked their own children and devoured them as beef or mutton. There is no doubt that the siege, about which we have read before, drove the people to acts too degrading to be spoken of, especially when they had become blinded through such great obstinacy and had completely hardened themselves in their madness against God.