Famine and the scarcity of bread become a recurring theme. Apart from their spiritual affliction, the physical affliction of hunger is described:
Lamentations 2:11 - the hunger of infants and babies
Lamentations 3:16 – the lack of food
Lamentations 4:10 – women ate the corpses of their children
Lamentations 5:9–10 – the hunger in the raging land
This theme is also found in the following verses: Lamentations 1:19; Lamentations 2:19; Lamentations 4:3–5; Lamentations 4:7–9; Lamentations 5:6.1
This recurring theme is significant, because famine was taken as a sign of God’s displeasure (see also Jeremiah 24:10; Ezekiel 7:15; Ezekiel 14:13; Amos 4:6).2
11 All her people groan as they search for bread; they trade their treasures for food to revive their strength. “Look, O LORD, and see, for I am despised.”