How is the gold become dim! [how] is the most pure gold changed! The stones of the sanctuary are poured out at the head of every street.
"The jackals ... give suck to their young ones"  (Lamentations 4:3a).  The wild animals could nurse their young, but Jerusalem's starving women could not.  Nothing, in all the horrors of warfare, ever exceeded the cruel horrors of a siege.  The literature of all nations does not provide any better account of what happens in such a siege than this account from Jeremiah.