Even jackals offer their breasts to nurse their young, but the daughter of my people has become cruel, like an ostrich in the wilderness.
This verse is harshly explained by many, for they think that the daughter of the people is called cruel, because she acted towards her children as serpents do to their young ones. But this meaning is not suitable, for the word בת, beth, is well known to be feminine. He says that the daughter of the people had come to a savage or cruel one, the latter word is masculine.
The elegy in this chapter begins with a lamentation of the very sad and doleful change which the judgments of God had made in Jerusalem. The city that was formerly as gold, as the most fine gold, so rich and splendid, the perfection of beauty and the joy of the whole earth, has become dim, and is changed, has lost its lustre, lost its value...
Commenting on Lamentations 4:1-12
Even the sea monsters draw out the breast,.... Which some interpret of dragons; others of seals, or sea calves; but it is best to understand it of whales, as the word is rendered in Gen 1:21; and elsewhere: and Bochart (d) has proved, out of various writers, that these have breasts and milk; but that their breasts, or however their paps, are not manifest, but...