When I read about the Lindsay Clancy trial, I want only to go cuddle my seven-month-old son, even if it disrupts an all-important nap. It makes me physically ill to think about a mom killing her three children, and I am deeply disturbed by the cultural chaos this case is causing. I am hesitant to write much about it because I am not a psychiatrist or a lawyer or an influencer trying to score political points through hot takes. I’m just a new mom with a broken heart and a Bible, trying to make sense of what I’m seeing. And the more I read and think about this trial, the more I keep coming back to Lamentations 4:3, which reads:
“Even the jackals offer the breast;
they nurse their young;
but the daughter of my people has become cruel,
like the ostriches in the wilderness.” (ESV)
This is nobody’s favorite verse. It has probably never been the theme of a women’s conference, and I guarantee Hobby Lobby does not carry any prints of it. But its stark honesty about sin, sickness, and suffering has helped me think biblically about the Clancy trial.
Let’s look at the verse by itself first. Jackals are wild dogs. Feral, fierce, and filthy. But even these tend to their babies, making sure their pups are protected and fed. The implication is that the women described by this verse lack even the animal instinct to care for their babies; they refuse to nurse their babies, something even wild dogs do readily. The King James Version actually opts for “sea monsters” instead of jackals as the translation for the original term, which would be even more astonishing. Imagine telling someone that a sea monster is a better mother than she is.
Ostriches, meanwhile, were considered silly—and it’s no wonder. Have you ever seen an ostrich in real life? Hilarious. But ostriches were not just thought of as silly. In Job, they are described as careless, laying their eggs on the ground where they were susceptible to being stepped on (Job 39:13–18). When this text compares the mothers in Jerusalem to ostriches, it’s a serious statement. It implies that they, through persistent folly, put their children in harm’s way.
When Lamentations 4:3 calls these women cruel, it really means it. The language makes that clear.
But when we look at the broader context, we see that this inhuman cruelty is not without cause. These verses consider the horrors of the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem. Mothers were starving. It was not that they woke up one day and decided to deprive their babies out of pure selfishness; they were likely so malnourished that they had no milk to give.
And yet, the emphasis here is still on their unmotherly cruelty, not on maternal grief as we might expect. The women here are not described as weeping over the fact that they cannot nurse their babies. Instead, the verse suggests that they coldly refuse to. In other words, it holds them accountable for the harm befalling their babies. To understand this, we need to zoom out even further, considering the full biblical context.
The Babylonian siege was no random misfortune. It was foretold—forewarned, rather—in Deuteronomy 28:15–68. In these verses, God explicitly lays out what his people can expect if they forsake their covenant: siege and starvation leading to the abandonment of maternal tenderness. The implication is clear: if you love your children, you will obey the Lord who gave them to you. But, like ostriches, the people were careless and put their young in danger.
The prophet in Lamentations weeps over the realization of Deuteronomy’s warning. Read in context, we see that the mothers in Lamentations 4:3 are sick and sinful. As they continued down a path of unrepentant sin, knowing full well where it would lead, the people of God grew sicker and sicker, and their children suffer the most severely.
Is it sickness that leads the mothers in Jerusalem to deprive their babies? Yes. Is it sin? Also yes.
We must learn to accept the tension of sin and sickness. In what proportion are these mothers sick? To what degree are they sinful? We simply cannot know. What we do know is that Lamentations portrays them as both, and, now as in the ancient world, it is almost always impossible to parse out sin and sickness into neat psychological piles.
Let me pause and add a crucial caveat: I am in no way discrediting the reality of mental illness, nor am I saying that mental illness is always due to a personal sin issue. I and people close to me have struggled with mental health issues due to adrenal fatigue, hormonal imbalances, and so on—not rampant sin. However, I am saying that we are still held responsible for what we do in our broken bodies, whether we consider ourselves mentally healthy or unhealthy. I acknowledge, too, that mental illness is a result of sin’s broad impact on creation (Rom. 8:19–23).
But let’s return to Lamentations, which also invites us to sit in the tension of compassion and culpability. Traditionally, it is believed that this book was written by Jeremiah, known as “the weeping prophet.” This book bleeds compassion which, if you did not know, means “to suffer with.” The human author of Lamentations (writing as inspired by the Holy Spirit) is mourning alongside his people. He sheds tears for the dry breasts of sick mothers. He is not glorying in their downfall but grieving for the real horrors they are experiencing and have experienced.
This brings me to an important application: the prophet did not shy away from the goriest aspects of the siege, but neither did he revel in them. But today, we seem addicted to, frankly, gross details. We should find cases like Clancy’s terrifying, not titillating. Murder is not amusing, something I fear we have forgotten in our cultural obsession with true crime as a form of entertainment. As a fan of murder mysteries such as those by Dorothy Sayers and Agatha Christie, you may think I’m being hypocritical. I posit, however, that there is a serious moral difference between these stories and true crime, which I’ll likely blog about later.
For now, we need to remember that filicide is not something to scroll through idly. We should, as Christians—and, really, as human beings—view such cases with extreme wariness, sorrow, and reluctance. We should not be hungrily awaiting updates or discussing conspiracy theories as a sort of morbid hobby. Where has our appropriate sense of repulsion gone? How can we talk and read about such travesties without falling to our knees and crying out to the Lord to come back and make things right?
I digress.
The compassion of Lamentations does not remove culpability. The deaths of babies are not dismissed as collateral damage, the unfortunate result of a mother’s illness. The mothers are still called cruel, worse than wild beasts. The adults—not the children, who are presented only as victims of their parents’ sin and sickness—are held responsible for their plight, which comes as a judgment from the Lord for their determined disobedience.
Are the people in this passage sick and to be pitied? Yes. Are they sinful and to be held responsible? Also yes.
This passage does not, perhaps, answer any practical questions about the Clancy trial. But it has helped me understand the proper response to this case, similar tragedies, and, horrible as it is to consider, inevitable copycat crimes. And this is what I believe our response as believers must include:
- An acknowledgment of the impossibility of separating sin and sickness in this broken world.
- Heartfelt compassion for all, knowing that there but by grace were we.
- A commitment to culpability, not pardoning the guilty from facing justice in this life even as we pray for their ultimate repentance and redemption.
- Godly grief over the horrors wreaked by sin and sickness—that is, treating evil with rightful repulsion and sorrow, putting to death our tendency to treat it as entertainment.
- A determined pursuit of justice for the clearest victims of adult sin and sickness, who have always been children.
- A habit of self-examination and correction, recognizing that our sin and folly will bring pain not only to us but those we are tasked with loving and protecting.
Lamentations 4:3 is still not, perhaps, your favorite verse. And yet, its stark realism about sin, sickness, compassion, and culpability has been helpful to me as I process this case and its tensions. I hope this post proves helpful to you as well.
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Ryanne Molinari 