Lamentations 4:3 - Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible

The learned author of our English Annotations well observeth, that whatever creature is here intended by the word translated sea-monsters, yet our translation is not proper, the text speaking of creatures of God's making, monsters properly signifying such as have something beyond their natural bulk and proportion. What creatures are signified by the Hebrew term, whether sea-calves, or dragons, or serpents, or whales, is very hard to say, the Hebrew word signifying some creatures, occurring so rarely as it is not easy to determine the species, from the word used to express it. He certainly speaks of some brute beasts, and those that are most savage. He saith there are none such but by a natural instinct feed and nourish their young ones; but the Jewish women were become cruel to their children, either forced to appear so, having through the famine no milk to give them, nor any thing to relieve them, or were indeed so, killing them to make food for themselves, as Lamentations 2:20. Like the ostriches in the wilderness; like ostriches, that lay their eggs and leave them in the sand, and are hardened against their young ones, as Job 39:14-16. Some think a kind of owls are intended, which for want of meat eat up their young ones, as the Jewish women now did. See Lamentations 4:10.