‘Teeth Broken with Gravel’

■ One of the calamities that Jehovah God allowed to come upon unfaithful Jerusalem as a consequence of the fall of the city to the Babylonians is described at Lamentations 3:16: “With gravel he makes my teeth get broken.” Jewish Bible commentators suggest that this happened when the Israelites were on the way into exile. They were forced to bake bread in pits dug in the ground and, therefore, the bread came to contain grit. One eating such bread could break off part of his teeth.