Lamentations 4:3

3. Sea monsters The original here has been mistaken in our Version. It is not tannim, “sea monsters” but tannin jackals; and this harmonizes with the mention of ostriches in the last clause of the verse.

Cruel, like the ostriches Which fowl is, in Job 39:13-17, used as “nature’s type of unmotherhood.” This popular belief, that the ostrich treats her young as if they were not hers, comes of the fact that her eggs are sometimes left to be hatched in the sand by the heat of the sun, and not by the warmth of her own body.