And in the siege, and in the straitness, wherewith thine enemies shall distress thee, thou shalt eat the fruit of thine own body, the flesh of thy sons and of thy daughters whom Jehovah thy God hath given thee.
The children in this verse are God's own gift. Moses warns that under siege that gift would become food. The verse sits in a long list of curses. Is it literal? Was it ever fulfilled? And why would God speak this way to His own people?
The chapter falls into two halves, and the weight is uneven.
There is no need for elaborate explanation. The chapter divides into two clear parts. In the first, we have a full and blessed statement of the results of obedience. In the second, we have a very solemn and moving statement of the terrible consequences of disobedience. And we cannot help noticing that the part holding the curses is more than three times the length of the part holding the blessings... It is utter folly for anyone to try to escape the full force of such passages, or to explain them away. It cannot be done.
These are the terms of God's government of a nation in the land, not the terms on which a soul is accepted.
In Deuteronomy 28 we have the principles of God's government among that people, and the immediate consequences of obedience or disobedience — consequences so solemnly fulfilled in the fate of that unhappy people, still loved for the sake of their fathers. The consequences of breaking the law as the principle of relationship with God — the question of a righteousness good enough as ground for God's acceptance — must not be confused with the temporary consequences of disobedience under God's government. Chapter 28 deals with the second of these.
Verse 53 belongs to a sequence: the land stripped, then the walls surrounded, then hunger doing its work inside.
These enemies would devastate the land of all its produce, leaving nothing for Israel (v.52). They would besiege the cities, no matter how well fortified, causing the starving occupants to go so far as to eat their own children (v.53). We may well wonder why such things would not drive people's hearts back to the Lord. But in verse 54 we read that even the most refined people would turn against their wives and their children.
A few verses earlier the chapter names the cause.
These curses would be a sign and a wonder on Israel and their descendants (v.46). This sign witnesses to God's faithfulness and truth in dealing with His own failing people. It would make people wonder at the great sovereignty and righteousness of God, who would not spare sin in His own chosen people. All of this would come because they did not serve the Lord with joy and gladness of heart when they had every reason to do so (v.47).
Centuries later an enemy army camped around Samaria, the capital of the northern kingdom.
This abomination had at last come to pass.
It happened more than once.
The famine at Samaria brought such distress that women ate their own children. It was simply a fulfilment of the judgments threatened against a people who had turned away from God. The same horror occurred during the siege of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, and also, according to Josephus, during the siege by Titus in AD 70.
Rome's siege of Jerusalem was no accident of history.
The siege and capture of Jerusalem by the Romans had been foretold by Moses and the prophets and by the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and some of the darkest parts of Scripture describe it (see Deuteronomy 28:49-68; Zechariah 11; Luke 21:20-24). They had chosen a murderer instead of their King, and now murder and slaughter engulf them... How solemn to think that the worst is still to come (Matthew 24:21).
Yet ruin is not the end of the story. Another writer looks past it: "again the star of Jacob will rise, and the sons of her destroyers build up her walls" (Walter Scott).
One writer turns the same cause on believers today.
When joy fails, there is a real loss of the possession — here, on our tested path. Is there not danger for us?... May not heavenly things lose their power over our hearts? How we need to guard the heart, watchful against the first weakening of joy! That weakening shows that decline has begun, and once the heart starts to go, the fall is easy and fast.
- Cause. Joy went first. Israel did not serve the Lord with gladness when blessings were plentiful. The chapter gives that as the reason for all that followed.
- Gift. Children were God's own gift. Under judgment that gift became the food of the siege. The blessing itself turned into the horror.
- Government. This is how God governed a nation in its land. It is not the ground on which a soul is accepted. Never confuse the two.
- History. Samaria saw it over five hundred years later. Nebuchadnezzar's siege saw it again, and so did AD 70. No one can explain these words away.
- Hope. Commentators say a darker trouble still lies ahead for Jerusalem. Yet the city will be rebuilt and blessed at last.
The eye of the man in thy midst that is tender and very luxurious shall be evil towards his brother, and the wife of his bosom, and the residue of his children which he hath left;
The words fall in the middle of a siege scene. Moses is describing what hunger does inside a walled city. The gentlest man in Israel will look at his own brother, his own wife, and his last surviving children — and refuse them a bite of food.
Deuteronomy 28 is not about how God accepts a person. It sets out the terms of God's rule over that nation.
In Deuteronomy 28 we have the principles of God's government among that people. We also have the immediate results of obedience or disobedience. Those results were solemnly fulfilled in the fate of that unhappy people, who are still beloved for the fathers' sakes. Breaking the law, as a principle of relationship with God, has its own consequences on the point of a righteousness good enough to be the ground of God's acceptance. Do not confuse those with the temporary consequences of disobedience under the government of God. It is to these latter that chapter 28 refers.
The man in view is not a brute. He is the most refined person in the community.
They would besiege the cities, however well fortified. The starving people inside would go so far as to eat their own children (v.53). See 2 Kings 6:28-29 and Jeremiah 19:8-9. We may well wonder why such things would not drive people's hearts back to the Lord. But in verse 54 we read that even the most refined of people would turn hostile toward their wives and their children. Hunger would make them so desperate that no thought was left for even the closest loved ones (v.55).
The ESV reads "the wife he embraces." Older translations render it "the wife of his bosom." Scripture uses that word for the deepest affection.
Used symbolically for the seat of deep affection. John speaks of the Lord Jesus as the only begotten Son "in the bosom of the Father." John 1:18. The tender and sacred relationship which husband and wife have to each other is also called the "bosom." Deut. 28:54, 56.
Older translations read, "his eye shall be evil toward his brother." Scripture uses that phrase in other places too.
In the Scriptures, the evil eye often keeps close company with covetousness, selfishness and envious jealousy. The evil eye ignores the sufferings of others if it can secure personal gain. The Lord warned the people of Israel against having an evil eye towards a poor brother in need and withholding proper help from him (Deut. 15:7-9; Deut. 28:54-55).
These sentences did not stay on the page. Writers point to Samaria under siege, centuries after Moses spoke.
Moses had warned the people of God that if they departed from God, the time would come when, besieged by their enemies, they would come to such desperate need that tender, delicate women would secretly eat their young children (Lev. 26:21-29; Deut. 28:49-57). This abomination had at last come to pass.
Another writer points to Rome, named by Moses before Rome existed.
Moses clearly predicted the Roman power that would break the Jews, and he did so at a time when no such power existed. Read verses 49-50. "The LORD will bring a nation against you from far away, from the end of the earth, swooping down like the eagle, a nation whose language you do not understand." The eagle was the standard of the Roman armies. The Jews understood many eastern languages, but they did not know Latin. The same passage says, "a hard-faced nation who shall not respect the old or show mercy to the young." Rome killed the old people and the children. These words were fulfilled in the dreadful sieges of Jerusalem, perhaps the most terrible events in the history of blood and tears of this poor earth.
The chapter itself names the starting point, and it is not cruelty. It is joyless plenty.
"Because you did not serve the LORD your God with joyfulness and gladness of heart, because of the abundance of all things, therefore you shall serve your enemies whom the LORD will send against you, in hunger and thirst, in nakedness, and lacking everything." When joy fails, there is a practical loss of the possession here, on our tested path. What need there is of diligent, watchful keeping of the heart against the first weakening of joy! For this shows that decline has begun, and the descent is easy and rapid once the heart begins to go.
- Government. The chapter deals with God's rule over a nation in the land — not with the ground of a person's acceptance before Him.
- Joyless plenty. The slide starts with abundance held without gladness; the loss of joy is the first sign that a heart is going.
- Then want. Plenty held without gladness ends in serving enemies, "in hunger and thirst," with nothing left.
- Then the evil eye. Under siege, a starving man weighs even a brother's survival against his own gain.
- Then the bosom. The last thing to break is the tenderest tie, and the sieges of Jerusalem showed the words were no exaggeration.
so that he will not give to any of them of the flesh of his children that he eateth, because he hath nothing left him in the siege and in the straitness wherewith thine enemies shall distress thee in all thy gates.
Verse 55 sits at the lowest point of a long chapter of warnings. Two questions press on any reader: why would God put such a warning in writing, and does the chapter leave Israel a way back?
This chapter is about God's dealings with Israel as a nation on earth. One writer warns us not to mix it up with how a person stands before God.
In Deuteronomy 28 we have the principles of God's government among that people. We also have the immediate results of obedience or disobedience. Those results came true, with great solemnity, in the fate of that unhappy people, still loved for the sake of their fathers. Two things must not be confused. One is what follows from breaking the law when the law is treated as the basis of relationship with God — as a righteousness good enough for God to accept a person. The other is the temporary result of disobedience under God's government. Chapter 28 speaks of this second one.
The horror of verse 55 does not start with poverty. Earlier in the chapter Moses names the root: they did not serve God with joy while everything was plentiful.
Deuteronomy holds one more word of solemn meaning and warning for us. It is the only other mention of joy in the book. Deuteronomy 28:47-48 says: "Because you did not serve the LORD your God with joyfulness and gladness of heart, because of the abundance of all things, therefore you shall serve your enemies whom the LORD will send against you, in hunger and thirst, in nakedness, and lacking everything." Lose your joy, and you lose the possession in practice... What need of diligent, watchful keeping of the heart against the first weakening of joy! For this shows that decline has begun, and the descent is easy and rapid once the heart begins to go.
The verse is not only about starvation. It is about what starvation exposes — a man who will not share with the people he loves most.
These enemies would besiege the cities, no matter how well fortified. The starving people inside would go so far as to eat their own children (v.53)... We may well wonder why such things would not drive people's hearts back to the Lord, but in verse 54 we read that even the most refined of people would become hostile toward their wives and their children. Hunger would make them so desperate that they would have no thought left even for their closest loved ones (v.55).
Moses names details that fit one nation in particular. That nation did not exist when he wrote.
Moses clearly predicted the Roman power that would break the Jews, and he did so at a time when no such power existed. Read verses 49-50... The eagle was the standard of the Roman armies; the Jews knew many eastern languages, but they did not know Latin. "Who shall not respect the old or show mercy to the young." Rome killed the old people and the children... Moses went on to say that a refined woman would eat her own children in the siege (verses 54-57). This came true in the dreadful sieges of Jerusalem, perhaps the most terrible events in this poor earth's history of blood and tears. Every verse from the fifteenth to the end of this chapter has come true again and again.
Extreme distress did not turn hearts back to God. One writer describes what happened in an actual siege.
Israel's heart was hardened, so that, in the famine accompanying the siege, instead of turning to Jehovah, some of the inhabitants in their terrible extremity turned to the horrible deed of eating even their own offspring! See Leviticus 26:26-29; Deuteronomy 28:52-53; which was finally fulfilled under the Romans.
One writer turns this chapter into a warning for people outside Israel too.
It would take a great many pages to follow the different predictions and show their literal fulfilment in the nation, which turned away from Jehovah and disobeyed His Word. What a warning this chapter is to Gentile Christendom! "If God did not spare the natural branches, neither will He spare you" (Rom. 11:21).
The curses say Israel will be destroyed. One writer asks what that word means here.
Deuteronomy 28 uses the word six times of Israel, and never once does it mean that they die out: "Also every sickness and every plague... them will the LORD bring upon you until you are destroyed." Are they extinct? No. Instead, "you shall be left few in number," and once the curse has run its course the book adds, "the LORD will restore your fortunes"! (Deut. 30:1-3.)
- Cause — It began in good times. They did not serve the Lord with joy when they had plenty.
- Collapse — Lost joy leads to lost possession. Verse 55 is the end of that slide. The first weakening of the heart is the start of it.
- Character — Extreme need does not make people good. It strips goodness away, until a father shares nothing with his wife and children.
- Confirmation — Moses wrote the details centuries early. Rome did not yet exist, and the sieges of Jerusalem matched what he said.
- Continuation — "Destroyed" never meant wiped out. God left them few in number, then promised to restore their fortunes. The judgment is real, but it is not the last word.
The eye of the tender and luxurious woman in thy midst who would not attempt to set the sole of her foot upon the ground from luxuriousness and from tenderness, shall be evil toward the husband of her bosom, and her son, and her daughter,
Moses ends his address to Israel with a long list of what follows disobedience. This verse belongs to its darkest part. A woman raised in comfort is reduced by siege to turning against her own husband and children. The picture raises two hard questions. How is God dealing with His people here, and did this ever happen?
Commentators read this section as God's government of Israel on earth. It does not answer how God accepts a sinner.
In Deuteronomy 28 we have the principles of God's government among that people, and the immediate results of obedience or disobedience. Those results were solemnly fulfilled in the fate of that unhappy people, who are still loved for the sake of their fathers. Breaking the law brings consequences of a different sort. As a principle of relationship with God, the law raised the question of a righteousness good enough to be the ground of God's acceptance. Do not confuse those with the temporary consequences of disobedience under God's government. Chapter 28 speaks of the temporary ones.
The details are hard to read, and the worst of them happen in secret.
The graphic details of all this, and how it would affect both men and women, are most painful to read. Verses 56 and 57 speak of even the tender and delicate woman. She would eat her newborn infant and her placenta, in secret, hiding this from her husband. Verse 58 presses the reason again: "if you do not carefully observe all the words of these laws that are written in this book, that you may fear this glorious and awesome name, THE LORD YOUR GOD."
The ESV says "the husband she embraces." Older translations read "the husband of her bosom." That word carries a settled meaning across Scripture.
The bosom stands for the seat of deep affection. John speaks of the Lord Jesus as the only begotten Son "in the bosom of the Father" (John 1:18). The tender and sacred relationship between husband and wife is also called the "bosom" (Deut. 28:54, 56).
Where the ESV says she will "begrudge" her family, older translations say her eye is "evil" toward them. Scripture uses that phrase in a fixed way.
Scripture often treats the evil eye as a close companion of covetousness, selfishness and envious jealousy. The evil eye ignores the sufferings of others if it can gain something for itself.
Moses names not only the outcome but the kind of enemy, centuries before such a power existed.
Moses clearly predicts the Roman power that would break the Jews, and he does so at a time when no such power existed. Read verses 49-50: "The LORD will bring a nation against you from far away, from the end of the earth, swooping down like the eagle, a nation whose language you do not understand." The eagle was the standard of the Roman armies. The Jews understood many eastern languages, but they did not know Latin. "A hard-faced nation who shall not respect the old or show mercy to the young." Rome killed the old people and the children.
The same scene appears twice in Israel's history.
How true is Scripture! It had been foretold that a delicate and tender woman would eat her own children (Deut. 28:56-57). It had taken place at the siege of Samaria (2 Kings 6:29), and it had now taken place at Jerusalem. There a mother cooked her own child and ate part of it. It is hard to fight against God!
The fulfilment stands as evidence, and that evidence calls for a response.
Now it had turned out just as the Word had predicted. That is undeniable evidence that the Word of God must be fulfilled. Heaven and earth will pass away, but not one letter or stroke of His Word can fail. It will be well with those who pay attention to those words.
The same speaker who pronounced these curses went on to promise their reversal.
In Deuteronomy 30 Moses declares what will happen when Israel come to repentance among the nations where they are driven. If they return to the LORD their God and obey His voice, then He will bring them back from captivity. In His compassion He will gather them and bring them into the land. There He will bless and multiply them, and He will put all the curses on their enemies and persecutors.
The curse itself has an answer.
Christ has redeemed us from the curse by being made a curse for us. Christ bears our curse that we might receive blessing.
- Cause — The chapter shows God's government of Israel in the land. These are the results of disobedience, not the ground of a sinner's acceptance.
- Curse — Hunger turns the most refined woman against the husband she embraces and her own children. Affection and pity are both gone.
- Confirmed — History proved Moses right at Samaria and at Jerusalem, and again under Rome, down to the eagle and the unknown language.
- Called — The record stands as evidence that God's Word must be fulfilled, It calls every reader to pay attention.
- Cancelled — Deuteronomy 30 promises restoration when Israel repent. Christ took the curse for us, so that blessing might come.
because of her afterbirth which hath come out between her feet, and her children whom she shall bear; for she shall secretly eat them for want of everything in the siege and in the straitness wherewith thine enemy shall distress thee in thy gates.
Moses is still spelling out what will happen if Israel abandons God. Here the warning reaches its lowest point: a gentle, well-bred woman turning on her own newborn during a siege. Why does such a thing stand in Scripture at all? And what does it say about how God governs the people He has blessed?
Deuteronomy 28 sets out two paths. The space given to each is part of the message.
This chapter is completely different from the one before it. Once the reader sees that, he can read it with spiritual understanding and real profit. It divides into two parts. In the first we have a full and most blessed statement of the results of obedience (verses 1-15). In the second we have a deeply solemn and moving statement of the awful consequences of disobedience (verses 16-68). One thing strikes us. The section of curses is more than three times the length of the section of blessings. That one has fifteen verses; this one has fifty-three. The whole chapter gives an impressive commentary on the government of God.
The phrase "government of God" needs one distinction kept clear.
In Deuteronomy 28 we have the principles of God's government among that people. We also have the immediate consequences of obedience or disobedience. Those consequences were solemnly fulfilled in the fate of that unhappy people, still beloved for the fathers' sakes. Now, keeping the law was also a principle of relationship with God, a righteousness that could be an adequate ground of God's acceptance. Do not confuse the consequences of breaking it that way with the temporary consequences of disobedience under the government of God. It is to these latter that chapter 28 refers.
The verse spares us nothing: the afterbirth, the child just born, the secrecy from her own husband. It also names the reason.
The graphic details of all this are most painful to read. They show how both men and women would suffer. Verses 56 and 57 speak of even the tender and delicate woman. She would eat her newborn infant and her afterbirth, in secret, hiding this from her husband. Verse 58 presses the reason again: "if you are not careful to do all the words of this law that are written in this book, that you may fear this glorious and awesome name, the LORD your God."
Centuries later an army surrounded the city of Samaria and starved it. The warning stopped being a warning.
Now, under the government of God, God lets the enemy besiege Samaria. This led to "a great famine" in the city. The people were driven to terrible straits, and so a solemn prophecy spoken more than five hundred years earlier came true. Moses had warned the people of God that if they turned away from Him, a time would come when their enemies would besiege them. They would be driven to such straits that tender, delicate women would secretly eat their young children. This horror had at last come to pass.
It happened more than once. Writers trace the same scene through later sieges of Jerusalem.
There was such distress that women ate their own offspring. It was simply a fulfilment of the judgments threatened against an apostate people (Lev. 26:29; Deut. 28:53). The same horror occurred during the siege of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar (Lam. 4:10) and also, according to Josephus, during the siege by Titus in A.D. 70.
A mother's tenderness is the last human instinct to break. Scripture gives one explanation for why it broke.
Every trace of compassion, even of natural feeling, was wiped out. We are next told, "The hands of compassionate women have boiled their own children; they became their food during the destruction of the daughter of my people" (verse 10). Only one thing accounts for such barbarity, and he adds it at once in verse 11: "The LORD gave full vent to his wrath; he poured out his hot anger, and he kindled a fire in Zion that consumed its foundations." What could be more thorough than to consume foundations?
The record also shows how honestly Scripture describes people.
Think of a woman, a mother, boiling and eating her own child. Impossible, you say. No, women did it. God had said they would do it. In an earlier book God told His people that if they sinned and turned away from Him, they would be reduced to such a state that they would eat their own offspring (Leviticus 26:29). And here they do it. The Word of God never fails. This is the beauty of Scripture: it paints man as he is, and woman as she is, and not as a historian or a novelist paints them.
Moses did not stop at chapter 28. The same voice that threatened also promised.
Further, in Deuteronomy 30 Moses declares what happens when Israel come to repentance among the nations where they have been driven. They return to the LORD their God and obey His voice. Then He will restore them from captivity. In His compassion He will gather them back and bring them into the land. He will not only bless and multiply them there, but put all the curses on their enemies and persecutors.
- Warned — God announced the horror of verse 57 in writing, generations before any siege. Nothing here caught Israel by surprise.
- Weighted — Fifty-three verses of curse against fifteen of blessing. That proportion is itself a commentary on how God governs His own people.
- Distinguished — This chapter deals with temporary consequences under God's government. It is not about the righteousness that makes a person acceptable to Him.
- Fulfilled — Samaria, then Jerusalem under Nebuchadnezzar, then Jerusalem again in A.D. 70. The words landed as spoken, so we can trust Scripture when it describes what people are.
- Reversed — Moses' last word to Israel is repentance and return. God gathers, blesses and multiplies them in the land again.