What does the Bible say about cannibalism? Is there cannibalism in the Bible?

"Therefore thus says the Lord Jehovah, because ye multiplied more than the nations that are round about you, and you have not walked in my statutes, neither have kept my judgments, neither have done according to the judgments of the nations that are round about you. Therefore thus says the Lord Jehovah, Behold, I, even I, am against thee, and will execute judgments in the midst of thee in the sight of the nations. And I will do in thee that which I have not done, and whereunto I will not do any more the like, because of all thy abominations. Therefore the fathers shall eat their sons in the midst of thee, and the sons shall eat their fathers: and I will execute judgments in thee, and the whole remnant of thee will I scatter into all the winds. Wherefore, as I live, says the Lord Jehovah; Surely, because thou hast defiled my sanctuary with all thy detestable things, and with all thine abominations, therefore will I also diminish thee; neither shall mine eye spare, neither will I have any pity. A third part of thee shall die with the pestilence, and with famine shall they be consumed in the midst of thee: and a third part shall fall by the sword round about thee; and I will scatter a third part into all the winds, and I will draw out a sword after them." (Vers. 7-10)

We clearly see then the divine dealing. A third was to perish by plague and famine inside the besieged city; a third to fall by the sword round about Jerusalem; and the remaining third to be scattered to all the winds with a sword drawn after them by God. Here too we see how those of Jerusalem under the circumstances represent "all the house of Israel," no account being taken in this place of the ten tribes already carried to the East. The defilement of Jehovah's sanctuary by heathen abominations brought in by kings and priests and people made Jerusalem intolerable.

"Thus shall mine anger be accomplished, and I will cause my fury to rest upon them, and I will be comforted: and they shall know that I Jehovah have spoken it in my zeal, when I have accomplished my fury in them. Moreover I will make thee waste, and a reproach among the nations that are round about thee, in the sight of all that pass by." (Vers. 13, 14) Their judgment should be in the sight of those nations who had beheld their infidelity to the true God, their God. "So it shall be a reproach and a taunt, an instruction and an astonishment to the nations that are round about thee, when I shall execute judgments in thee in anger and in fury and in furious rebukes. I Jehovah have spoken it." (Ver. 15) The heathen themselves were astonished; for they had no notion of a national deity so dealing with the people who professed that worship. "When I shall send upon them the evil arrows of famine, which shall be for their destruction, and which I will send to destroy you: and I will increase the famine upon you, and will break your staff of bread: so will I send upon you famine and evil beasts, and they shall bereave thee; and I will bring the sword upon thee. I Jehovah have spoken it." (Vers. 16, 17)

In Jeremiah 19 Jehovah summons the prophet to take a potter's earthen bottle before the ancients of the people and of the priests and in the valley of Hinnom to proclaim His new message. "Hear ye the word of the Lord, O kings of Judah, and inhabitants of Jerusalem; Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, Behold, I will bring evil upon this place, the which whosoever hears, his ears shall tingle. Because they have forsaken me, and have estranged this place, and have burned incense in it to other gods, whom neither they nor their fathers have known, nor the kings of Judah, and have filled this place with the blood of innocents; they have built also the high places of Baal, to burn their sons with fire for burnt offerings to Baal, which I commanded not, nor spake it, neither came it into my mind: therefore, behold, the days come, says the Lord, that this place shall no more be called Tophet, nor The valley of the son of Hinnom, but the valley of slaughter. And I will make void the counsel of Judah and Jerusalem in this place; and I will cause them to fall by the sword before their enemies, and by the hands of them that seek their lives: and their carcases will I give to be meat for the fowls of the heaven, and for the beasts of the earth. And I will make this city desolate, and an hissing; every one that passes thereby shall be astonished and hiss because of all the plagues thereof. And I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and they shall eat every one the flesh of his friend in the siege and straitness, wherewith their enemies, and they that seek their lives, shall straiten them." (Ver. 3-9.)

Verses 27 and 28 are a virtual repetition of verses 23 and 24. How wearying it must have been to God to find Israel consistently rebellious in the face of His many disciplinary dealings! But His chastisement would then bring the awful experience of their eating the flesh of their sons and daughters (v. 29)! Compare 2 Kings 6:26-29. Instead of turning in repentant faith, praying to God, they would adopt the horrible alternative of murdering their children to satisfy their fleshly appetites!

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). 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 become hostile toward their wives and their children. Such would be the desperation occasioned by hunger that there would be no consideration left for even the closest loved ones (v.55).

The graphic details of all this, and how both men and women would be affected, are most painful to read. Verses 56 and 57 speaks of even the tender and delicate woman, who would eat her new born infant and her placenta, in secret, hiding this from her husband. The reason is again pressed in verse 58, "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."

So obliterated were all traces of compassion or even natural feeling that, as we are next told, "the hands of pitiful women boiled their children; they became their food in the destruction of the daughter of my people." (Ver. 10.) Nothing could account for such barbarity but that which he adds immediately after (ver. 11): "Jehovah has spent his fury; be has poured out his fierce anger, and has kindled a fire in Zion which has devoured her foundations." What can be more thorough than to devour foundations? So it was declared of God against Jerusalem for their heinous sins. Impossible to escape His hand stretched out against His own: how deep their sin and vain to deny it!

Jehoram, the apostate king, was already beholden to Elisha for having saved his life, and rescued his army from destruction. Apparently this great mercy had affected no change either in the king or nation. Now, in the government of God the enemy is allowed to besiege Samaria, leading to "a great famine" in the city. In the fearful straits to which the inhabitants are reduced, the solemn prophecy uttered more than five hundred years before, is fulfilled. Moses had warned the people of God, that if they departed from God, the time would come when, besieged by their enemies, they would be reduced to such straits, 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.

Some time after Ben-hadad besieged Samaria and a great famine followed, and there was such a distress that women ate their own offspring. It was but a fulfilment of the threatened judgments upon 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 70 A.D. The wicked nature of the king asserted itself in blaming Elisha for the misfortune which had fallen upon his kingdom. He seeks to slay the man of God. After all the mighty miracles God had wrought by the hands of Elisha, the representative of Israel, wants to kill the prophet. This also foreshadows our Lord, when they sought to kill Him after His gracious ministry. But Elisha knew the murderous purpose of the long ere the messengers came. He called the king by the right name "this son of a murderer," for such Ahab was. And when the king appeared in person he said, "Behold this evil is of the LORD, what should I wait for the LORD any longer?" He realizes the impending judgment on account of Israel's sin.

I find here that the king of Israel had a sense that the hand of God was upon him and the nation, and was repentant. Picture to yourselves a large city, as Samaria was, beleaguered by a vigilant enemy, who had cut off every possible means of supply, until at length the bread was spent, the corn gone, the food done, and the besieged reduced to such a condition that an ass's head fetched nine pounds of our money. They were surely hungry, starving people in Samaria that day. Even the very mothers forgot their natural affection for their offspring. I believe there is not a mother now living whose blood does not boil as she reads this chapter. Think of a woman, a mother, actually 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 said to His people that if they sinned, and departed from Him, they would be reduced to such a state that they would eat their own offspring (Lev. 26:29), and here they do it. The Word of God never fails; and the beauty of Scripture is this, that it paints man as he is, and woman as she is, and not as a historian or a novelist paints them. The difference between the Scripture and a novel is that the Scripture is true, and the novel false; and the difference between Scripture and any human biography is, that the Scripture shows me exactly what a man is, what he can be and do, and how the grace of God can save him, and bring him to glory; but when any one nowadays writes a biography, he tells all the nice things about his subject, and covers with the mantle of charity, so-called, all his little peccadilloes. The result is, that when you read a Christian's biography, you are usually discouraged, for you have to say, That is such a good man, he is not a bit like me. But the truth is this, that is not the man, it is only a bit of him.

Scripture tells me the truth about man, it sets him before me as he is. And we may as well start with the truth, that man is lost; every man, woman, and child is lost, and must perish eternally, unless saved by the sovereign grace of God. It will not be your own works that will save you. It was no work of the Samaritans, it was no work of the lepers, that saved them that day. No, it was the intervention of God in sovereign grace, and it is the same today. So far from man's works or merits having anything to do with it, it is when the sin of man has risen to its full height, that the gospel of God comes out.

What next follows I may be brief upon. We are all more or less familiar, no doubt, with the great famine in Samaria, and how the Lord changed everything, and changed so surprisingly, and by such simple means. The distress was excessive. The king of Israel was most helpless, and all was in confusion. "And as the king of Israel was passing by upon the wall, there cried a woman to him saying, Help, my lord, O king. And he said, If Jehovah do not help thee whence shall I help thee?" "And she answered, This woman said to me, Give thy son that we may eat him today, and we will eat my son tomorrow. So we boiled my son and did eat him; and I said to her on the next day, Give thy son that we may eat him, and she has hid her son." No wonder that the king rent his clothes, and wore sackcloth; but there was no fear of God — on the contrary, there was a murderous intent against the prophet of God.

But further, if such dealings should fail of effecting real repentance, then (3) wild beasts would multiply, which would bereave them of their children, destroy their cattle, thin the population, and make desolate the highways. To this infliction Ezekiel (14:15) refers. If still they would not be reformed by the Lord's dealings with them, but would walk contrary to Him, then He would walk contrary to them, and would punish them seven times for their sins, bringing (4) a sword to avenge the quarrel of the covenant (v. 23-26), with its too frequent accompaniments, want and pestilence. Should that too fail, the Lord would walk contrary to them in fury, and (5) the people reduced to the last extremity should eat their own offspring, and the idols, demonstrated to be idols, Jehovah would destroy. The people formerly regarded by Him as the apple of His eye He would abhor, and their cities should be laid waste, and their sanctuaries should be brought to desolation, the savour of their sweet odours God would not accept, but would bring their land into desolation, and would scatter them among the nations, terminating His dealings with them to induce repentance with exile from the land of their possession (29-33). That took place finally in the days of Zedekiah. The miseries predicted were realised during the siege of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, as Lamentations 1; 2, describe; and after the capture of the city the land rested, enjoying its Sabbaths, because it did not rest in the Sabbatical years when they dwelt upon it. To this passage in Lev. (26:35) the chronicler (2 Chron. 36:21) evidently refers.