Deuteronomy 28:53 Because of the suffering that your enemy will inflict on you during the siege, you will eat the fruit of the womb, the flesh of the sons and daughters the LORD your God has given you.
Cannibalism in not very common these days, at least we don’t hear about it in the press or on social media. (Maybe it happens all the time and we just don’t hear about it!) We don’t see human meat in Aldi’s or Piggly Wiggly. It isn’t listed on Amazon foods.
Just how desperate would you have to be to eat another human being? We have heard about the plane crash that happened a number of years ago and the fact that they ate their fellow passengers to survive. They at least waited until they had died before consuming them! But this is an extreme situation and those who survived were severely affected by the experience.
There are things that are so repugnant to humans that we just don’t do them as a rule. Some of those things were written into our laws. Rape, murder, incest. And yet even these things have become all too common in our society. What should be repugnant gets used as a weapon today in war and in human trafficking.
Our text tells us a part of the warning that the LORD gives to his people in an effort to convince them to obey. The previous section of the text has outlined the curses that would happen if they rejected the protection and fellowship of the LORD.
Now the implications of the withdrawal of the LORD’s presence from his people in connection to Israel’s enemies in battle are explained. They would lock themselves in their fortified cities, behind the gates they had erected for protection, and try to survive the attack and siege. But things would get very bad for them.
They would be so hungry that they would do the unthinkable. Their own children! And all because they refused to obey. The LORD told them the horror that would happen, and they could choose not to disobey.
Too often we know the consequences of our disobedience, and we walk into it anyway. The consequences might not be a severe as eating our own children, but the consequences are just as real. And we knowingly continue to walk.
Oh that we would turn around and obey! The blessings are so much better than the curses. Let’s choose the blessings!
The Arnold Journey 