Deuteronomy 28:53

53 You shall eat the fruit of your own body, the flesh of your sons and your daughters whom the Lord your God has given you, in the siege and desperate straits in which your enemy shall distress you.

Deuteronomy 28:53 Meaning and Commentary

Deuteronomy 28:53

And thou shall eat the fruit of thine body
Than which nothing can be more shocking and unnatural, which is explained as follows:

the flesh of thy sons and of thy daughters, which the Lord thy God
hath given thee;
which is an aggravation of the cruel and inhuman fact:

in the siege, and in the straitness wherewith thine enemies shall
distress thee;
this shows the cause of it, a famine by reason of the closeness of the siege, so that no provisions could be brought in for their relief; and all within being eaten up, and everything that was eatable, even the most nauseous and disagreeable, they would be led on to this strange, unheard of, and barbarous action, eating their own children. This was fulfilled in the siege of Samaria, ( 2 Kings 6:25 2 Kings 6:28 2 Kings 6:29 ) ; and in the siege of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, ( Lamentations 2:10 ) ( 4:10 ) and again in the Apocrypha:

``Moreover he hath delivered them to be in subjection to all the kingdoms that are round about us, to be as a reproach and desolation among all the people round about, where the Lord hath scattered them.'' (Baruch 2:4)

and in the siege of the same city by the Romans; of which an instance will be hereafter given.

Deuteronomy 28:53 In-Context

51 And they shall eat the increase of your livestock and the produce of your land, until you are destroyed; they shall not leave you grain or new wine or oil, or the increase of your cattle or the offspring of your flocks, until they have destroyed you.

52 They shall besiege you at all your gates until your high and fortified walls, in which you trust, come down throughout all your land; and they shall besiege you at all your gates throughout all your land which the Lord your God has given you.

53 You shall eat the fruit of your own body, the flesh of your sons and your daughters whom the Lord your God has given you, in the siege and desperate straits in which your enemy shall distress you.

54 The sensitive and very refined man among you will be hostile toward his brother, toward the wife of his bosom, and toward the rest of his children whom he leaves behind,

55 so that he will not give any of them the flesh of his children whom he will eat, because he has nothing left in the siege and desperate straits in which your enemy shall distress you at all your gates.