Were women actually eating their own children? (Lamentations 4:10)
10 With their own hands compassionate women
have cooked their own children,
who became their food
when my people were destroyed.
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Asked July 26 2019
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Jack Gutknecht
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Jack Gutknecht
Cannibalism of their own children was predicted in Deuteronomy 28:49-57 and Jeremiah 19:3-9. I just can't imagine getting so desperate that I would turn to these extremes. I would rather just die instead of doing this to survive because then I couldn't even live with myself and wish I were dead anyway. I simply cannot understand how someone can arrive at this level, I suppose because I have never had a situation such as this. This horrible scene could have been avoided if they had turned from their sin to God. Sin had a way of causing great sadness, grief, remorse, and devastation to many.
Tim Maas
Another separate example (aside from the reference made by Jeremiah) to this desperate practice is described in 2 Kings 6:24-30, during the days of Elisha the prophet (before Jeremiah's time). Ben-hadad of Syria besieged Samaria (the capital of the northern kingdom of Israel), causing a severe famine, and leading two women to come before the king of Israel asking him to judge between them. The women had previously agreed between themselves to kill their respective sons for food. However, after the first woman had killed her son, the second woman had hidden her son, and had refused to kill him. The king of Israel then attempted to have Elisha killed, because the king blamed Elisha as God's prophet for the troubles that Israel was experiencing. However, as described in 2 Kings 7:3-16, God made the Syrians abandon their camp and flee, and the people of Samaria went out and plundered the Syrian camp, providing an abundance of food.
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