Honey I Ate the Kids

2 Kings 6:28-29 | Deuteronomy 28:53-57 | Leviticus 26:29

WARNING: Child boiling, afterbirth consumption, failure to provide children for dinner

CONTEXT: ~1200 - 800 BCE The children of Israel are constantly in trouble with the Lord, causing multiple scenarios that drive the chosen people to chow down their own children.

Has this ever happened to you? You and another woman have agreed to boil and eat your kids, but once you’ve shared your own kid for lunch, the other woman takes off without slitting hers! What’s a mother to do? 

As is the case with multiple accounts of incest, genocide, monsters, unicorns and human sacrifice, most believers would be shocked to discover how many incidents of cannibalism are in the Bible. More evidence, of course, that they haven’t read it.

2 Kings 6:28-29

In the Hebrew Bible, the Elisha era provides one of four cannibalism incidents associated with military sieges. The interlude in Kings is all the more fraught because it incorporates an add-on element of treachery. The incident is set around ~800 BCE during reign of Joram in Israel.1The Arameans have besieged Samaria, capital of the Northern Kingdom; everyone is starving and to dramatize it, the text provides details.

“…a donkey’s head sold for eighty shekels of silver, and a quarter of a cab of seed pods for five shekels.” 

This leaves no doubt the situation is bad. Eighty shekels is about 2 pounds of silver – very expensive for a donkey’s head.2 

In the story, as King Joram is wandering around the besieged city he is stopped by a woman who begs him for help.

“The king said, What aileth thee? — Is there anything singular in thy case? Dost thou fare worse than thy neighbours?”

She answered, “This woman said to me, ‘Give up your son so we may eat him today, and tomorrow we’ll eat my son.’  So we cooked my son and ate him. The next day I said to her, ‘Give up your son so we may eat him,’ but she had hidden him.” - 2 Kings 6:28-29 [KJV]

She had fallen for the oldest scam in the book: “let’s dine on your child now and tomorrow we can dig into mine.”

That is the end of this cannibalism episode as far as it goes. We don’t know if Joham gives the woman food or perhaps offers to help her find the other woman so they can gobble down her child, as agreed. But we do know that the woman’s complaint makes the King angry at the resident prophet Elisha3 because he is the Lord’s local representative. The King doesn’t attempt to help out with food, but he does decide to behead Elisha.

Thereupon follows a series of events that make little sense, culminating in the siege being lifted for no particular reason. There are some lepers involved, but we don’t know why they are in the story at all. Although Bible apologists generally attribute the need to eat other people as the consequences of not following Gods rules, in this case Elisha doesn’t even mention it. God arbitrarily lifts the siege by playing a magic trick on the Arameans; punishment is not mentioned. 

These two texts contains graphic predictions of an unspecified siege of the future, interesting in part because the Israelites were still wandering at this point in the Moses cycle and hadn’t established any cities that would invite besieging.4 

“The Lord shall bring a nation against thee from far, from the end of the earth, as swift as the eagle flieth; a nation whose tongue thou shalt not understand;  A nation of fierce countenance, which shall not regard the person of the old, nor shew favour to the young.” – Deut. 28: 49-50 [KJV]

This is actually just a small part of an extended curse YHWH is threatening lay on the chosen if they continue to screw up. It is notable for featuring the fact that even the most decent man in the group will not divide up the flesh of his children for group consumption. Likewise, even the most generous woman refuses to share her afterbirth. She will keep them for herself and eat them secretly.

“The most gentle and sensitive woman among you—so sensitive and gentle that she would not venture to touch the ground with the sole of her foot—will begrudge the husband she loves and her own son or daughter the afterbirth from her womb and the children she bears. For in her dire need she intends to eat them secretly because of the suffering your enemy will inflict on you during the siege of your cities.” - Deut. 28: 56-57 [KJV]

Book of Ezekiel 5 | Book of Jeremiah 19 | Lamentations 2:20

Next in the cannibalism category, we have three entries related to the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar’s siege of Jerusalem. This warlike monarch destroyed the First Temple and resettled some of the population in the city of Babylon in 586 BCE.

In his dire prophecy, the flamboyant prophet Ezekiel broadens the human flesh menu to include parents. 

“Therefore the fathers shall eat the sons in the midst of thee, and the sons shall eat their fathers; and I will execute judgments on thee; and the whole remnant of thee will I scatter unto all the winds.” – Ezekiel 5:10 [ASV]

The Book of Lamentations also describes the unspeakable during the siege of Jerusalem. The poems of Lamentations differ from the predictive curses of Jeremiah and Ezekiel in that they are reports of things the narrator has personally witnessed.5 

Should women eat their offspring,  the children they have cared for?- Lam. 2:20 [NIV]

Jeremiah may have been the author of these poems.

Why all the cannibalism in the Bible? Apologists explain that cannibalism is what happens when you don’t follow Gods rules, which the Israelites had a history of not doing.

Nice God.

Nice religion.

__________________________________ NOTES_________________________________

1. Israel was the Northern Kingdom, which split away from Judea or Judea in 922BCE. Samaria is the capital city. This is more or less historically accurate according to extra biblical attestation. Jerusalem was the capital of Judea and was the historical seat of King David. The split occurred due to excessive taxation by Solomon, levied to pay for YHWH’s temple.

2. The Old Testament bounces around between providing no explanation of events and providing more information than we really need. In this passage, we get a list of inflated food prices in the besieged city. Often, the connection to why we need such specific ancient data to upgrade our worship of God isn’t clear.
 

3. Elisha is the same holy guy who called upon YHWH to send bears to kill a bunch of unruly teens who made fun of his bald head.  
 

4. Since the Books of Moses were not edited into final form until hundreds of years later (during the exilic period), inserting backward looking material that predicted military sieges was a winning formula. This reference is likely to the Assyrian Empire.

5. There is no shortage of “lamentations” about the deportation of the Judeans (including the Book of Lamentations) and their suffering in Babylon. While this was no doubt a tragedy, it was also an upgrade in terms of the urban setting. Babylon was the wonder of the ancient Near East during this period, and Jerusalem was a small backwater kingdom. It was a little like being relocated from Davenport, Iowa to New York City, and about the same distance. When Cyrus the Great allowed the Judeans to return to Palestine, not everyone took him up on his offer.