Are we living under God’s curse or should we expect it in another time? What do you see? Fathers and mothers butchering their own children to death, the state supporting it, homosexuality flourishing, wise becoming fools in their promotion of folly and sin, God’s order being hated, idols worshipped, the deity of Christ rejected. Such things are the way of the cursed. As they were in ancient times so they are today.

Then as the king of Israel was passing by on the wall, a woman cried out to him, saying, “Help, my lord, O King!” And he said, “If the Lord does not help you, where can I find help for you? From the threshing floor or from the winepress?” Then the king said to her, “What is troubling you?”

And she answered, “This woman said to me, ‘Give your son, that we may eat him today, and we will eat my son tomorrow.’ So we boiled my son, and ate him. And I said to her on the next day, ‘Give your son, that we may eat him’; but she has hidden her son.” – II Kings 6:26-29 NKJV

One of the first chapters I remember memorizing as a child in Sunday School was Deuteronomy 28. Regrettably I no longer remember the whole chapter from memory but I can remember sections and the theme of the chapter: Blessing for obeying the voice of the LORD and His commandments (vs. 1) and cursing for not obeying the voice of the LORD to observe all His commandments (vs. 15). As a young child I was taught many lessons through this chapter including: to fear the Lord God who graciously spoke to us in His Word and gave us His good commandments; to love walking with Him in obedience to His will in gratitude for His saving work for me on the cross; to flee from sin and the just and terrible curse of God upon sinners for their sin; and when I sin to swiftly repent of my sin knowing that God is faithful and just to forgive me my sin and to cleanse me from all my unrighteousness. As the curses of Deuteronomy 28 unfold they seem to get worse and worse until we read the following beginning in verse 52:

They shall besiege you at your gates until your high and fortified walls, in which you trust, come down throughout all your land… 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. 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, 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.

The tender and delicate woman among you, who would not venture to set the sole of her foot on the ground because of her delicate ness and sensitivity, will refuse to the husband of her bosom, and to her son and her daughter, [and toward her young one that cometh out form between her feet (KJV)], and her children whom she bears; for she will eat them secretly for lack of everything in the siege and desperate straits in which your enemy shall distress you at all your gates. – Deut. 28:52-57 NKJV (except where otherwise cited)

Israel had rejected God for generations. They had been delivered up to their enemies, famine, disease, and plague for many many years. Constantly the Word of the Lord came to them through the prophets and constantly they rejected the prophets and even sought to kill them. Finally the Lord’s curse was heightened, the Syrians were besieging Samaria. The starvation became so great during the siege that we read of the horrendous account of the two women who promised each other’s sons for food.

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