“God is merciful. God is gracious. God is patient. God is loving. And God is just. He will by no means clear the guilty but will visit consequence upon people and upon communities in keeping with their actions. That is who God is. Therefore, what He says in Deuteronomy 28:63 is entirely in keeping with His character.”

A few days ago I wrote a brief reflection on my favourite chapter of the Old Testament – Isaiah 52:13-53:12. If that doesn’t make you want to leap for joy and praise the Lord, there is something seriously wrong with you. However, not every chapter in the Bible is intended to lighten our steps – some of them are meant to put weight in our souls. So it is with Deuteronomy 28.

Deuteronomy 28 is not my favourite chapter in the Bible. Not by a long shot. In it, Moses tells the people of Israel that they are not strong enough to live apart from the protection of the Lord. He tells them that if they forsake their covenant with the Lord, then they will be exposed to the power of their enemy and they will fall.

The Bible says that our enemy seeks only to steal, kill and destroy and this story reminds us that he will use every weapon in his arsenal and every minion in his power to erase and deface the image of God in us. If the Lord is not our fortress, then we shall utterly despair! This chapter describes that prophesied desolation in almost unreadable detail.

“They shall besiege you in all your towns, until your high and fortified walls, in which you trusted, come down throughout all your land. And they shall besiege you in all your towns throughout all your land, which the Lord your God has given you. 53 And you shall eat the fruit of your womb, the flesh of your sons and daughters, whom the Lord your God has given you, in the siege and in the distress with which your enemies shall distress you. 54 The man who is the most tender and refined among you will begrudge food to his brother, to the wife he embraces, and to the last of the children whom he has left, 55 so that he will not give to any of them any of the flesh of his children whom he is eating, because he has nothing else left, in the siege and in the distress with which your enemy shall distress you in all your towns. 56 The most tender and refined woman among you, who would not venture to set the sole of her foot on the ground because she is so delicate and tender, will begrudge to the husband she embraces, to her son and to her daughter, 57 her afterbirth that comes out from between her feet and her children whom she bears, because lacking everything she will eat them secretly, in the siege and in the distress with which your enemy shall distress you in your towns.” (Deuteronomy 28:52–57 ESV)

Siege warfare is brutal and dehumanizing. The Jews endured it twice, first during the Babylonian assault in 589-586 BC and then again under the Romans in AD 69-70. Prophecy became history in the writings of Flavius Josephus. He records the story of a woman named Mary, driven mad by her incessant hunger during the Roman siege:

“Famine gnawed at her vitals, and the fire of rage was ever fiercer than famine. So, driven by fury and want, she committed a crime against nature. Seizing her child, an infant at the breast, she cried, “My poor baby, why should I keep you alive in this world of war and famine? Even if we live till the Romans come, they will make slaves of us; and anyway, hunger will get us before slavery does; and the rebels are crueler than both. Come, be food for me, and an avenging fury to the rebels, and a tale of cold horror to the world to complete the monstrous agony of the Jews.” With these words she killed her son, roasted the body, swallowed half of it, and stored the rest in a safe place.”1

It is very hard to read a prophecy like the one we read this morning in Deuteronomy 28; it is ever harder when we know that it actually happened – twice in the history of the Jewish people.

This is one of those chapters from which we would rather look away.

We would rather imagine a God who was only mercy.

We would rather imagine a God who was slightly less antagonistic towards human rebellion and sin.

However, the Bible does not give us such a God.

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