The first is an extended anecdote in 2 Kings 6, where it highlights the incapacity and weakness of King Jehoram, the final Omride ruler of Israel, soon to be dethroned by his general Jehu (all these events take place around the middle of the ninth century B.C.E.). The curse of parents – more specifically, mothers – eating their own children comes to pass in two quite different situations later in the Hebrew Bible.
Unlike Esarhaddon’s treaty, Leviticus was read, canonized, and interpreted over millennia by both Jews and Christians, many of whom assumed that its curses were prophetic and had already been fulfilled in some past era – but which one? Eating Children in Biblical Sieges The difference between depiction and prediction might depend on the date of the great rebukes in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, but this essay will not address those questions directly instead, it will focus on the reception history of the Leviticus text. ĭeuteronomy and Leviticus marshal their curses in a similar way, suggesting that such a terrible fate awaits any who violate YHWH’s commandments.īut are the Torah’s curses, like Esarhaddon’s, purely a rhetorical device to express the seriousness of Israel’s obligations as YHWH’s vassal, or are they meant to invoke something that had transpired or would transpire in the future? In other words, is the text simply trying to describe terrible things that happen or are imagined to happen during war – or is it in fact depicting or predicting a specific historical event such as the fall of Israel in 722 B.C.E., the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of its Temple in 586 B.C.E., or even the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E.? May, through want and famine, one man eat the other’s flesh (lines 450-452).
May you eat in your hunger the flesh of your children,
Vassal Treaty of Esarhaddon includes this curse on any Assyrian vassal who violates the treaty through disloyalty to Esarhaddon’s son Ashurbanipal: Mother shall her daughter, For example, the late seventh-century B.C.E. Some version of a child-eating and/or cannibalistic curse was a standard part of ancient Near Eastern vassal treaties, which may have influenced the passages in Deuteronomy and Leviticus. Deut 28:53 you shall eat your own issue, the flesh of your sons and daughters that YHWH your God has assigned to you, because of the desperate straits to which your enemy shall reduce you. If the Israelites obey God’s commandments, God promises them many blessings, including the now-familiar covenantal promise of an abundance of children: ויקרא כו:ט וּפָנִיתִי אֲלֵיכֶם וְהִפְרֵיתִי אֶתְכֶם וְהִרְבֵּיתִי אֶתְכֶם וַהֲקִימֹתִי אֶת בְּרִיתִי אִתְּכֶם Lev 26:9 I will look with favor upon you, and make you fertile and multiply you and I will maintain My covenant with you.Ĭonversely, if the Israelites disobey, God will punish them with terrible curses, including the death of their own children: ויקרא כו:כב וְהִשְׁלַחְתִּי בָכֶם אֶת חַיַּת הַשָּׂדֶה וְשִׁכְּלָה אֶתְכֶם… Lev 26:22 I will loose wild beasts against you, and they shall bereave you of your children… īut the most terrible instantiation of the curse of child death comes in v. Birth and Death of Children in Leviticus 26Ĭhildren are a recurring theme in both the blessings and the curses of Leviticus 26.
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