Deuteronomy 28:55, commentary and pictures

The verse pictures the utter straitness of a besieged people, when enemies surround and press and distress Israel in every gate and city until food is exhausted and a person has nothing left. In that extremity hunger drives him to eat the flesh of his own children and, because nothing remains, to refuse to share any of it with others. The eater is a desperate father who withholds even that dreadful food from his own family.

It stands as part of Moses' prediction of the suffering to follow disobedience, belonging to the stated and threatened curses of the chapter for disobedience. In this warning the Lord's promises are shown to be conditional upon obedience, and Israel's disobedience brought the threatened curses. Doing His judgments and diligently hearkening to His voice and doing what is right, and keeping His ordinances, statutes and commandments and walking in them, brings life and blessing and entrance into the promised land and His covenant of mercy and protection. Unbelief, murmuring, turning away, sin and transgressing His law forfeit that promise and bring adversity and curses.

That conditional promise was shown when the adult men from twenty years old and upward who came out of Egypt were refused entry into the promised land for unbelief and made to wander in the wilderness forty years until that evil generation was consumed. Only Caleb and Joshua were excepted, because they wholly followed the Lord. The verse is also part of God's lesson in the wilderness under Christ's special direction, that disease comes upon human beings because of sin and transgressing the law and breaking down the barriers God erected to preserve them from disease. That discipline was given that they might live in health and holiness and learn obedience, and that diligently hearkening to the voice of the Lord and keeping His commandments and statutes brings His covenant of mercy and protection, for He is the Lord that healeth.

The curse upon humanity and the earth illustrated by the verse has grown heavier through continued transgression, while blessings remain promised for obedience and curses threatened for disobedience. The prediction was fulfilled in the terrible starvation and distress during the Roman siege of Jerusalem under Titus. It was applied and fulfilled in the siege of Jerusalem when starvation became so severe that its inhabitants and families ate their own children. The famine and siege of Deuteronomy 28:53-57 came upon Jerusalem when mothers ate their children, and this fulfillment brought suffering upon the Jews after their proud resistance of Christ.