Imagine with me you’re a woman living in ancient Israel. There’s a famine happening, because there’s a war happening. Your Syrian neighbors to the north have been battling against your home country and trying to invade your city. Food is scarce. You can’t remember the last time you’ve eaten. You’ve got at least one son, and your husband is likely out fighting in the war. You’ve got to figure out how to keep yourself alive.
Nothing’s being harvested in the fields, and no new wine is being pressed. Prices for food are sky high. People have resorted to selling unclean animals, like donkeys, in parts for consumption. The thought of eating a donkey’s head would normally make you cringe, but right now, you’d eat anything.
You’re in agony. You’re hungry - deeply, desperately hungry like you’ve never been before. So hungry you consider doing things you never thought you’d do.
In 2 Kings 6, we find one such woman. She and another unnamed woman are so desperate for food they make a pact to eat their sons - one that very night, and one the next day.
Things don’t turn out the way she planned, though. We meet her as she is crying out for help to Jehoram, the King of Israel:
“Now as the king of Israel (Jehoram) was passing by on the wall, a woman cried out to him, saying, ‘Help, my lord, O king!’ And he said, “If the Lord will not help you, how shall I help you? From the threshing floor, or from the winepress?’ And the king asked her, ‘What is your trouble?’ 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 on the next day I said to her, “Give your son, that we may eat him.” But she has hidden her son.’ When the king heard the words of the woman, he tore his clothes..” (2 Kings 6:26-30)
What a devastating story. A family wrecked by war and famine, two desperate women, and a helpless king driven into continual mourning. The woman came to him looking for justice, but the golden era of wise and just Israeli kings had passed. The king entertained her question, but provided no solution. Her story broke him and pushed him over the edge. He was openly wrecked by the state of his nation.
The idea (and even more so, the reality) of cannibalism sends shivers down our spines. How could a mother even think of eating her son? How could the second mother in the story eat someone else’s child? We are so far removed from this kind of famine we cannot understand their level of hopelessness and hunger.
I find that in times when I am overwhelmed, confused, shocked, or even disgusted by God’s Word, I need to search the Bible for more. I need a fuller picture. I need context. When I encountered this passage, I wondered, “What else does God say about this?”
I found an answer in Leviticus 26:27-29:
“But if in spite of this you will not listen to me, but walk contrary to me, then I will walk contrary to you in fury, and I myself will discipline you sevenfold for your sins. You shall eat the flesh of your sons and you shall eat the flesh of your daughters.”
Woah.
When God gave His people the law, He clearly laid out His responses to their actions. If the people obeyed the law, they would experience God’s blessing. If they turned away from Him in rebellion, they would experience His punishment. Along with famine, disease, war, and destruction, cannibalism is mentioned in the long list of curses for disobeying God’s law (Lev. 26 and Deut. 28:53-57.)
God was not surprised to see those two unnamed women make their grievous deal. He warned His people about it hundreds of years before. He spoke of cannibalism explicitly through the prophet Jeremiah and the writer of Lamentations (Jer. 19:9, Lam. 2:20, 4:10.) He even said that ears of all who heard about these things would tingle (Jer. 19:3.) The cannibalism in this story was the result of Israel’s collective rejection of God.
It’s not that these women were horrible, cold, vicious, or unfeeling. In fact, God said “the most tender and refined woman” would succumb to distress and resort to eating her child under the curse (Deut. 28:56.) Lamentations says “the hands of compassionate women have boiled their own children” (Lam. 4:10.) These weren’t careless mothers.
He’s our daily bread, our sustenance, satisfying every desperate craving and depraved thought…the source of our hope and turns our mourning into dancing.
Israel, as a nation, made a covenant with God to walk in His ways. They promised to follow His plan for a flourishing life (the law,) and in return, He promised never to leave them or forsake them. But, they broke the covenant over and over, and as a result, they bore the consequences over and over. The woman in our story, along with the rest of God’s people, collectively bore the curse for deserting the one true God. Breaking relationship with God has serious consequences, both then and now.
We don’t hear anything more in the passage about what happened to the woman. We know her life was broken and her community was suffering. We know she endured great loss. We also know the Lord brought miraculous economic recovery to Samaria the very next day through the words of Elisha (2 Kings 7.) So maybe she was able to eat again, and maybe her husband came back from war, but my guess is that if she lived, she lived under guilt and shame for her actions toward her son - the guilt and shame of the curse.
But unlike the woman, who could only look forward to a coming Messiah, we have a Savior, a Snake Crusher - Jesus Christ of Nazareth. He became a curse for us and redeemed us from the law (Gal. 3:13.) He kept our side of the covenant perfectly. He was rejected by God the Father, that we might be accepted and blessed. He gave us His Spirit, who helps us to listen to and walk with God. He’s our daily bread, our sustenance, satisfying every desperate craving and depraved thought. He is the source of our hope and turns our mourning into dancing (Ps. 30:11.)
May we live with an awareness of our Great God and all of His blessings. May we dance at the thought of the lifted curse! May we believe with faith that Jesus is coming again to make all of the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. May we leave strange passages of Scripture like this one with hope, believing that Jesus has or will redeem it all.
