“And I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and they shall eat every one the flesh of his friend in the siege and straitness, wherewith their enemies, and they that seek their lives, shall straiten them.”
My Notes
What Does Jeremiah 19:9 Mean?
Jeremiah delivers one of the Bible's most horrifying predictions: "I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and they shall eat every one the flesh of his friend in the siege." The cannibalism isn't random — it's directed at the most intimate relationships: parents consuming children, friends consuming friends. The siege that Babylon will impose produces the most extreme survival behavior imaginable.
The word "cause" (ha'akaltim — I will make them eat, I will cause them to consume) attributes the cannibalism's circumstances to God: the siege that produces the starvation that produces the cannibalism is divinely orchestrated. God doesn't force the act itself, but the conditions that make it inevitable are his doing. The judgment creates the circumstances; the circumstances create the horror.
The friend-eating detail extends the cannibalism beyond family: not just parents consuming children (the most intimate violation) but friends consuming friends (the social violation). The siege doesn't just destroy families. It destroys the social fabric entirely. Every relationship becomes a potential food source.
Reflection Questions
- 1.How does God 'causing' the conditions (siege) without forcing the act (cannibalism) work theologically?
- 2.What does the progression (parents eating children, friends eating friends) teach about how extreme conditions destroy relationships?
- 3.How does the historical fulfillment (it actually happened) affect how you read this prediction?
- 4.What was the covenant designed to prevent — and what happens when it's comprehensively broken?
Devotional
Parents will eat their children. Friends will eat their friends. Jeremiah predicts the siege's most extreme consequence: the relationships that define humanity will be consumed by the survival instinct the siege produces.
The 'cause them to eat' makes God the architect of the conditions, not the agent of the act: God sends the siege (Babylon's army). The siege produces the famine. The famine produces the desperation. The desperation produces the cannibalism. The chain of causation runs from God's judgment through multiple intermediate steps to the most horrifying human behavior imaginable. God doesn't force the eating. He creates the conditions that make the eating inevitable.
The children being consumed by parents inverts creation's most fundamental relationship: the parent who gave life takes it back — not through murder but through consumption. The child who was nourished at the mother's breast becomes the mother's nourishment. Every natural law of parenthood is reversed by the extremity of the siege.
The friends consuming friends extends the destruction beyond family: the social bonds that survived when family bonds collapsed now collapse too. The friend who shared your table becomes the one who eats you from it. The siege doesn't just attack the family structure. It attacks the friendship structure. Every human connection becomes a survival calculation.
The historical fulfillment (Lamentations 2:20, 4:10; 2 Kings 6:28-29) confirms that the prediction wasn't hyperbole: during actual sieges of Jerusalem and Samaria, the cannibalism Jeremiah described actually occurred. The prophecy spoke what history would prove. The horror wasn't exaggerated.
The verse exists in the Bible not to traumatize but to communicate the comprehensive nature of what covenant-breaking produces: when a society completely abandons God, the judgment that follows can reach the point where every human relationship — parent-child, friend-friend — disintegrates into survival consumption.
This is the bottom. And the covenant was designed to prevent this.
Commentary
Trusted original commentary from respected historical Bible scholars and theologians.
And I will cause them to eat the flesh of their sons, and the flesh of their daughters,.... For want of food; the famine…
The corruption of man having made it necessary that precept should be upon precept, and line upon line (so unapt are we…
The v. is taken from Deu 28:53. Cp. Lev 26:29. For the fulfilment see Lam 4:10.
Cross References
Related passages throughout Scripture