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2Ki_6:25-29
To show the extremities to which the people were reduced from scarcity of food, it is stated that “an ass’s head was sold for fourscore pieces of silver, and the fourth part of a cab of doves’ dung for five pieces of silver.” If shekels be meant, the ass’s head must have fetched, nearly ten pounds of our money, and half a pint of “doves’ dung” about twelve shillings and sixpence. As to the ass’s head, it is to be remarked that the ass was forbidden food to the Israelites; but this would not restrain them, when mothers had come to eat their own children. The case is not without parallel, even in this. Even in modern warfare it not seldom happens, that soldiers are driven to eat their own horses; and in Plutarch’s life of Artaxerxes, an instance occurs of the Persian army being reduced to such distress, that they had to eat their beasts of burden; and even that kind of food became so scarce, that an ass’s head would be sold for sixty silver drachma.
As to the “doves’ dung,” most people think that it was a kind of pulse, which has some resemblance to doves’ dung, and is even now called by that name. It is preserved by being parched and dried, and is stored up for use chiefly upon long journeys. It is a sort of food which, from its quality of keeping as a dry pulse, would be likely to exist among the stores of a large city, and to acquire a high value when softer food had disappeared. To this interpretation we incline. Some, however, think that it means corn taken from the crops of pigeons; for the birds could go out into the open country, where food abounded, and would return with full crops to their cotes in town. Others apprehend that it was really the dung of the bird; but suppose it was employed as manure for cucurbitaceous fruits, such as melons, for which it is now highly valued in the East. But we imagine, that people in such circumstances of famine are little solicitous about the culture of melons, or disposed to incur large expenditure for a future benefit. Men ravening for food of the passing day, are not apt thus to occupy their attention or to spend their money. A few go so far as to suppose, that it was not only doves’ dung, but that it was actually bought to be eaten; and although we think the better explanation has been given, we would not pronounce this to be absolutely impossible, in the knowledge of the extremities to which a starving people may be reduced. We are assured, on the authority of a highly credible historian, Note: Abdallatif, in his History of Egypt. that during the famine which afflicted Egypt in the year 1200, the poorer people in the city of Old Cario “were driven to devour dogs, the carcasses of animals and men, yea, even the dried excrements of both.”
There is perhaps no description of a famine on record which supplies so many details which tend to illustrate those which are given in the passage of Scripture now before us. We have ourselves been shut up with famine in an eastern city, and know something of these awful matters; but nothing in our own experience, however distressing, will bear comparison with the details of the famine in Egypt, which the Arabian historian has furnished.
After noticing the unclean and abominable food to which the people resorted in the extremity of their hunger, we are told that they at length went a step further, and began to feed on young children, and it was not uncommon to surprise parties with children half boiled or roasted. At first this was treated by the authorities as a horrible crime, and those who were found thus occupied, as well as all those who were found to have eaten such food, were burnt alive. But it often happened, that when a miserable wretch, convicted of having eaten human flesh, had been thus burned, his carcass was found devoured next morning. Indeed, the monsters ate of it the more willingly, because, being already roasted, it required no further preparation.
When the poor people began first to eat human flesh, the dismay and astonishment were so great, that these crimes became the general topic of conversation among the citizens; but afterwards they became so accustomed to the fact, and even began to conceive a taste for this horrible food, that persons of a better sort might be found who ate it with relish at their ordinary repasts, and even laid up a provision of it. They devised different modes of preparing it; and the use of it being once introduced, rapidly spread through the provinces, so that there was no part of Egypt in which examples of this enormity might not be found. It no longer created the least surprise; the horror which had been first experienced entirely subsided; and every one spoke of it, and heard it spoken of, as an ordinary and indifferent matter. There was at first no scarcity of this food. The streets were swarming with the children of the poor, both of the tenderest years and also older, whose parents had died of the famine, and who had none left to take care of them; for the difficulty of procuring food prevented the friends and neighbors of those who died from taking charge of their children. The poorer people, men and women, lay in wait for these unfortunate children, hurried them off, and devoured them. They were seldom taken with the proofs of their crime. The guilty persons were surprised in this flagrant act but rarely, and when they were not well on their guard. It was most commonly women who were taken; not that these were more guilty than men, but, as the historian supposes, because the women had less presence of mind than men, and could not flee with so much promptitude, or conceal themselves from search. In the course of a few days thirty women were burnt at Misr (Cairo), not one of whom but confessed she had eaten of several children.
When these poor little vagrants became scarce, the wretched people, now accustomed to this resource to keep themselves alive, infested the streets, seizing and bearing off such children of those who were better off, as appeared for a moment unguarded or strayed abroad, and even rending them with violence from the slaves and nurses in whose charge they appeared.
The historian assures us, that many women had related to him that persons had thrown themselves upon them, in order to snatch from them their infants, and that they were obliged to use all their efforts to preserve them. “Seeing,” he says, “one day, a woman with a male child, just weaned, and very plump, I admired the child, and recommended her to take good care of it. On which she related to me, that while she was walking along the banks of the canal, a stout man had thrown himself upon her, and attempted to snatch away her infant; and that she found no other way of protecting it but to throw herself upon the ground and hold it under her, till a cavalier who happened to pass, forced the man to quit her. She added, that the villain snatched eagerly the opportunity to seize any limb of the child that protruded from under her, in order to devour it; and the child was ill a long time from the sprains and bruises it received from the contrary efforts of the ravisher and herself, the one to snatch the child, and the other to retain it.”
There are other anecdotes too horrible to be transcribed here. But we may mention that in one case, a slave was playing in the dusk of the evening with a child newly weaned, belonging to a wealthy private citizen. While the infant was still at his side, a female beggar seized a moment when his eyes were turned from it, to snatch up the child, and rent it, and began on the spot to devour its quivering flesh.
The government punished these enormities when they became known, long after the public had ceased to regard them with horror. Abdallatif says, that he one day beheld a woman wounded in the head, and dragged along through the market-place. She had been arrested while eating a small child roasted, which had been seized with her. This incident made no stir in the market; but every one pursued his own business, without showing any marks of astonishment or horror—a circumstance which occasioned the narrator more surprise than the crime itself. But, as he remarks, these were now among the things to which the people were accustomed, and which had therefore no longer any power to astonish. Even adult persons were inveigled away by the more reckless wretches, and murdered in order to be eaten. This was particularly the case with physicians, some of whom were called away as if to visit sick persons, and never returned, while some who did return, reported the dangers they had escaped. The following circumstance acquired great notoriety, and was related by the commandant himself, who, in the painful circumstances in which he was placed, behaved with more firmness and discretion than king Jehoram. A woman came one day to seek his office. She was without the veil—a mark of strange disorder—and seemed overwhelmed with affright. She said she was a midwife, and had been called professionally to a certain family, where they had presented her with some sickbadj upon a plate, very well prepared, and seasoned with spices; that she observed that there was a good deal of meat in it of a different kind from that usually employed in making sickbadj, which had excited in her extreme loathing; and having found means of drawing aside a little girl, so as to ask her what that meat was, the child said—“Such a woman, who was so fat, came to see us, and my father killed her. She is here in this place, cut up in pieces, and hung up.” That upon this she had gone to the place, and had found there quantities of human flesh. The commandant, having received this declaration, sent with her persons who surprised the house, and arrested all they found there; but the master escaped, and afterwards managed to purchase his pardon.
Even the bodies of the recent dead were frequently devoured by the surviving relations. Nothing was more common than for those who indulged in this revolting practice, to allege that it was the body of their son, their husband, or of some other near relative. An old woman was found eating the flesh of a male child; and she excused herself by saying, that it was her daughter’s son, and not the child of another and it was more fit the child should be eaten by her than by any other person.
We have given but a small selection from the illustrative facts which this single famine offers, and have no need to resort to the accounts of other eastern famines, which present the same features, although seldom with the same intensity. Such things, as the eating of children by their own mothers, occurred in the famines produced in Jerusalem by the sieges of Nebuchadnezzar and of the Romans. For the former we have the testimony of Eze_5:10, and for the latter that of Josephus, who furnishes details nearly, if not fully, as horrible, as those we have supplied—all strikingly and emphatically fulfilling the words of Moses—“The tender and delicate woman among you, which would not adventure to set the sole of her foot upon the ground for delicateness and tenderness, her eye shall be evil toward the husband of her bosom, and toward her son, and toward her daughter; for she shall eat them for want of all things secretly in the siege and in the straitness, wherewith thine enemy shall distress thee in thy gates,” Deu_28:56-57.