Deuteronomy 28:57 Meaning and Explanation
“And toward her young one that cometh out from between her feet, and toward her children which she shall bear: for she shall eat them for want of all things secretly in the siege and straitness, wherewith thine enemy shall distress thee in thy gates.”
King James Version (KJV)
Read this verse in context with translation switching:
Read Full Chapter →One word in this verse deserves attention, and that word is 'secretly.' Even at the furthest edge of human collapse, shame is still working. The line tells us something about conscience under pressure, showing that people who have lost everything else can still know what they are doing is wrong and can still try to hide it.
The sheltered woman's grudging eye extends even to her newborn and the children she bears, and in the extremity of siege she eats them in secret because every other resource is gone.
The Context of Deuteronomy 28:57
This sentence completes the portrait begun in verse 56 and closes the siege section that started in verse 52. The listed relations move from husband to son to daughter and now to the newborn that comes out from between her feet, the most dependent life imaginable. Moses ends the unit with the paired words used throughout, siege and straitness, and with the phrase about gates that has echoed since verse 52. Verse 58 then steps back to restate the condition behind the whole catalogue.
What Does Deuteronomy 28:57 Mean?
The progression through the verse is deliberate and awful. Each named relationship is closer than the one before, ending with an infant just born. 'For want of all things' explains the cause without excusing the act, describing a total absence of alternatives. Then comes 'secretly.' A person hiding what she does still holds some sense of what she has become. That single adverb keeps the passage from reading as a description of monsters. These are ordinary people crushed into unrecognizable behavior, and Moses records their shame alongside their deeds, which is part of why the passage aches instead of merely shocking.
Read as the chapter's closing image of siege, this verse ends a descent that began with weather and harvest. The covenant curses have worked inward from land to city to home to womb. Israel's law surrounded infants with protection and treated the child sacrifice of the nations as an abomination. Here the same people are described doing something worse, driven by hunger where the nations were driven by religion. The passage stands as the clearest possible statement that abandoning the LORD carries consequences reaching places we would never volunteer to imagine, and that the covenant blessings were never small favors.
Lamentations 2:20 asks God directly whether women should eat their fruit and children a span long, addressing the question to the LORD inside the sanctuary itself. The poet turns a fulfilled warning into a prayer, which is a remarkable thing to do. Scripture allows grief to be spoken back to God instead of swallowed in silence. The same book that records this horror also insists that the LORD's compassions fail not and are new every morning. Holding those two together is what faith looks like in the ruins, and it is the posture the prophets model for anyone reading this chapter today.
Deuteronomy 28:57 in the Original Language
seter (סֵתֶר), 'secretly' -- a covering or hiding place, so the phrase means acting under cover. The word normally describes shelter, and here it describes concealment, a sign that shame outlives nearly everything else in the wreck of a besieged city.
Bible Verses Related to Deuteronomy 28:57
“Behold, O LORD, and consider to whom thou hast done this. Shall the women eat their fruit, and children of a span long? shall the priest and the prophet be slain in the sanctuary of the Lord?”
- Lamentations 2:20
“The hands of the pitiful women have sodden their own children: they were their meat in the destruction of the daughter of my people.”
- Lamentations 4:10
“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,”
- Deuteronomy 28:56
“And ye shall eat the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your daughters shall ye eat.”
- Leviticus 26:29
Where Deuteronomy 28:57 Echoes in Scripture
Lamentations 4:10 reports that the hands of pitiful women boiled their own children, which became their food in the destruction of the daughter of God's people. The word rendered 'pitiful' there means compassionate. The poet insists on describing them as tender-hearted while recording what they did, exactly as Moses does here. Scripture consistently refuses to flatten such people into villains, and that refusal is itself a form of mercy.
How to Apply Deuteronomy 28:57 Today
Extremity is rare, and hiddenness is not. Most of us carry something we would prefer no one saw, and this verse gently reminds us that concealment is a sign the conscience is still awake. Bringing a hidden thing into the light with a trusted friend, a pastor, or in honest prayer breaks its hold better than resolve alone. The passage also asks for compassion toward people who have done terrible things under terrible pressure. Judgment comes easily from a full stomach, and the God who records this scene does so with grief.
Reflection & Prayer
What am I keeping in the dark, and what would it cost to bring it into the light this week? Lord, You see what I hide and love me still. Give me courage to be honest with You and with one person I trust. Make me slow to condemn the desperate, and keep my own heart tender under pressure.