November 24, 2011 - Deuteronomy 28:36 - 28:69

What a horrible description of a siege. A siege so bad that a woman would eat her young after birth because of a lack of anything else. We really don’t have sieges anymore, or maybe we do. I guess if a person blockaded themselves in a home and tried to wait out the police, that would be something like it. But back then they would do it to entire cities. The way that cities were built, with the high fortified walls, they were difficult to defeat by an army. So, the army would wait outside, not letting anything in, until those inside had to give up or starve. It was a waiting game. If an enemy could wait long enough, the city could do nothing. If the army could not wait them out, either because they had other enemies, the city was getting reinforcements, or they were not supplied well, then the city would stay intact. The blockades done by navies were similar, but limited to stopping things by sea. If you had a landlocked city, your only hope was some tunnel. Things would get very barbaric when supplies would run low. Think of the movie “Alive” about the plane crash in the Andes.

I was trying to think of somebody trying to siege Bloomington/Normal and how difficult that would be. It is such a large area and so open. Yet, it wasn’t that long ago that East Germany was under a siege of their own government with the wall. As I speak, North Korea is under siege by their own government as well. It is not so much a siege of material as it is of ideas. Needless to say, they are not a pretty thing and God’s description of what will happen during the siege of Israel if they disobey is probably a “G” rated description compared to the actual horror that would ensue.