It was foretold both by Tiresias in the Kingdom of the Dead chapter (page 253), as well as by Circe in The Cattle of the Sun chapter (page 275) that if Odysseus' men were to eat the sun god, Helios', sheep or cattle, then Odysseus' crew and ship would be destroyed.
Odysseus tries to lead his men away from the island with the cattle of the sun god; however, his men persuade him that they can row no further, because they are exhausted from constant rowing and lack of sleep. Odysseus tells his crew of the warning he received twice from two different people, and his crew are relentless. Odysseus gives in, but warns his crew not to eat any of the sheep nor cattle.
Zeus causes powerful winds in the middle of the night, causing such terrible waves and weather that Odysseus and his men are stuck on the island for a month. By the end of the month, Odysseus and his crew have eaten all of their provisions, and even with fishing and foraging, the men are starving. While Odysseus is off praying to the gods on a mountain top, Odysseus' men decide to kill and eat some of the cattle. The crew does offer up the innards and bones of the cattle they killed (page 282); however, Lampetie (who was in charge of taking care of her father's cattle) told Zeus what happened to the cattle, including an ultimatum that basically said, you better help me get my revenge, or the sun will never rise again: "Unless they pay me back in blood for the butchery of my herds, down I go to the House of Death and blaze among the dead!" (283). Zeus' response was "Sun, you keep shinning...on the wine-dark sea I'll hit their racing ship with a white-hot bolt, I'll tear it into splinters" (283).
So essentially, it was already prophesied that Odysseus' crew was going to kill and eat some of the cattle of the sun god, and they would be destroyed. When the event came to be, Zeus' loyalty was not with the few mortals offering up part of the cattle to him, but to his fellow immortal who gave him an ultimatum.
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