Eat man alive, expecting punishment, I assure you (4,2,4,3,2)
I believe the answer is:
take my word for it
'alive expecting punishment i assure you' is the definition.
I don't know anything about this answer so I can't judge whether it can be defined by this definition.
'eat man' is the wordplay.
I cannot really see how this works, but
'man' could be 'em' and 'em' is found within the answer.
This may be the basis of the clue (or it may be nonsense).
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for take my word for it that I've seen before include "Have faith" , "Tees to provide some lovemaking synonym?" .)