²⁴Later, Ben-Hadad king of Aram gathered his whole army and surrounded and attacked Samaria. ²⁵There was a shortage of food in Samaria. It was so bad that a donkey’s head sold for about two pounds of silver, and half of a pint of dove’s dung sold for about two ounces of silver.

²⁶As the king of Israel was passing by on the wall, a woman yelled out to him, “Help me, my master and king!”

²⁷The king said, “If the Lord doesn’t help you, how can I? Can I get help from the threshing floor or from the winepress?” ²⁸Then the king said to her, “What is your trouble?”

She answered, “This woman said to me, ‘Give up your son so we can eat him today. Then we will eat my son tomorrow.’ ²⁹So we boiled my son and ate him. Then the next day I said to her, ‘Give up your son so we can eat him.’ But she had hidden him.”

³⁰When the king heard the woman’s words, he tore his clothes in grief. As he walked along the wall, the people looked and saw he had on rough cloth under his clothes to show his sadness. ³¹He said, “May God punish me terribly if the head of Elisha son of Shaphat isn’t cut off from his body today!”

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