2 Kings 6:24–7:20

Famine in Besieged Samaria

²⁴Some time later, Ben-Hadad^z king of Aram mobilized his entire army and marched up and laid siege^a to Samaria. ²⁵There was a great famine^b in the city; the siege lasted so long that a donkey’s head sold for eighty shekels^a of silver, and a quarter of a cab^b of seed pods^cc for five shekels.^d

²⁶As the king of Israel was passing by on the wall, a woman cried to him, “Help me, my lord the king!”

²⁷The king replied, “If the Lord does not help you, where can I get help for you? From the threshing floor? From the winepress?” ²⁸Then he asked her, “What’s the matter?”

She answered, “This woman said to me, ‘Give up your son so we may eat him today, and tomorrow we’ll eat my son.’ ²⁹So we cooked my son and ate^d him. The next day I said to her, ‘Give up your son so we may eat him,’ but she had hidden him.”

³⁰When the king heard the woman’s words, he tore^e his robes. As he went along the wall, the people looked, and they saw that, under his robes, he had sackcloth^f on his body. ³¹He said, “May God deal with me, be it ever so severely, if the head of Elisha son of Shaphat remains on his shoulders today!”

³²Now Elisha was sitting in his house, and the elders^g were sitting with him. The king sent a messenger ahead, but before he arrived, Elisha said to the elders, “Don’t you see how this murderer^h is sending someone to cut off my head?ⁱ Look, when the messenger comes, shut the door and hold it shut against him. Is not the sound of his master’s footsteps behind him?” ³³While he was still talking to them, the messenger came down to him.

The king said, “This disaster is from the Lord. Why should I wait^j for the Lord any longer?”

7Elisha replied, “Hear the word of the Lord. This is what the Lord says: About this time tomorrow, a seah^a of the finest flour will sell for a shekel^b and two seahs^c of barley for a shekel^k at the gate of Samaria.”

²The officer on whose arm the king was leaning^l said to the man of God, “Look, even if the Lord should open the floodgates^m of the heavens, could this happen?”

“You will see it with your own eyes,” answered Elisha, “but you will not eatⁿ any of it!”

The Siege Lifted

³Now there were four men with leprosy^do at the entrance of the city gate. They said to each other, “Why stay here until we die? ⁴If we say, ‘We’ll go into the city’—the famine is there, and we will die. And if we stay here, we will die. So let’s go over to the camp of the Arameans and surrender. If they spare us, we live; if they kill us, then we die.”

⁵At dusk they got up and went to the camp of the Arameans. When they reached the edge of the camp, no one was there, ⁶for the Lord had caused the Arameans to hear the sound^p of chariots and horses and a great army, so that they said to one another, “Look, the king of Israel has hired^q the Hittite^r and Egyptian kings to attack us!” ⁷So they got up and fled^s in the dusk and abandoned their tents and their horses and donkeys. They left the camp as it was and ran for their lives.

⁸The men who had leprosy^t reached the edge of the camp, entered one of the tents and ate and drank. Then they took silver, gold and clothes, and went off and hid them. They returned and entered another tent and took some things from it and hid them also.

⁹Then they said to each other, “What we’re doing is not right. This is a day of good news and we are keeping it to ourselves. If we wait until daylight, punishment will overtake us. Let’s go at once and report this to the royal palace.”

¹⁰So they went and called out to the city gatekeepers and told them, “We went into the Aramean camp and no one was there—not a sound of anyone—only tethered horses and donkeys, and the tents left just as they were.” ¹¹The gatekeepers shouted the news, and it was reported within the palace.

¹²The king got up in the night and said to his officers, “I will tell you what the Arameans have done to us. They know we are starving; so they have left the camp to hide^u in the countryside, thinking, ‘They will surely come out, and then we will take them alive and get into the city.’ ”

¹³One of his officers answered, “Have some men take five of the horses that are left in the city. Their plight will be like that of all the Israelites left here—yes, they will only be like all these Israelites who are doomed. So let us send them to find out what happened.”

¹⁴So they selected two chariots with their horses, and the king sent them after the Aramean army. He commanded the drivers, “Go and find out what has happened.” ¹⁵They followed them as far as the Jordan, and they found the whole road strewn with the clothing and equipment the Arameans had thrown away in their headlong flight.^v So the messengers returned and reported to the king. ¹⁶Then the people went out and plundered^w the camp of the Arameans. So a seah of the finest flour sold for a shekel, and two seahs of barley sold for a shekel,^x as the Lord had said.

¹⁷Now the king had put the officer on whose arm he leaned in charge of the gate, and the people trampled him in the gateway, and he died,^y just as the man of God had foretold when the king came down to his house. ¹⁸It happened as the man of God had said to the king: “About this time tomorrow, a seah of the finest flour will sell for a shekel and two seahs of barley for a shekel at the gate of Samaria.”

¹⁹The officer had said to the man of God, “Look, even if the Lord should open the floodgates^z of the heavens, could this happen?” The man of God had replied, “You will see it with your own eyes, but you will not eat any of it!” ²⁰And that is exactly what happened to him, for the people trampled him in the gateway, and he died.