2 Kings 6:24–31

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!”