2 Kings 6:24–31

Syria Besieges Samaria in Famine

²⁴And it happened after this that ^oBen-Hadad king of Syria gathered all his army, and went up and besieged Samaria. ²⁵And there was a great ^pfamine in Samaria; and indeed they besieged it until a donkey’s head was sold for eighty shekels of silver, and one-fourth of a ¹kab of dove droppings for five shekels of silver.

²⁶Then, as the king of Israel was passing by on the wall, a woman cried out to him, saying, “Help, my lord, O king!”

²⁷And he said, “If the Lord does not help you, where can I find help for you? From the threshing floor or from the winepress?” ²⁸Then the king said to her, “What is troubling you?”

And she answered, “This woman said to me, ‘Give your son, that we may eat him today, and we will eat my son tomorrow.’ ²⁹So ^qwe boiled my son, and ate him. And I said to her on the next day, ‘Give your son, that we may eat him’; but she has hidden her son.”

³⁰Now it happened, when the king heard the words of the woman, that he ^rtore his clothes; and as he passed by on the wall, the people looked, and there underneath he had sackcloth on his body. ³¹Then he said, ^s“God do so to me and more also, if the head of Elisha the son of Shaphat remains on him today!”