2 Kings 6:24–31

²⁴Afterward Ben-hadad king of Syria mustered his entire army, and went up, and besieged Samaria. ²⁵And there was a great famine in Samaria, as they besieged it, until an ass’s head was sold for eighty shekels of silver, and the fourth part of a kab of dove’s dung for five shekels of silver. ²⁶Now as the king of Israel was passing by upon the wall, a woman cried out to him, saying, “Help, my lord, O king!” ²⁷And he said, “If the Lord will not help you, whence shall I help you? From the threshing floor, or from the wine press?” ²⁸And the king asked her, “What is your trouble?” She answered, “This woman said to me, ‘Give your son, that we may eat him today, and we will eat my son tomorrow.’ ²⁹So we boiled my son, and ate him. And on the next day I said to her, ‘Give your son, that we may eat him’; but she has hidden her son.” ³⁰When the king heard the words of the woman he rent his clothes—now he was passing by upon the wall—and the people looked, and behold, he had sackcloth beneath upon his body— ³¹and he said, “May God do so to me, and more also, if the head of Elisha the son of Shaphat remains on his shoulders today.”