hoping that some family member would lower food to them from the top of the wall. Jewish tradition identifies them as Gehazi and his three sons.27 No food was forthcoming and the encircling darkness seemed to typify their despair. They felt as if they were cut off from all hope and comfort. In their extremity they reasoned among themselves: “Why [do] we sit here until we die? If we say, ‘We shall go into the city [to find food], then there [is] the famine in the city, and we shall die there. And