1 Then Elisha said, Give ear to the word of the Lord: the Lord says, Tomorrow, about this time, a measure of good meal will be offered for the price of a shekel and two measures of barley for a shekel, in the market-place of Samaria.
2 Then the captain whose arm was supporting the king said to the man of God, Even if the Lord made windows in heaven, would such a thing be possible? And he said, Your eyes will see it, but you will not have a taste of the food.
3 Now there were four lepers seated at the doorway into the town: and they said to one another, Why are we waiting here for death?
4 If we say, We will go into the town, there is no food in the town, and we will come to our end there; and if we go on waiting here, death will come to us. Come then, let us give ourselves up to the army of Aram: if they let us go on living, then life will be ours; and if they put us to death, then death will be ours.
5 So in the half light they got up to go to the tents of Aram; but when they came to the outer line of tents, there was no one there.
6 For the Lord had made the sound of carriages and horses, and the noise of a great army, come to the ears of the Aramaeans, so that they said to one another, Truly, the king of Israel has got the kings of the Hittites and of the Egyptians for a price to make an attack on us.
7 So they got up and went in flight, in the half light, without their tents or their horses or their asses or any of their goods; they went in flight, fearing for their lives.
8 And when those lepers came to the outer line of tents, they went into one tent, and had food and drink, and took from it silver and gold and clothing, which they put in a secret place; then they came back and went into another tent from which they took more goods, which they put away in a secret place.
9 Then they said to one another, We are not doing right. Today is a day of good news, and we say nothing: if we go on waiting here till the morning, punishment will come to us. So let us go and give the news to those of the king's house.
10 So they came in, and, crying out to the door-keepers of the town, they gave them the news, saying, We came to the tents of the Aramaeans, and there was no one there and no voice of man, only the horses and the asses in their places, and the tents as they were.
11 Then the door-keepers, crying out, gave the news to those inside the king's house.
12 Then the king got up in the night and said to his servants, This is my idea of what the Aramaeans have done to us. They have knowledge that we are without food; and so they have gone out of their tents, and are waiting secretly in the open country, saying, When they come out of the town, we will take them living and get into the town.
13 And one of his servants said in answer, Send men and let them take five of the horses which we still have in the town; if they keep their lives they will be the same as those of Israel who are still living here; if they come to their death they will be the same as all those of Israel who have gone to destruction: let us send and see.
14 So they took two horsemen; and the king sent them after the army of the Aramaeans, saying, Go and see.
15 And they went after them as far as Jordan; and all the road was covered with clothing and vessels dropped by the Aramaeans in their flight. So those who were sent went back and gave the news to the king.
16 Then the people went out and took the goods from the tents of the Aramaeans. So a measure of good meal was to be had for the price of a shekel, and two measures of barley for a shekel, as the Lord had said.
17 And the king gave authority to that captain, on whose arm he was supported, to have control over the doorway into the town; but he was crushed to death there under the feet of the people, as the man of God had said when the king went down to him.
18 So the words of the man of God came true, which he said to the king: Two measures of barley will be offered for the price of a shekel and a measure of good meal for a shekel, tomorrow about this time in the market-place of Samaria.
19 And that captain said to the man of God, Even if the Lord made windows in heaven, would such a thing be possible? And he said to him, Your eyes will see it, but you will not have a taste of the food.
20 And such was his fate; for he was crushed to death under the feet of the people, in the doorway into the town.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Keil & Delitzsch Commentary » Commentary on 2 Kings 7
Commentary on 2 Kings 7 Keil & Delitzsch Commentary
Elisha announced to him the word of the Lord: “At the (this) time to-morrow a seah of wheaten flour ( סלת , see at 1 Kings 5:2) will be worth a shekel, and two seahs of barley a shekel in the gate, i.e., in the market, at Samaria.” A seah, or a third of an ephah = a Dresden peck (Metze), for a shekel was still a high price; but in comparison with the prices given in 2 Kings 6:25 as those obtained for the most worthless kinds of food, it was incredibly cheap. The king's aide-de-camp ( שׁלישׁ : see at 2 Samuel 23:8; נשׁען למּלך אשׁר , an error in writing for נשׁ המּלך אשׁר , cf. 2 Kings 7:17, and for the explanation 2 Kings 5:18) therefore replied with mockery at this prophecy: “Behold (i.e., granted that) the Lord made windows in heaven, will this indeed be?” i.e., such cheapness take place. (For the construction, see Ewald, §357, b .) The ridicule lay more especially in the “windows in heaven,” in which there is an allusion to Genesis 7:11, sc. to rain down a flood of flour and corn. Elisha answered seriously: “Behold, thou wilt see it with thine eyes, but not eat thereof” (see 2 Kings 7:17.). The fulfilment of these words of Elisha was brought about by the event narrated in 2 Kings 7:3.
“Four men were before the gate as lepers,” or at the gateway, separated from human society, according to the law in Leviticus 13:46; Numbers 5:3, probably in a building erected for the purpose (cf. 2 Kings 15:5), just as at the present day the lepers at Jerusalem have their huts by the side of the Zion gate (vid., Strauss, Sinai u. Golgatha, p. 205, and Tobler, Denkblהtter aus Jerus. p. 411ff.). These men being on the point of starvation, resolved to invade the camp of the Syrians, and carried out this resolution בּנּשׁף , in the evening twilight, not the morning twilight (Seb. Schm., Cler., etc.), on account of 2 Kings 7:12, where the king is said to have received the news of the flight of the Syrians during the night. Coming to “the end of the Syrian camp,” i.e., to the outskirts of it on the city side, they found no one there. For (2 Kings 7:6, 2 Kings 7:7) “the Lord had caused the army of the Syrians to hear a noise of chariots and horses, a noise of a great army,” so that, believing the king of Israel to have hired the kings of the Hittites and Egyptians to fall upon them, they fled from the camp in the twilight אל־נפשׁם , with regard to their life, i.e., to save their life only, leaving behind them their tents, horses, and asses, and the camp as it was. - The miracle, by which God delivered Samaria from the famine or from surrendering to the foe, consisted in an oral delusion, namely, in the fact that the besiegers thought they heard the march of hostile armies from the north and south, and were seized with such panic terror that they fled in the greatest haste, leaving behind them their baggage, and their beasts of draught and burden. It is impossible to decide whether the noise which they heard had any objective reality, say a miraculous buzzing in the air, or whether it was merely a deception of the senses produced in their ears by God; and this is a matter of no importance, since in either case it was produced miraculously by God. The kings of the Hittites are kings of northern Canaan, upon Lebanon and towards Phoenicia; חתּים in the broader sense for Canaanites, as in 1 Kings 10:29. The plural, “kings of the Egyptians,” is probably only occasioned by the parallel expression “kings of the Hittites,” and is not to be pressed.
When these lepers (these, pointing back to 2 Kings 7:3.) came into the camp which the Syrians had left, they first of all satisfied their own hunger with the provisions which they found in the tents, and then took different valuables and concealed them. But their consciences were soon aroused, so that they said: We are not doing right; this day is a day of joyful tidings: if we are silent and wait till the morning light, guilt will overtake us; “for it is the duty of citizens to make known things relating to public safety” (Grotius). They then resolved to announce the joyful event in the king's palace, and reported it to the watchman at the city gate. העיר שׁער stands as a generic term in a collective sense for the persons who watched at the gate; hence the following plural להם , and in 2 Kings 7:11 השּׁערים . “And the gate-keepers cried out (what they had heard) and reported it in the king's palace.”
The king imagined that the unexpected departure of the Syrians was only a ruse, namely, that they had left the camp and hidden themselves in the field, to entice the besieged out of the fortress, and then fall upon them and press into the city. בּהשּׂדה according to later usage for בּשּׂדה (vid., Ewald, §244, a). In order to make sure of the correctness or incorrectness of this conjecture, one of the king's servants (counsellors) gave this advice: “Let them take (the Vav before יקחוּ as in 2 Kings 4:41) five of the horses left in the city, that we may send and see how the matter stands.” The words, “Behold they (the five horses) are as the whole multitude of Israel that are left in it (the city); behold they are as the whole multitude of Israel that are gone,” have this meaning: The five horsemen (for horses stand for horsemen, as it is self-evident that it was men on horseback and not the horses themselves that were to be sent out as spies) can but share the fate of the rest of the people of Samaria, whether they return unhurt to meet death by starvation with the people that still remain, or fall into the hands of the enemy and are put to death, in which case they will only suffer the lot of those who have already perished. Five horses is an approximative small number, and is therefore not at variance with the following statement, that two pair of horses were sent out with chariots and men. The Chethîb ההמון is not to be altered, since there are other instances in which the first noun is written with the article, though in the construct state (vid., Ewald, §290, e.); and the Keri is only conformed to the following כּכל־המון . 2 Kings 7:14 , 2 Kings 7:15. They then sent out two chariots with horses, who pursued the flying enemy to the Jordan, and found the whole of the road full of traces of the hurried flight, consisting of clothes and vessels that had been thrown away. The Chethîb בּהחפזם is the only correct reading, since it is only in the Niphal that חפז has the meaning to fly in great haste (cf. 1 Samuel 23:26; Psalms 48:6; Psalms 104:7).
When the returning messengers reported this, the people went out and plundered the camp of the Syrians, and this was followed by the consequent cheapness of provisions predicted by Elisha. As the people streamed out, the unbelieving aide-de-camp, whom the king had ordered to take the oversight at the gate ( הפקיד , to deliver the oversight) for the purpose of preserving order in the crowding of the starving multitude, was trodden down by the people, so that he died, whereby this prediction of Elisha was fulfilled. The exact fulfilment of this prediction appeared so memorable to the historian, that he repeats this prophecy in 2 Kings 7:18-20 along with the event which occasioned it, and refers again to its fulfilment.