The Siege of Samaria

A terrible famine came on Samaria. The siege went on until a donkey’s head sold for eighty pieces of silver. A quarter of a kab of dove’s dung, about a pint, sold for five pieces of silver.

One day, as the king of Israel was passing along the top of the wall, a woman shouted to him, “Help, my lord the king!”

“If the Lord doesn’t help you,” he said, “where could I get help for you? From the threshing floor, or from the wine press?”

Then the king asked her, “What’s wrong?”

She answered, “This woman said to me, ‘Hand over your son. We’ll eat him today, and we’ll eat my son tomorrow.’ Then we cooked my son, and we ate him. And on the next day I told her, ‘Give up your son so we can eat him.’ And she has hidden her son.”

When the king heard what the woman said, he tore his clothes. He was passing along the wall, and the people looked and saw that he was wearing sackcloth underneath, next to his body. Sackcloth was the rough cloth people wore when they mourned.

Then he said, “May God punish me severely if Elisha son of Shaphat still has his head by the end of today!”

Elisha was still talking with them when the messenger came down to him. Then he said, “Look, the Lord has sent this trouble. Why should I wait for the Lord any longer?”

Elisha said, “Listen to the Lord’s word. The Lord says, ‘About this time tomorrow, at the gate of Samaria, a seah of fine flour will sell for one shekel, and two seahs of barley will sell for one shekel.’” A seah was nearly two gallons, and a shekel was about a third of an ounce of silver.

The officer whose hand the king leaned on answered the man of God. “Even if the Lord made windows in the sky,” he said, “could this happen?”

Elisha said, “Look, you will see it with your eyes, but you won’t eat any of it.”

In the twilight they got up to go to the Syrian camp. But when they reached the outskirts of the camp, there wasn’t a man there.

The Lord had made the Syrian army hear the sound of chariots and horses, the noise of a great army. “Look,” they had said to one another, “the king of Israel has paid the kings of the Hittites and the kings of the Egyptians to attack us!” So in the twilight they had run away. They left their tents, their horses and their donkeys, the whole camp just as it was, and ran for their lives.

When the four men got to the outskirts of the camp, they went into one tent and ate and drank. They carried off the silver, gold and clothing they found there, and went and hid it. Then they came back, went into another tent, carried off what was in it, and hid that too.

Then they said to one another, “We aren’t doing right. Today is a day of good news, and we’re saying nothing. If we wait until morning, punishment will catch up with us. Come on, let’s go and tell the king’s household.”

So they came back and called to the city’s gatekeepers. “We went to the Syrian camp,” they told them, “and there was no one there, not even the sound of a voice. There were only horses tied up and donkeys tied up, and the tents standing as they were.”

One of his officials answered, “Please let some men take five of the horses still left in the city. They’re like all the people of Israel still left here. They’re like all the people of Israel who are being destroyed. Let’s send someone to see.”

So they took two chariots with horses, and the king sent them out after the Syrian army. “Go and see,” he said. They went after the Syrians all the way to the Jordan, and the whole road was full of clothes and gear that the Syrians had thrown down in their hurry. The messengers came back and told the king.

The people went out and plundered the Syrian camp. So a seah of fine flour sold for a shekel, and two measures of barley sold for a shekel, just as the Lord had said.

The king had appointed the officer whose hand he leaned on to be in charge of the gate. The people trampled him there in the gate, and he died. Elisha, the man of God, had said so when the king came down to him.

It happened just as the man of God had told the king: “About this time tomorrow, at the gate of Samaria, two seahs of barley will sell for a shekel, and a seah of fine flour for a shekel.” The officer had answered, “Even if the Lord made windows in the sky, could anything like this happen?” Elisha had told him, “You will see it with your eyes, but you won’t eat any of it.” And that is just what happened to him: the people trampled over him in the gate, and he died.

So she did what the man of God told her. She went with her household and lived in the land of the Philistines for seven years.

When the seven years were over, the woman returned from the land of the Philistines. Then she went to the king to plead for her house and her land.

At that time the king was talking with Gehazi, the servant of the man of God. “Please tell me all the great things that Elisha has done,” he said.

Gehazi was in the middle of telling the king how Elisha had brought a dead boy back to life. Just then the boy’s mother herself came to plead with the king for her house and her land. “My lord the king,” Gehazi said, “this is the woman, and this is her son, the one Elisha brought back to life!”

When the king asked her about it, the woman told him. Then the king chose an official to take care of it for her. “Give back everything that was hers,” he told him, “and everything her fields have produced from the day she left the land until now.”

The king said to Hazael, “Go and meet the man of God, and take a gift with you. Have him ask the Lord, ‘Will I recover from this sickness?’”

So Hazael went to meet him, taking a gift with him: all kinds of good things from Damascus, as much as forty camels could carry. He came and stood in front of Elisha and said, “Your son Ben Hadad, the king of Syria, has sent me to you with this question: ‘Will I recover from this sickness?’”

Elisha said to him, “Go and tell him, ‘You will certainly recover.’ But the Lord has shown me he will certainly die.”

He stared and stared at him, until he was ashamed. Then the man of God wept.

“Why are you weeping, my lord?” Hazael asked.

“Because I know the harm you will bring on the people of Israel,” Elisha answered. “You’ll set their strongholds on fire. You’ll kill their young men with the sword, smash their little children to death, and cut open their pregnant women.”

Hazael said, “But what am I? I’m nothing but a dog. How could I do this great thing?”

Elisha answered, “The Lord has shown me that you will be king over Syria.”

Then Hazael left Elisha and went back to his master. “What did Elisha say to you?” the king asked.

“He told me you would certainly recover,” Hazael answered.

The next day he took a thick cloth, dipped it in water, and spread it on the king’s face, so that he died. Then Hazael reigned in his place.

Jehoram had brothers, Jehoshaphat’s other sons: Azariah, Jehiel, Zechariah, another Azariah, Michael and Shephatiah. Their father had given them great gifts of silver, gold and precious things, and fortified cities in Judah. But he gave the kingdom to Jehoram, because he was the firstborn.

When Jehoram had taken over his father’s kingdom and made himself strong, he killed all his brothers with the sword, and some of the princes of Israel as well.

Jehoram son of Jehoshaphat became king of Judah in the fifth year that Joram son of Ahab was king of Israel. 2 Kings says Jehoshaphat was king of Judah then. Jehoram was thirty-two when he began to reign, and he reigned eight years in Jerusalem.

He followed the ways of Israel’s kings, as Ahab’s family did, because he had married Ahab’s daughter. He did what was evil in the Lord’s eyes. Even so, the Lord would not destroy Judah and David’s royal family, for the sake of his servant David and the covenant he had made with him. He had promised David that he would always give him and his children a lamp.

While Jehoram was king, Edom rebelled against Judah’s rule and made a king of its own. Jehoram went over to Zair with his commanders and all his chariots. He got up in the night and attacked the Edomites who were surrounding him, along with the chariot commanders, and the people ran away home. Edom has been free of Judah’s rule to this day. At the same time the town of Libnah rebelled too, because Jehoram had turned away from the Lord, the God of his ancestors.

Then a letter came to him from Elijah the prophet. It said: “The Lord, the God of your ancestor David, says this: ‘You did not follow the ways of Jehoshaphat your father, or of Asa king of Judah. Instead you followed the way of the kings of Israel. You have made Judah and those who live in Jerusalem unfaithful, as Ahab’s family did. And you have killed your own brothers, your father’s sons, who were better men than you.

“‘So now the Lord is going to strike your people, your children, your wives and everything you own with a great plague. And you yourself will be very sick with a disease of the bowels, day after day, until the sickness makes your bowels come out.’”

The Lord turned the Philistines against Jehoram, and the Arabians who live near the Ethiopians as well. They came up against Judah, broke into it, and carried off everything they found in the king’s palace, even his sons and his wives. The only son he had left was Jehoahaz, the youngest.

After all this, the Lord struck him with a disease of the bowels that no one could cure. Two years later his bowels came out because of the sickness, and he died of his terrible illness. His people did not light a fire in his honor, the way they had for his ancestors when they died.

He had reigned in Jerusalem eight years, from the age of thirty-two. When he died, no one was sorry.

The rest of what Jehoram did is written in the records of the kings of Judah. He died and joined his ancestors, and was buried with them in David’s city. 2 Chronicles says he was not buried in the tombs of the kings. His son Ahaziah reigned in his place.

Ahaziah became king of Judah in the twelfth year that Joram son of Ahab was king of Israel. He was twenty-two years old when he began to reign, and he reigned one year in Jerusalem. 2 Chronicles gives his age as forty-two. His mother was Athaliah, the daughter of Omri king of Israel.

He followed the ways of Ahab’s family, because he was related to them by marriage. Like them, he did what was evil in the Lord’s eyes. His mother advised him to do wicked things. After his father died, Ahab’s family became his advisers, and that led to his ruin.

Following their advice, he went with Joram son of Ahab to fight against Hazael king of Syria at Ramoth Gilead, and the Syrians wounded Joram. King Joram went back to Jezreel to recover from the wounds the Syrians had given him at Ramah, in his fight against Hazael king of Syria. Ahaziah son of Jehoram, the king of Judah, went down to visit Joram son of Ahab in Jezreel, because Joram was sick. Here 2 Chronicles calls Ahaziah by the name Azariah.

2 Chronicles looks ahead and says what came of that visit. It says that Ahaziah’s ruin came from God, and it came through his visit to Joram. When Ahaziah got there, he went out with Joram against Jehu the son of Nimshi, the man the Lord had anointed to wipe out Ahab’s family. While Jehu was punishing Ahab’s family, he found the princes of Judah and Ahaziah’s nephews, who were serving Ahaziah, and he killed them. After that, Jehu went looking for Ahaziah. Ahaziah was hiding in Samaria, but he was caught, brought to Jehu, and killed. They buried him, because they said, “He is from the family of Jehoshaphat, who sought the Lord with all his heart.” Ahaziah’s family had no power to hold on to the kingdom.