Siege of Samaria by the Syrians - Terrible Straits and Tragedy in the City - The King sends to slay Elisha, but arrests

his Messenger - Announced Deliverance and Judgment on the Unbelieving "Lord" - The Discovery by the Four Lepers

­ Flight of the Syrians - Relief of Samaria - The Unbelieving Trodden to Death in the Gate.

(2 Kings 6:24 -7:20.)

THE sacred narrative now resumes the record of public events in Israel, although still in close connection with the

ministry of Elisha, which at this crisis appears the primal factor in the history of the northern kingdom. Remembering

that it is written from the prophetic standpoint, we do not here look for a strictly chronological arrangement of events,

but rather expect to find them grouped according to the one grand idea which underlies this history.

It is impossible to determine what time may have intervened between the attempts and the expedition described in the

last chapter and the open warfare against Samaria, the incidents of which we are about to relate. According to Josephus

(Ant. 9:4, 4), it followed immediately - the narrative of those who had returned from Samaria having convinced Ben-

hadad that any secret attempts upon the king of Israel were hopeless, and determined him to resort to open warfare, for

which he deemed his army sufficient.233

However that may be, he was soon to experience how vain were all such attempts when God was in defense of His

people. And here the question naturally arises why such Divine interpositions should have been made on behalf of

Israel. The answer is not difficult, and it will throw light upon the course of this history. Evidently, it was a period of

comparative indecision, before the final attitude of the nation towards Jehovah was taken, and with it the ultimate fate

of Israel decided. Active hostility to the prophet as God's representative and to the worship of Jehovah had ceased, and

there we re even tokens for good and of seeming return to the LORD. But, as events soon showed, there was not any

real repentance, and what to a superficial observer might seem the beginning of a calm was only a lull before the storm.

This interval of indecision, o r token of pending decision, must be taken into account. The presence of the prophet in

Israel meant the final call of God to Israel, and the possibility of national repentance and forgiveness. Every special

interposition, such as those we have described, was an emphatic attestation of Elisha's mission, and hence of his

message; and every deliverance indicated how truly and easily God could help and deliver His people, if only that were

in them towards which the presence of the prophet pointed. And the more minute and apparently unimportant the

occasions for such interposition and deliverance were, the more strikingly would all this appear. It is with such thoughts

in our minds that we must study the history of the siege and miraculous relief of Samaria.

Ben-hadad was once more laying siege to Samaria (comp. 1 Kings 20). And to such straits was the city reduced that not

only levitically unclean but the most repulsive kind of meat fetched a price which in ordinary times would have been

extravagant for the mo st abundant supply of daintiest food, while the coarsest material for cooking it sold at a

proportionally high rate. It must have been from want of provender for them that such beasts of burden as asses, so

common and useful in the East, were killed. Even their number must have been terribly diminished (Comp. 2 Kings

7:13) when an ass's head would sell for eighty pieces of silver (variously computed at from 5 pounds to 8 pounds), and

a "cab234 of doves' dung"235 - used when dried as material for firing - for five pieces of silver (computed at from 6/ to

10/  236).

If such were the straits to which the wealthier were reduced, we can imagine the sufferings of the poor. But only the

evidence of those who themselves were actors in it could have made any one believe in the possibility of such a tragedy

as that to the tale of which King Joram was to listen. While making the round of the broad city wall (the glacis),

probably to encourage as well as to inspect the defenders of the city, and to observe the movements of the enemy, he

was arrested by the cry for help of a frenzied woman. Probably too much accustomed to the state of famine and misery,

the king uttered an ejaculation, indicative not only of the general distress prevailing in the city, but of his own state of

mind. His words seem to imply that he felt Jehovah alone could give help,237 perhaps that he had some dim expectation

of it, but that the LORD withheld from sending it for some reason for which neither king nor people were to blame.

As we view it in the light of his after-conduct (comp. vv. 31-33), King Joram connected the straits of Samaria with the

prophet Elisha, - either they were due to his direct agency, or else to his failure to make intercession for Israel. Such