2 Kings 7King James Version
Famine in Samaria so severe people are eating their own children. Four lepers sitting at the gate decide to defect to the Syrian camp. They find it empty. God had made the Syrians hear the sound of a great army and they fled. The lepers tell the city. The people rush out and plunder the camp. A skeptical officer is trampled at the gate, as Elisha had foretold.
Elisha prophesies that by the next day food will be abundant in Samaria. A court official mocks the prediction. Four lepers at the gate decide they have nothing to lose and walk toward the Syrian camp, which they find abandoned: God had caused the Syrians to hear sounds of a massive army and flee. The lepers eat, take silver and gold and clothing, then go back to report. The king suspects a trap but sends scouts. The city is saved. The official who mocked is trampled in the gate rush.
Salvation comes through four outcast lepers who had nothing to lose, and the man closest to the king who doubted it is killed by the very abundance he could not believe in.
9: "Then they said one to another, We do not well: this day is a day of good tidings, and we hold our peace: if we tarry till the morning light, some mischief will come upon us: now therefore come, that we may go and tell the king's household." Four lepers choose to share what they found instead of hoarding it.
The Syrian army's panic is attributed to a divine acoustic illusion: they heard the sounds of Hittite and Egyptian chariots. These were the major military powers of the era, and the mention of them is historically credible. The Syrian camp, abandoned with food, horses, silver, and gold, becomes the salvation of a city that had been reduced to eating donkeys and children.
Elisha, whose word proves true; the four lepers, whose desperation becomes deliverance; the king of Israel, suspicious and cautious; the royal official, whose death fulfills the prophecy exactly.
The chapter inverts every expected social order. The people with the most official status are paralyzed by doubt or crushed by the crowd. The lepers, people with no status or rights, are the ones who discover, benefit from, and then report the miracle. Their logic in verse 9 is a small model of faithfulness: we cannot keep good news to ourselves.
For when you are so far to the margins that you figure you might as well try. You have nothing left to lose, and sometimes that is exactly the right position to discover something unexpected.
1Then Elisha said, Hear ye the word of the LORD; Thus saith the LORD, To morrow about this time shall a measure of fine flour be sold for a shekel, and two measures of barley for a shekel, in the gate of Samaria.
2Then a lord on whose hand the king leaned answered the man of God, and said, Behold, if the LORD would make windows in heaven, might this thing be? And he said, Behold, thou shalt see it with thine eyes, but shalt not eat thereof.
3And there were four leprous men at the entering in of the gate: and they said one to another, Why sit we here until we die?
4If we say, We will enter into the city, then the famine is in the city, and we shall die there: and if we sit still here, we die also. Now therefore come, and let us fall unto the host of the Syrians: if they save us alive, we shall live; and if they kill us, we shall but die.
5And they rose up in the twilight, to go unto the camp of the Syrians: and when they were come to the uttermost part of the camp of Syria, behold, there was no man there.
6For the Lord had made the host of the Syrians to hear a noise of chariots, and a noise of horses, even the noise of a great host: and they said one to another, Lo, the king of Israel hath hired against us the kings of the Hittites, and the kings of the Egyptians, to come upon us.
7Wherefore they arose and fled in the twilight, and left their tents, and their horses, and their asses, even the camp as it was, and fled for their life.
8And when these lepers came to the uttermost part of the camp, they went into one tent, and did eat and drink, and carried thence silver, and gold, and raiment, and went and hid it; and came again, and entered into another tent, and carried thence also, and went and hid it.
9Then they said one to another, We do not well: this day is a day of good tidings, and we hold our peace: if we tarry till the morning light, some mischief will come upon us: now therefore come, that we may go and tell the king's household.
10So they came and called unto the porter of the city: and they told them, saying, We came to the camp of the Syrians, and, behold, there was no man there, neither voice of man, but horses tied, and asses tied, and the tents as they were.
11And he called the porters; and they told it to the king's house within.
12And the king arose in the night, and said unto his servants, I will now shew you what the Syrians have done to us. They know that we be hungry; therefore are they gone out of the camp to hide themselves in the field, saying, When they come out of the city, we shall catch them alive, and get into the city.
13And one of his servants answered and said, Let some take, I pray thee, five of the horses that remain, which are left in the city, (behold, they are as all the multitude of Israel that are left in it: behold, I say, they are even as all the multitude of the Israelites that are consumed:) and let us send and see.
14They took therefore two chariot horses; and the king sent after the host of the Syrians, saying, Go and see.
15And they went after them unto Jordan: and, lo, all the way was full of garments and vessels, which the Syrians had cast away in their haste. And the messengers returned, and told the king.
16And the people went out, and spoiled the tents of the Syrians. So a measure of fine flour was sold for a shekel, and two measures of barley for a shekel, according to the word of the LORD.
17And the king appointed the lord on whose hand he leaned to have the charge of the gate: and the people trode upon him in the gate, and he died, as the man of God had said, who spake when the king came down to him.
18And it came to pass as the man of God had spoken to the king, saying, Two measures of barley for a shekel, and a measure of fine flour for a shekel, shall be to morrow about this time in the gate of Samaria:
19And that lord answered the man of God, and said, Now, behold, if the LORD should make windows in heaven, might such a thing be? And he said, Behold, thou shalt see it with thine eyes, but shalt not eat thereof.
20And so it fell out unto him: for the people trode upon him in the gate, and he died.