2 Kings 7:7

Wherefore 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.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(7) Wherefore (and) they arose.—The verse gives a vivid picture of a wild flight, in which everything was forgotten except personal safety.

As it was.—“Camp” is feminine here and in Genesis 32:9 only.

For their life.—1Kings 19:3.

Benson Commentary

2 Kings 7:7. Wherefore they arose and fled — And that with incredible precipitation, as for their lives, leaving their camp as it was, and even their horses, which, if they had taken them, might have expedited their flight. None of them had so much sense as to send scouts to discover the supposed enemy, much less courage enough to face them. God can, when he pleases, dispirit the boldest, and make the stoutest hearts to tremble. They that will not fear God, he can make them fear at the shaking of a leaf. Perhaps Gehazi was one of these lepers, which might occasion his being taken notice of by the king, chap. 2 Kings 8:4.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

7:3-11 God can, when he pleases, make the stoutest heart to tremble; and as for those who will not fear God, he can make them fear at the shaking of a leaf. Providence ordered it, that the lepers came as soon as the Syrians were fled. Their consciences told them that mischief would befall them, if they took care of themselves only. Natural humanity, and fear of punishment, are powerful checks on the selfishness of the ungodly. These feelings tend to preserve order and kindness in the world; but they who have found the unsearchable riches of Christ, will not long delay to report the good tidings to others. From love to him, not from selfish feelings, they will gladly share their earthly good things with their brethren.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

It is a matter of no importance whether we say that the miracle by which God now performed deliverance for Samaria consisted in a mere illusion of the sense of hearing (compare 2 Kings 6:19-20); or whether there was any objective reality in the sound (compare the marginal references).

The king of Israel hath hired - The swords of mercenaries had been employed by the nations bordering on Palestine as early as the time of David 2 Samuel 10:6; 1 Chronicles 19:6-7. Hence, the supposition of the Syrians was far from improbable.

The kings of the Hittites - The Hittites, who are found first in the south Genesis 23:7, then in the center of Judea Joshua 11:3, seem to have retired northward after the occupation of Palestine by the Israelites. They are found among the Syrian enemies of the Egyptians in the monuments of the 19th dynasty (about 1300 B.C.), and appear at that time to have inhabited the valley of the Upper Orontes. In the early Assyrian monuments they form a great confederacy, as the most powerful people of northern Syria, dwelling on both banks of the Euphrates, while at the same time there is a second confederacy of their race further to the south, which seems to inhabit the anti-Lebanon between Hamath and Damascus. These southern Hittites are in the time of Benhadad and Hazael a powerful people, especially strong in chariots; and generally assist the Syrians against the Assyrians. The Syrians seem now to have imagined that these southern Hittites had been hired by Jehoram.

The kings of the Egyptians - This is a remarkable expression, since Egypt elsewhere throughout Scripture appears always as a centralised monarchy under a single ruler. The probability is that the principal Pharaoh had a prince or princes associated with him on the throne, a practice not uncommon in Egypt. The period, which is that of the 22nd dynasty, is an obscure one, on which the monuments throw but little light.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

6, 7. the Lord had made the host of the Syrians to hear a noise of chariots—This illusion of the sense of hearing, whereby the besiegers imagined the tramp of two armies from opposite quarters, was a great miracle which God wrought directly for the deliverance of His people.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

To save their lives; which they fancied to be in such present and extreme danger, that they durst not stay to take away any of their goods, but every man fled the next way before him.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Wherefore they arose and fled in the twilight,.... Or in the dark, as the Targum; when the twilight was going off; so that the lepers came very quickly after they were gone, 2 Kings 7:5.

and left their tents, and their horses, and their asses; such was their fright, that they could not stay to loose their cattle, with which they might have made greater speed, but ran away on foot: and they left

even the camp as it was; took nothing away with them, either money or provisions:

and fled for their life; which they imagined to be in great danger.

Geneva Study Bible

Wherefore they arose and fled in the twilight, and left their tents, and their horses, and their asses, even the camp as it was, and {g} fled for their life.

(g) The wicked need no greater enemy than their own conscience to pursue them.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 7. Wherefore they arose and fled in the twilight. At the very time when the lepers were drawing off from the gate of Samaria to fall away to them (see ver. 5). And left their tents, and their horses, and their asses, even the camp as it was. Partly, perhaps, in mere panic; partly to induce a belief on the part of the enemy that they had not quitted their camp. So Darius Hystaspis, when he began his retreat from Scythia (Herod., 4:135), left his camp standing, and the camp fires lighted, and the asses tethered (see ver. 10), that the Scythians, seeing the tents and hearing the noise of the animals, might be fully persuaded that his troops were still in the same place. Asses were the chief baggage-animals in many ancient armies. And fled for their life. Thinking that, if they waited till dawn, the Israelite allies, Hittites and Egyptians, would exterminate them. 2 Kings 7:7

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

"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, Denkbltter 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.