2 Kings 6:22-33 ▼

22 And he says, “You do not strike; are you striking those whom you have taken captive with your sword and with your bow? Set bread and water before them, and they eat, and drink, and go to their lord.”

23 And he prepares great provision for them, and they eat and drink, and he sends them away, and they go to their lord: and troops of Aram have not added to come into the land of Israel anymore.

24 And it comes to pass afterward, that Ben-Hadad king of Aram gathers all his camp, and goes up, and lays siege to Samaria,

25 and there is a great famine in Samaria, and behold, they are laying siege to it, until the head of a donkey is at eighty pieces of silver, and a forth of the cab of dove’s dung at five pieces of silver.

26 And it comes to pass, the king of Israel is passing by on the wall, and a woman has cried to him, saying, “Save, my lord, O king.”

27 And he says, “YHWH does not save you—from where do I save you? Out of the threshing-floor or out of the wine-vat?”

28 And the king says to her, “What is [troubling] you?” And she says, “This woman said to me, Give your son, and we eat him today, and we eat my son tomorrow;

29 and we boil my son and eat him, and I say to her on the next day, Give your son, and we eat him; and she hides her son.”

30 And it comes to pass, at the king’s hearing the words of the woman, that he tears his garments, and he is passing by on the wall, and the people see, and behold, the sackcloth [is] within on his flesh.

31 And he says, “Thus God does to me and thus He adds, if the head of Elisha son of Shaphat remains on him this day.”

32 And Elisha is sitting in his house, and the elderly are sitting with him, and [the king] sends a man from before him; before the messenger comes to him, even he himself said to the elderly, “Have you seen that this son of the murderer has sent [him] to turn aside my head? See, at the coming in of the messenger, shut the door, and you have held him fast at the door, is not the sound of the feet of his lord behind him?”

33 He is yet speaking with them, and behold, the messenger is coming down to him, and he says, “Behold, this [is] the calamity from YHWH; why do I wait for YHWH anymore?”