Daily Bread

Famine in Besieged Samaria

²⁴ Some time later, Ben-Hadad^(A) king of Aram mobilized his entire army and marched up and laid siege^(B) to Samaria. ²⁵ There was a great famine^(C) in the city; the siege lasted so long that a donkey’s head sold for eighty shekels^[a] of silver, and a quarter of a cab^[b] of seed pods^[c](D) for five shekels.^[d]

²⁶ As the king of Israel was passing by on the wall, a woman cried to him, “Help me, my lord the king!”

²⁷ The king replied, “If the Lord does not help you, where can I get help for you? From the threshing floor? From the winepress?” ²⁸ Then he asked her, “What’s the matter?”

She answered, “This woman said to me, ‘Give up your son so we may eat him today, and tomorrow we’ll eat my son.’ ²⁹ So we cooked my son and ate^(E) him. The next day I said to her, ‘Give up your son so we may eat him,’ but she had hidden him.”

³⁰ When the king heard the woman’s words, he tore^(F) his robes. As he went along the wall, the people looked, and they saw that, under his robes, he had sackcloth^(G) on his body. ³¹ He said, “May God deal with me, be it ever so severely, if the head of Elisha son of Shaphat remains on his shoulders today!”

³² Now Elisha was sitting in his house, and the elders^(H) were sitting with him. The king sent a messenger ahead, but before he arrived, Elisha said to the elders, “Don’t you see how this murderer^(I) is sending someone to cut off my head?^(J) Look, when the messenger comes, shut the door and hold it shut against him. Is not the sound of his master’s footsteps behind him?” ³³ While he was still talking to them, the messenger came down to him.

The king said, “This disaster is from the Lord. Why should I wait^(K) for the Lord any longer?”

7 Elisha replied, “Hear the word of the Lord. This is what the Lord says: About this time tomorrow, a seah^[e] of the finest flour will sell for a shekel^[f] and two seahs^[g] of barley for a shekel^(L) at the gate of Samaria.”

² The officer on whose arm the king was leaning^(M) said to the man of God, “Look, even if the Lord should open the floodgates^(N) of the heavens, could this happen?”

“You will see it with your own eyes,” answered Elisha, “but you will not eat^(O) any of it!”