2 Kings 6: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

This chapter holds three linked episodes about Elisha. He makes a borrowed axe head float in the Jordan; he repeatedly warns Israel's king where the Syrian army will be, and when Syria sends troops to seize him at Dothan, he prays for them to be struck blind, leads them into Samaria, and tells the king to feed them and send them home. Later Benhadad besieges Samaria until the famine is so severe that two women agree to eat their sons, and when the king hears of it he swears to have Elisha's head. The chapter breaks off with the messenger reaching Elisha's door and the words that this trouble comes from the LORD.

Claim by Claim

1. 6:1
   • The sons of the prophets spoke to Elisha.
   • They said the place where they lived in his presence was too cramped for them.
2. 6:2
   • They asked to go to the Jordan.
   • They proposed that each man take one beam from there.
   • They proposed to build themselves a place there to live.
   • Elisha told them to go.
3. 6:3
   • One of them asked Elisha to consent to go with his servants.
   • Elisha said he would go.
4. 6:4
   • Elisha went with them.
   • They came to the Jordan.
   • They cut down trees.
5. 6:5
   • One of them was felling a beam.
   • The iron axe head fell into the water.
   • The man cried out.
   • He said, Alas, my master.
   • He said the axe head had been borrowed.
6. 6:6
   • The man of God asked where it fell.
   • The man showed him the place.
   • The man of God cut off a stick.
   • He threw the stick into that place.
   • The iron floated.
7. 6:7
   • Elisha told him to lift it up for himself.
   • The man reached out his hand.
   • The man took the axe head.
8. 6:8
   • The king of Aram was at war against Israel.
   • He took counsel with his servants.
   • He said his camp would be at a certain unnamed place.
9. 6:9
   • The man of God sent word to the king of Israel.
   • He warned the king to take care not to pass by that place.
   • He said the Arameans were coming down there.
10. 6:10
    • The king of Israel sent to the place the man of God had told him of and warned him about.
    • The king was on guard there.
    • This happened not once and not twice.
11. 6:11
    • The heart of the king of Aram was agitated over this matter.
    • He called his servants.
    • He asked them to tell him which of their own was for the king of Israel.
12. 6:12
    • One of his servants answered that it was none of them.
    • He addressed the king as his lord the king.
    • He said Elisha the prophet who is in Israel tells the king of Israel the words the king of Aram speaks in his bedchamber.
13. 6:13
    • The king said to go and see where Elisha was.
    • The king said he would send and seize him.
    • The king was told that Elisha was in Dothan.
14. 6:14
    • The king sent horses there.
    • He sent chariots there.
    • He sent a heavy force there.
    • They came by night.
    • They surrounded the city.
15. 6:15
    • The attendant of the man of God rose early.
    • He went out.
    • An army was surrounding the city with horses and chariots.
    • His servant said to him, Alas, my master.
    • The servant asked what they should do.
16. 6:16
    • Elisha told him not to fear.
    • Elisha said those with them were more than those with the enemy.
17. 6:17
    • Elisha prayed.
    • He asked the LORD to open the servant's eyes so he could see.
    • The LORD opened the young man's eyes.
    • The young man saw.
    • The mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire around Elisha.
18. 6:18
    • The Arameans came down toward Elisha.
    • Elisha prayed to the LORD.
    • He asked the LORD to strike that people with blinding confusion of sight.
    • The LORD struck them with blinding confusion of sight.
    • This was done according to Elisha's word.
19. 6:19
    • Elisha said to them that this was not the way.
    • Elisha said this was not the city.
    • Elisha told them to follow him.
    • Elisha said he would bring them to the man they were seeking.
    • He led them to Samaria.
20. 6:20
    • They came into Samaria.
    • Elisha asked the LORD to open the eyes of these men so they could see.
    • The LORD opened their eyes.
    • They saw.
    • They were in the middle of Samaria.
21. 6:21
    • The king of Israel saw them.
    • The king of Israel spoke to Elisha.
    • He called Elisha his father.
    • He asked twice whether he should strike them down.
22. 6:22
    • Elisha said the king should not strike them down.
    • Elisha asked whether the king would strike down those he had captured with his own sword and bow.
    • Elisha told him to set bread and water before them.
    • Elisha said they should eat and drink.
    • Elisha said they should go to their master.
23. 6:23
    • The king prepared a great feast for them.
    • They ate and drank.
    • He sent them away.
    • They went to their master.
    • The raiding bands of Aram did not come again into the land of Israel.
24. 6:24
    • After this, Ben-hadad king of Aram gathered his whole army.
    • He went up.
    • He laid siege to Samaria.
25. 6:25
    • There was a great famine in Samaria.
    • They besieged the city.
    • A donkey's head sold for eighty pieces of silver.
    • A quarter of a kab of dove's dung sold for five pieces of silver.
26. 6:26
    • The king of Israel was passing along the wall.
    • A woman cried out to him.
    • She called for help from her lord the king.
27. 6:27
    • The king's reply is ambiguous: it can mean the LORD not helping her, or a wish that the LORD not help her.
    • He asked from where he could help her.
    • He asked whether help would come from the threshing floor or the winepress.
28. 6:28
    • The king asked her what was wrong.
    • She said this woman had said to her, Give your son so we may eat him today.
    • She said the woman proposed they would eat her own son the next day.
29. 6:29
    • They boiled the speaker's son.
    • They ate him.
    • The speaker said to the other woman on the next day, Give your son so we may eat him.
    • The other woman had hidden her son.
30. 6:30
    • The king heard the woman's words.
    • The king tore his clothes.
    • He was passing along the wall.
    • The people saw.
    • He had sackcloth underneath on his flesh.
31. 6:31
    • The king invoked a curse on himself from God.
    • He swore that the head of Elisha son of Shaphat would not remain on him that day.
    • Elisha is identified as the son of Shaphat.
32. 6:32
    • Elisha was sitting in his house.
    • The elders were sitting with him.
    • The king sent a man ahead of himself.
    • Before the messenger reached Elisha, Elisha spoke to the elders.
    • Elisha asked whether they saw that this son of a murderer had sent to remove his head.
    • Elisha told them that when the messenger came they should shut the door.
    • Elisha told them to press the messenger back with the door.
    • Elisha asked whether the sound of his master's feet was not behind him.
33. 6:33
    • While Elisha was still speaking with them, the messenger came down to him.
    • The speaker said this evil is from the LORD.
    • The speaker asked why he should wait for the LORD any longer.
    • The text does not make explicit whether the speaker is the messenger or the king.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

6:1

"Sons of the prophets" is a Hebrew idiom: "son of" often marks membership in a group or trade rather than family descent. These were companies of men attached to a leading prophet, living together near him; several such groups appear around Elijah and Elisha in these chapters.

6:2

A "beam" here is a length of timber for building. They head for the Jordan because thick stands of trees grew along the riverbanks in a country that was otherwise short of usable wood.

6:5

Iron was expensive and tools were often shared or borrowed rather than owned. Under Israelite custom a borrower who lost or damaged what he had borrowed was liable to replace it, so the loss is a debt the man may not be able to pay.

6:6

"Man of God" is a standard title for a prophet, used repeatedly for Elisha in these chapters. It identifies his office, not a special claim about his nature.

6:8

"Syria" here translates Aram, the kingdom centered on Damascus to the north-east of Israel. The two states fought repeatedly over the border territory between them across several generations.

6:9

"The man of God" is a standard title for a prophet, used throughout these chapters as another way of saying Elisha.

6:11

"Sore troubled" means severely troubled; "sore" in the King James is an intensifier, not a reference to pain. The Hebrew suggests he was enraged and agitated, which fits his demand in the same breath that someone name the traitor.

6:12

The bedchamber was a king's private inner room, where he would speak only with his closest advisers. The point is that even his most secret war planning is leaking.

6:13

Dothan was a town roughly ten miles north of Samaria, set on a hill overlooking one of the main north-south trade routes.

6:14

Chariot forces were the elite and costliest arm of an ancient army, comparable to heavy armor in a modern one. A king is sending a full field force against a single man.

6:15

Chariots were the elite, expensive, fast strike force of an ancient army. Sending horses, chariots and a large army to arrest one unarmed prophet is deliberate overkill.

6:17

"The mountain" is the high ground around Dothan. The fiery horses and chariots are described in exactly the terms used for the army below, matching it piece for piece.

6:18

The Hebrew word here is rare and occurs elsewhere only of the men at Lot's door in Genesis 19. It suggests dazzled or confused sight rather than total darkness, which is why the men can still walk and follow a guide.

6:19

Samaria was the walled capital of the northern kingdom of Israel, about twelve miles south of Dothan. Following Elisha there took the Syrian force into the middle of the enemy's fortress city.

6:21

"My father" is a respectful form of address to a prophet or senior figure, not a statement of family relationship. Elisha used the same words of Elijah.

6:22

Prisoners taken in battle were normally spared (held, ransomed, or enslaved), rather than executed. The force of the rhetorical question is disputed: it may mean "you do not kill even the men you capture yourself," or "you would not kill those, so certainly not these, whom you did not capture at all."

6:23

Raiding parties were small bands crossing the border for plunder and captives, a chronic low-level harassment distinct from full-scale war, which resumes in the next verse.

6:24

Benhadad was a name, or possibly a throne title, borne by more than one king of Damascus. To besiege a city was to camp around its walls and cut off all supply, forcing it to starve or surrender rather than storming the defenses.

6:25

Silver was weighed out, not coined; coinage did not yet exist. Eighty shekels is roughly two pounds of silver (for a donkey's head, an animal Israel's food laws counted unclean and which has almost no meat on the skull. For scale, a slave was valued at thirty shekels. A cab is a dry measure of about a quart or a liter, so a quarter cab is around half a pint. "Dove's dung" may be literal) dried dung was burned as fuel, and in extremity eaten, or a popular name for some cheap plant food such as a pod or seed; the term is disputed.

6:26

City walls were thick enough to walk along the top, and the king is inspecting his defenses. Calling out to the king in person was also how an ordinary person brought a case before the highest court in the land.

6:27

The threshing floor is where grain was separated from the husk, the winepress where grapes were crushed. Together they stand for the entire food and drink supply of the country; the king means both are empty.

6:28

The woman is not asking for food but bringing a lawsuit: she wants the king to enforce an agreement. The agreement was to eat their children. Famine so severe that parents ate their own children is named in Israel's law as the furthest extremity of a siege.

6:30

Tearing one's clothes was the recognized public sign of grief or horror. Sackcloth is coarse goat-hair cloth worn in mourning or self-abasement; because the king wore it hidden under his robes, the crowd learns only now that he had already been in mourning.

6:31

"May God do so to me and more also" is a fixed oath formula. The speaker calls down an unnamed punishment on himself if he fails to do what he is swearing to do.

6:32

The king is Joram, son of Ahab and Jezebel, who had Naboth killed to take his vineyard and had prophets of the LORD put to death, hence "son of a murderer." The elders are the leading men of the town, who functioned as its local council.

6:33

The Hebrew simply reads "he said," and it is unclear whether the speaker is the messenger or the king who has followed close behind him; translations differ. The word rendered "trouble" means disaster or calamity, not moral wickedness.