2 Kings 7: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

During a siege that has starved Samaria, the prophet Elisha announces that within a day food will be cheap again at the city gate, and he tells the officer who doubts him that he will see it but not eat any of it. Four men with a skin disease, sitting outside the gate, walk to the Syrian camp and find it deserted: the LORD had made the Syrians hear the sound of a huge army, and they fled, leaving everything. The men report the news, scouts confirm the enemy is gone, and the people plunder the camp, so grain sells at the price Elisha named. The officer, put in charge of the gate, is trampled to death by the crowd, exactly as Elisha had said.

Claim by Claim

1. 7:1
   • Elisha spoke.
   • Elisha told them to hear the word of the LORD.
   • Elisha said that thus says the LORD.
   • The LORD said that tomorrow about this time a seah of fine flour would sell for a shekel.
   • The LORD said that tomorrow about this time two seahs of barley would sell for a shekel.
   • This selling would take place in the gate of Samaria.
2. 7:2
   • An officer answered the man of God.
   • The king leaned on that officer's hand.
   • The officer said that even if the LORD were to make windows in heaven, this thing could not happen.
   • The man of God answered that the officer would see it with his own eyes.
   • The man of God said the officer would not eat of it.
3. 7:3
   • Four men who were lepers were at the entrance of the gate.
   • They said to one another, asking why they were sitting there until they died.
4. 7:4
   • They said that if they decided to go into the city, the famine was in the city and they would die there.
   • They said that if they sat still where they were, they would die also.
   • They proposed going over to the camp of the Arameans.
   • They said that if the Arameans let them live, they would live.
   • They said that if the Arameans killed them, they would die.
5. 7:5
   • They rose up at twilight to go to the camp of the Arameans.
   • They came to the edge of the camp of the Arameans.
   • There was no man there.
6. 7:6
   • The Lord had caused the camp of the Arameans to hear a sound of chariots.
   • The Lord had caused them to hear a sound of horses.
   • The Lord had caused them to hear the sound of a great army.
   • The Arameans said to one another that the king of Israel had hired the kings of the Hittites against them.
   • They said the king of Israel had hired the kings of Egypt against them.
   • They said these kings were hired to come upon them.
7. 7:7
   • The Arameans arose and fled at twilight.
   • They left their tents.
   • They left their horses.
   • They left their donkeys.
   • They left the camp just as it was.
   • They fled for their lives.
8. 7:8
   • These lepers came to the edge of the camp.
   • They went into one tent.
   • They ate and drank.
   • They carried silver, gold, and clothing away from there.
   • They went and hid it.
   • They came back and entered another tent.
   • They carried things away from there also.
   • They went and hid it.
9. 7:9
   • They said to one another that what they were doing was not right.
   • They said that day was a day of good news.
   • They said they were keeping silent.
   • They said that if they waited until morning light, punishment for wrongdoing would overtake them.
   • They proposed going and telling the king's household.
10. 7:10
    • They came and called to the gatekeeper of the city.
    • They reported that they had gone to the camp of the Arameans.
    • They reported that there was no man there.
    • They reported that there was no human voice there.
    • They reported that horses were tied there.
    • They reported that donkeys were tied there.
    • They reported that the tents were just as they had been.
11. 7:11
    • The gatekeepers called out.
    • They reported it inside the king's house.
12. 7:12
    • The king arose in the night.
    • The king spoke to his servants.
    • The king said he would tell them what the Arameans had done to them.
    • The king said the Arameans knew that they were hungry.
    • The king said the Arameans had gone out of the camp to hide themselves in the field.
    • The king said the Arameans intended that when the Israelites came out of the city they would take them alive.
    • The king said the Arameans intended to enter the city.
13. 7:13
    • One of his servants answered.
    • The servant proposed that some take five of the remaining horses that were left in the city.
    • The servant said those horses were like all the multitude of Israel that were left in the city.
    • The servant said they were like all the multitude of Israel that had perished.
    • The servant proposed sending and seeing.
14. 7:14
    • They took two chariots with horses.
    • The king sent them after the camp of the Arameans.
    • The king told them to go and see.
15. 7:15
    • They went after the Arameans as far as the Jordan.
    • The whole way was full of garments and equipment.
    • The Arameans had thrown these away in their haste.
    • The messengers returned.
    • The messengers told the king.
16. 7:16
    • The people went out.
    • The people plundered the camp of the Arameans.
    • A seah of fine flour sold for a shekel.
    • Two seahs of barley sold for a shekel.
    • This happened according to the word of the LORD.
17. 7:17
    • The king appointed the officer on whose hand he leaned to be in charge of the gate.
    • The people trampled the officer in the gate.
    • The officer died.
    • This happened as the man of God had said.
    • The man of God had spoken when the king came down to him.
18. 7:18
    • It happened as the man of God had spoken to the king.
    • The man of God had said two seahs of barley would sell for a shekel.
    • The man of God had said a seah of fine flour would sell for a shekel.
    • The man of God had said this would be tomorrow about this time in the gate of Samaria.
19. 7:19
    • The officer had answered the man of God.
    • The officer said that even if the LORD were to make windows in heaven, such a thing could not happen.
    • The man of God answered that the officer would see it with his own eyes.
    • The man of God said the officer would not eat of it.
20. 7:20
    • It turned out that way for him.
    • The people trampled him in the gate.
    • He died.

Words Worth Explaining

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

7:1

A "measure" here is a seah, a dry measure of about seven quarts (roughly 7–8 liters). A shekel was not a coin but a weight of silver, about two-fifths of an ounce (11–12 grams); coined money did not yet exist, and payment was made by weighing out metal. Barley was the cheap grain, eaten mostly by the poor and by animals, which is why twice as much of it went for the same price as fine wheat flour. The city gate was the marketplace and public square of a walled town, where goods were traded, prices settled and legal business done, so a price quoted "at the gate" is the going market rate. Samaria was the capital city of the northern kingdom of Israel, and at this moment it was under siege and starving, with food selling at grotesque prices (see the end of the previous chapter). Elisha is promising ordinary market prices by the next day.

7:2

"The officer whose arm the king leaned on" is a court position, not a description of an accident: a senior royal attendant who supported the king in public and stood closest to him. "Windows in the sky" draws on the old picture of the sky as a solid dome holding back an ocean above, pierced by hatches that were opened to let rain through, the same image used of the flood in Genesis. The officer is saying: even if God flung open the sky itself, food could not appear that fast. "Man of God" is a standard title for a prophet, roughly "God's spokesman."

7:3

The Hebrew word covers a range of disfiguring skin conditions, not specifically the modern disease called leprosy (Hansen's disease). Israelite law required people with these conditions to live apart from everyone else, which is why the four men are outside the city wall at the gateway rather than inside with the rest of the population, and why, once inside enemy lines, they had nothing further to lose.

7:4

"Syrians" translates "Arameans," the kingdom centered on Damascus to the north-east of Israel. They were Israel's most persistent military rival in this period, and their army is the one currently besieging Samaria.

7:6

Hired foreign armies were a normal instrument of ancient warfare, and these were the two obvious sources of them from Israel's position: the "kings of the Hittites" were the rulers of a cluster of small states in northern Syria, remnants of the old Hittite empire, and Egypt lay to the south. The Arameans conclude they are about to be caught between two hired forces.

7:7

Abandoning horses and donkeys is the detail that shows how complete the panic was. Animals were transport, military equipment and serious wealth, and no army left them behind unless the men were running on foot without stopping to untie anything.

7:8

Cloth was spun, woven and sewn by hand, so clothing was expensive and counted as real wealth. Carrying off clothes was like carrying off money.

7:9

The Hebrew says literally "punishment" or "guilt will find us." Plunder taken from a defeated army was normally the king's to claim and distribute, and news affecting the city's survival was owed to the crown; four men quietly looting the camp overnight while a starving city went unwarned would have been treated as a punishable offense, not merely bad manners.

7:10

A "porter" in the King James is a gatekeeper, the guard posted at the city gate, not someone who carries luggage. During a siege the gates stayed shut and guarded around the clock, so the four men have to shout their news from outside.

7:12

The king's suspicion describes a standard ancient tactic: an attacking army pretends to withdraw, hides nearby, and waits for the defenders to open the gates and come out for the abandoned supplies, then cuts them off from the city and takes it undefended.

7:13

The servant's sentence is compressed and awkward in the Hebrew, and translators divide over it. It is either "the horses we risk are no worse off than the rest of the Israelites left in the city, who are as good as dead already" or "the men we send risk no more than everyone else here already risks." Either way the argument is the same: the scouting party costs nothing that is not already lost. The horses matter because animals were being eaten or had starved during the siege; only a handful survived.

7:14

The Hebrew is terse, and it is unclear whether the two chariot teams were drawn from the five horses the servant proposed or counted separately.

7:15

The Jordan River lay some thirty-five to forty miles east of Samaria, on the route home to Damascus. The trail of discarded gear stretching that far shows the Arameans never stopped running.

7:16

"Spoiled" in the King James means plundered or stripped of goods, not ruined. A whole army's supplies suddenly dumped onto a starving city's market is what crashes the price of grain to the level Elisha named.

7:17

Putting the officer "in charge of the gate" means posting him to control the crowd at the gateway market, the very place where the cheap flour and barley were now being sold. He is trampled by the rush of a starving city.

7:18

Verses 18–20 stop the action to repeat the exchange from verses 1–2 word for word. This kind of verbatim recap is a standard device in Hebrew narrative for closing a story off, not a duplicated passage or a scribal slip.