BRAGADAYJAH 1077
Famine in Samaria
Then it came to pass that after
Elisha’s magnanimity in advising the king to let the Syrians go, after all the
host of the Syrians would not have spared him had they caught him, Benhadad
king of Syria gathered all his host and went up and besieged Samaria at a time
when there was a great famine in Samaria. And the Syrians continued to besiege
it until there was nothing to eat; the famine was so bad that an ass’s head was
sold for forty pieces of silver, and a fourth part of a cab of dove’s dung, for
five pieces of silver. And as the king was passing by the wall there cried unto
him a woman saying, “Help my Lord O king!” And the king said. ”If the Lord does
not help you, how can I?” And how can I help you, out of the barn floor or out
of the winepress? The king’s rhetorical
question was designed to show that there was neither wheat in the barns nor
wine in the winepress, hence he asked “How can I help you?” Then the king asked
her what ailed her and she said “This woman agreed with me that we should eat
my son the first day, and that after that we would eat hers. So we boiled my
son and did eat him, and on the next day when I called upon her to produce her
son that we should eat him, she hid her son. And when the king heard the report
of the woman he tore his clothes and came closer to the wall and as he did so
the people beheld that he had sackcloth upon his flesh. Then in response to the
woman’s complaint, the king ignoring the plea turned his vengeance against
Elisha swearing to have his head. But we may observe, he had no real sympathy
for the woman’s plight. He ignored it or did not offer her any resolution to
her complaint. We say this because we note that when he came on the scene he
was already wearing sackcloth. We conclude then he used the complaint to vent
his spleen against Elisha, no doubt blaming him for the famine in the land, and
also to avert attention away from him and on Elisha. Elisha’s master Elijah was
held by the king’s mother and father, Jezebel and Ahab for the previous famine
in the land. So now the king felt in his heart Elisha was responsible either
for causing it, or for not caring enough about the plight of the people to
intervene and end it. So in the sight and hearing of the people he cried death
to Elisha!
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