The Siege Lifted

Now there were four men with leprosy[a](A) at the entrance of the city gate. They said to each other, “Why stay here until we die? If we say, ‘We’ll go into the city’—the famine is there, and we will die. And if we stay here, we will die. So let’s go over to the camp of the Arameans and surrender. If they spare us, we live; if they kill us, then we die.”

At dusk they got up and went to the camp of the Arameans. When they reached the edge of the camp, no one was there, for the Lord had caused the Arameans to hear the sound(B) of chariots and horses and a great army, so that they said to one another, “Look, the king of Israel has hired(C) the Hittite(D) and Egyptian kings to attack us!” So they got up and fled(E) in the dusk and abandoned their tents and their horses and donkeys. They left the camp as it was and ran for their lives.

The men who had leprosy(F) reached the edge of the camp, entered one of the tents and ate and drank. Then they took silver, gold and clothes, and went off and hid them. They returned and entered another tent and took some things from it and hid them also.

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Footnotes

  1. 2 Kings 7:3 The Hebrew for leprosy was used for various diseases affecting the skin; also in verse 8.

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