¹² So the king arose in the night and said to his servants, “Let me now tell you what the Syrians have done to us. They know that we are ^(A)hungry; therefore they have gone out of the camp to ^[a]hide themselves in the field, saying, ‘When they come out of the city, we shall catch them alive, and get into the city.’ ”

²⁵ And there was a great ^(A)famine in Samaria; and indeed they besieged it until a donkey’s head was sold for eighty shekels of silver, and one-fourth of a ^[a]kab of dove droppings for five shekels of silver.

²⁶ Then, as the king of Israel was passing by on the wall, a woman cried out to him, saying, “Help, my lord, O king!”

²⁷ And he said, “If the Lord does not help you, where can I find help for you? From the threshing floor or from the winepress?” ²⁸ Then the king said to her, “What is troubling you?”

And she answered, “This woman said to me, ‘Give your son, that we may eat him today, and we will eat my son tomorrow.’ ²⁹ So ^(B)we boiled my son, and ate him. And I said to her on the next day, ‘Give your son, that we may eat him’; but she has hidden her son.”

⁴ And he commanded them, saying: “Behold, ^(A)you shall lie in ambush against the city, behind the city. Do not go very far from the city, but all of you be ready.