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The officer assisting the king said, “That couldn’t happen if the Lord made windows in the sky!”

But Elisha replied, “You will see it happen, but you won’t be able to buy any of it!”

Now there were four lepers sitting outside the city gates. “Why sit here until we die?” they asked each other. “We will starve if we stay here and we will starve if we go back into the city; so we might as well go out and surrender to the Syrian army. If they let us live, so much the better; but if they kill us, we would have died anyway.”

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The officer on whose arm the king was leaning(A) said to the man of God, “Look, even if the Lord should open the floodgates(B) of the heavens, could this happen?”

“You will see it with your own eyes,” answered Elisha, “but you will not eat(C) any of it!”

The Siege Lifted

Now there were four men with leprosy[a](D) 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.”

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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.

Then a lord on whose hand the king leaned answered the man of God, and said, Behold, if the Lord would make windows in heaven, might this thing be? And he said, Behold, thou shalt see it with thine eyes, but shalt not eat thereof.

And there were four leprous men at the entering in of the gate: and they said one to another, Why sit we here until we die?

If we say, We will enter into the city, then the famine is in the city, and we shall die there: and if we sit still here, we die also. Now therefore come, and let us fall unto the host of the Syrians: if they save us alive, we shall live; and if they kill us, we shall but die.

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