Syria Besieges Samaria in Famine

²⁴ And it happened after this that ^(A)Ben-Hadad king of Syria gathered all his army, and went up and besieged Samaria. ²⁵ And there was a great ^(B)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 ^(C)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.”

³⁰ Now it happened, when the king heard the words of the woman, that he ^(D)tore his clothes; and as he passed by on the wall, the people looked, and there underneath he had sackcloth on his body. ³¹ Then he said, ^(E)“God do so to me and more also, if the head of Elisha the son of Shaphat remains on him today!”

³² But Elisha was sitting in his house, and ^(F)the elders were sitting with him. And the king sent a man ahead of him, but before the messenger came to him, he said to the elders, ^(G)“Do you see how this son of ^(H)a murderer has sent someone to take away my head? Look, when the messenger comes, shut the door, and hold him fast at the door. Is not the sound of his master’s feet behind him?” ³³ And while he was still talking with them, there was the messenger, coming down to him; and then the king said, “Surely this calamity is from the Lord; ^(I)why should I wait for the Lord any longer?”