Beginning
Chapter 6
Finding the Lost Ax. 1 The sons of the prophets came to Elisha and said, “Look, the place where we meet with you is too small. 2 Let us go to the Jordan. Each of us can take a pole, and we can make a place for ourselves there.” He answered, “Go.”
3 One of them said, “Will you please go with your servants.” He answered, “I will go.” 4 He went with them and they came to the Jordan and began to cut down trees.
5 One of the men was cutting down a tree, but the iron ax head fell into the water. He cried out, “Woe is me, master, for it was borrowed.” 6 The man of God asked, “Where did it fall?” So he showed him the place. He cut down a stick and tossed it there, and it made the iron float. 7 He said, “Pick it up.” So he stretched out his hand and grabbed it.
Aramean Ambush. 8 Now the king of Aram was fighting against Israel. He conferred with his servants saying, “I will set up my camp over there.”
9 The man of God sent word to the king of Israel, saying, “Beware of passing by that place, for the Arameans have gone down there.” 10 The king of Israel sent men to the place that the man of God had indicated. He warned him and saved him more than once or twice.
11 The king of Aram was enraged at this, and he summoned his servants and said, “Will you not let me know which of us has sided with the king of Israel?” 12 One of his servants answered, “No one, my lord, O king. It is Elisha, the prophet who is in Israel, who tells the king of Israel whatever you say in your bed chamber.”
13 He said, “Go find out where he is so that I can send and capture him.” He was told, “He is in Dothan.”[a] 14 He sent horses and chariots and a large army there. They arrived at night and surrounded the city.
15 Early the next morning, when the servant of the man of God got up and went out, behold, he saw an army with horses and chariots surrounding the city. His servant said to him, “Oh, my lord, what shall we do?” 16 He answered, “Do not be afraid. There are more with us than with them.”
17 Then Elisha prayed, “O Lord, open his eyes so that he might see.” The Lord opened the young man’s eyes, and he looked, and behold, the hill was covered with horses and chariots and fire all around Elisha.
18 As they came down toward him, Elisha prayed to the Lord, “Strike this people with blindness.” They were stricken with blindness, as Elisha had said. 19 Then Elisha said to them, “This is not the way, and this is not the city. Follow me, and I will bring you to the man whom you are seeking.” He led them to Samaria.
20 When they entered Samaria, Elisha said, “Open the eyes of these men, O Lord, so that they might see.” The Lord opened their eyes and they saw that they were in the middle of Samaria.
21 When the king of Israel saw them, he said to Elisha, “Shall I kill them, my father? Shall I kill them?” 22 He answered, “Do not kill them! Would you kill someone whom you had taken with the sword or the bow? Give them bread and water so that they can eat and drink and go back to their master.”
23 He prepared a great feast for them, and when they finished eating and drinking, he sent them away, and they returned to their master. No more Aramean raiding parties came into the land of Israel.
24 Sometime later, Ben-hadad, the king of Aram, assembled his whole army and he went up and laid siege to Samaria. 25 There was a terrible famine in Samaria, and they continued the siege until a donkey’s head sold for eighty shekels of silver, and a quarter of a kab of dove’s dung sold for five shekels of silver.
26 [b]As the king of Israel was passing by on the wall, a woman cried out to him, “Help me, my lord, O king.” 27 He said, “If the Lord does not help you, where can I get help for you? From the threshing floor? From the winepress?”
28 The king said to her, “What do you want?” She said, “This woman said to me, ‘Give me your son, so that we can eat him today. We can eat my son tomorrow.’ 29 So we cooked my son and we ate him. The next day I said to her, ‘Give me your son so that we can eat him,’ but she hid her son.”
30 When the king heard the woman’s words, he tore his clothes. As he walked along on the wall, the people looked up and they saw that he was wearing sackcloth underneath his clothes. 31 He said, “May God do this to me and more if the head of Elisha, the son of Shaphat, remains on his body today.”
32 Elisha was sitting in his house, and the elders were sitting with him. The king sent a man to him, but even before the messenger arrived, he said to the elders, “Do you not see how he has sent this son of a murderer to cut off my head? Look, when the messenger arrives, shut and bar the door against him. Is not the sound of his master’s feet behind him?”
33 As he was still talking, the messenger came down to him. He said, “This disaster is from the Lord. Why should I wait for the Lord any longer?”
Chapter 7
1 Elisha said, “Listen to the word of the Lord for thus says the Lord: By this time tomorrow a seah[c] of flour will sell for a shekel and two seahs of barley will sell for a shekel in the gates of Samaria.” 2 An officer on whose arm the king was leaning said to the man of God, “Behold, even if the Lord were to make windows in the heavens, how could this happen.” He answered, “Behold, your eyes will see it, but you will not eat any of it.”
Lepers at the Gate. 3 There were four lepers at the entrance to the city gate, and they said to one another, “Why are we sitting here until we die?[d] 4 If we say, ‘Let us go into the city,’ there is famine in the city. We would die there. If we continue to sit here, we will die just the same. Let us go and surrender to the army of the Arameans. If they let us live, then we will live, but if they kill us, then we will die.”
5 At dusk they got up and went into the camp of the Arameans. When they arrived at the edge of the Aramean camp, they did not find anyone. 6 The Lord had made the Aramean army hear the sound of chariots and the sound of horses and the sound of a large army. They said to one another, “The king of Israel has paid the Hittite kings and the Egyptian kings to attack us.” 7 They arose at dusk and fled, abandoning their tents, their horses, and their donkeys, leaving their camp as it was. They fled for their lives.
8 These lepers reached the edge of the camp, and they entered one of the tents where they ate and drank and carried away silver, gold, and clothing. They went off and hid it, and they then entered another tent and carried off things from it as well. They went and hid those things.
9 They then said to one another, “What we are doing today is not right. It is a day of good news, and we are keeping it to ourselves. If we wait until the morning, will we not be punished? Come on, let us go and inform the king’s household.”
10 So they went and called out to the city gatekeeper, saying, “We have come from the Aramean camp, and there was no one there, not a sound from anyone. Yet, the horses are tied up, and the donkeys are tied up, and the tents are the way they were.”
11 The gatekeepers shouted out the news, and it was heard in the king’s palace. 12 The king got up during the night and he said to his servants, “I will explain to you what the Arameans have done to us. They knew that we were hungry, so they left the camp and hid in the field, saying, ‘When they come out from the city, we will catch them alive and take the city.’ ”
13 One of his servants said, “Let some men take five of the horses that are left in the city. Their fate will be the same as the rest of the Israelites who are left here, for the rest of the Israelites are doomed as well. Let us send them to see.”
14 End of the Siege. The king chose two chariots with their horses, and he sent them after the Aramean army saying, “Go and see!” 15 They followed them to the Jordan, and all along the way they found garments and equipment that the Arameans had thrown away in their haste. The messengers returned and reported it to the king.
16 The people went out and they plundered the tents of the Arameans. A seah of flour sold for one shekel, and two seahs of barley sold for one shekel, as the Lord had said.
17 Now the king had placed the officer on whose arm he leaned in charge of the gate, and the people trampled him in the gateway, as the man of God had foretold when the king had visited him.
18 And so what the man of God had said to the king came true, for he said, “Two seahs of barley will sell for a shekel, and a seah of flour will sell for a shekel at this time tomorrow in the gates of Samaria.” 19 The officer had said to the man of God, “Behold, even if the Lord were to make windows in the heavens, how could this happen,” and he had answered, “Behold, your eyes will see it, but you will not eat any of it.” 20 This is exactly what happened, for the people trampled him in the gateway and he died.
Chapter 8
Famine Predicted. 1 Now Elisha spoke to the woman whose son he had restored to life, saying, “You and your household must get up and go to dwell wherever you can, for the Lord has called a famine down upon the land, and it will last for seven years.”
2 The woman rose up and did what the man of God had told her to do. She and her household went and dwelt in the land of the Philistines for seven years. 3 At the end of seven years, the woman returned from the land of the Philistines. She went to the king and begged for her house and her land.
4 The king had been talking to Gehazi, the servant of the man of God, and he had said, “Please tell me all of the great things that Elisha has done.” 5 Just as he was recounting to the king how he had restored a dead body to life, the woman whose son he had restored to life beseeched the king for her house and her land. Gehazi said, “My lord, O king, this is the woman whose son Elisha restored to life.”
6 The king questioned the woman about it, and she told him about it. The king assigned an official for her case, saying, “Restore everything to her, including the produce from the field from the day she left the land up until the present.”
Ben-hadad’s Death Foretold. 7 Elisha went to Damascus, to Ben-hadad, the king of the Arameans, who was ill. He was told, “The man of God has come here.”
8 The king said to Hazael, “Take a present with you and go and meet the man of God. Inquire of the Lord through him, asking, ‘Will I recover from this illness?’ ”
9 Hazael went to meet him, and he took a present of forty camel loads of the finest products of Damascus with him. He stood before him and said, “Ben-hadad the king of Aram, has sent me to you, saying, ‘Will I recover from this illness?’ ” 10 Elisha answered, “Go and say to him, ‘You will surely recover,’ for the Lord has revealed to me that he will surely die.”[e]
11 He continued to stare at him until he became embarrassed. The man of God then began to weep. 12 Hazael asked, “Why is my lord weeping?” He answered, “Because I know what harm you will do to the Israelites. You will burn down their strongholds, you will put their young men to the sword, you will dash their children to the ground, and you will rip open their pregnant women.” 13 Hazael said, “But how could your servant, who is nothing more than a dog,[f] do such a great thing?” Elisha answered, “The Lord has revealed to me that you will be the king of Aram.”
14 He left Elisha and went back to his master who said to him, “What did Elisha say to you?” He answered, “He told me that you will surely recover.” 15 The next day he took a thick cloth and soaked it in water. He placed it over the king’s face, so that he died. Hazael then reigned in his stead.
16 Reign of Joram of Judah. In the fifth year of the reign of Joram, the son of Ahab, the king of Israel, when Jehoshaphat was the king of Judah, Joram, the son of Jehoshaphat, began to reign over Judah. 17 He was thirty-two years old when he began to reign, and he reigned for eight years in Jerusalem. 18 He walked in the ways of the kings of Israel, as the house of Ahab had, for the daughter of Ahab was his wife. He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. 19 Yet, the Lord would not destroy Judah for the sake of David, his servant, for he had promised to give a light to him and his children forever.
20 During his reign, Edom rebelled against Judah and set up their own king. 21 Joram went to Zair with all of his chariots. He rose up during the night and attacked the Edomites who had surrounded him. The captains of his chariots and his army fled back home. 22 Edom has been in a state of rebellion against Judah up to the present. Libnah rebelled at the same time.
23 As for the other deeds of Joram, what he did, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah?
24 Joram slept with his fathers, and he was buried with his fathers in the City of David, and Ahaziah, his son, reigned in his stead.
25 Ahaziah Rules Judah. Ahaziah, the son of Joram, began to reign as the king of Judah during the twelfth year of the reign of Joram, the son of Ahab, the king of Israel. 26 Ahaziah was twenty-two years old when he began to reign, and he reigned in Jerusalem for one year. His mother’s name was Athaliah. She was the daughter of Omri, the king of Israel.[g] 27 He walked in the ways of the house of Ahab and did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, as the house of Ahab had, for he was the son-in-law of the house of Ahab.
28 He went to war against Hazael, the king of Aram, at Ramoth-gilead along with Joram, the son of Ahab. The Arameans wounded Joram. 29 Joram returned to Jezreel to recover from the wounds he had received from the Arameans at Ramoth when he fought against Hazael, the king of the Arameans.
Ahaziah, the son of Joram, the king of Judah, went down to visit Joram, the son of Ahab, in Jezreel because he was ill.
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