2 Kings 7:1-20
7 * But Elishaʽ said “Listen to Jehovah’s word. Says Jehovah, Right away tomorrow, farina twelve quarts for a shekel and barley three pecks for a shekel in the gate of Samaria.”
2 * And the adjutant on whose arm the king leaned answered Elishaʽ “Here is Jehovah making hatchways in the sky! will any such thing happen?” and he said “You will find yourself looking on at it but not eating any of it.”
3 And there were four men on the outside of the gate, lepers; and they said to each other “What are we sitting here till we die for?
4 If we think we will go into the city, when the famine is in the city, then we die there; and if we stay here, then we die; come on now, let us desert to the Syrian camp: if they spare our lives we shall live, and if they put us to death, then we die”;
5 and they rose in the morning twilight to go to the Syrian camp. And they came to the edge of the Syrian camp and found that there was not a man there,
6 but the Lord had caused the Syrian army to hear a sound of chariots and of ponies, the sound of a large body of troops, and they had said to each other “Here the king of Israel has hired against us the kings of the Hittites and the kings of Egypt to come against us”—
7 * and they had made off in the morning twilight and left their tents and their donkeys, the camp as it was, and fled for their lives.
8 And these lepers came to the edge of the camp and went into a tent and ate and drank, and took away from there silver and gold and clothes and went and buried them, and went back and went into another tent and took things away from there and went and buried them.
9 * And they said to each other “We are not doing right: this is a day of good news, and we are lying still and shall be waiting till morning daylight and suffering for it. Come on now, let us report to the palace.”
10 * And they came and called to the city gatemen, and told them “We have gone into the Syrian camp and found not a man there, nor a human sound, but the ponies tied and the donkeys tied and the tents as they were.”
11 And the gatemen called out and reported it to the palace inside;
12 and the king got up in the night and said to his officers “Let me tell you what the Syrians have done with us: they know we are starving, and they have gone out of the camp to hide out in the country, thinking ‘When they come out of the city we shall capture them alive and get into the city.’”
13 * But one of his officers answered “Then let them get out half a dozen of the remaining ponies that are left here—they are just like all the drove that are gone—and let us send and see.”
14 And they got out two teams of ponies, and the king sent them after the Syrian army, telling them “Go and see”;
15 and they went after them to the Jordan, and found all the road full of clothes and things that the Syrians had thrown away in their haste; and the messengers came back and reported to the king.
16 And the people went out and plundered the Syrian camp; and farina was twelve quarts for a shekel, and barley three pecks for a shekel, in accordance with Jehovah’s promise.
17 * And the king put in charge of the gate the adjutant on whose arm he had leaned; and the people trampled him to death in the gate, as the man of God had predicted when the king came down to him.
18 As the man of God had said to the king “Barley shall be three pecks for a shekel, and farina twelve quarts for a shekel, in the gate of Samaria right away tomorrow,”
19 * and the adjutant had answered the man of God “But here is Jehovah making hatchways in the sky; will such a thing as this happen?” and he had said “You are to see it with your own eyes, but you will not eat any of it,”
20 so it befell him: the people trampled him to death in the gate.
Footnotes
^ 7:1 A shekel was about half a dollar
^ 7:2 Or Suppose Jehovah makes hatchways in the sky, will
^ 7:7 Var. in the camp as
^ 7:9 Var. let us go in and report
^ 7:10 Var. to the city gate
^ 7:13 Codd. the drove, Israel, that
^ 7:17 Var. had predicted, what he had predicted when
^ 7:19 Or answered the man of God “Even supposing Jehovah makes hatchways in the sky, will
