Famine in Samaria
Ben-hadad of Aram besieged Samaria, and the siege was long and brutal. The famine that resulted inside the city reached the extremity that ancient siege accounts describe when a city's supplies were entirely exhausted. A donkey's head sold for eighty shekels of silver — a donkey being an unclean animal, already degraded as food — and a small measure of dove's dung sold for five shekels. When the king of Israel passed on the wall, a woman cried out to him: my lord, save me. He answered: if the LORD will not save you, where shall I find help for you? But she told him her story. She and another woman had agreed to boil her son and eat him one day, then the other woman's son the next. They had boiled and eaten her son, and now the other woman had hidden her son. The king of Israel tore his clothes and the people saw that he had sackcloth beneath them on his skin — he had been in private mourning all along.
He turned his anger on Elisha and swore to take off his head before the day was out. When the royal messenger came to Elisha's house, Elisha told the elders with him: do you see how this son of a murderer has sent to take off my head? He told them to shut the door when the messenger arrived and hold it against him, for the king himself was following behind. Then he made a declaration:
"Hear the word of the LORD: thus says the LORD, Tomorrow about this time a seah of fine flour shall be sold for a shekel, and two seahs of barley for a shekel, at the gate of Samaria." — 2 Kings 7:1 (ESV)
The king's officer who was leaning on his arm responded with scornful skepticism: if the LORD himself made windows in heaven, could this thing be? Elisha told him: you shall see it with your own eyes, but you shall not eat of it.
Four Lepers and an Empty Camp
Four men who were lepers sat at the city gate. They reasoned aloud with each other: if we stay here we die; if we go into the city we die of famine; if we go over to the Aramean camp, if they spare us we live, if they kill us we die — we have nothing to lose. They set out at twilight toward the Aramean camp. But when they reached the edge of the camp, there was no one there. The LORD had caused the Aramean army to hear the sound of chariots and horses and a great army. Ben-hadad's troops had said to one another: the king of Israel has hired the Hittite kings and the Egyptian kings to come against us. They had fled at twilight, leaving their tents, their horses, their donkeys, the camp as it was, and fled for their lives.
The four lepers entered a tent, ate and drank, carried off silver and gold and clothing and went and hid them, then came back and entered another tent and carried off more. Then they said to each other: "We are not doing right. This day is a day of good news. If we are silent and wait until the morning light, punishment will overtake us. Now therefore come; let us go and tell the king's household." They went and called to the gatekeepers and reported what they had found: the Aramean camp was abandoned, the horses and donkeys still tied, the tents still standing. Gatekeepers reported to the palace.
The king suspected an ambush — the Arameans had gone into the field to hide, planning to rush the city when Israel came out. An officer suggested sending five of the remaining horses to investigate; if they died it would be no worse than what would happen anyway inside the starving city. The messengers followed the Aramean tracks all the way to the Jordan and found the road littered with garments and equipment that the army had thrown off in their panic. The people went out and plundered the Aramean camp. A seah of fine flour sold for a shekel and two seahs of barley for a shekel, as the LORD had spoken through Elisha.
The king had appointed his officer — the skeptic who had said "even if the LORD makes windows in heaven, could this be?" — to be in charge of the gate. The people trampled him in the rush and he died. He had seen the abundance with his eyes but did not eat of it, exactly as Elisha had said.
What strikes us about the four lepers is who they were. Ritually unclean, marginal, acting purely from self-interest. They discovered the empty camp and then chose to share the news rather than keep the plunder — and their choice saved Samaria. Not prophets, not soldiers, not officials. Four sick men sitting at the gate who had nothing to lose. That's who God used to fulfill Elisha's word. We find it significant that the narrator doesn't romanticize them; they weren't acting nobly at first. They acted out of fear of punishment. And still God used it.
The Shunammite and the Restored Land
Elisha spoke to the Shunammite woman whose son he had restored to life: go sojourn wherever you can, for the LORD has called for a famine and it will come upon the land for seven years. She arose and did as the man of God said, going with her household to the land of the Philistines for seven years. When the seven years were over she returned and went to appeal to the king for her house and her land. The king was at that moment speaking with Gehazi — the timing, the narrator implies, was not accidental. "Tell me all the great things Elisha has done," the king was saying. As Gehazi was telling him about the raising of the dead son, the very woman arrived with her son to appeal for the house and land. Gehazi said: "My lord, O king, here is the woman, and here is her son whom Elisha restored to life." The king asked the woman, and she told him. He appointed an official for her case and ordered her restored everything that was hers, plus all the produce of her fields from the day she left the land.
The episode is brief but pointed. The Shunammite woman had already received the greatest gift Elisha gave her — her son's life. Now the smaller gift of land restoration followed, through a bureaucratic coincidence that placed her story in the king's hearing at exactly the right moment. Kings presents this alignment as governance shaped by the unseen movements of God's word. Providence working through ordinary institutional processes.
Hazael and the Death of Ben-hadad
Ben-hadad king of Aram fell sick. He heard that Elisha was in Damascus and sent Hazael with a gift — forty camel-loads of the best things in Damascus — and instructed him to inquire of the man of God whether he would recover from the illness. Hazael went and stood before Elisha and brought the question. Elisha answered: "Go, say to him, 'You shall certainly recover,' but the LORD has shown me that he shall certainly die." Elisha fixed his gaze on Hazael steadily until Hazael was ashamed. Then Elisha wept.
Hazael asked why he wept. Elisha said: "Because I know the evil that you will do to the people of Israel. You will set on fire their fortresses, and you will kill their young men with the sword and dash in pieces their little ones and rip open their pregnant women." Hazael was incredulous: what is your servant, who is but a dog, that he should do this great thing? Elisha answered: "The LORD has shown me that you are to be king over Syria." Hazael went back to his master and told him the prophet had said he would recover. The next day he took the coverlet, dipped it in water, and spread it over Ben-hadad's face until he died. Hazael became king.
The scene is morally complex in ways that the text acknowledges without resolving. Elisha wept at the violence Hazael would do. He knew, and he watched the man leave, and the violence happened as he had seen. The LORD had told him Hazael would be king — this was not a prediction Elisha was inventing, but a disclosure of what God had already determined. The instrument of judgment against Israel would be the very man Elisha was now looking at. The grief in the prophet's tears was not powerlessness but the specific anguish of seeing clearly what was coming and bearing the knowledge.
This is the fulfillment of what God commissioned Elijah at Horeb in 1 Kings 19 — "anoint Hazael to be king over Syria" was one of the three tasks. Through Elisha, the work continues even after Elijah's departure. The word given to Elijah on the mountain travels forward through his successor. God's word outlasts any single prophet's ministry.
We keep coming back to Elisha weeping. He was a prophet. He had the word of God. He knew what was coming. And he wept. That's not weakness — that's what it looks like to carry the knowledge of coming suffering without being made callous by it. The knowledge didn't harden him. He still felt it. We find that worth holding onto.
Last updated: March 3, 2026.
Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.