33 SAMARIA BESIEGED

In the previous lesson we learned how Elisha, through recommending the act of kindness to give Israel’s enemies a feast rather than killing them dismissed the Aramean army. The Aramean army then left Samaria, returned to Aram and stopped raiding Israeli territory. Now time has passed and that policy has evidently changed. In fact, the Arameans now lay siege to Samaria. How God provides for the Israelites is another wonderful miracle. We will see how God announced and then performed a miraculous deliverance through Elisha. This and the next lesson seek to learn from the siege and how Elisha was used as God delivered Samaria. We will notice that God is working and Elisha serves as the mouthpiece. This is typical of the ministry of a prophet. God needs a mouthpiece to help people understand what He is doing and what they must do to fit in with His plans. It does not seem that Elisha is initiating or starting anything. God is working in human history.

Even though Israel had fed the Aramean army a feast and sent them freely on their way, still, after the passing of some time, Ben-Hadad king of Aram went to attack Israel and lays a siege on Samaria. This reduced the city to great distress. The Arameans had soon forgotten the kindnesses they had recently received in Samaria. Very ungratefully, for what appears to be without any provocation, they tried to conquer it, as verse 24 says, the king “mobilized his entire army and marched up and laid siege to Samaria.” There are evil people who give way to evil spirits so that no matter how you try to please or placate them they can never feel any obligation to treat you kindly in return. If we wanted to make a spiritual application of this fact we could easily observe that that is the way the devil is, not that we would ever to try to please him! God is a good God and the devil is a bad devil.

The whole country, we may suppose, was plundered and laid waste when this capital city was brought to the last extremity as verse 25 says, “There was a great famine in the city; the siege lasted so long that a donkey’s head sold for eighty shekels of silver, and a quarter of a cab of seed pods for five shekels.” The dearth which had lately been in the land was probably the reason for the emptiness of their stores, unless the siege was so sudden that they did not have time to gather provisions. The famine could not, however, be the original true cause of this invasion because we will learn that there were ample provisions in the camp of the Arameans. At any rate, while the sword devoured outside the city, the famine inside the city was even more grievous just as Jeremiah, who lived at another time in Jerusalem, not Samaria, laments in Lamentations 4:9,10 “Those killed by the sword are better off than those who die of famine; racked with hunger, they waste away for lack of food from the field. 10 With their own hands compassionate women have cooked their own children, who became their food when my people were destroyed.” 

It seems, the Syrians did not intend to storm the city, but to starve it. So great was the scarcity of food that a donkey’s head, that has only a little flesh in it, does not taste good, is not wholesome to eat and is ceremoniously unclean, was sold for eighty-five shekels, and a small quantity of lentils, or some such coarse corn, possibly then called dove’s dung, for five pieces of silver. This is only a small and practical lesson, but nevertheless it would be good for us to learn to value food supplies when we have them, and to be thankful for them, because we will see that money has no value in time of famine when there is no food. It is so freely parted with for anything eatable.

A story about a poor woman is inserted for us readers to feel the severity of the famine. The sad complaint which a poor woman had to make to the king, in the extremity of the famine is recorded. The king was passing by on the wall to give orders for the mounting of the guard, the posting of the archers, the repair of the breaches, and this sort of thing, when a woman of the city cried out to him, as recorded in verse 26, “As the king of Israel was passing by on the wall, a woman cried to him, ‘Help me, my lord the king!’” Actually, the woman did the right thing. Where else should the subject, in distress, go for help but to the king, who is, by his position, the protector of right and the avenger of wrong? But the poor man could not respond with anything encouraging. Verse 27 says, “The king replied, ‘If the Lord does not help you, where can I get help for you? From the threshing floor? From the winepress?’” Was it a quarreling or argumentative response or merely the language of anxiety? This was as though to ask “Why do you expect anything from me, when God Himself deals in this difficult way with us like this?” Because he could not help her as he would have wanted to, out of the floor where grain was thrashed or the press where wine was processed, he could not help her at all. And the lesson for leaders today is that we should be careful not to be angry by our afflictions with those for whom we are responsible. When suffering occurs like this, we all are suffering and the leader can show the best attitude possible so that on top of the affliction there is not added another of a griping, complaining noisy crowd. Could leaders rather give a quieting or comforting word? Let us try to be content, and make the best of our affliction, looking up to God, for, until He helps us, I cannot help. We do not know if that was his meaning or if he was adding to the affliction.  At any rate, he laments the emptiness of the floor and the wine-press. These were not as they had been; even the king’s storage room evidently failed.

In the previous lesson in this series we read of the great provisions which the king of Samaria had used. They had been sufficient for the entertainment of an entire army, yet now he does not have enough to relieve one poor hungry woman. In any case, the king acknowledges himself completely unable to help, unless God would help them. That was wise because it was true. On the other hand, though he cannot help her, he is willing to hear her. Verse 28 tells us, “Then he asked her, ‘What’s the matter?’” It is one thing not to be able to help and yet be willing to help and quite another to be able to help, but not willing. This king, though generally evil and resistant to God, was, in his abasement at the poor condition of his city and his people, at least, willing to hear the request of this woman citizen. “Then he asked her, ‘What’s the matter?’” as though to be asking is there anything unique or specific in your case? Are you any worse off than your neighbors? And to this question the distressed woman replies with ‘Truly, yes.’ She and one of her neighbors had made a horrible agreement, that, all provisions failing, they would boil and eat her son first and then her neighbor’s. Her’s was eaten. Can you imagine the agony of eating the boiled flesh of your own child? Who can think of it without horror? And now her neighbor, who had agreed to surrender her’s, instead hid her’s. “She answered, ‘This woman said to me, “Give up your son so we may eat him today, and tomorrow we’ll eat my son.” 29 So we cooked my son and ate him. The next day I said to her, “Give up your son so we may eat him,” but she had hidden him.’”

Hunger drives a person to think of extreme measures for the preservation of life. These women were ruled by their flesh not by a right spirit. The most natural affections of the mind can be overpowered by the natural appetites of the body. If we look at Deuteronomy 28:53-57, we can see that this very sad situation was the consequences of Israel’s own sin. That says, “53 Because of the suffering your enemy will inflict on you during the siege, you will eat the fruit of the womb, the flesh of the sons and daughters the Lord your God has given you. 54 Even the most gentle and sensitive man among you will have no compassion on his own brother or the wife he loves or his surviving children, 55 and he will not give to one of them any of the flesh of his children that he is eating. It will be all he has left because of the suffering your enemy will inflict on you during the siege of all your cities. 56 The most gentle and sensitive woman among you—so sensitive and gentle that she would not venture to touch the ground with the sole of her foot—will begrudge the husband she loves and her own son or daughter 57 the afterbirth from her womb and the children she bears. For in her dire need she intends to eat them secretly because of the suffering your enemy will inflict on you during the siege of your cities.” See the Word of God fulfilled; among the threatenings of God’s judgments on Israel for their sins. This cannibalism, eating the flesh of another human, even the flesh of one’s own child, had been foretold. One would think it incredible, yet it happened.

This next part of the story is illogical and does not make sense. The king lamented the sad situation, but instead of seeking God, repenting, humbling himself before the prophet or any of this more reasonable, correct or noble sort of thing, he is angry with Elisha and evidently also angry at God. The king lamented the calamity, as one heartily concerned for the misery of his people, and that it was not in his power to help them; but he did not lament his own iniquity, nor the iniquity of his people, which was the basic cause of the calamity. He was not prudent to acknowledge that his own ways and his doings had brought this to himself and his people; this was due to his own wickedness. Instead of vowing to pull down the idolatrous golden calves at Dan and Bethel, or enforcing the law against the false prophets of Baal and Asheroth, he swears the death of Elisha.“He said, ‘May God deal with me, be it ever so severely, if the head of Elisha son of Shaphat remains on his shoulders today!’” (31) Why? What is the matter? What had Elisha done? His head is the most innocent and valuable in all Israel, and yet he is to be made a curse.

In this same way in the days of the Christian-persecuting Roman Emperors, when the empire groaned under any extraordinary calamity, the fault was laid on the Christians, and they were doomed to destruction. Did the idolatrous Romans turn from their idolatry? No! Instead, they cried out, “Away with the Christians to the lions.” Perhaps Joram was in this heat against Elisha because Elisha had foretold this judgment, or had persuaded him to hold out, and not surrender. Or, as was more likely, it was because Elisha did not, by his prayers, remove the siege and relieve the city, which Joram, though he by repenting from his sin could do but would not do. In actuality, until the Israeli idol worshippers in Samaria repented, turned to God, reformed, and were then ready for deliverance, they had no reason to expect that the prophet should pray for it.

God gave Elisha advance notice that someone would come to take his head. The advance knowledge Elisha had of the king’s plan against him is recorded in verse 32, “Now Elisha was sitting in his house and the elders were sitting with him. The king sent a messenger ahead, but before he arrived, Elisha said to the elders, ‘Don’t you see how this murderer is sending someone to cut off my head? Look, when the messenger comes, shut the door and hold it shut against him. Is not the sound of his master’s footsteps behind him?’” Elisha sat in his house well composed with the elders with him, while the angry and irrational king was like a wild bull in a net, or like the troubled sea when it cannot rest. Elisha told the elders there was an officer coming from the king to cut off his head, and told them to stop him at the door, and not let him in. The reason for this was that the king, his master, was just following him. What was the king going to do to add to or change what the messenger was going to say? The same spirit of prophecy that enabled Elisha to tell him what was done at a distance authorized him now to call the king the son of a murderer. Is that the way to talk about the king? Unless we clearly have such an extraordinary commission, it is not for us to talk this way to or about governmental leaders.

Elisha appealed to the elders as to whether he had deserved such bad treatment from the king. Was the king right or am I innocent? What wrong had Elisha done? None that we know of. As Jeremiah said in Jeremiah 17:16, “I have not run away from being your shepherd; you know I have not desired the day of despair. What passes my lips is open before you.” The important words are: “you know I have not desired the day of despair.” Neither did Elisha desire the day of despair any more than Jeremiah would. These prophets did not want evil to come; they simply announced God’s righteous judgments. It was not wrong for Elisha to speak against evil in Joram’s day. To not do it would have been to fail in his task. Doing so did not make Elisha worthy of death. Yet doing so put Elisha’ life was now at risk.

The king evidently changed his mind and decided not to kill Elisha and followed the messenger in order to change the message and prevent Elisha’s death. He seems to have been in a struggle between his inner convictions and his outward corruptions. He did not know what to say, but, seeing things brought to the last extremity of hunger in the city, he even abandoned himself to despair and said, “This disaster is from the Lord.” He was correct. God was judging the city and largely for his sin. It is generally true that all judgments are of the Lord and it is our responsibility to apply that principle to particular cases. Here is the logic: if all evil, then this evil, whatever it is we are now groaning under, whoever are the instruments, God is the principal Agent of it.

He was correct so far, but the next thing he says shows he does not truly understand the whole picture. He wrongly says, “Why should I wait for the Lord any longer?” His inference from this truth he had just acknowledged was foolish and wicked: “Why should I wait for the Lord any longer?” Because God is just, fair. Wait for Him. Wait on Him. Don’t act quickly or rashly. See what God, the righteous Judge will do. When Eli, David and Job, said, It is of the Lord, they grew patient and waited on God, but this bad man grew outrageous. “I will neither fear worse nor expect better, for worse cannot come and better will never come: we are all undone, and there is no remedy.” Our lesson? It is an unreasonable thing to be weary of waiting for God, for He is a God of fair judgment, and blessed are all those that wait for him.

Elisha foretells that, in spite of the present great difficulties to which the city of Samaria is reduced, yet within twenty-four hours everyone will have plenty. That did not seem likely, but that is what Elisha said, “Elisha replied, ‘Hear the word of the Lord. This is what the Lord says: “About this time tomorrow, a seah of the finest flour will sell for a shekel and two seahs of barley for a shekel at the gate of Samaria.”’” (7:1) The king of Israel grew weary of waiting and abandoned all hope and just then Elisha foretold abundance right when things were at their worst.

Man’s extremity is God’s opportunity to magnify His own power. His time to appear for His people is when their strength is gone. “Why should I wait for the Lord any longer?” And perhaps some of the elders were ready to say the same. “Well,” says Elisha, “you hear what these say; now hear you the word of the Lord, hear what He says, hear it and heed it and believe it. Tomorrow corn will be sold at the usual price in the gate of Samaria;” that is, the siege will end; the gate of the city will be opened, and the market will be held as usual. The consequence of that will be great plenty. This would happen, in time, they might imagine, but that corn should be so cheap in so short a time was totally beyond what could be thought. The king of Israel had just now threatened Elisha’s life, but God promises to save his life and the lives of his people. What a God!

An officer of Israel who escorted the king openly declared his disbelief in this prediction. He was a right-hand man on whose prudence the king evidently relied. He thought it impossible, unless God should rain corn out of the clouds, as once He did manna. He thought that no less than the repetition of Moses’s miracle will serve make this happen. Had he forgotten or did he not know about the miracle of provision in which Elisha had already been involved? Anyway, he strongly disbelieved and we must wait for the next lesson to see what happens to him.

That doom is announced now by Elisha; that he would see this great plenty and yet not eat of it. Unbelief is a sin by which men greatly dishonor and displease God, in addition to depriving themselves of the favors He designed and wants to give them. The murmuring Israelites saw Canaan, but could not enter because of unbelief. And today some see heaven at a distance, but will not enter it because of their unbelief. Lord, give us the chance to experience what we see by faith.

This has been a lesson about the need to wait and trust rather than disbelieve and complain.