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is with such thoughts in our minds that we must study the history of the siege and
miraculous relief of Samaria.
Ben-hadad was once more laying siege to Samaria (comp. 1 Kings 20). And to such
straits was the city reduced that not only levitically unclean but the most repulsive
kind of meat fetched a price which in ordinary times would have been extravagant
for the most abundant supply of daintiest food, while the coarsest material for
cooking it sold at a proportionally high rate. It must have been from want of
provender for them that such beasts of burden as asses, so common and useful in the
East, were killed. Even their number must have been terribly diminished (Comp. 2
Kings 7:13) when an ass's head would sell for eighty pieces of silver (variously
computed at from 5 pounds to 8 pounds), and a "cab^234 of doves' dung"^235 - used
when dried as material for firing - for five pieces of silver (computed at from 6/ to
10/^236 ).
If such were the straits to which the wealthier were reduced, we can imagine the
sufferings of the poor. But only the evidence of those who themselves were actors in
it could have made any one believe in the possibility of such a tragedy as that to the
tale of which King Joram was to listen. While making the round of the broad city
wall (the glacis), probably to encourage as well as to inspect the defenders of the
city, and to observe the movements of the enemy, he was arrested by the cry for help
of a frenzied woman. Probably too much accustomed to the state of famine and
misery, the king uttered an ejaculation, indicative not only of the general distress
prevailing in the city, but of his own state of mind. His words seem to imply that he
felt Jehovah alone could give help,^237 perhaps that he had some dim expectation of it,
but that the LORD withheld from sending it for some reason for which neither king
nor people were to blame.
As we view it in the light of his after-conduct (comp. vv. 31-33), King Joram
connected the straits of Samaria with the prophet Elisha, - either they were due to his
direct agency, or else to his failure to make intercession for Israel. Such ignorance of
the spiritual aspect of God's dealings, even when they are recognized, together with
an unhumbled state of heart, unwillingness to return to God, and the ascription of the
evils befalling us to the opposite of their true cause, are only too common in that
sorrow which Holy Scripture characterizes as "of the world," and working "death."
The horrible story which the woman told to the king was that she and another had
made the agreement that each of them was successively to kill her son for a meal in
which they two were to share; that the one had fulfilled her part of the bargain, but
that, after partaking of the dreadful feast, the other had hidden her son. Whether or
not the feelings of motherhood had thus tardily asserted themselves in the second
mother, or whether, in the avarice of her hunger, she wished to reserve for herself
(^)