2 Kings 7
Remember at the end of the last post, Samaria has been besieged by Aram and the city is close to collapse. The king is getting desperate, when Elisha says that food will be plentiful in the city as soon as tomorrow.
There were 4 lepers living in a small colony close to the city walls of Samaria and they are starving to death, so they figure to go down to the Aramean army camp and accept either food to go away or a quick death from a weapon, they really have nothing to lose at this point.
God had caused the Arameans to hear the sound of a massive attacking army with chariots and horsemen and a great army - the Arameans had assumed that Israel had got help from Egypt or the Hittites, panicked and fled trampling each other in their haste to get away leaving all their gear and supplies behind them.
The lepers came into camp, finding nobody helped themselves to clothes and silver and food, came back for seconds before they said - "Do you think we should tell them in the city?"
They shouted to the guards on the wall and word was reported to the king.
The king sent out scouts to find what the Arameans had done - they found scattered military gear dropped all the way to the river Jordan but no sign of the army.
Word reached the citizenry of Samaria who ploughed straight into the camp and plundered it. very soon food was again cheap and plentiful.
The final irony is the captain of the guard who had commented that he did not believe that God would do this was standing in the city gateway and got trampled to death by the rush of people going out of the gate into the camp, thus he saw food going cheap, but was not able to taste any of it.
One thing on this story that strikes me, during the time of Solomon there was peace with a strong king endowed with wisdom, now the land has deteriorated to that the capital city of Israel is under siege
Remember at the end of the last post, Samaria has been besieged by Aram and the city is close to collapse. The king is getting desperate, when Elisha says that food will be plentiful in the city as soon as tomorrow.
There were 4 lepers living in a small colony close to the city walls of Samaria and they are starving to death, so they figure to go down to the Aramean army camp and accept either food to go away or a quick death from a weapon, they really have nothing to lose at this point.
God had caused the Arameans to hear the sound of a massive attacking army with chariots and horsemen and a great army - the Arameans had assumed that Israel had got help from Egypt or the Hittites, panicked and fled trampling each other in their haste to get away leaving all their gear and supplies behind them.
The lepers came into camp, finding nobody helped themselves to clothes and silver and food, came back for seconds before they said - "Do you think we should tell them in the city?"
They shouted to the guards on the wall and word was reported to the king.
The king sent out scouts to find what the Arameans had done - they found scattered military gear dropped all the way to the river Jordan but no sign of the army.
Word reached the citizenry of Samaria who ploughed straight into the camp and plundered it. very soon food was again cheap and plentiful.
The final irony is the captain of the guard who had commented that he did not believe that God would do this was standing in the city gateway and got trampled to death by the rush of people going out of the gate into the camp, thus he saw food going cheap, but was not able to taste any of it.
One thing on this story that strikes me, during the time of Solomon there was peace with a strong king endowed with wisdom, now the land has deteriorated to that the capital city of Israel is under siege
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