Tag Archives: Siege of Samaria

2 Kings 17 The End of Samaria

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A neo-Assyrian relief of Assyrians in a procession, Photo by Denis Bourez in the Brittish Museum, London. Shared under CC 2.0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assyria#/media/File:Denis_Bourez_-_British_Museum,_London_(8748213226).jpg

2 Kings 17: 1-6 King Hoshea the Last King in Samaria and the End of the Northern Kingdom of Israel

 1 In the twelfth year of King Ahaz of Judah, Hoshea son of Elah began to reign in Samaria over Israel; he reigned nine years. 2 He did what was evil in the sight of the LORD, yet not like the kings of Israel who were before him. 3 King Shalmaneser of Assyria came up against him; Hoshea became his vassal and paid him tribute. 4 But the king of Assyria found treachery in Hoshea, for he had sent messengers to King So of Egypt and offered no tribute to the king of Assyria, as he had done year by year; therefore the king of Assyria confined him and imprisoned him.

  5 Then the king of Assyria invaded all the land and came to Samaria; for three years he besieged it. 6 In the ninth year of Hoshea the king of Assyria captured Samaria; he carried the Israelites away to Assyria. He placed them in Halah, on the Habor, the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.

The brief description of the reign of King Hoshea of Samaria, the capture of Samaria, and the scattering of the Northern Kingdom of Israel is accomplished in six terse verses. Yet, this major event will prompt a much longer reflection of the why the exile of Israel occurs and the resettlement of the land under the Assyrian king. The dissolution of the Kingdom of Samaria does not end the dream of a reunification of Judah and Israel among the prophetic imagination, but it does mark a significant shift in the narrative of 2 Kings. The bulk of 1 and 2 Kings to this point has focused on the events of the northern kingdom of Israel while it tracks the kings of Judah and the occasional event or interaction with the northern kingdom, but now after this chapter the entire focus of the narrator will orient on the remaining kingdom of Judah. The siege of Samaria, the capture of Israel and the dispersal of the population were traumatic for the people involved and the narrative of the book of Kings is designed to provide a theological rationale for this catastrophic event (and the eventual exile of Judah) among the people of the covenant.

King Hoshea comes to power around 732 BCE and roughly five years into his reign the powerful king Tiglath-pileser III dies and his son Shalmaneser V assumes control of the Assyrian empire. Shalmaneser V only reigns for five years, and it is possible that his replacement Sargon II is not his heir and that he meets a violent end. The transition to Shalmaneser V was likely viewed in the region as an opportunity for nations to extract themselves from Assyrian rule and King Hoshea’s withholding of tribute payments and appeals to King So of Egypt[1] are acts of rebellion that Shalmaneser V responds to violently by besieging Samaria and occupying the land. It is possible that Shalmaneser V dies during the three-year long siege and Sargon II completed it (Assyrian records seem to indicate this) but ultimately the result is the same. The destruction of Samaria, the exile of Israel and the resettlement of the land.

One would expect that the king of Samaria who reigns during the destruction of the nation would receive a harsh judgment, but instead he receives a more favorable judgment than any other northern king. His toned-down judgement is unique among the northern kings. Rabbinical commentators have often indicated that Hoshea paid off the tribute to Assyria by removing the golden statues in Bethel and Dan, and this was viewed favorably by the God of Israel and that Hoshea removed the barriers for people from Israel to worship in Jerusalem.[2] The narrator of the book of Kings also tends to view accommodation with the empire of the day as a sign of unfaithfulness so it the better, if not positive evaluation, may be in part due to the resistance of Hoshea to the king of Assyria.

In the aftermath of the fall of Samaria, 2 Kings describes the exile of the population to two places in modern day Iraq and one in modern day Iran. The Assyrians scattered captured populations to prevent a concentration in one area where they could rise against Assyria, but it also is likely that the entire population of northern Israel is not exiled. Some do apparently migrate to Judah and Alex Israel notes that archeology shows an increase in the population of Judah during this period. (Israel, 2019, p. 269) Other portions of the population likely remained in place and were mixed with the people that Assyrian resettled in the region. The northern tribes of Israel ceased to be a unified people, but that does not stop the prophets of Judah from imagining a future where Judah and Ephraim can be reunited as the people of God.[3]

2 Kings 17: 7-23 Theological Rationale for the Exile of Israel (Samaria)

  7 This occurred because the people of Israel had sinned against the LORD their God, who had brought them up out of the land of Egypt from under the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. They had worshiped other gods 8 and walked in the customs of the nations whom the LORD had driven out before the people of Israel and in the customs that the kings of Israel had introduced. 9 The people of Israel did things that were not right against the LORD their God. They built for themselves high places at all their towns, from watchtower to fortified city; 10 they set up for themselves pillars and sacred poles on every high hill and under every green tree; 11 there they made offerings on all the high places, as the nations did whom the LORD had carried away before them. They did wicked things, provoking the LORD to anger; 12 they served idols, of which the LORD had said to them, “You shall not do this.” 13 Yet the LORD warned Israel and Judah by every prophet and every seer, saying, “Turn from your evil ways and keep my commandments and my statutes, in accordance with all the law that I commanded your ancestors and that I sent to you by my servants the prophets.” 14 They would not listen but were stubborn, as their ancestors had been, who did not believe in the LORD their God. 15 They despised his statutes and his covenant that he had made with their ancestors and the warnings that he had given them. They went after false idols and became false; they followed the nations that were around them, concerning whom the LORD had commanded them that they should not do as they did. 16 They rejected all the commandments of the LORD their God and made for themselves cast images of two calves; they made a sacred pole, worshiped all the host of heaven, and served Baal. 17 They made their sons and their daughters pass through fire, used divination and augury, and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the LORD, provoking him to anger. 18 Therefore the LORD was very angry with Israel and removed them out of his sight; none was left but the tribe of Judah alone.
  19 Judah also did not keep the commandments of the LORD their God but walked in the customs that Israel had introduced. 20 The LORD rejected all the descendants of Israel; he punished them and gave them into the hand of plunderers, until he had banished them from his presence.
  21 When he had torn Israel from the house of David, they made Jeroboam son of Nebat king. Jeroboam drove Israel from following the LORD and made them commit great sin. 22 The people of Israel continued in all the sins that Jeroboam committed; they did not depart from them 23 until the LORD removed Israel out of his sight, as he had foretold through all his servants the prophets. So Israel was exiled from their own land to Assyria until this day.

The narrator of the book of Kings is both narrating the history of the kings of Israel and Judah (and by extension the people of both nations) but also looking back from two exilic events (the Assyrian exile of Israel and the Babylonian exile of Judah) and utilizing the historical narrative told through a theological lens to explain how the nation went from its highpoint as a unified kingdom under Solomon to Samaria’s scattering and Judah’s exile. At this first moment of crisis, the narrator steps back from the events to explain why this crisis occurred. The rise of Assyria may form the political background of the story, but through the lens of the narrator Assyria is merely a tool of the LORD because of the multiple sins of the people. The sins of the people of Israel, and Judah, are couched in the language of idolatry, a violation of the central commandment given to the Hebrew people whether in the Ten Commandments[4] or in the Shema[5]. As Choon-Leong Seow can state about this section of chapter seventeen:

The text is ultimately more than a justification of the doom that God brought upon a nation long ago. It is a homily to those of us for whom there is still an opportunity to do what is right. It is a homily about what happens when we violate the first commandment and betray God, from whom no secrets can be kept. (NIB III: 257)

The language of this section is the language of the covenant in Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy. The people worshipped other gods and adopted the practices of the nations that surrounded them. As people of the covenant, they were intended to be a treasured possession, a priestly nation, and a holy people,[6] but instead they have become indistinguishable from the people the LORD drove out before them in the book of Joshua. The language seems to be hyperbole with the statement of setting up high places in all their towns and sacred poles on every high hill and under every green tree, but the intent of this section is to convey the pervasiveness of the corruption of Israel and Judah. From the Golden Calf during the exodus,[7] to the sins of Jeroboam constructing the golden calves at Bethel and Dan [8], to the practices of Ahab opposed by Elijah, and finally to this moment of exile the people have continued to violate the commandments and statutes of the LORD their God.

The command not to worship other gods or to adopt the practices of the land is one of the most frequently repeated injunctions throughout the law. Deuteronomy 18: 9-11 is a representative example which our text echoes:

 “When you come into the land that the LORD your God is giving you, you must not learn to imitate the abhorrent practices of those nations. No one shall be found among you who makes a son or daughter pass through fire, or who practices divination, or is a soothsayer, or an augur, or a sorcerer,  or one who casts spells, or who consults ghosts or spirits, or who seeks oracles from the dead.

The people of Israel and Judah have gone after the false practices of the nations and they have become false. They have worshipped idols who were false instead of worshipping the God who is unseen but real. The word translated false by the NRSVue is the Hebrew word hebel (or hevel) which is famously translated in Ecclesiastes as ‘vanity.’ Hebel is an evanescent word which means wind, vapor, smoke, or mist and is something transitory that cannot be grasped onto.[9] Walter Brueggemann picks up on this when he says of the people, “They worshipped “vapor” and they became vapor”” (Brueggemann, 2000, p. 480)

Even though the narrator of 1 and 2 Kings rarely notes the existence of the prophets who we have in the bible (after Elijah and Elisha), the last several chapters have been times when the biblical books of Amos, Hosea, Micah, and the first section of Isaiah address. There are prophets active in both Israel and Judah, in addition to the seers mentioned which also paint a troubled future with the LORD the God of Israel due to the disobedience of the people. This section which serves as both a summary of the history of disobedience and as a warning for Judah closes the narration of Israel but also points to the reality that this is an intentional action of the LORD the God of Israel. As Brueggemann helpfully summarizes:

The condemning action of Yahweh is summarized in a series of harsh verbs: reject, punish, gave into, banished, removed. The deportation is not an accident. It is not a matter of Assyrian policy. It is the sure and inevitable enactment of covenant curses that have been known from the outset of Sinai. (Brueggemann, 2000, p. 481)

The narrative of Israel has been viewed through the lens of the covenant and the cause of the exile of Israel is not Assyria, but God’s actions in response to their continual pattern of disregarding the covenant and adopting the worship and the practices of the nations of the region.

2 Kings 17: 24-41 The Ressettlement of Samaria by Assyria


  24 The king of Assyria brought people from Babylon, Cuthah, Avva, Hamath, and Sepharvaim and placed them in the cities of Samaria in place of the people of Israel; they took possession of Samaria and settled in its cities. 25 When they first settled there, they did not worship the LORD; therefore the LORD sent lions among them that killed some of them. 26 So the king of Assyria was told, “The nations that you have carried away and placed in the cities of Samaria do not know the law of the god of the land; therefore he has sent lions among them; they are killing them because they do not know the law of the god of the land.” 27 Then the king of Assyria commanded, “Send there one of the priests whom you carried away from there; let him go and live there and teach them the law of the god of the land.” 28 So one of the priests whom they had carried away from Samaria came and lived in Bethel; he taught them how they should worship the LORD.
  29 But every nation still made gods of its own and put them in the shrines of the high places that the people of Samaria had made, every nation in the cities in which they lived; 30 the people of Babylon made Succoth-benoth, the people of Cuth made Nergal, the people of Hamath made Ashima; 31 the Avvites made Nibhaz and Tartak; the Sepharvites burned their children in the fire to Adrammelech and Anammelech, the gods of Sepharvaim. 32 They also worshiped the LORD and appointed from among themselves all sorts of people as priests of the high places, who sacrificed for them in the shrines of the high places. 33 So they worshiped the LORD but also served their own gods, after the manner of the nations from among whom they had been carried away. 34 To this day they continue to practice their former customs.
  They do not worship the LORD, and they do not follow the statutes or the ordinances or the law or the commandment that the LORD commanded the children of Jacob, whom he named Israel. 35 The LORD had made a covenant with them and commanded them, “You shall not worship other gods or bow yourselves to them or serve them or sacrifice to them, 36 but you shall worship the LORD, who brought you out of the land of Egypt with great power and with an outstretched arm; you shall bow yourselves to him, and to him you shall sacrifice. 37 The statutes and the ordinances and the law and the commandment that he wrote for you, you shall always be careful to observe. You shall not worship other gods; 38 you shall not forget the covenant that I have made with you. You shall not worship other gods, 39 but you shall worship the LORD your God; he will deliver you out of the hand of all your enemies.” 40 They would not listen, however, but continued to practice their former custom.
  41 So these nations worshiped the LORD but also served their carved images; to this day their children and their children’s children continue to do as their ancestors did.

The Assyrians would resettle captured lands with displaced populations, here the text notes populations from Babylon, Cuthah, Avva, Hamath, and Sepharvaim (modern day Iraq and Syria). These resettled populations bring their native gods and practices and are tormented by lions in the land. Lions have previously been used by God to deal with prophets who disobeyed God’s instructions,[10] and now become a judgment of the God of the land on these new people who do not know the LORD. Leviticus notes wild animals as one of God’s methods of punishing the disobedience of the people of the land:

 I will let loose wild animals against you, and they shall bereave you of your children and destroy your livestock; they shall make you few in number, and your roads shall be deserted. Leviticus 26:22

Mordechai Cogan and Hayim Tadmor note how lions as predators would become more dangerous in the aftermath of wars devastation and depopulation, (Cogan, 1988, p. 210) but for the narrator of 2 Kings this is a part of God’s causing some partial, if incomplete in the view of 2 King’s narrator, worship of the LORD. The king of Assyria dispatched a priest who formerly served at Bethel to teach the people the worship of the LORD, but in the narrators view what emerges is an amalgamation of practices from the worship of the resettled people and the worship of the LORD taught by one of the priests at one of the shrines where the improper worship of the LORD, in the view of the narrator, began. This section becomes an origin story for the Samaritans of later generations who will be viewed with suspicion by their neighbors in Judah.

[1] Historians are unsure which King of Egypt this name is intended to refer to.

[2] 2 Chronicles narrates King Hezekiah of Judah inviting Israel to participate in the Great Passover, and even though most of Israel scorns this invitation a few attend (2 Chronicles 30:11)

[3] For example, Isaiah 11:10-16, Jeremiah 31, and Ezekiel 37 all imagine a reconstituted Israel (comprised of both Judah and Ephraim) under a Davidic king.

[4] Exodus 20: 2-6; Deuteronomy 5: 6-10.

[5] Deuteronomy 6: 4-5.

[6] Exodus 19: 5-6.

[7] Exodus 32.

[8] 1 Kings 12: 25-33.

[9] See a fuller discussion of hebel in my discussion of Ecclesiastes 1.

[10] 1 Kings 13: 24-28; 20:36.

2 Kings 6:24-7:20 The Siege and Deliverance of Samaria

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Hills Near the Ruins of Samaria By Daniel Ventura – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=32449397

2 Kings 6:24-7:2

24 Some time later King Ben-hadad of Aram mustered his entire army; he marched against Samaria and laid siege to it. 25 As the siege continued, famine in Samaria became so great that a donkey’s head was sold for eighty shekels of silver and one-fourth of a kab of dove’s dung for five shekels of silver. 26 Now as the king of Israel was walking on the city wall, a woman cried out to him, “Help, my lord king!” 27 He said, “If the LORD does not help you, where would my help come from? From the threshing floor or from the winepress?” 28 But then the king asked her, “What is your complaint?” She answered, “This woman said to me, ‘Give up your son; we will eat him today, and we will eat my son tomorrow.’ 29 So we cooked my son and ate him. The next day I said to her, ‘Give up your son, and we will eat him.’ But she has hidden her son.” 30 When the king heard the words of the woman he tore his clothes—now since he was walking on the city wall, the people could see that he had sackcloth on his body underneath 31 and he said, “So may God do to me and more, if the head of Elisha son of Shaphat stays on his shoulders today.” 32 So he dispatched a man from his presence.
  Now Elisha was sitting in his house, and the elders were sitting with him. Before the messenger arrived, Elisha said to the elders, “Are you aware that this murderer has sent someone to take off my head? When the messenger comes, see that you shut the door and hold it closed against him. Is not the sound of his master’s feet behind him?” 33 While he was still speaking with them, the king came down to him and said, “This trouble is from the LORD! Why should I hope in the LORD any longer?”

71 But Elisha said, “Hear the word of the LORD: Thus says the Lord: Tomorrow about this time a measure of choice meal shall be sold for a shekel and two measures of barley for a shekel, at the gate of Samaria.” 2 Then the captain on whose hand the king leaned said to the man of God, “Even if the LORD were to make windows in the sky, could such a thing happen?” But he said, “You shall see it with your own eyes, but you shall not eat from it.”

The final seven verses of chapter six are connected to the story that continues through the seventh chapter of 2 Kings. The verses and chapters were added at a later point, and the chapter division highlights the prophecy of Elisha by bookending the seventh chapter, but the narrative which evokes the word of the LORD begins at verse twenty-four. One of the Aramean kings named Ben-hadad[1] lays siege to Samaria creating the severe crisis of the story.

Siege warfare works by denying the encircled city the resources it needs to survive while the surrounding army has access to food from the land and if necessary, brought in from the besieging country. The first to feel the impact of the food shortages are the poor and the vulnerable as the cost of the food necessary to survive climbs as the supply dwindles. In our story the cost of once unpalatable foods has reached a point unreachable to all but the wealthiest households. The ‘dove’s dung’ has a couple possible interpretations. It may be the droppings from birds who are able to eat from the grain fields that the population no longer has access to, and this may form a disgusting but necessary source of nutrition for the captured population. Some translations like the NEB and NJPS follow a linguistic trail to translate this as the “seeds of the (false) carob” which is a plant of limited nutritional value. However one translates the ‘dove’s dung,’ the situation in the city has become desperate to the point where hunger is creating an inhumane situation.

The woman at the wall who calls upon the king of Israel for help is met with a pious sounding answer, “If the LORD does not help you, where would my help come from.” To me this resonates like the empty ‘thoughts and prayers’ of a politician who has no interest in resolving the crisis of the individual who comes to them for help. Yet, in Israel there is a tradition of people coming to their kings to judge difficult and life changing matters and the kings of Israel are supposed to be guardians of the vulnerable. This story resonates with Solomon’s judging between the two women fighting over a child in 1 Kings 3: 16-28, but in this story of famine now the women are fighting over children to be eaten in their starvation. The situation echoes the darkest warnings against disobedience in Deuteronomy 28: 52-57:

52 It shall besiege you in all your towns until your high and fortified walls, in which you trusted, come down throughout your land; it shall besiege you in all your towns throughout the land that the LORD your God has given you. 53 In the desperate straits to which the enemy siege reduces you, you will eat the fruit of your womb, the flesh of your own sons and daughters whom the LORD your God has given you. 54 Even the most refined and gentle of men among you will begrudge food to his own brother, to the wife whom he embraces, and to the last of his remaining children, 55 giving to none of them any of the flesh of his children whom he is eating, because nothing else remains to him, in the desperate straits to which the enemy siege will reduce you in all your towns. 56 She who is the most refined and gentle among you, so gentle and refined that she does not venture to set the sole of her foot on the ground, will begrudge food to the husband whom she embraces, to her own son, and to her own daughter, 57 begrudging even the afterbirth that comes out from between her thighs, and the children that she bears, because she is eating them in secret for lack of anything else, in the desperate straits to which the enemy siege will reduce you in your towns.

The woman’s situation in this siege echoes the narration of the later siege of Jerusalem by Babylon in Ezekiel 5:10 and Lamentations 2:20 and 4:10. It is a world where the bond between mother and child has been broken by hunger and people lose their humanity in the horror of the siege. The king who has been sheltered from the worst aspects of the deprivation of the siege is horrified by the woman’s situation and yet still claims no power to alleviate her condition. The stores of grain and wine even for the king are likely depleted and we learn that he is wearing sackcloth, a sign of mourning and repentance, under his clothes which he tears on hearing the woman’s story. In response he rashly declares that he will kill Elisha.

Elisha may be the target of the king’s rage as the representative of the LORD who the king of Israel blames for this unbroken siege, or he may simply be a scapegoat in the king’s powerlessness. Elisha did in the previous chapter deliver into Samaria an Aramean army who he instructed the king to feed and allow them to depart in peace. The peace which Elisha brokered did not endure and the king of Israel may blame the prophet for the situation. It is also possible that the king feels that the prophet, who has provided food miraculously, has not performed a miracle to provide food for the suffering city. If this unnamed king of Israel is Jehoram, as the order of the stories implies, there is a long animosity between the Omri dynasty that Jehoram is a member of and Elijah as well as Elisha. It is possible that the king has never approached the prophet until this point in the siege although it is worth noting that the elders are with the prophet during this scene.

The story becomes a bit confused in verses 32-33 where a messenger arrives and later the king. Mordechai Cogan and Hayim Tadmor point to Josephus’ reconstruction of the events as being as sensible as any:

“But you,” (Elisha) said, “when the man arrives who has been given this order be on guard as he is about to enter, and press him back against the door and hold him there, for the king will follow him and come to me, having changed his mind.” So, when the man came who had been sent by the king to make away with Elisha, they did as he had ordered. But Joram, repenting of his wrath against the prophet and fearing that the man who had been ordered to kill him might already be doing so, hastened to prevent the murder and even save the prophet. Antiquities ix, 69-70. (Cogan, 1988, pp. 80-81)

Despite the king’s earlier murderous words, the king, the prophet, and the elders all share in hearing the word of the LORD that Elisha receives declaring that the crisis will end suddenly in roughly twenty-four hours. The immediate availability of cheap food prophesied is unbelievable to the captain of the king, and Elisha adds a final note that this captain will see the prophecy fulfilled but be unable to partake in it.

2 Kings 7:3-20

  3 Now there were four men with a defiling skin disease outside the city gate who said to one another, “Why should we sit here until we die? 4 If we say, ‘Let us enter the city,’ the famine is in the city, and we shall die there, but if we sit here, we shall also die. Therefore, let us desert to the Aramean camp; if they spare our lives, we shall live, and if they kill us, we shall but die.” 5 So they arose at twilight to go to the Aramean camp, but when they came to the edge of the Aramean camp there was no one there at all. 6 For the Lord had caused the Aramean army to hear the sound of chariots and of horses, the sound of a great army, so that they said to one another, “The king of Israel has hired the kings of the Hittites and the kings of Egypt to fight against us.” 7 So they fled away in the twilight and abandoned their tents, their horses, and their donkeys, leaving the camp just as it was, and fled for their lives. 8 When these diseased men had come to the edge of the camp, they went into a tent, ate and drank, carried off silver, gold, and clothing, and went and hid them. Then they came back, entered another tent, carried off things from it and went and hid them.
  9 Then they said to one another, “What we are doing is wrong. This is a day of good news; if we are silent and wait until the morning light, we will be found guilty; therefore let us go and tell the king’s household.” 10 So they came and called to the gatekeepers of the city and told them, “We went to the Aramean camp, but there was no one to be seen or heard there, nothing but the horses tied, the donkeys tied, and the tents as they were.” 11 Then the gatekeepers called out and proclaimed it to the king’s household. 12 The king got up in the night and said to his servants, “I will tell you what the Arameans have prepared against us. They know that we are starving, so they left the camp to hide themselves in the open country, thinking, ‘When they come out of the city, we shall take them alive and get into the city.’ ” 13 One of his servants said, “Let some men take five of the remaining horses, since those left here will suffer the fate of the whole multitude of Israel that have perished already; let us send and find out.” 14 So they took two mounted men, and the king sent them after the Aramean army, saying, “Go and find out.” 15 So they went after them as far as the Jordan; the whole way was littered with garments and equipment that the Arameans had thrown away in their haste. So the messengers returned and told the king.
  16 Then the people went out and plundered the camp of the Arameans. So a measure of choice meal was sold for a shekel and two measures of barley for a shekel, according to the word of the LORD. 17 Now the king had appointed the captain on whose hand he leaned to have charge of the gate; the people trampled him to death in the gate, just as the man of God had said when the king came down to him. 18 For when the man of God had said to the king, “Two measures of barley shall be sold for a shekel and a measure of choice meal for a shekel, about this time tomorrow in the gate of Samaria,” 19 the captain had answered the man of God, “Even if the LORD were to make windows in the sky, could such a thing happen?” And he had answered, “You shall see it with your own eyes, but you shall not eat from it.” 20 It did indeed happen to him; the people trampled him to death in the gate.

The resolution to the crisis begins in the desperation of four men who are unclean and left outside the city. As mentioned above it is the vulnerable, and these four men with an affliction traditionally translated as leprosy would be vulnerable as they are excluded outside the city’s protective walls. In a situation where staying where they are would lead to death and entering the city would lead to death, they make the choice to surrender to the Arameans because the worst they can do is kill them. This decision to give up to the besieging forces sets in motion the deliverance of Samaria.

I have mixed feelings about the NRSVue decision throughout these texts to translate what is traditionally rendered ‘leprosy’ as a ‘defiling skin disease’ or ‘skin disease.’ On the one hand, what we now categorize as leprosy or Hansen’s disease is probably not what is referred to throughout the bible. But I wonder if the more generic skin disease disconnects the average reader from the severity of this diagnosis in the ancient world of Judaism. It is telling that Leviticus thirteen and fourteen are dedicated to the identification, the exclusion of the infected individuals from the community, and the necessary examination to allow their re-inclusion if the skin disorder clears up. These lepers are ‘unclean’ and unable to participate in the life of the community. Yet these outsiders will provide deliverance for the people trapped inside the city.

Before the four men approach the camp, the Arameans flee in panic because they hear the sound of horses and chariots approaching and fear that the king of Israel has paid Egypt and the Hittites to come and break the siege for them. The horses and chariots echo the appearance of the ‘horses and chariots of Israel’ in the previous story (2 Kings 6:15) and now instead of opening the eyes of the servant the LORD in a different manner opens the ears of the Arameans. The panic of the Arameans in the story is enough that they abandon not only their encampment but also their horses and donkey and leave a trail of discarded items in the path of their retreat. There are resources and wealth to feed and equip an army surrounding the city, much of the food likely taken from Israel’s fields, and there waiting to be discovered by the starving city.

The Jewish sages identified the four men with Gehazi and his sons (Israel, 2019, p. 129) which makes sense with this story being between Gehazi having Naaman’s leprosy cling to him and his family (2 Kings 5:27) and Gehazi’s reemergence talking with the king in the upcoming chapter (2 Kings 8: 4-5). This identification while interesting is not necessary for the story as these four men proceed to the camp, find it empty, ate and drank, pillaged some of the wealth they found, and eventually notify the gatekeepers of the situation. These men excluded as outsiders because of their skin condition still consider themselves a part of the people and have an obligation to those suffering inside the city. They appeal through the gatekeeper to the king’s household.

The king initially views this report from the four men as a trap set by the Aramean army to draw him out, but eventually one of his servants convinces the king to send out scouts with horses to examine the situation, lest the remaining horses perish with the people inside the city. Once the messengers return to the king it sets in motion the availability of food promised by the prophecy of Elisha as well as the death of the captain of the king. As mentioned in the previous section, the current chapter divisions highlight the words of Elisha at the beginning and ending of the chapter to demonstrate their fulfillment. A siege which reduced men and women to inhuman actions is now ended by four men whose humanity is compromised by the unclean disease carried on their skin. The God of Israel’s unseen host is now heard by the Aramean causing them to abandon their siege and to provide the food the city needs. The prophet once blamed by the king for the situation inside the city has now accurately predicted the cities deliverance by the LORD the God of Israel.

[1] Mordechai Cogan and Hayim Tadmor note there are at least two and possibly three kings name Ben-Hadad,  whose name means the son of (the God) Hadad, “At least two, if not three persons by this name are known: Ben-hadad, contemporary of Baasha (1 Kgs 15:18); Ben-hadad, foe of Abab (1 Kgs 20: 1; he is identical with mAdad-idri of Assyrian inscriptions…and Ben-hadad, son of Hazael (2 Kgs 13:3).” (Cogan, 1988, p. 78)