In our last study as we looked at Naaman, commander of the Aramean army, we noticed that the Arameans were given victory in their war with Israel as a direct punishment for King Ahab. But that was only then, now the Lord will protect Israel from them. Remember too that the Arameans at that time still occupied Israel’s lands to the east of the River Jordan.
Read 2 Kings 6:8-11
8 Now the king of Aram was at war with Israel. After conferring with his officers, he said, ‘I will set up my camp in such and such a place.’
9 The man of God sent word to the king of Israel: ‘Beware of passing that place, because the Arameans are going down there.’ 10 So the king of Israel checked on the place indicated by the man of God. Time and again Elisha warned the king, so that he was on his guard in such places.
11 This enraged the king of Aram. He summoned his officers and demanded of them, ‘Tell me! Which of us is on the side of the king of Israel?’
‘the king of Aram’ does have a name: Hadadezer (Also known as Ben-Hadad II), and so also does the King of Israel: Joram, but the writer of 2 Kings knows how confusing all these names are so he uses them sparingly!
Here Hadadezer obviously suspects there must be a spy in his close circle of officers.
Read 2 Kings 6:12
12 ‘None of us, my lord the king,’ said one of his officers, ‘but Elisha, the prophet who is in Israel, tells the king of Israel the very words you speak in your bedroom.’
Perhaps an exaggeration, but he obviously held Elisha in such awe that he was convinced that nothing could now be kept secret.
Read 2 Kings 6:13-15
13 ‘Go, find out where he is,’ the king ordered, ‘so that I can send men and capture him.’ The report came back: ‘He is in Dothan.’ 14 Then he sent horses and chariots and a strong force there. They went by night and surrounded the city. 15 When the servant of the man of God got up and went out early the next morning, an army with horses and chariots had surrounded the city. ‘Oh no, my lord! What shall we do?’ the servant asked.
Now they really are in trouble. Elisha’s servant guessed that they were only after Elisha, and maybe those who feared for their city might be prepared to hand him over.
Read 2 Kings 6:16-17
16 ‘Don’t be afraid,’ the prophet answered. ‘Those who are with us are more than those who are with them.’
17 And Elisha prayed, ‘Open his eyes, Lord, so that he may see.’ Then the Lord opened the servant’s eyes, and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all round Elisha.
Opening eyes that cannot see, or simply looking up, is a theme encountered several times in the Bible. There is a study in the appendix to Genesis 18 that lists examples where people are enabled to really see – it is up to you to make what you will from it!
The Lord gave Elisha’s servant ‘the eyes of faith’ to see the armies of the Lord that were invisible to everyone else. But only to encourage the servant – there would be no fighting today. Elisha would simply walk out to meet the approaching army. Not the whole army, but still a ‘strong force’ (v14).
Read 2 Kings 6:18
18 As the enemy came down towards him, Elisha prayed to the Lord, ‘Strike this army with blindness.’ So he struck them with blindness, as Elisha had asked.
Not all Elisha’s prayers are recorded but it is obvious he prayed often. Here he asks for the opposite of his prayer for his servant. They were not blind so they could not see, only that they were convinced they were surrounding the wrong city, and looking for a different man!
In those days there were no signposts, no maps, no GPS; you had to rely on local knowledge if you were looking for a specific town. So it was not hard for the Lord to persuade them they were 10 miles off target.
Read 2 Kings 6:19-20
19 Elisha told them, ‘This is not the road and this is not the city. Follow me, and I will lead you to the man you are looking for.’ And he led them to Samaria.
20 After they entered the city, Elisha said, ‘Lord, open the eyes of these men so that they can see.’ Then the Lord opened their eyes and they looked, and there they were, inside Samaria.
Again Elisha prayed and lo and behold they are now in the midst of the enemy’s capital city – a military fortress.
Read 2 Kings 6:21-23
21 When the king of Israel saw them, he asked Elisha, ‘Shall I kill them, my father? Shall I kill them?’
22 ‘Do not kill them,’ he answered. ‘Would you kill those you have captured with your own sword or bow? Set food and water before them so that they may eat and drink and then go back to their master.’ 23 So he prepared a great feast for them, and after they had finished eating and drinking, he sent them away, and they returned to their master. So the bands from Aram stopped raiding Israel’s territory.
Would someone like to imagine what they said as they reported back to Hadadezer? Explaining how they had failed in this simple task. And what precisely was it, that was sufficient to cause him to stop any more raids?
It was the whole of the detachment, not just its leader, who had been led into Joram’s capital city. For these ancient peoples, obviously a strong curse must have caused their ‘blindness’. Treating the soldiers to a banquet before sending them home suggested the king must have a God whose power was so great, coupled by the supernatural spying power of his prophet, that he was not afraid to treat the men with undeserved kindness, rather than simply killing them (which actually was Joram’s initial response v21).
Whether politically astute, or more likely prompted by the Lord, Elisha’s instruction was exactly the right thing to do.
However Hadadezer’s fear of Joram’s power did not last. (Hadadezer is also called Ben-Hadad)
Read 2 Kings 6:24-25
24 Some time later, Ben-Hadad king of Aram mobilised his entire army and marched up and laid siege to Samaria. 25 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.
Eventually there was literally nothing left to eat anywhere, and probably the soldiers encamped round the walls outside made a great show of the generous amounts they were consuming.
Read 2 Kings 6:26-29
26 As the king of Israel was passing by on the wall, a woman cried to him, ‘Help me, my lord the king!’
27 The king replied, ‘If the Lord does not help you, where can I get help for you? From the threshing floor? From the winepress?’ 28 Then he asked her, ‘What’s the matter?’
She answered, ‘This woman said to me, “Give up your son so that 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 that we may eat him,” but she had hidden him.’
If you were king how would you respond?
We know very little of Joram’s character – obviously he tolerated the idolatry and witchcraft of his mother Jezebel (2 Kings 9:22), but he also seems to believe in Elisha’s God, and it seems he had been praying to the Lord for help.
Read 2 Kings 6:30-31
30 When the king heard the woman’s words, he tore his robes. As he went along the wall, the people looked, and they saw that, under his robes, he had sackcloth on his body. 31 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!’
The King had done all he could, he had put on sackcloth and had prayed for deliverance. In the mind of the King, If Elisha’s God was not going to answer his prayers, Elisha must be responsible.
Read 2 Kings 6:32-33
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?’ 33 While he was still talking to them, the messenger came down to him.
The king said, ‘This disaster is from the Lord. Why should I wait for the Lord any longer?’
The messenger may have been sent ahead, but the king was close behind. The king’s threat in verse 31 was empty rhetoric. He well understood that this was a punishment from the Lord for his own and his people’s disobedience. He had been waiting for the Lord to relent and provide relief but he could bear it no longer. Probably behind the outward bluster was the plea to Elisha: ‘help!’
I wonder if Elisha opened the door or carried out the following conversation through it?
Read 2 Kings 7:1-2
1 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.’
2 The officer on whose arm the king was leaning said to the man of God, ‘Look, even if the Lord should open the floodgates of the heavens, could this happen?’
‘You will see it with your own eyes,’ answered Elisha, ‘but you will not eat any of it!’
Was this a punishment for his disbelief, or simply a statement of fact? Elisha had obviously been given a vision of what tomorrow would bring.
Amazingly, it looks like the king meekly accepted Elisha's words as fact. His bluster had left him and he returned to his palace.
Read 2 Kings 7:3-7
3 Now there were four men with leprosy at the entrance of the city gate. They said to each other, ‘Why stay here until we die? 4 If we say, “We’ll go into the city”– the famine is there, and we will die. And if we stay here, we will die. So let’s go over to the camp of the Arameans and surrender. If they spare us, we live; if they kill us, then we die.’
5 At dusk they got up and went to the camp of the Arameans. When they reached the edge of the camp, no one was there, 6 for the Lord had caused the Arameans to hear the sound of chariots and horses and a great army, so that they said to one another, ‘Look, the king of Israel has hired the Hittite and Egyptian kings to attack us!’ 7 So they got up and fled in the dusk and abandoned their tents and their horses and donkeys. They left the camp as it was and ran for their lives.
The four lepers, banished from society to live ‘outside the gate’, were also now desperate with hunger. Death was inevitable, so why not go to see if the enemy would have any compassion?
Then to their amazement the enemy had gone.
Read 2 Kings 7:8-12
8 The men who had leprosy reached the edge of the camp, entered one of the tents and ate and drank. Then they took silver, gold and clothes, and went off and hid them. They returned and entered another tent and took some things from it and hid them also.
9 Then they said to each other, ‘What we’re doing is not right. This is a day of good news and we are keeping it to ourselves. If we wait until daylight, punishment will overtake us. Let’s go at once and report this to the royal palace.’
10 So they went and called out to the city gatekeepers and told them, ‘We went into the Aramean camp and no one was there – not a sound of anyone – only tethered horses and donkeys, and the tents left just as they were.’ 11 The gatekeepers shouted the news, and it was reported within the palace.
12 The king got up in the night and said to his officers, ‘I will tell you what the Arameans have done to us. They know we are starving; so they have left the camp to hide in the countryside, thinking, “They will surely come out, and then we will take them alive and get into the city.”’
Do we sometimes pray for something and are slow to believe that our prayers have been answered?
Read 2 Kings 7:13-16
13 One of his officers answered, ‘Make some men take five of the horses that are left in the city. Their plight will be like that of all the Israelites left here – yes, they will only be like all these Israelites who are doomed. So let us send them to find out what happened.’
14 So they selected two chariots with their horses, and the king sent them after the Aramean army. He commanded the drivers, ‘Go and find out what has happened.’ 15 They followed them as far as the Jordan, and they found the whole road strewn with the clothing and equipment the Arameans had thrown away in their headlong flight. So the messengers returned and reported to the king. 16 Then the people went out and plundered the camp of the Arameans. So a seah of the finest flour sold for a shekel, and two seahs of barley sold for a shekel, as the Lord had said.
Again we see the generosity of our God: not only have the enemy fled, not only is there great wealth left behind, but there is now so much food to share that it is now basically valueless.
17 Now the king had put the officer on whose arm he leaned in charge of the gate, and the people trampled him in the gateway, and he died, just as the man of God had foretold when the king came down to his house. 18 It happened as the man of God had said to the king: ‘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.’
19 The officer had said to the man of God, ‘Look, even if the Lord should open the floodgates of the heavens, could this happen?’ The man of God had replied, ‘You will see it with your own eyes, but you will not eat any of it!’ 20 And that is exactly what happened to him, for the people trampled him in the gateway, and he died.
Once word spread that there was abundant food for the taking, all the inhabitants rushed for the gate. The poor officer who had possibly returned to tell the people the good news didn’t stand a chance.
Is it true that even though our sins are forgiven, we still may have to bear the consequences? (David, Bathsheba and his son 2 Samuel 12:13-14)
