2 And the captain whom the king hath, by whose hand he hath been supported, answereth the man of God and saith, `Lo, Jehovah is making windows in the heavens -- shall this thing be?' and he saith, `Lo, thou art seeing it with thine eyes, and thereof thou dost not eat.'
For this thing Jehovah be propitious to thy servant, in the coming in of my lord into the house of Rimmon to bow himself there, and he was supported by my hand, and I bowed myself `in' the house of Rimmon; for my bowing myself in the house of Rimmon Jehovah be propitious, I pray thee, to thy servant in this thing.'
In the six hundredth year of the life of Noah, in the second month, in the seventeenth day of the month, in this day have been broken up all fountains of the great deep, and the net-work of the heavens hath been opened,
and Abraham and Sarah `are' aged, entering into days -- the way of women hath ceased to be to Sarah; and Sarah laugheth in her heart, saying, `After I have waxed old I have had pleasure! -- my lord also `is' old!' And Jehovah saith unto Abraham, `Why `is' this? Sarah hath laughed, saying, Is it true really -- I bear -- and I am aged? Is any thing too wonderful for Jehovah? at the appointed time I return unto thee, about the time of life, and Sarah hath a son.'
for what, if certain were faithless? shall their faithlessness the faithfulness of god make useless?
And Moses saith, `Six hundred thousand footmen `are' the people in whose midst I `am'; and Thou, Thou hast said, Flesh I give to them, and they have eaten, a month of days! Is flock and herd slaughtered for them, that one hath found for them? -- are all the fishes of the sea gathered for them -- that one hath found for them?' And Jehovah saith unto Moses, `Is the hand of Jehovah become short? now thou dost see whether My word meeteth thee or not.'
go up `to' the top of Pisgah, and lift up thine eyes westward, and northward, and southward, and eastward, and see with thine eyes -- for thou dost not pass over this Jordan;
And the king hath appointed the captain, by whose hand he is supported, over the gate, and the people tread him down in the gate, and he dieth, as the man of God spake, which he spake in the coming down of the king unto him, yea, it cometh to pass, according to the speaking of the man of God unto the king, saying, `Two measures of barley at a shekel, and a measure of fine flour at a shekel are, at this time to-morrow, in the gate of Samaria;' and the captain answereth the man of God, and saith, `And lo, Jehovah is making windows in the heavens -- it is according to this word?' and he saith, `Lo, thou art seeing with thine eyes, and thereof thou dost not eat;' and it cometh to him so, and the people tread him down in the gate, and he dieth.
And they rise early in the morning, and go out to the wilderness of Tekoa, and in their going out Jehoshaphat hath stood and saith, `Hear me, O Judah, and inhabitants of Jerusalem, remain stedfast in Jehovah your God, and be stedfast; remain stedfast in His prophets, and prosper.'
And they speak against God -- they said: `Is God able to array a table in a wilderness?' Lo, He hath smitten a rock, And waters flow, yea, streams overflow. `Also -- bread `is' He able to give? Doth He prepare flesh for His people?' Therefore hath Jehovah heard, And He sheweth Himself wroth, And fire hath been kindled against Jacob, And anger also hath gone up against Israel,
And the head of Ephraim `is' Samaria, And the head of Samaria `is' the son of Remaliah. If ye do not give credence, Surely ye are not stedfast.'
but with whom was He grieved forty years? was it not with those who did sin, whose carcasses fell in the wilderness? and to whom did He swear that they shall not enter into His rest, except to those who did not believe? -- and we see that they were not able to enter in because of unbelief.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Keil & Delitzsch Commentary » Commentary on 2 Kings 7
Commentary on 2 Kings 7 Keil & Delitzsch Commentary
Elisha announced to him the word of the Lord: “At the (this) time to-morrow a seah of wheaten flour ( סלת , see at 1 Kings 5:2) will be worth a shekel, and two seahs of barley a shekel in the gate, i.e., in the market, at Samaria.” A seah, or a third of an ephah = a Dresden peck (Metze), for a shekel was still a high price; but in comparison with the prices given in 2 Kings 6:25 as those obtained for the most worthless kinds of food, it was incredibly cheap. The king's aide-de-camp ( שׁלישׁ : see at 2 Samuel 23:8; נשׁען למּלך אשׁר , an error in writing for נשׁ המּלך אשׁר , cf. 2 Kings 7:17, and for the explanation 2 Kings 5:18) therefore replied with mockery at this prophecy: “Behold (i.e., granted that) the Lord made windows in heaven, will this indeed be?” i.e., such cheapness take place. (For the construction, see Ewald, §357, b .) The ridicule lay more especially in the “windows in heaven,” in which there is an allusion to Genesis 7:11, sc. to rain down a flood of flour and corn. Elisha answered seriously: “Behold, thou wilt see it with thine eyes, but not eat thereof” (see 2 Kings 7:17.). The fulfilment of these words of Elisha was brought about by the event narrated in 2 Kings 7:3.
“Four men were before the gate as lepers,” or at the gateway, separated from human society, according to the law in Leviticus 13:46; Numbers 5:3, probably in a building erected for the purpose (cf. 2 Kings 15:5), just as at the present day the lepers at Jerusalem have their huts by the side of the Zion gate (vid., Strauss, Sinai u. Golgatha, p. 205, and Tobler, Denkblהtter aus Jerus. p. 411ff.). These men being on the point of starvation, resolved to invade the camp of the Syrians, and carried out this resolution בּנּשׁף , in the evening twilight, not the morning twilight (Seb. Schm., Cler., etc.), on account of 2 Kings 7:12, where the king is said to have received the news of the flight of the Syrians during the night. Coming to “the end of the Syrian camp,” i.e., to the outskirts of it on the city side, they found no one there. For (2 Kings 7:6, 2 Kings 7:7) “the Lord had caused the army of the Syrians to hear a noise of chariots and horses, a noise of a great army,” so that, believing the king of Israel to have hired the kings of the Hittites and Egyptians to fall upon them, they fled from the camp in the twilight אל־נפשׁם , with regard to their life, i.e., to save their life only, leaving behind them their tents, horses, and asses, and the camp as it was. - The miracle, by which God delivered Samaria from the famine or from surrendering to the foe, consisted in an oral delusion, namely, in the fact that the besiegers thought they heard the march of hostile armies from the north and south, and were seized with such panic terror that they fled in the greatest haste, leaving behind them their baggage, and their beasts of draught and burden. It is impossible to decide whether the noise which they heard had any objective reality, say a miraculous buzzing in the air, or whether it was merely a deception of the senses produced in their ears by God; and this is a matter of no importance, since in either case it was produced miraculously by God. The kings of the Hittites are kings of northern Canaan, upon Lebanon and towards Phoenicia; חתּים in the broader sense for Canaanites, as in 1 Kings 10:29. The plural, “kings of the Egyptians,” is probably only occasioned by the parallel expression “kings of the Hittites,” and is not to be pressed.
When these lepers (these, pointing back to 2 Kings 7:3.) came into the camp which the Syrians had left, they first of all satisfied their own hunger with the provisions which they found in the tents, and then took different valuables and concealed them. But their consciences were soon aroused, so that they said: We are not doing right; this day is a day of joyful tidings: if we are silent and wait till the morning light, guilt will overtake us; “for it is the duty of citizens to make known things relating to public safety” (Grotius). They then resolved to announce the joyful event in the king's palace, and reported it to the watchman at the city gate. העיר שׁער stands as a generic term in a collective sense for the persons who watched at the gate; hence the following plural להם , and in 2 Kings 7:11 השּׁערים . “And the gate-keepers cried out (what they had heard) and reported it in the king's palace.”
The king imagined that the unexpected departure of the Syrians was only a ruse, namely, that they had left the camp and hidden themselves in the field, to entice the besieged out of the fortress, and then fall upon them and press into the city. בּהשּׂדה according to later usage for בּשּׂדה (vid., Ewald, §244, a). In order to make sure of the correctness or incorrectness of this conjecture, one of the king's servants (counsellors) gave this advice: “Let them take (the Vav before יקחוּ as in 2 Kings 4:41) five of the horses left in the city, that we may send and see how the matter stands.” The words, “Behold they (the five horses) are as the whole multitude of Israel that are left in it (the city); behold they are as the whole multitude of Israel that are gone,” have this meaning: The five horsemen (for horses stand for horsemen, as it is self-evident that it was men on horseback and not the horses themselves that were to be sent out as spies) can but share the fate of the rest of the people of Samaria, whether they return unhurt to meet death by starvation with the people that still remain, or fall into the hands of the enemy and are put to death, in which case they will only suffer the lot of those who have already perished. Five horses is an approximative small number, and is therefore not at variance with the following statement, that two pair of horses were sent out with chariots and men. The Chethîb ההמון is not to be altered, since there are other instances in which the first noun is written with the article, though in the construct state (vid., Ewald, §290, e.); and the Keri is only conformed to the following כּכל־המון . 2 Kings 7:14 , 2 Kings 7:15. They then sent out two chariots with horses, who pursued the flying enemy to the Jordan, and found the whole of the road full of traces of the hurried flight, consisting of clothes and vessels that had been thrown away. The Chethîb בּהחפזם is the only correct reading, since it is only in the Niphal that חפז has the meaning to fly in great haste (cf. 1 Samuel 23:26; Psalms 48:6; Psalms 104:7).
When the returning messengers reported this, the people went out and plundered the camp of the Syrians, and this was followed by the consequent cheapness of provisions predicted by Elisha. As the people streamed out, the unbelieving aide-de-camp, whom the king had ordered to take the oversight at the gate ( הפקיד , to deliver the oversight) for the purpose of preserving order in the crowding of the starving multitude, was trodden down by the people, so that he died, whereby this prediction of Elisha was fulfilled. The exact fulfilment of this prediction appeared so memorable to the historian, that he repeats this prophecy in 2 Kings 7:18-20 along with the event which occasioned it, and refers again to its fulfilment.