Study Desk

As soon as they had entered Samaria, Elisha prayed, "O Lord , now open their eyes and let them see." So the Lord opened their eyes, and they discovered that they were in the middle of Samaria.

So the king made a great feast for them and then sent them home to their master. After that, the Aramean raiders stayed away from the land of Israel.

As a result, there was a great famine in the city. The siege lasted so long that a donkey's head sold for eighty pieces of silver, and a cup of dove's dung sold for five pieces of silver.

So we cooked my son and ate him. Then the next day I said to her, ‘Kill your son so we can eat him,' but she has hidden her son."

"We will starve if we stay here, but with the famine in the city, we will starve if we go back there. So we might as well go out and surrender to the Aramean army. If they let us live, so much the better. But if they kill us, we would have died anyway."

So at twilight they set out for the camp of the Arameans. But when they came to the edge of the camp, no one was there!

So they panicked and ran into the night, abandoning their tents, horses, donkeys, and everything else, as they fled for their lives.

So they went back to the city and told the gatekeepers what had happened. "We went out to the Aramean camp," they said, "and no one was there! The horses and donkeys were tethered and the tents were all in order, but there wasn't a single person around!"

The king got out of bed in the middle of the night and told his officers, "I know what has happened. The Arameans know we are starving, so they have left their camp and have hidden in the fields. They are expecting us to leave the city, and then they will take us alive and capture the city."

So two chariots with horses were prepared, and the king sent scouts to see what had happened to the Aramean army.

Then the people of Samaria rushed out and plundered the Aramean camp. So it was true that six quarts of choice flour were sold that day for one piece of silver, and twelve quarts of barley grain were sold for one piece of silver, just as the Lord had promised.

The king appointed his officer to control the traffic at the gate, but he was knocked down and trampled to death as the people rushed out. So everything happened exactly as the man of God had predicted when the king came to his house.

And so it was, for the people trampled him to death at the gate!

So the woman did as the man of God instructed. She took her family and settled in the land of the Philistines for seven years.

"Is this true?" the king asked her. And she told him the story. So he directed one of his officials to see that everything she had lost was restored to her, including the value of any crops that had been harvested during her absence.

So Hazael loaded down forty camels with the finest products of Damascus as a gift for Elisha. He went to him and said, "Your servant Ben-hadad, the king of Aram, has sent me to ask, ‘Will I recover from this illness?'"

But Jehoram followed the example of the kings of Israel and was as wicked as King Ahab, for he had married one of Ahab's daughters. So Jehoram did what was evil in the Lord 's sight.

So Jehoram went with all his chariots to attack the town of Zair. The Edomites surrounded him and his chariot commanders, but he went out at night and attacked them under cover of darkness. But Jehoram's army deserted him and fled to their homes.

So Edom has been independent from Judah to this day. The town of Libnah also revolted about that same time.

So the young prophet did as he was told and went to Ramoth-gilead.