[104] Gen. xxxvii. 17, _Dothain_, "two wells" (?).
[105] Psalm xci. 4.
[106] Psalm xxxiv. 7.
[107] Psalm xci. 11.
[108] Zech. ix. 8.
[109] Isa. lxiii. 9.
[110] Adopting the reading of the Syriac version: "And when they [Elisha and his servant] came down to them [the Syrians]." The ordinary reading is "to _him_," which makes the narrative less clear.
[111] 2 Kings vi. 19. מַנְוֵרִים, ἀορασία, only found in Gen. xix. 11.
[112] Deut. xx. 13.
[113] Num. xxxi. 7.
[114] Vulg., _Non percuties; neque enim cepisti eos ... ut percutias._
[115] Jos., _Antt._, IX. iv. 4, Κρύφα μὲν οὐκέτι ... φανερῶς δέ.
[116] Kittel, following Kuenen, surmises that this story has got misplaced; that it does not belong to the days of Jehoram ben-Ahab and Benhadad II., but to the days of Jehoahaz ben-Jehu and Benhadad III., the son of Hazael (_Gesch. der Hebr._, 249). In a very uncertain question I have followed the conclusion arrived at by the majority of scholars, ancient and modern.
2 KINGS vi. 24-vii. 20
"'Tis truly no good plan when princes play The vulture among carrion; but when They play the carrion among vultures--that Is ten times worse." LESSING, _Nathan the Wise_, Act I., Sc. 3.
If the Benhadad, King of Syria, who reduced Samaria to the horrible straits recorded in this chapter, (2 Kings vi.) was the same Benhadad whom Ahab had treated with such impolitic confidence, his hatred against Israel must indeed have burned hotly. Besides the affair at Dothan, he had already been twice routed with enormous slaughter, and against those disasters he could only set the death of Ahab at Ramoth-Gilead. It is obvious from the preceding narrative that he could advance at any time at his will and pleasure into the heart of his enemy's country, and shut him up in his capital almost without resistance. The siege-trains of ancient days were very inefficient, and any strong fortress could hold out for years, if only it was well provisioned. Such was not the case with Samaria, and it was reduced to a condition of sore famine. Food so loathsome as an ass's head, which at other times the poorest would have spurned, was now sold for eighty shekels' weight of silver (about £8); and the fourth part of a _xestes_ or _kab_--which was itself the smallest dry-measure, the sixth part of a _seah_--of the coarse, common pulse, or roasted chick-peas, vulgarly known as "dove's dung," fetched five shekels (about 12_s._ 6_d._).[117]
While things were at this awful pass, "the King of Israel," as he is vaguely called throughout this story, went his rounds upon the wall to visit the sentries and encourage the soldiers in their defence. As he passed, a woman cried, "Help, my lord, O king!" In Eastern monarchies the king is a judge of the humblest; a suppliant, however mean, may cry to him. Jehoram thought that this was but one of the appeals which sprang from the clamorous mendicity of famine with which he had grown so painfully familiar. "The Lord curse you!" he exclaimed impatiently.[118] "How can I help you? Every barn-floor is bare, every wine-press drained." And he passed on.
But the woman continued her wild clamour, and turning round at her importunity, he asked, "What aileth thee?"
He heard in reply a narrative as appalling as ever smote the ear of a king in a besieged city. Among the curses denounced upon apostate Israel in the Pentateuch, we read, "Ye shall eat the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your daughters shall ye eat";[119] or, as it is expressed more fully in the Book of Deuteronomy, "He shall besiege thee in all thy gates throughout all thy land.... And thou shalt eat the fruit of thine own body, the flesh of thy sons and thy daughters, which the Lord thy God hath given thee, in the siege, and in the straitness wherewith thine enemies shall distress thee: so that the man that is tender among you, and very delicate, his eye shall be evil towards his brother, and towards the wife of his bosom, and towards the remnant of his children which he shall leave; so that he shall not give to any of them of the flesh of his children whom he shall eat, because he hath nothing left him in the siege.... The tender and delicate woman, which would not adventure to set the sole of her foot upon the ground for delicateness and tenderness, her eye shall be evil towards the husband of her bosom, and towards her son, and towards her daughter, and towards her children: for she shall eat them for want of all things secretly in the siege and the straitness, if thou wilt not observe to do all the words of the law, ... that thou mayest fear the glorious and fearful name, _The Lord thy God_."[120] We find almost the same words in the prophet Jeremiah;[121] and in Lamentations we read: "The hands of the pitiful women have sodden their own children: they were their meat in the destruction of the daughter of My people."[122]