As we've discussed earlier in our study of the Bible, siege was a strategy often used in ancient times to compel a city to surrender. As a siege went on it would cause severe deprivations for the people inside the walls. They could not go outside the city walls to tend the crops in the fields or to harvest their crops. They could not import any foods or medicines. They could not go fishing or hunting or foraging. Enemy armies were sometimes successful in stopping up the city's water supply if it came from springs on the outside instead of from wells inside. In time the inhabitants would begin to starve and might eventually wave the white flag of surrender and agree to become subject to the nation that was besieging them. Even if they refused to surrender they would become too weak to fight back when the enemy finally chose to build siege ramps with which to scale the walls. Meanwhile the army that was besieging them suffered no casualties, which they would have suffered if they'd attempted to take the city by force. The enemy army was simply employing a waiting game, keeping the city surrounded at all times while not undergoing any deprivations themselves, for they were being regularly supplied by their government with everything they needed. People inside a city under siege were going without the things necessary for life while the enemy army enjoyed plenty of food, water, wine, medicine, and even entertainment.
We don't know how much time passed since we concluded yesterday's study at verse 23. The Bible just says it was "some time later" when Ben-Hahad besieged the city. The siege has already been going on for a long time when we pick up today at verse 24. "Some time later, Ben-Hadad king of Aram mobilized his entire army and marched up and laid siege to Samaria. 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." (2 Kings 6:24-25)
There were already famine conditions present in the land of Israel before this siege took place. This is why the prophets were having a hard time finding food and almost ate poisonous wild plants by accident in Chapter 4. So the storehouses inside the city of Samaria would have been running much lower than normal even before the Arameans blocked them in. Food is so scarce that inflation has gone through the roof, with even the most unappealing parts of plants and animals selling for astronomical prices. The poor wouldn't be able to come up with the amount of money quoted here: two pounds of silver for a donkey's head and two ounces of silver for about four ounces of seed pods. The poorest people in the city have been reduced to doing something they never would have believed they'd ever do, as we will see momentarily.
"As the king of Israel was passing by on the wall, a woman cried to him, 'Help me, my lord the king!'" (2 Kings 6:26) The walls of ancient cities were several feet thick and flat on top, providing a platform on which guards could stand and from which archers could shoot at anyone attacking the city. The Arameans, who are keeping the city surrounded, are camped far enough away that they can't be hit by arrows from the walls. This is why it's safe for the king to walk on top of the walls because the Arameans can't hit him with an arrow either. The walls of some ancient cities were so thick that chariots could even be driven around on the top of them! The excavations of the city of Samaria have shown its walls to have been about five feet thick and that would be plenty of room for King Joram to walk around on.
The king hears the woman calling out to him for help and he answers her in a spirit of bitterness. "The king replied, 'If the Lord does not help you, where can I get help for you? From the threshing floor? From the winepress?'" (2 Kings 6:27) Joram is not an especially godly man but we were told that he is not as wicked as his father King Ahab was. Joram renounced the Baal religion of his father and mother but he did not go far enough and give his heart fully to the Lord. He merely reverted back to the religious practices of the northern kingdom's early days when King Jeroboam set up the golden calves as representations of God and as alternate locations for worship. This is a form of idolatry, so even though Joram may acknowledge that God is the only God, (or at least the most powerful of all deities), he does not appear to have a personal relationship with God. He has not made Him the Lord of his life. So he says to the woman something like, "God has abandoned us. If He hasn't done anything to help you, what makes you think I can? I am in the same position as you and everyone else in Samaria. None of us can step foot outside the gates to harvest the fields and thresh the grains. None of us can go out to the vineyards to pluck the grapes. I can't even help myself; what makes you think I can help you?"
But he is the king of Israel and he has a duty to hear legal cases, which this might be for all he knows at this point, so he relents and asks her the nature of her problem. "Then he asked her, 'What's the matter?'" (2 Kings 6:28s) This woman does have a legal case, in a manner of speaking because someone hasn't kept their end of a bargain made with her, but the case is of such a vile and shocking nature that Joram doesn't see it coming. He doesn't expect to hear something of this nature and, if you are not familiar with this passage of Scripture, you'll want to brace yourself for it. "She answered, 'This woman said to me, 'Give up your son so we may eat him today, and tomorrow we'll eat my son.' So we cooked my son and ate him. The next day I said to her, 'Give up your son that we may eat him,' but she had hidden him.'" (2 Kings 6:28b-29)
This is probably the first account of cannibalism in Samaria that Joram has been made aware of, although it's not necessarily the first time it has happened. Being the king and still being able to pay the heavily inflated prices for food, he may not have realized yet that the poorest of his people have had to sink to this level. What he and his household members are eating might not be very tasty or very nutritious and it may not be enough for them to ever feel completely full at any time but it's enough to keep any of them from resorting to eating the dead. I say "eating the dead" because this woman's son and her neighbor's son were almost certainly already dead when they decided to eat them, but the siege of Samaria is not the first case in history of a city's citizens eating their dead and it won't be the last case of it. Such things happened all over the world during sieges of ancient times and of the not-so-ancient times.
The main reason I believe these women's sons were already dead is because in times of siege or famine it's the weakest who perish first. That means it's the very youngest, the very oldest, and those with pre-existing illnesses who succumb the quickest to the effects of dehydration and malnutrition. These women's sons must have been very small infants or even newborns since the women were able to fully consume one on the first day and expected to fully consume the other on the second day. I think it's extremely likely that these babies perished on their own due to their mothers being unable to nurse them. I'm basing this theory on these women's desperate condition; it's clearly been so long since these women have eaten anything at all that they were able to contemplate consuming the bodies of their own children. Dehydration can kill a healthy, normal-weight infant quite quickly and these infants may have been born prematurely or underweight since their mothers are almost dead from starvation themselves. I'm not trying to be gruesome but am saying these things to exonerate these women from accusations of murder because the Bible does not say that either of them killed her child. I know some scholars have suggested they smothered their babies as a "mercy killing" because they were dying a painful death already. But the fact is we don't know what took place before this woman comes to Joram with her complaint.
Upon hearing the most shocking and abominable words he's ever heard spoken, the king's first reaction will be one of grief. But as it so often does, grief turns to anger. And then, as anger so often does, it turns to sin. In tomorrow's text Joram will look for someone to blame for the suffering of the people and he will point his finger at the prophet Elisha instead of at himself at at the idolatry in the nation.
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