Dual Panel1Elisha answered, “Hear this word from the LORD: By this time tomorrow a shekel will buy a measure of flour or two measures of barley at the gate of Samaria.”
2The officer on whose arm the king leaned said to the man of God, “Even if the LORD were to open windows in the sky, such a thing could not happen!” He answered, “You will see it with your own eyes, but you will not eat any of it.”
3At the city gate were four lepers. They said to one another, “Why should we stay here and wait for death?
4If we say we will go into the city, the famine is there, and we shall die; if we stay here, we shall die. Well then, let us go to the camp of the Aramaeans and give ourselves up: if they spare us, we shall live; if they put us to death, we can but die.”
5At dusk they set out for the Aramaean camp, and when they reached the outskirts, they found no one there.
6The LORD had caused the Aramaean army to hear a sound like that of chariots and horses and a great host, so that the word went round: “The king of Israel has hired the kings of the Hittites and the kings of Egypt to attack us.”
7They had taken to flight in the dusk, abandoning their tents, horses, and donkeys. Leaving the camp as it stood, they had fled for their lives.
8Those lepers came to the outskirts of the camp, where they went into a tent. They ate and drank, looted silver and gold and clothing, and made off and hid them. Then they came back, went into another tent and rifled it, and made off and hid the loot.
9But they said to one another, “What we are doing is not right. This is a day of good news and we are keeping it to ourselves. If we wait till morning, we shall be held to blame. We must go now and give the news to the king's household.”
10So they went and called to the watch at the city gate and described how they had gone to the Aramaean camp and found not one man in it and had heard no human voice: nothing but horses and donkeys tethered, and the tents left as they were.
11The watch called out and announced the news to the king's household in the palace.
12The king rose in the night and said to his staff, “I shall tell you what the Aramaeans have done. They know we are starving, so they have left their camp to go and hide in the open country, expecting us to come out, and then they can take us alive and enter the city.”
13One of his staff said, “Send out a party of men with some of the horses that are left; if they live, they will be as well off as all the other Israelites who are still left; if they die, they will be no worse off than all those who have already perished. Let them go and see what has happened.”
14They picked two mounted men, and the king dispatched them in the track of the Aramaean army with the order to go and find out what had happened.
15Having followed as far as the Jordan and found the whole road littered with clothing and equipment which the Aramaeans had discarded in their haste, the messengers returned and made their report to the king.
16The people went out and plundered the Aramaean camp, and a measure of flour was sold for a shekel and two measures of barley for a shekel, so that the word of the LORD came true.
17The king had appointed the officer on whose arm he leaned to take charge of the gate, and the crowd trampled him to death there, just as the man of God had foretold when the king visited him.
18For when the man of God said to the king, “By this time tomorrow a shekel will buy two measures of barley or one measure of flour at the gate of Samaria,”
19the officer had answered, “Even if the LORD were to open windows in the sky, such a thing could not happen!” And the man of God had said, “You will see it with your own eyes, but you will not eat any of it.”
20This is what happened to him: he was trampled to death at the gate by the crowd.