CONTEXT:
This story is one of a series of miracle stories centered around Elisha,
successor to Eliyhu in the 9th century BCE. Among other wondrous
acts, the prophet has fed a lot of people with a few loaves of bread, revived a
dead child, and caused a lost a lost iron axe head to float. At the time Aram
(Syria) was a perennial opponent of Yisrael. Shomron, capitol of the northern
kingdom, was experiencing a terrible drought/famine–the price of food had
become impossible. And that’s when King Ben Hadad, II, of Aram, has gathered
his forces to attack the city and camped not far from its gate. Y’horam, King
of Yisrael, walking the city wall at night encounters a woman who calls out:
“Help me O King!” He replies: “If
Yah has not helped you from where can I? What’s the matter?” “This woman said
to me give up your son and we shall eat it today and my son we shall eat
tomorrow. We cooked my son and ate
him. Days later when I said to her give up your son and we shall eat it, she
hid her son.” The king is distraught, tears his clothes, and mourns. Perhaps out of impotent madness he
turns on the prophet: “Damn me if I don’t have Elisha’s head this day.” Elisha,
at home surrounded by the leaders of his disciples of course knows what is
going on, tells his men to grab the messenger from the king and in his hearing
declares an incredibly hopeful prediction: “At this time tomorrow, at the
Shomron gate, flour will sell for a shekel a bushel and two bushels of barley
will go for a shekel.” The official sarcastically jibes back: “God’s going to
open the heavens? Could such a thing happen?” Elisha replies; “You’ll live to
see it but not to eat of it!”
One
more detail, Leviticus 13:46 provides, that a person with plague, being impure,
must dwell alone, his dwelling outside the camp.
(Haftara
Tazria/M’tsora)
There
were four men, m’tsoraim, at the door
of the gate. One said to the other, “For what are we sitting here till our
death? If, say, we enter the city and there’s famine, we die there. And if we
stay here we die. So let’s go drop into the Aram camp: if they revive us we
live and if they kill us we die.”
So
they rose in the dark to enter the Aram camp and when they reached the
perimeter, look, not a man there. What had happened was that my Lord had
sounded in the Aram camp the noise of chariot and horse, the noise of a great
army. One man said to the other, “Hey, the king of Yisrael has hired against us
the Chiti kings and the Mitsrayim kings to attack us.” They had risen and fled
in the dark and left their gods and their horses and their donkeys in the camp
as it was. They had fled for their
lives. So these m’tsoraim entered the camp perimeter and
went into one tent and they ate and drank and bore off from there silver and
gold and clothing. The went and buried it and then returned, entering another
tent, bearing off from there and burying it.
Then
one said to the other, “We’re not doing the right thing. Today is a day of good news and we’re
keeping quiet. If we wait till morning we’ll be found out and guilty. Let’s go tell it at the king’s house.”
So
they arrived and called out to the city gatekeeper: “We came to the Aram camp
and, hey, there wasn’t a man or the sound of a man. Just the horses and donkeys tied up. And the tents just as
they were.”
The
gatekeepers sent the call inward, telling it at the king’s house. The king got up and said to his
servants, “I’ll tell you what Aram has done to us. They knew we were hungry so they left the camp to hide in
the field, saying: “When they leave the city we’ll capture them alive and enter
the city.’”
One
of his servants replied, “Take five of our remaining horses. They’re like the hoards of Yisrael who
have already died. Let’s send and
see.”
So
they took two chariots with horses and the king sent them to the Aram camp. “Go
see.” And they went after them all
the way to the Yarden. Look, the
entire way was full of clothing and vessels that Aram had thrown in their
hurry. The messengers returned and reported to the king.
The
people went out and looted the Aram camp.
And it was that just as the word of Yah, a seah bushel of flour brought a shekel
and two seah bushels of barley
brought a shekel. The king took care
of the third officer, his right hand man, by placing him at the gate. The people trampled him and he died,
just as the man of God had spoken when the king had come down to him.
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