22. Elisha replied, “You must not kill them. Do you slay those whom you have taken captive with your sword or bow? Serve them a meal. Let them eat and drink, and then go back to their master.”
23. The king spread a great feast for them. When they had eaten and drunk he sent them away, and they went back to their master. No more Aramean raiders came into the land of Israel.
24. After this, Ben-hadad, king of Aram, mustered his whole army and laid siege to Samaria.
25. Because of the siege the famine in Samaria was so severe that a donkey’s head sold for eighty pieces of silver, and a fourth of a kab of “dove droppings” for five pieces of silver.
26. One day, as the king of Israel was walking on the city wall, a woman cried out to him, “Save us, my lord king!”
27. He replied, “If the Lord does not save you, where could I find means to save you? On the threshing floor? In the wine press?”
28. Then the king asked her, “What is your trouble?” She replied: “This woman said to me, ‘Give up your son that we may eat him today; then tomorrow we will eat my son.’
29. So we boiled my son and ate him. The next day I said to her, ‘Now give up your son that we may eat him.’ But she hid her son.”
30. When the king heard the woman’s words, he tore his garments. And as he was walking on the wall, the people saw that he was wearing sackcloth underneath, next to his skin.
31. The king exclaimed, “May God do thus to me, and more, if the head of Elisha, son of Shaphat, stays on him today!”