22. “Don’t strike them down,” he replied. “Would you strike down those whom you have captured with your own sword and bow? Set before them bread and water that they may eat and drink and go back to their master.”
23. So he prepared a great feast for them. After they had eaten and drunk, he sent them away, and they went back to their master. Ever since, the marauding bands of Aram stopped invading the land of Israel.
24. Now it came to pass after this, that King Ben-hadad of Aram gathered all his army and marched against Samaria and besieged it.
25. Now there was a great famine in Samaria, since they were besieging it, until a donkey’s head was sold for 80 pieces of silver, and the quarter of a kav of dove’s dung for five pieces of silver.
26. As the king of Israel was passing by on the wall, a woman cried out to him saying, “My lord the king, help!”
27. But he said, “If Adonai doesn’t help you, how would I help you? From the threshing floor, or from the winepress?”
28. Then the king asked her, “What’s the matter with you?” She answered, “This woman said to me: ‘Give your son that we may eat him today, and we will eat my son tomorrow.’
29. So we cooked my son and ate him. The next day I told her: ‘Give your son that we may eat him’—but she hid her son.”
30. Now it came to pass when the king heard the words of the woman, that he tore his clothes—as he was passing by on the wall, the people looked, and behold, he had sackcloth underneath upon his flesh.
31. Then he said, “May God do so to me and even more, if the head of Elisha the son of Shaphat remains on him today.”
32. Now Elisha was sitting in his house, and the elders were sitting with him. The king had sent a messenger ahead, yet even before the messenger arrived, Elisha said to the elders, “Do you see, this son of a murderer was sent to take away my head! Look, when the messenger comes, shut the door and hold the door fast against him. Is not the sound of his master’s footsteps behind him?”
33. While he was yet talking with them, behold, the messenger came down to him. So the king said, “Look! This evil is from Adonai—why should I wait for Adonai any longer?”