Read 2 Kings 7 here (text coming …) or at Bible Gateway.
The Hebrew paragraphs:
7:1-2 {p} Elisha: Tomorrow flour and barley will sell for a normal price/ the king’s officer did not believe it
7:3-20 {s} Four lepers discovered the abandoned Aramean camp/ when it was told, Elisha’s word came to pass
2 Kin 6:24-7:20 Chiastic structure:
Israel has experienced drought (1 Kin 17:1), and being besieged by enemies, and famine.
Moses declared to Israel, right before his death, that if Israel forsook YHVH:
“They shall besiege you at all your gates until your high and fortified walls, in which you trust, come down throughout all your land; and they shall besiege you at all your gates throughout all your land which YHVH your God has given you. You shall eat the fruit of your own body, the flesh of your sons and your daughters whom YHVH your God has given you, in the siege and desperate straits in which your enemy shall distress you.” Deu 28:52-53
Solomon prayed, at the dedication of the Temple:
“When the heavens are shut up and there is no rain because they have sinned against You, when they pray toward this place and confess Your name, and turn from their sin because You afflict them, then hear in heaven, and forgive the sin of Your servants, Your people Israel, that You may teach them the good way in which they should walk; and send rain on Your land which You have given to Your people as an inheritance. When there is famine in the land, pestilence or blight or mildew, locusts or grasshoppers; when their enemy besieges them in the land of their cities; whatever plague or whatever sickness there is; whatever prayer, whatever supplication is made by anyone, or by all Your people Israel, when each one knows the plague of his own heart, and spreads out his hands toward this temple: then hear in heaven Your dwelling place, and forgive, and act, and give to everyone according to all his ways, whose heart You know (for You alone know the hearts of all the sons of men), that they may fear You all the days that they live in the land which You gave to our fathers.” 1 Kin 8:35-40
The king of Israel, instead of sending for Elisha’s head, should have looked to himself for the troubles Israel was enduring, and repented.
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