Slices
Prepare
Thank God for the good things he has done this week.
Bible passage
Famine in besieged Samaria
24 Some time later, Ben-Hadad king of Aram mobilised his entire army and marched up and laid siege to Samaria. 25 There was a great famine in the city; the siege lasted so long that a donkey’s head sold for eighty shekels of silver, and a quarter of a cab of seed pods for five shekels.
26 As the king of Israel was passing by on the wall, a woman cried to him, ‘Help me, my lord the king!’
27 The king replied, ‘If the Lord does not help you, where can I get help for you? From the threshing floor? From the winepress?’ 28 Then he asked her, ‘What’s the matter?’
She answered, ‘This woman said to me, “Give up your son so that we may eat him today, and tomorrow we’ll eat my son.” 29 So we cooked my son and ate him. The next day I said to her, “Give up your son so that we may eat him,” but she had hidden him.’
30 When the king heard the woman’s words, he tore his robes. As he went along the wall, the people looked, and they saw that, under his robes, he had sackcloth on his body. 31 He said, ‘May God deal with me, be it ever so severely, if the head of Elisha son of Shaphat remains on his shoulders today!’
32 Now Elisha was sitting in his house, and the elders were sitting with him. The king sent a messenger ahead, but before he arrived, Elisha said to the elders, ‘Don’t you see how this murderer is sending someone to cut off my head? Look, when the messenger comes, shut the door and hold it shut against him. Is not the sound of his master’s footsteps behind him?’ 33 While he was still talking to them, the messenger came down to him.
The king said, ‘This disaster is from the Lord. Why should I wait for the Lord any longer?’
7 Elisha replied, ‘Hear the word of the Lord. This is what the Lord says: about this time tomorrow, a seah of the finest flour will sell for a shekel and two seahs of barley for a shekel at the gate of Samaria.’
2 The officer on whose arm the king was leaning said to the man of God, ‘Look, even if the Lord should open the floodgates of the heavens, could this happen?’
‘You will see it with your own eyes,’ answered Elisha, ‘but you will not eat any of it!’
Explore
What a dramatic change. In yesterday’s passage the king of Israel trusted Elisha’s words. In today’s passage he appears to blame Elisha (v 31) for the siege and the suffering. To his credit, the king is distressed by the story he hears of women eating their children (v 30), but rather than take responsibility, he declares that God has caused the disaster (v 33b). The king considers that Elisha, as God’s messenger, shares the blame (v 31).
When our disasters come, how do we react? Do we accuse the Lord of being the cause of our trouble? Or do we go to him for comfort, for guidance, for wisdom and in hope of a miracle? It depends on what we believe deep down about God. Although he’d previously seen God act for the good of Israel, the king believes that the Lord is against him. Elisha, on the other hand, has confidence that God will bring the siege to a miraculous end (7:1,2). He knows that the Lord is for Israel.
Do you remember in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, when everything seemed scary and dark? Many churches, groups and nations recorded versions of a song called ‘The Blessing’ which carried a message we all desperately needed to hear: he is for you!
Respond
‘In the morning, in the evening / In your coming, and your going / In your weeping, and rejoicing / He is for you, he is for you …’*
*Jobe et al, © Worship Together Music, 2020
Deeper Bible study
Open my heart, Father, to your Spirit, your word, your people and the world around me, especially to those who are in poverty of one kind or another.
What a dreadful story! This siege is the situation that Elisha had prevented with his actions in the previous chapter. He averted it for a time, but the Arameans did not stay away for ever. As their leader, the king of Israel should have beseeched God for his mercy, or he could have called for Elisha, as servants in previous chapters had done. His answer to the woman who calls him to help, however, demonstrates a kind of fatalism, for, instead of appealing to God, he gives a rational answer. In fact, he blames Elisha, possibly because Elisha had advised against his killing his captives (v 22), though it is unlikely that killing the Aramean army would have prevented this siege by Ben-Hadad’s ‘entire army’ (v 24). Alternatively, the king might have felt that Elisha had humiliated the Arameans by giving them a feast.
The previous passage had a lot about seeing and blindness. Here the king is blind. In these chapters, Elisha has repeatedly been referred to by the narrator and others as ‘the man of God’. The king, however, sees no irony in calling on God to curse him if he does not that day murder the man of God.
At the same time, the king had some sensibility. It would be easy to read sarcasm into his response to the starving woman, but it may well have been a simple statement that there was no food or wine left. He stops to listen to her complaint; despite feeling that he can do nothing, he tears his clothes in dismay at her story and accidentally reveals in doing so that he is wearing sackcloth – clothes of mourning or repentance. Then, as now, people were complicated and their relationship to and with God ambiguous.
Think of a difficult situation, calling for a response to someone’s suffering. Might it be best to listen, mourn, repent, intercede, all of these, or
something different?
Bible in a year
Read the Bible in a year: Jeremiah 7,8; Psalms 114,115
Pray for Scripture Union
Pray for Local Mission Partner Artless Theatre Trust as they face a busy October touring If Prison Walls Could Speak, from London to Manchester from the 13th– 21st. Pray for safe travels and for God to work powerfully through the performances.
