Chapter Six

1–33. New miracles of the prophet Elisha: the floating of the axe, the prophet’s disclosure of Syrian military plans, the revelation to the prophet of heavenly warriors, the striking of the Syrians with blindness, foresight of danger from Joram.

2 Kings 6:1. Now the company of prophets said to Elisha, “As you see, the place where we live under your supervision is too small for us. 2 Kings 6:2. “Let us go to the Jordan, and let us collect logs there, one for each of us, and build a place there for us to live.” He answered, “Do so. 2 Kings 6:3. Then one of them said, “Please come with your servants.” “I will,” he answered. 2 Kings 6:4. So he went with them. When they came to the Jordan, they cut down trees. 2 Kings 6:5. As one was felling a log, his ax head fell into the water; he cried out, “Alas, master! It was borrowed! 2 Kings 6:6. The man of God asked, “Where did it fall?” When he showed him the place, he cut off a stick, and threw it in there, and made the iron float. 2 Kings 6:7. He said, “Pick it up.” So he reached out his hand and took it. The connection of the beginning of chapter VI to the end of the preceding the blessed Theodoret establishes thus: “Gehazi, this lover of gain, became a leper, while the company of prophets loved extreme poverty. They did not even have a house, but lived in shelters. Therefore they asked the great prophet to go with them to cut wood to build shelters. And such was their poverty that they could not afford to buy their own ax” (question 19). According to its circumstances and content, this section (v. 1–7) is directly connected to the account (2 Kgs 4:38-44). The miracle of the floating of the ax, according to the blessed Theodoret, “prefigured the economy of our Savior. For as light wood sank while heavy iron floated, so by the descent of Divine nature was accomplished the ascent of human nature”.

2 Kings 6:8. The king of Syria was at war with Israel; he took counsel with his officers, saying, “At such and such a place shall be my camp. 2 Kings 6:9. But the man of God sent word to the king of Israel, “Take care not to pass by this place, for the Arameans are laying an ambush there. 2 Kings 6:10. The king of Israel sent someone to the place of which the man of God had warned him. More than once or twice he saved him there. 2 Kings 6:11. The mind of the king of Syria was greatly troubled by this; he called his officers and said to them, “Now tell me who among us sides with the king of Israel? 2 Kings 6:12. One of his officers said, “No one, my lord king. But the prophet Elisha in Israel knows all the words that you speak in your bedchamber. 2 Kings 6:13. He said, “Go and find where he is, so that I may send and capture him.” When it was told him, “He is in Dothan, 2 Kings 6:14. he sent horses and chariots there and a great army; they came by night, and surrounded the city. 2 Kings 6:15. When an attendant of the man of God rose early in the morning and went out, an army with horses and chariots was all around the city. His servant said, “Alas, master! What shall we do? 2 Kings 6:16. He replied, “Do not be afraid, for there are more with us than there are with them. 2 Kings 6:17. Then Elisha prayed: “O Lord, please open his eyes that he may see.” So the Lord opened the eyes of the servant, and he saw; the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha. 2 Kings 6:18. When the Arameans came down against him, Elisha prayed to the Lord, “Strike this people, please, with blindness.” So he struck them with blindness as Elisha had asked. 2 Kings 6:19. Elisha said to them, “This is not the way, and this is not the city; follow me, and I will bring you to the man you are looking for.” And he led them to Samaria. 2 Kings 6:20. As soon as they entered Samaria, Elisha said, “O Lord, open the eyes of these men so that they may see.” The Lord opened their eyes, and they saw that they were inside Samaria. 2 Kings 6:21. When the king of Israel saw them he said to Elisha, “Father, shall I kill them? 2 Kings 6:22. He answered, “No! Did you capture them with your own sword and spear that you would kill them? Set food and water before them so that they may eat and drink; and let them go to their master. 2 Kings 6:23. So he prepared for them a great feast; after they ate and drank, he sent them on their way to their master. And the Aramean raiders did not come again into the land of Israel. The chronological date of the armed attacks of the Syrians on the Israelite kingdom described here cannot be determined with certainty: the unifying idea here is not temporal sequence, but the miracle-working of the prophet Elisha. Apparently, these raids preceded the account of Naaman, where there is mention of these raids (2 Kgs 5:2); probably these events took place during Joram, the “son of a murderer,” and these words of the verse (2 Kgs 6:32) could apply only to him, not to subsequent kings. The prophet Elisha, possessing superhuman knowledge, uses it to reveal the treacherous plans of the Syrians and thereby provokes their persecution (verses 9–12), directed at the prophet’s dwelling place – Dothan, Heb. Dothan (v. 13) – a city on the trade route from Gilead to Egypt, where Joseph was once sold (Gen 37:17), to the north of Samaria (cf. Jdt 3:6 and others). Now Tell-Dothan to the north of Nablus (Onomasticon, 396. Cf. Tolkovaya Bibliya, vol. I, p. 101). The gracious heavenly protection over Israel in the form of fiery horses and chariots, like the heavenly host that once encouraged Jacob (Gen 32:1-2), was, by the prayer of the prophet, revealed even to one of his servants (verses 15–17). Elisha performs the miraculous blinding of the Syrian detachment, then again heals it, brings it to Samaria to the Israelite king, but turns away the latter from his intention to perform over the Syrians the dangerous ancient herem (verses 19–23; cf. (1 Sam 27:11)), commanding him to let the Syrian soldiers go, as having been captured without battle: and if they were killed, the miracle would not be known; but if they return whole to the one who sent them, then he too will know the power of our God (the blessed Theodoret, question 20). Temporary peace was achieved.

2 Kings 6:24. After this Ben-hadad king of Syria mustered his entire army, marched up, and besieged Samaria. 2 Kings 6:25. There was a great famine in Samaria, as they besieged it. Indeed, a donkey’s head was sold for eighty shekels of silver, and one-quarter of a kab of dove dung for five shekels of silver. 2 Kings 6:26. As the king of Israel was walking on the city wall, a woman cried out to him, “Help, my lord king! 2 Kings 6:27. He said, “No! Let the Lord help you. How can I help you? From the threshing floor or from the wine press? 2 Kings 6:28. But then the king asked her, “What is your complaint?” She answered, “This woman said to me, ‘Give your son so we may eat him today, and we will eat my son tomorrow.’ 2 Kings 6:29. “So we cooked my son and ate him. The next day I said to her, ‘Now give your son so we may eat him’; but she has hidden her son. 2 Kings 6:30. When the king heard the words of the woman, he tore his clothes—now he was walking on the city wall—and all the people could see that he had sackcloth on under his clothes. 2 Kings 6:31. He said, “So may God do to me, and more, if the head of Elisha son of Shaphat stays on his shoulders today. 2 Kings 6:32. Now Elisha was sitting in his house, and the elders were sitting with him. The king sent a man ahead, but before the messenger reached him, Elisha said to the elders, “Do you see how this son of a murderer has sent someone to take off my head? When the messenger comes, see that you shut the door and hold it closed against him. Is not the sound of his master’s feet behind him? 2 Kings 6:33. While he was still speaking with them, the messenger came down to him and said, “This trouble is from the Lord! Why should I hope in the Lord any longer? Now begins the open war of the Syrian king against the Israelite kingdom. Regarding Ben-hadad see the commentary to (1 Kgs 15:18) and (1 Kgs 20:1). During the siege of Samaria there was a great famine, which forced the inhabitants to eat even foods not permitted by law, even dove dung (used by the besieged instead of salt, the blessed Theodoret) and to buy them at high prices (v. 25). A terrible case (v. 26–30), learned by the king, though it threw him into great sorrow (verse 30), but then this feeling was replaced by irrational rage of the king toward the prophet Elisha (v. 31), and only the miraculous power of his foresight saved the prophet (v. 31–33; cf. the blessed Theodoret, question 21–22). To those around the prophet he advises to detain the royal messenger, evidently in the thought that the ill-considered royal command should soon be revoked, which indeed happened. * * * The grievous famine during the siege of Samaria and accompanied by a terrible phenomenon: the murder of a child by his mother for food, which Moses had already predicted, Deut 28:53, was merely a foreboding of those immense horrors of famine and death that accompanied the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar and, finally, by Titus. About the latter Josephus says (Jewish War 5:13,7) and others.