And the king said to her, What aileth thee? And she said, This woman said to me, Give thy son, that we may eat him to-day, and we will eat my son to-morrow.
The scene is Samaria under siege, with food gone and a king walking the wall while a woman cries out for help. His short question draws out an answer so horrifying that it turns a famine story into proof that God's oldest warnings were true.
The woman cries to the king, but the king has nothing to give her. She is appealing to a man as helpless as she is. One commentator sums up the city, and the king's response to it:
The distress was extreme. The king of Israel was completely helpless, and everything was in confusion. No wonder the king tore his clothes and wore sackcloth. But there was no fear of God in him. Instead there was a murderous intent against the prophet of God.
The woman's reply is not a complaint about hunger. It is the report of an agreement: one son today, the other son tomorrow.
What a famine it was! Tender women, each of them mothers, agreed together to take the lives of their children. One child was cooked and eaten. The next day that child's mother was furious, because the other woman's child was kept back and the cannibal meal she had waited for never came. So she appealed to the king for justice he was too shaken to give her! Again we say, what a famine this was! It erased from women the very marks of their sex: gentleness, tenderness, and love for their own children.
What the woman describes was not unforeseen. Moses had put the warning in writing long before Israel entered the land.
Now, under God's government He allows the enemy to besiege Samaria, leading to "a great famine" in the city. The people inside are driven to a desperate state, and so a solemn prophecy spoken more than five hundred years before comes true. Moses had warned the people of God that if they turned away from Him, a time would come when their enemies would besiege them. They would sink so low that tender, delicate women would eat their young children in secret (Leviticus 26; Deuteronomy 28). This horror had at last come to pass.
Readers often find this verse hard to believe. One writer answers that the problem is not the record, but our habit of hiding the dark side.
You can imagine nothing worse than a woman boiling her own son. When God draws a picture, He draws a true picture. Man likes to draw a bright picture and to throw a veil over the dark side; God describes faithfully what man is.
The king's sackcloth was hidden. He wore it under his robes, where no one could see it. One writer explains why that sincerity still left him short of blessing.
The king stands here, as always in Israel, for a people just as guilty as he is. This king was the wicked descendant of ancestors just as wicked. He was awake to his danger, but not to his sin. He had put on the clothing of repentance — Job's sackcloth without Job's self-loathing… And none of this was hypocrisy. The sackcloth was not on the outside for people to see; it was inside, against his flesh. He is trying to establish a claim on God by the very thing that shows he has no claim. And how many people, without being hypocrites at all, are doing that! They turn their repentance itself into a kind of righteousness, when the whole meaning of repentance is that we have none. And God waits. He holds back the blessing He wants to give, because to give it then would be to approve what is not true. In this way the king's sackcloth was the very thing that blocked the blessing.
Rescue did come to this city, but no one inside had earned it.
It was no work of the Samaritans and no work of the lepers that saved them that day. No, it was the intervention of God in sovereign grace, and it is the same today. So far from man's works or merits having anything to do with it, it is when the sin of man has risen to its full height that the gospel of God comes out.
- Warned — Moses described this scene centuries before it happened. God's word proved true in its threats as much as in its promises.
- Starved — hunger stripped mothers of tenderness, until two women bargained over which son died first.
- Helpless — the king had nothing left to give. The one appealed to was as empty as the woman appealing.
- Unhumbled — the king's sackcloth was real. But repentance used as a claim on God is repentance misunderstood, and it held the blessing back.
- Rescued — God stepped in once every human claim had collapsed. No one inside the walls earned it.
And we boiled my son, and ate him and I said to her on the next day, Give thy son, that we may eat him; and she has hidden her son.
These words describe a bargain between two starving mothers in a besieged city. One son was eaten. The second was hidden. The quarrel then went to the king, as if it were an ordinary broken deal. Samaria's famine raises two questions. How did God's people sink this far, and what does God do with a ruin this complete?
This horror was no accident of war. Commentators trace it back to mercy that changed nothing, and to a warning Moses gave Israel long before they entered the land.
Jehoram, the king who had turned away from God, already owed his life to Elisha. Yet this great mercy seems to have changed nothing, either in the king or in the nation. Now God's government lets the enemy besiege Samaria, and this brings "a great famine" in the city. Their suffering grew so terrible that a solemn prophecy, spoken more than five hundred years earlier, came true. Moses had warned the people of God that if they turned away from Him, a time would come when their enemies would besiege them. They would sink so low that gentle, tender women would eat their own young children in secret (Lev. 26:21-29; Deut. 28:49-57). This horror had happened at last.
One writer meets the reader's disgust head on. What the Bible records here is horrible, and it is true.
Even mothers forgot their natural love for their own children. Think of a woman, a mother, boiling and eating her own child. Impossible, you say. No, women did it. God had said they would do it... The Word of God never fails. This is the beauty of Scripture: it paints man as he is, and woman as she is, not as a historian or a novelist paints them.
Another writer walks through the bargain itself, and where it ended.
What a famine it was! Tender women, all of them mothers, agreed together to take the lives of their own children. They cooked one child and ate it. The next day that child's mother was furious, because the other woman kept her own child back and the cannibal dish she had looked forward to never came. So she appealed to the king for a remedy he was too shaken to give her! Again we say, what a famine this was! It wiped out from women the very qualities of their sex: gentleness, tenderness, and love of their children.
She takes her case to the highest authority in the city, and he has no answer. One writer notes what the king never even tries.
Why did the king of Israel not even consider praying to the Lord in this predicament? He could speak of the Lord (v.27), but had no faith whatever in God's sovereign goodness.
The king did feel something. But where he wore his sackcloth tells its own story.
In the king we see a certain measure of looking to God — he wore sackcloth next to his skin. In Scripture sackcloth is a well-known symbol of repentance. But he was too proud to let the people know he thought God's hand was on him, so he wore the sackcloth underneath, not on the outside. He was like many people today, who have a certain seriousness but would not want their neighbours to know. He did not want to admit his sin. He would have been glad to blame God or His servant for this condition, which was the result of Israel's sin.
One writer puts that instinct in a long line of others.
This was man charging God — or His servant, which comes to the same thing — with all the trouble that was happening. It was like Adam at the beginning of our sin: "The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate." It was like Cain: "Am I my brother's keeper?" It was laying the sin and the sorrow on the one head that was clear and free of it all.
The story does not stop in despair. One writer marks the moment when the promise came, and what that timing shows.
This was sin carried out to the full. Like the cross of Christ, this was the height of evil. This was exactly the moment when Samaria's sin was at its worst. But, as at that same cross of Christ, this very moment became the occasion for God to display His grace. The ruin was complete, and there was no hope from man. It is then that Elisha opens his lips with a promise and delivers a word from the Lord.
- Warned. Moses described Samaria's horror five hundred years before it happened. God's word never fails — its warnings no less than its promises.
- Ruined. Famine erased even a mother's love for her child. Scripture records it, because Scripture shows people as they really are.
- Helpless. The woman appealed to the king, who could name the Lord but never thought to pray to Him, and so had no relief to give.
- Blaming. The king hid his sackcloth under his clothes and blamed God's servant — laying the sin on the one head that was free of it all.
- Rescued. Evil reached its height and human hope was gone. At that exact moment the prophet spoke a promise. That is how grace works.