2 Kings 6:24-33
September 5, 2021
Ben-hadad's Siege of Samaria
Afterward, Ben-hadad king of Syria mustered his entire army and went up and besieged Samaria. And there was a great famine in Samaria, as they besieged it until a donkey's head was sold for eighty shekels of silver, and the fourth part of a kab of dove's dung for five shekels of silver. Now as the king of Israel was passing by on the wall, a woman cried out to him, saying, “Help, my lord, O king!” 27 And he said, “If the Lord will not help you, how shall I help you? From the threshing floor, or from the winepress?” And the king asked her, “What is your trouble?” She answered, “This woman said to me, ‘Give your son, that we may eat him today, and we will eat my son tomorrow.’ So, we boiled my son and ate him. And on the next day, I said to her, ‘Give your son, that we may eat him.’ But she has hidden her son.” When the king heard the words of the woman, he tore his clothes—now he was passing by on the wall—and the people looked, and behold, he had sackcloth beneath on his body— and he said, “May God do so to me and more also if the head of Elisha the son of Shaphat remains on his shoulders today.”
Elisha was sitting in his house, and the elders were sitting with him. Now the king had dispatched a man from his presence, but before the messenger arrived Elisha said to the elders, “Do you see how this murderer has sent to take off 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 feet behind him?” And while he was still speaking with them, the messenger came down to him and said, “This trouble is from the Lord! Why should I wait for the Lord any longer?”
After reading this account of the siege of Samaria, this thought came into my mind; “Seek the Lord when He can be found. The Scripture is Isaiah 55:6, but let us look at it in the ESV verses 6,7, “Seek the Lord while he may be found; call upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the Lord, that he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.”
Have you been there, you prayed, you even begged God to rescue you, but it seems he is far away, but He was near, and you were impacted and instead of doing a heart check, you put the blame for your troubles on someone else? Now you understand where the king was coming from, so Elisha became the bad guy, and did the king believe that was going to make things right with the God who Elisha served? It makes no sense, but have you not tried to do the same thing, and how did that turn out?
I’ve come to have a good understanding of why, the answer found in Isaiah 55:8, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.”
From the Back Porch,
Bob Rice
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