_THE FAMINE AND THE SIEGE_
2 KINGS vi. 24-vii. 20
"'Tis truly no good plan when princes play
The vulture among carrion; but when
They play the carrion among vultures--that
Is ten times worse."
LESSING, _Nathan the Wise_, Act I., Sc. 3.
If the Benhadad, King of Syria, who reduced Samaria to the horrible
straits recorded in this chapter, (2 Kings vi.) was the same Benhadad
whom Ahab had treated with such impolitic confidence, his hatred
against Israel must indeed have burned hotly. Besides the affair at
Dothan, he had already been twice routed with enormous slaughter, and
against those disasters he could only set the death of Ahab at
Ramoth-Gilead. It is obvious from the preceding narrative that he
could advance at any time at his will and pleasure into the heart of
his enemy's country, and shut him up in his capital almost without
resistance. The siege-trains of ancient days were very inefficient,
and any strong fortress could hold out for years, if only it was well
provisioned. Such was not the case with Samaria, and it was reduced to
a condition of sore famine. Food so loathsome as an ass's head, which
at other times the poorest would have spurned, was now sold for eighty
shekels' weight of silver (about £8); and the fourth part of a
_xestes_ or _kab_--which was itself the smallest dry-measure, the
sixth part of a _seah_--of the coarse, common pulse, or roasted
chick-peas, vulgarly known as "dove's dung," fetched five shekels
(about 12_s._ 6_d._).[117]
While things were at this awful pass, "the King of Israel," as he is
vaguely called throughout this story, went his rounds upon the wall to
visit the sentries and encourage the soldiers in their defence. As he
passed, a woman cried, "Help, my lord, O king!" In Eastern monarchies
the king is a judge of the humblest; a suppliant, however mean, may
cry to him. Jehoram thought that this was but one of the appeals which
sprang from the clamorous mendicity of famine with which he had grown
so painfully familiar. "The Lord curse you!" he exclaimed
impatiently.[118] "How can I help you? Every barn-floor is bare, every
wine-press drained." And he passed on.
But the woman continued her wild clamour, and turning round at her
importunity, he asked, "What aileth thee?"
He heard in reply a narrative as appalling as ever smote the ear of a
king in a besieged city. Among the curses denounced upon apostate Israel
in the Pentateuch, we read, "Ye shall eat the flesh of your sons, and
the flesh of your daughters shall ye eat";[119] or, as it is expressed
more fully in the Book of Deuteronomy, "He shall besiege thee in all
thy gates throughout all thy land.... And thou shalt eat the fruit of
thine own body, the flesh of thy sons and thy daughters, which the Lord
thy God hath given thee, in the siege, and in the straitness wherewith
thine enemies shall distress thee: so that the man that is tender among
you, and very delicate, his eye shall be evil towards his brother, and
towards the wife of his bosom, and towards the remnant of his children
which he shall leave; so that he shall not give to any of them of the
flesh of his children whom he shall eat, because he hath nothing left
him in the siege.... The tender and delicate woman, which would not
adventure to set the sole of her foot upon the ground for delicateness
and tenderness, her eye shall be evil towards the husband of her bosom,
and towards her son, and towards her daughter, and towards her children:
for she shall eat them for want of all things secretly in the siege and
the straitness, if thou wilt not observe to do all the words of the law,
... that thou mayest fear the glorious and fearful name, _The Lord thy
God_."[120] We find almost the same words in the prophet Jeremiah;[121]
and in Lamentations we read: "The hands of the pitiful women have sodden
their own children: they were their meat in the destruction of the
daughter of My people."[122]
Isaiah asks, "Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not
have compassion on the son of her womb?" Alas! it has always been so in
those awful scenes of famine, whether after shipwreck or in beleaguered
cities, when man becomes degraded to an animal, with all an animal's
primitive instincts, and when the wild beast appears under the thin
veneer of civilisation. So it was at the siege of Jerusalem, and at the
siege of Magdeburg, and at the wreck of the _Medusa_, and on many
another occasion when the pangs of hunger have corroded away every
vestige of the tender affections and of the moral sense.
And this had occurred at Samaria: her women had become cannibals and
devoured their own little ones.
"This woman," screamed the suppliant, pointing her lean finger at a
wretch like herself--"this woman said unto me, 'Give thy son, that we
may eat him to-day, and we will afterwards eat my son.' I yielded to
her suggestion. We killed my little son, and ate his flesh when we had
sodden it. Next day I said to her, 'Now give thy son, that we may eat
him'; and she hath hid her son!"
How could the king answer such a horrible appeal? Injustice had been
done; but was he to order and to sanction by way of redress fresh
cannibalism, and the murder by its mother of another babe? In that
foul obliteration of every natural instinct, what could he do, what
could any man do? Can there be equity among raging wild beasts, when
they roar for their prey and are unfed?
All that the miserable king could do was to rend his clothes in horror
and to pass on, and as his starving subjects passed by him on the wall
they saw that he wore sackcloth beneath his purple, in sign, if not of
repentance, yet of anguish, if not of prayer, yet of uttermost
humiliation.[123]
But if indeed he had, in his misery, donned that sackcloth in order
that at least the semblance of self-mortification might move Jehovah
to pity, as it had done in the case of his father Ahab, the external
sign of his humility had done nothing to change his heart. The
gruesome appeal to which he had just been forced to listen only
kindled him to a burst of fury[124].The man who had warned, who had
prophesied, who so far during this siege had not raised his finger to
help--the man who was believed to be able to wield the powers of
heaven, and had wrought no deliverance for his people, but suffered
them to sink unaided into these depths of abjectness--should he be
permitted to live? If Jehovah would not help, of what use was Elisha?
"God do so to me, and more also," exclaimed Jehoram--using his
mother's oath to Elijah[125]--"if the head of Elisha, the son of
Shaphat, shall stand on him this day."
Was this the king who had come to Elisha with such humble entreaty,
when three armies were perishing of thirst before the eyes of Moab?
Was this the king who had called Elisha "my father," when the prophet
had led the deluded host of Syrians into Samaria, and bidden Jehoram
to set large provision before them? It was the same king, but now
transported with fury and reduced to despair. His threat against God's
prophet was in reality a defiance of God, as when our unhappy
Plantagenet, Henry II., maddened by the loss of Le Mans, exclaimed
that, since God had robbed him of the town he loved, he would pay God
out by robbing Him of that which He most loved in him--his soul.
Jehoram's threat was meant in grim earnest, and he sent an executioner
to carry it out. Elisha was sitting in his house with the elders of
the city, who had come to him for counsel at this hour of supreme
need. He knew what was intended for him, and it had also been revealed
to him that the king would follow his messenger to cancel his
sanguinary threat. "See ye," he said to the elders, "how this son of a
murderer"--for again he indicates his contempt and indignation for the
son of Ahab and Jezebel--"hath sent to behead me! When he comes, shut
the door, and hold it fast against him. His master is following hard
at his heels."
The messenger came, and was refused admittance. The king followed
him,[126] and entering the room where the prophet and elders sat, he
gave up his wicked design of slaying Elisha with the sword, but he
overwhelmed him with reproaches, and in despair renounced all further
trust in Jehovah. Elisha, as the king's words imply, must have refused
all permission to capitulate: he must have held out from the first a
promise that God would send deliverance. But no deliverance had come.
The people were starving. Women were devouring their babes. Nothing
worse could happen if they flung open their gates to the Syrian host.
"Behold," the king said, "this evil is Jehovah's doing. You have
deceived us. Jehovah does not intend to deliver us. Why should I wait
for Him any longer?" Perhaps the king meant to imply that his mother's
Baal was better worth serving, and would never have left his votaries
to sink into these straits.
And now man's extremity had come, and it was God's opportunity. Elisha
at last was permitted to announce that the worst was over, that the
next day plenty should smile on the besieged city. "Thus saith the
Lord," he exclaimed to the exhausted and despondent king, "To-morrow
about this time, instead of an ass's head being sold for eighty
shekels, and a thimbleful of pulse for five shekels, a peck of fine
flour shall be sold for a shekel, and two pecks of barley for a
shekel, in the gate of Samaria."
The king was leaning on the hand of his chief officer, and to this
soldier the promise seemed not only incredible, but silly: for at the
best he could only suppose that the Syrian host would raise the siege;
and though to hope for that looked an absurdity, yet even that would
not in the least fulfil the immense prediction. He answered,
therefore, in utter scorn: "Yes! Jehovah is making windows in heaven!
But even thus could this be?" It is much as if he should have answered
some solemn pledge with a derisive proverb such as, "Yes! if the sky
should fall, we should catch larks!"
Such contemptuous repudiation of a Divine promise was a blasphemy; and
answering scorn with scorn, and riddle with riddling, Elisha answers
the mocker, "Yes! and _you_ shall see this, but shall not enjoy it."
The word of the Lord was the word of a true prophet, and the miracle
was wrought. Not only was the siege raised, but the wholly unforeseen
spoil of the entire Syrian camp, with all its accumulated rapine,
brought about the predicted plenty.
There were four lepers[127] outside the gate of Samaria, like the
leprous mendicants who gather there to this day. They were cut off
from all human society, except their own. Leprosy was treated as
contagious, and if "houses of the unfortunate" (_Biut-el-Masákin_)
were provided for them, as seems to have been the case at Jerusalem,
they were built outside the city walls.[128] They could only live by
beggary, and this was an aggravation of their miserable condition. And
how could any one fling food to these beggars over the walls, when
food of any kind was barely to be had within them?
So taking counsel of their despair, they decided that they would
desert to the Syrians: among them they would at least find food, if
their lives were spared; and if not, death would be a happy release
from their present misery.
So in the evening twilight, when they could not be seen or shot at
from the city wall as deserters, they stole down to the Syrian camp.
When they reached its outermost circle, to their amazement all was
silence. They crept into one of the tents in fear and astonishment.
There was food and drink there, and they satisfied the cravings of
their hunger. It was also stored with booty from the plundered cities
and villages of Israel. To this they helped themselves, and took it
away and hid it. Having spoiled this tent, they entered a second. It
was likewise deserted, and they carried a fresh store of treasures to
their hiding-place. And then they began to feel uneasy at not
divulging to their starving fellow-citizens the strange and golden
tidings of a deserted camp. The night was wearing on; day would reveal
the secret. If they carried the good news, they would doubtless earn a
rich guerdon. If they waited till morning, they might be put to death
for their selfish reticence and theft. It was safest to return to the
city, and rouse the warder, and send a message to the palace. So the
lepers hurried back through the night, and shouted to the sentinel at
the gate, "We went to the Syrian camp, and it was deserted! Not a man
was there, not a sound was to be heard. The horses were tethered
there, and the asses, and the tents were left just as they were."
The sentinel called the other watchmen to hear the wonderful news, and
instantly ran with it to the palace. The slumbering house was roused;
and though it was still night, the king himself arose. But he could not
shake off his despondency, and made no reference to Elisha's prediction.
News sometimes sounds too good to be true. "It is only a decoy," he
said. "They can only have left their camp to lure us into an ambuscade,
that they may return, and slaughter us, and capture our city."
"Send to see," answered one of his courtiers. "Send five horsemen to
test the truth, and to look out. If they perish, their fate is but the
fate of us all."
So two chariots with horses were despatched, with instructions not
only to visit the camp, but track the movements of the host.
They went, and found that it was as the lepers had said. The camp was
deserted, and lay there as an immense booty; and for some reason the
Syrians had fled towards the Jordan to make good their escape to
Damascus by the eastern bank. The whole road was strewn with the traces
of their headlong flight; it was full of scattered garments and vessels.
Probably, too, the messengers came across some disabled fugitive, and
learnt the secret of this amazing stampede. It was the result of one of
those sudden unaccountable panics to which the huge, unwieldy,
heterogeneous Eastern armies, which have no organised system of
sentries, and no trained discipline, are constantly liable. We have
already met with several instances in the history of Israel. Such was
the panic which seized the Midianites when Gideon's three hundred blew
their trumpets; and the panic of the Syrians before Ahab's pages of the
provinces; and of the combined armies in the Valley of Salt; and of the
Moabites at Wady-el-Ahsy; and afterwards of the Assyrians before the
walls of Jerusalem. Fear is physically contagious, and, when once it has
set in, it swells with such unaccountable violence, that the Greeks
called these terrors "panic," because they believed them to be directly
inspired by the god Pan. Well-disciplined as was the army of the Ten
Thousand Greeks in their famous retreat, they nearly fell victims to a
sudden panic, had not Clearchus, with prompt resource, published by the
herald the proclamation of a reward for the arrest of the man who had
let the ass loose. Such an unaccountable terror--caused by a noise as of
chariots and of horses which reverberated among the hills--had seized
the Syrian host. They thought that Jehoram had secretly hired an army of
the princes of the Khetas[129] and of the Egyptians to march suddenly
upon them. In wild confusion, not stopping to reason or to inquire, they
took to flight, increasing their panic by the noise and rush of their
own precipitance.
No sooner had the messengers delivered their glad tidings, than the
people of Samaria began to pour tumultuously out of the gates, to
fling themselves on the food and on the spoil. It was like the rush of
the dirty, starving, emaciated wretches which horrified the keepers
of the reserved stores at Smolensk in Napoleon's retreat from Moscow,
and forced them to shut the gates, and fling food and grain to the
struggling soldiers out of the windows of the granaries. To secure
order and prevent disaster, the king appointed his attendant lord to
keep the gate. But the torrent of people flung him down, and they
trampled on his body in their eagerness for relief. He died after
having seen that the promise of Elisha was fulfilled, and that the
cheapness and abundance had been granted, the prophecy of which he
thought only fit for his sceptical derision.
"The sudden panic which delivered the city," says Dean Stanley, "is
the one marked intervention on behalf of the northern capital. No
other incident could be found in the sacred annals so appropriately to
express, in the Church of Gouda, the pious gratitude of the citizens
of Leyden, for their deliverance from the Spanish army, as the
miraculous raising of the siege of Samaria."[130]
FOOTNOTES:
[117] So _asafœtida_ is called "devil's dung" in Germany; and the _Herba
alcali_, "sparrow's dung" by Arabs. The _Q'ri_, however, supports the
_literal_ meaning; and compare 2 Kings xviii. 27; Jos., _B. J._, V.
xiii. 7. Analogies for these prices are quoted from classic authors.
Plutarch (_Artax._, xxiv.) mentions a siege in which an ass's head could
hardly be got for sixty drachmas (£2 10_s._), though usually the whole
animal only cost £1. Pliny (_H. N._, viii. 57) says that during
Hannibal's siege of Casilinum a mouse sold for £6 5_s._
[118] So Clericus. Comp. Jos. ἐπηράσατο αὐτῇ.
[119] Lev. xxvi. 29.
[120] Deut. xxviii. 52-58.
[121] Jer. xix. 9.
[122] Lam. iv. 10: comp. ii. 20; Ezek. v. 10; Jos., _B. J._, VI. iii. 4.
[123] 1 Kings xxi. 27; Isa. xx. 2, 3.
[124] Compare the wrath of Pashur the priest in consequence of the
denunciation of Jeremiah (Jer. xx. 2).
[125] 1 Kings xix. 2.
[126] In 2 Kings vi. 33 we should read _melek_ (king) for _maleak_
(messenger). Jehoram repented of his hasty order.
[127] The Jews say Gehazi, and his three sons (Jarchi).
[128] Lev. xiii. 46; Num. v. 2, 3.
[129] The capitals of the ancient Hittites--a nation whose fame had
been almost entirely obliterated till a few years ago--were
Karchemish, Kadesh, Hamath, and Helbon (Aleppo).
[130] _Lectures_, ii. 345.