2 Raja-raja 6:24-29

The Lord Saves Samaria

6:24 Later King Ben Hadad of Syria assembled his entire army and attacked ¹  and besieged Samaria. ²  6:25 Samaria’s food supply ran out. ³  They laid siege to it so long that ⁴  a donkey’s head was selling for eighty shekels of silver ⁵  and a quarter of a kab ⁶  of dove’s droppings ⁷  for five shekels of silver. ⁸ 

6:26 While the king of Israel was passing by on the city wall, a woman shouted to him, “Help us, my master, O king!” 6:27 He replied, “No, let the Lord help you. How can I help you? The threshing floor and winepress are empty.” ⁹  6:28 Then the king asked her, “What’s your problem?” She answered, “This woman said to me, ‘Hand over your son; we’ll eat him today and then eat my son tomorrow.’ 6:29 So we boiled my son and ate him. Then I said to her the next day, ‘Hand over your son and we’ll eat him.’ But she hid her son!”

2 Raja-raja 17:5-6

17:5 The king of Assyria marched through ¹⁰  the whole land. He attacked Samaria and besieged it for three years. 17:6 In the ninth year of Hoshea’s reign, the king of Assyria captured Samaria and deported the people of Israel ¹¹  to Assyria. He settled them in Halah, along the Habor (the river of Gozan), and in the cities of the Medes.

[6:24]  ¹ tn Heb “went up.”

[6:24]  ² map For location see Map2 B1; Map4 D3; Map5 E2; Map6 A4; Map7 C1.

[6:25]  ³ tn Heb “and there was a great famine in Samaria.”

[6:25]  ⁴ tn Heb “and look, [they] were besieging it until.”

[6:25]  ⁵ tn Heb “eighty, silver.” The unit of measurement is omitted.

[6:25]  ⁶ sn A kab was a unit of dry measure, equivalent to approximately one quart.

[6:25]  ⁷ tn The consonantal text (Kethib) reads, “dove dung” (חֲרֵייוֹנִים, khareyonim), while the marginal reading (Qere) has “discharge” (דִּבְיוֹנִים, divyonim). Based on evidence from Akkadian, M. Cogan and H. Tadmor (II Kings [AB], 79) suggest that “dove’s dung” was a popular name for the inedible husks of seeds.

[6:25]  ⁸ tn Heb “five, silver.” The unit of measurement is omitted.

[6:27]  ⁹ tn Heb “From where can I help you, from the threshing floor or the winepress?” The rhetorical question expresses the king’s frustration. He has no grain or wine to give to the masses.

[17:5]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “went up against.”

[17:6]  ¹¹ tn The Hebrew text has simply “Israel” as the object of the verb.