2 Kings 6:24

_AND IT CAME TO PASS AFTER THIS, THAT BEN-HA'DAD KING OF SYRIA GATHERED ALL HIS HOST, AND WENT UP, AND BESIEGED SAMARIA._ Ben-hadad ... besieged Samaria. This was the predicted accomplishment of the result of Ahab's foolish and misplaced kindness (1 Kings 20:42)....

24-33 Learn to value plenty, and to be thankful for it; see how contemptible money is, when in time of famine it is so freely parted with for any thing that is eatable! The language of Jehoram to the woman may be the language of despair. See the word of God fulfilled; among the threatenings of God's judgments upon Israel for their sins, this was one, that they should eat the flesh of their own children, Deuteronomy 28:53-5. The truth and the awful justice of God were displayed in this horrible transaction. Alas! what miseries sin has brought upon the world! But the foolishness of man perverts his way, and then his heart frets against the Lord. The king swears the death of Elisha. Wicked men will blame any one as the cause of their troubles, rather than themselves, and will not leave their sins. If rending the clothes, without a broken and contrite heart, would avail, if wearing sackcl...

AFTER THIS - Perhaps some years after - when the miracle and the kind treatment were alike forgotten....

EXPOSITION VERSE 1-7:20 FURTHER MIRACLES WROUGHT BY ELISHA. The historian relates first a (comparatively) private miracle wrought by Elisha in the vicinity of Jericho, for the benefit of one of the "sons of the prophets" (2 Kings 7:1). He then tells us briefly of a series of public miracles which brought Elisha into much note and prominence. War, it appears, had again broken out in a pronounced form between Israel and Syria, Syria being the aggressor. The Syrian monarch prepared traps for his adversary, encamping in places where he hoped to take him at a disadvantage. But Elisha frustrated these plans, by addressing warnings to the King of Israel, and pointing out to him the various positions occupied ...

AND IT CAME TO PASS AFTER THIS, THAT BENHADAD KING OF SYRIA GATHERED ALL HIS HOST,.... Still retaining a grudge and enmity against Israel, and not at all softened by the kind and humane treatment his forces had met with, when in the hands of Israel; and finding he could do nothing in a secret way, by ambush, mustered all his forces together, to try what he could by open war: AND WENT UP, AND BESIEGED SAMARIA; Jehoram king of Israel not being able to stop him till he came to his capital, which he laid close siege to....

5. ELISHA AND THE SYRIANS CHAPTER 6 _ 1. The lost axe-head recovered (2 Kings 6:1)_ 2. Elisha makes known Ben-hadad's plans (2 Kings 6:8) 3. Elisha's arrest planned (2 Kings 6:13) 4. The blinded Syrians led to Samaria (2 Kings 6:18) 5. Samaria besieged (2 Kings 6:24) 6. The king's wrath against Elisha (2 Kings 6:31) It has been truly said that the miracle of the swimming axe-head reveals the condescension of

AN AXEHEAD SWIMS. ELISHA AND THE SYRIANS AT DOTHAN. In several minor miracles Elisha is always represented as working them not by his word, but by some expedient. Thus he heals the miscarrying waters by salt, and the pot by meal, and recovers the axehead by casting a stick into the water. The prophet appears in the second narrative as the moving spirit in the Syrian war. Whenever the king of Syria devised an ambush (2 Kings 6:8, with a slight alteration of reading), Elisha revealed the secret. Elisha was at Dothan (2 Kings 6:13), a city standing on a hill about 10 miles N. of Samaria, on the caravan road from Egypt to Damascus (Genesis 37:17, p. 30). Elisha was defended, as we are finely told, by horses and chariots of f

GATHERED. This was organized war, in contrast with the freebooting irregular bands of 2 Kings 6:23....

Benhadad besieges Samaria. The city suffers terribly from famine, and the king threatens to put Elisha to death (Not in Chronicles) 24. _Ben-hadad_ Probably the same king who was defeated and submitted himself to Ahab (1 Kings 20). _went up, and besieged Samaria_Josephus explains that Jehoram did not feel himself a match for Benhadad, and so shut himself up in Samaria, relying for protection on the security of its walls....

IT CAME TO PASS AFTER THIS, THAT BEN-HADAD, &C.— It has been often observed, that injuries are more gloriously overcome by benefits, than requited by pertinacious and mutual hatred; but the sense of benefits does not last long in bad natures. No sooner do we read of the kind treatment which the Syrians received, than it immediately follows, that the _king of Syria gathered all his host, and went up, and besieged Samaria:_ which, seeming not to agree with what is said in the preceding verse, that _the bands of Syria came no more into the land of Israel,_ some suppose, that the Syrians quite retreated for this time, and laid aside all thoughts of war, though afterwards they altered their minds, and broke out again into hostilities. Others, however, suppose the meaning to be, that the bands of the Syrians made no more incursions and inroads, but that they were resolved to fall upon the Isra...