2 Kings 6:24-31
"24 Afterward Ben-hadad king of Syria mustered his entire army and went up and besieged Samaria. 25 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. 26 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?”28 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.’ 29 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.” 30 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— 31 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's act of mercy towards the Syrians stopped their maraudings for the time being (23), but at a later date the pressures began again. It is true also in the spiritual life that such victories are never 'once-for-all', but need to be won again and again. Satan is a very persistent foe. The siege recorded here was obviously a protracted one, and reduced Israel to sore straits. But what shocks and revolts us is the depth to which the people sank in their extremity. It is one of the most gruesome stories in the Old Testament. But we should be clear in our minds that it was not the famine that was responsible for this - it was merely brought out by the shortage, and it is an evidence of the moral corruption and landslide that continuing sin and idolatry had brought about in the life of the nation. Extremities of any kind are great revealers of character and of the real state of men's hearts, and it is in this that their potential for ultimate good in the purpose and intention of God may be seen, for when men discover what is really in them, it is open to them to repent and mend their ways through very fear of what they may sink to next (It was something like this that brought the prodigal son to his senses, Luke 15). But the other danger is likewise present - that of refusing to face facts, and the king took his shameful alternative and, blaming Elisha for earlier sparing the Syrians, vowed vengeance on him for something for which he himself was directly responsible. There is, it seems, no limit to the perversity of men's hearts.