2 Kings 6 - NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible

6:5 iron axhead. Iron technology was becoming more widely available at this time, but implements of iron were still expensive and valuable.

6:6 cut a stick . . . made the iron float. Ancient magic included a category called transference, where properties or characteristics of one object were passed to another. In this case, the buoyancy of the wood is passed to the axhead. While the text is unclear whether Elisha was actually practicing magic or not, his actions would have appeared that way to an ancient observer.

6:8 the king of Aram was at war with Israel. Aram had already become a thorn in Israel’s side during the reigns of Baasha, Omri and Ahab (1Ki 15:16–22; 20:1–43; 22:1–36), although the two states sometimes became allies when a greater threat confronted them. The Assyrian Monolith Inscription mentions Ahab fighting alongside the king of Damascus against the Assyrians at Qarqar in southern Syria in 853 BC. It was shortly afterward, however, when the Assyrian threat had waned, that conflict between Israel and Damascus was renewed and Ahab lost his life fighting to recover Ramoth Gilead (1Ki 22:1–36). Thereafter, there is no evidence of any Israelite presence at known battles between Shalmaneser and the Syro-Palestinian alliance. This external evidence, combined with the internal evidence of the Biblical text, suggests a general breakdown of relations between Israel and Damascus in the aftermath of Ahab’s death, which sometimes exhibited itself in the form of an uneasy truce between them (cf. 5:1–8, noting especially the Israelite king’s reaction in 5:7) and sometimes in the outbreak of full hostilities, as here in 6:8–7:20. It may have been during this war that Ramoth Gilead was recovered by Israel, since we are later told that Joram was wounded at a defensive battle at this city (8:28; 9:14–15). Our knowledge of interactions between Israel and Damascus in this period or in any other is, however, limited in view of the number and nature of the sources available to us, and specifically by the limited number of native Aramean records.

6:9 Beware of passing that place. Prophetic messages were often sought and/or offered in the ancient Near East in relation to military campaigns. In the case of Zimri-Lim of Mari, the information we have does not portray the king actively consulting prophets or personally encountering them, but only receiving their words through intermediaries. Prophetic messages were subjected to testing by other, more common means of divine communication (e.g., divination procedures such as extispicy). For divination regarding military tactics, see note on 1Sa 14:18–19. For differences between prophecy and divination, see the article “Balaam.”

6:17 hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha. The text does not speak of the mountains surrounding Dothan, but of the mount where Elisha stands. It refers then not to an army in the hills, but to Elisha’s heavenly bodyguard. They are not there to attack the Aramean army, but to protect Elisha from harm. This differs from the examples in the ancient Near East, in which the king is protected by the deity himself in that it is Yahweh’s army acting on his behalf.

6:18 blindness. It is often assumed that this refers to a total loss of physical sight. Yet the Arameans would not doubt their location just because they could no longer physically see it; and the “seeing” of the closely preceding vv. 15–17, which lies in contrastive parallel with this “not seeing,” is certainly not physical. It seems much more likely that the text refers to a dazed mental condition, in which the Arameans are open to suggestion and manipulation, but are still able to follow the prophet to Samaria. They believe Elisha when he tells them that they are in the wrong place (v. 19), and they do not realize that he has tricked them until the daze has passed (v. 20). An analogy to the idea of a god “blinding” enemy troops is found in the Tukulti-Ninurta Epic, where Shamash, the sun-god, “blinded the eyesight of the army of Sumer and Akkad.”

6:25 a donkey’s head sold for eighty shekels of silver. It is not likely that the inhabitants of any city would have moved quickly to slaughter and eat animals valuable to them in respect of their livelihoods. The Assyrian reliefs depicting Sennacherib’s conquest of Judahite Lachish in 701 BC underline this by showing animals (some of them looking more emaciated than the captured people) emerging from the city after the siege. That they are thus emaciated, but at least alive, indicates that their owners chose to eat their animals’ food before eating their animals. The people of Samaria, by contrast, were reduced not only to slaughtering and eating animals valuable to them, but also to consuming body parts that would not normally be consumed—and purchasing them for exorbitant prices. The cost of a live horse in 1Ki 10:29 is only 150 shekels of silver. seed pods. Lit. “dove’s dung,” which is sometimes interpreted as the popular name for something other than it at first appears (e.g., NIV’s “seed pods” and NEB’s “locust beans”). Yet we know that ancient city sieges often led to extremes among the besieged populations, including the eating of dung, and the people of Samaria were certainly in dire straits. A “quarter of a cab” is equivalent to about a quarter pound (100 grams). During the siege, then, a quarter pound of dove’s dung cost five shekels (what the average worker could make in six months).

6:28 Give up your son so we may eat him today. Describing his two-year siege of Babylon that ended in 648 BC, the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal says that “famine seized them; for in their hunger they ate the flesh of their sons and daughters.” Later he tells of a siege of King Uate of Arabia and his army in the mountain stronghold of Hukkuruna, where “famine broke out among them and they ate the flesh of their children against their hunger.” The Bible itself knows of other instances of this gruesome reality of cannibalism arising from long siege (e.g., La 2:20; 4:10; Eze 5:10).

6:31 May God deal with me, be it ever so severely, if the head of Elisha son of Shaphat remains on his shoulders today! Even though the prophets spoke on behalf of the deity, the people often held them responsible for the results as if they had the power to stop judgment or to enact deliverance. The office of prophet was therefore a dangerous one that could exact a high personal price.